A Very Authorly Holiday, or, The Card Quandary

For many of us, the holidays are joyful events, filled with friendly board games, embarrassing
It's not just the pressure of genius that hinders my writing of
holiday cards. Beneath Bast, my holiday helper,
lies a completed card awaiting a label. Sigh.
reminiscences, overdrawn bank accounts, and far too much cranberry sauce.

And holiday cards – we can never forget the holiday cards.

My fiancée is Jewish, I’m Agnostic, and our friends and family range from Wiccan to Atheist to Pentecostal. We’re an eclectic group, the people for whom folks popularized the bland, safe “happy holidays.” As a result, my fiancée and I purchased a variety of holiday cards: some celebrating Solstice, some the new year, some Hanukkah, and some just gratuitously representing adorable furry friends. One of my favorites features a picture of a certain, gentle giant of an aquatic mammal wishing “Happy holidays for all of humanatee!”

I love sending out holiday cards. I write a different message in each one, decorate the envelope with sparkly stickers (How does a glittery butterfly represent the holidays? Who cares?), and match each stamp with the addressee it best represents. I take my annual holiday card duty very seriously.

Only one aspect of this ritual can dim its holiday brilliance: Penning that darn personalized message. This scenario likely exists only in my neurotic, authorly brain, but I vividly imagine each recipient drawing a sparkly envelope from their mailbox, tearing it open with a zeal irrespective of potential papercuts, and unfolding the enclosed card in anticipation of a paragraph packed full of wit and wisdom from their favorite local author.

Should the message be funny? Irreverent? Profound? Heartfelt? Lighthearted? Generic? Some creative combination? As a romance writer, I use words as my creative medium for conveying ageless themes and amorphous feelings. Surely I should be able to distill the essence of an entire relationship into one brief, eloquent sequences of sentences. Right? Right?!

The. Pressure!

Oscar the Cute wishes everyone a
warm holiday season.
As a result of my (self-imposed) expectations of literary genius, each holiday season finds me sitting at the kitchen table before my festive tools of torture, tapping my fingers, rubbing my temples, and wondering how to birth each ethereal, witty, personal, and poignant message. Ten pages of stickers, forty-three labels, fifty cards, one hundred stamps, and thirteen tons of authorial guilt and responsibility.

No one mentioned this aspect of authorship.

That said, happy holidays, my friends! Insert delightfully funny, meaningful, enlightening observation here. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Public Peeing: A Case for Gender Desegregation

Image
I just wrote a scene about a topic near and dear all our hearts: public bathrooms. Below is an excerpt from my book. “Yeah, so how come girls and boys have different bathrooms?” … Josh thought for a time. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But I read about it in the Twelve’s* books. I think they did it and we inherited it from them. You know we live in buildings they built and use sewer systems they fashioned.” Garyn shook her head. “Well, we do. We owe our infrastructure to the Twelves. They were great builders and developers. Not so great at taking care of each other, but you know that…I guess they thought women and men should pee separately.” “Why?” Garyn persisted. “We don’t eat in separate places.” … “I don’t know, Garyn,” she said finally. “…I do know the Twelves thought a lot about sex. I think they were worried they wouldn’t be able to control themselves if they knew the person right next to them was only half-clothed.” Lynna snorted. “What about onesex or...
Read more

The Fat Twin Phenomenon

Image
My identical tw-- uh, best friend (left) and me Did you know I have a twin? I do. Lots of them, in fact. Or, if not a twin, at least a sister. Millions. My poor mom. Picture this: Two women sit next to one another on a shuttle to a hotel in Chicago. The shuttle driver grins at them in the mirror and asks, “Are you two twins?” They get the same question a few days later. A few years later, while one of them visits the other’s workplace, several people approach the smiling duo and ask if they’re sisters. They’re not twins. They’re not even sisters. In fact, they are separated by years (nine), hair (one has long, straight, blonde hair, while the other’s is curly and brown), height (the blonde is two or three inches taller), and body shapes (the blonde is more hourglass). Their eye colors and face shapes are completely different, and no one would ever confuse their voices over the phone. However, they have three things in common that automatically, and apparently, render t...
Read more

Soul Mate Blog Hop

Image
Mystery! Fun! Excitement! Prizes! Exclamation points! All this and more await you in this blog post, which links to several other amazing blog posts in the Soul Mate Super-Duper Fun Blog Hop, which stretches from Monday, February 24 to Friday, February 28. Okay, this post may not contain tons of mystery and romance, but it leads to several authors whose books do. And it does feature opportunities to win some cool prizes, such as a copy of my latest published book, Hunted Dreams , and a Kindle PaperWhite. Details are below. First, though, please allow me to introduce myself. So, hi. I’m Elle Hill. I’m a Sociology Instructor by day and a writer and social activist the rest of the time. I pen paranormal romance that delves pretty heavily into psychology and sociology. But hey, I don’t just pay attention to those human elements. I’m a big fan of animalkind and love featuring them in my works. Only The Tithe , my latest and as yet unpublished book, does not include animal sideki...
Read more