In a time of apparent magic…

À la Star Wars (right down to the unostentatious font), these words open Christopher Nolan’s 2026 adaptation of The Odyssey, setting us up for the fact that this latest adaptation of one of Western literature’s oldest texts was created in a time of apparent cynicism.

Or, at least, realism, which Christopher Nolan delivers through his usual commitment to the use of practical effects. In terms of craft—in every department—it’s a sophisticated film. His continued dedication to eschewing CGI wherever possible, especially as the arts risk invasion from every side and in every medium by generative AI, sets him apart as a director who values and prioritizes human work and talent. (He also has never owned a smartphone. I’m supremely jealous.)

Through this framework, Nolan creates a world that feels remarkably believable, for a story that famously features gods, monsters, a witch, and a cyclops. Its effect is twofold: first, it neutralizes our need to actively suspend any disbelief, but it also, in a subtle but impactful way, drains all of the magic and enchantment from the story. It no longer feels like a fantasy. It no longer feels like a myth.

Some of the main hallmarks of a Nolan movie are large-scale stories and grey-scale color palettes, which, to be fair, usually match each of his films’ subjects and narratives thematically, but in the case of The Odyssey, which is chock full of magical creatures, vibrant landscapes, gods, and magic, the world feels subdued. Yes, it almost makes you believe that everything you see on screen could happen, but doesn’t that take some of the magic out of the experience?

One area where this ultra-realism does shine, however, is in Nolan’s representation of the gods—or rather, his lack of representation. They never actually appear, at least not in a form we might recognize. They can instead be felt in the wind and waves that pummel Odysseus’s ship, in the distant rumbling of thunder as Antinous antagonizes Telemachus, and in the eyes of a terrified young priestess, caught and murdered by Odysseus’s men during the sack of Troy. Even Odysseus’s recurring visions of Athena later turn out to be a manifestation of his own guilt, rather than a visitation by the goddess herself. The characters in the movie experience the gods as the real people of Ancient Greece experienced them, in nature and in the workings of the world around them. Depicting gods on Mount Olympus lounging on klinai and drinking ambrosia can turn quickly into unwanted camp. Nolan cleverly circumvents this—and his film, his own interpretation of The Odyssey, is stronger for it.

There are times when this aforementioned cynicism is used, tactfully, to warn us away from the glorification and mythologizing of war, but it is mainly used to rob the world of enchantment, and of, ultimately—despite those godly thunderclaps—divinity. Nolan’s Odysseus, unlike Homer’s, is a man wracked with guilt, haunted by the ghosts of the violence he wrought at Troy. By tricking their way into the city via the famous Trojan Horse, “Zeus’s Law”—the law of hospitality, or xenia—has been broken, people’s trust in each other has been broken, and there is no magic, no enchantment, to be found. Like I said, it’s a pretty cynical movie, if still impactful for a modern audience.

Now, if I might be allowed to pivot…this is a lot like King Arthur.

HUH?

The way I see it, The Odyssey is adaptable in the same way that the tales and myths of King Arthur and Camelot are adaptable. The Odyssey takes place in a time and place vaguely familiar to us—Ancient Greece—, a catch-all term of periodization that encompasses thousands of years. King Arthur (who falls into the same category as the Trojan War in that we don’t know if he existed) is generally accepted to be a medieval figure, and the Middle Ages spanned a millenium. Think about all of the many films and tv shows that have been made about King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, The Green Knight, etc. No one—apart from a few embittered fashion historians—cares that Helen Mirren is wearing an off-the-shoulder blue velvet dress in Excalibur. Was anyone complaining about the costuming for the BBC’s Merlin? (A personal favorite adaptation of mine.) I don’t think so, but if I catch you, look out.

Unless you’ve made an active decision to attach the story to a very specific time (in the vein of Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 film King Arthur, which follows the theory that the historical Arthur was Roman General Lucius Artorius Castus), then there is no reason to hold the film’s costuming, speech, or sets to any kind of specific historical standard.

The fact is, we don’t know exactly when The Odyssey was first told, and historians’ best guess as to when it was first written down falls within a range of a hundred or so years. We don’t even know if the Trojan War ever happened, just like we don’t know if King Arthur ever existed. (Unfortunately, likely not.) “Historical accuracy”, in the case of The Odyssey, is ultimately just a buzzy phrase used by critics, classicists, and historians, who know it is the worst charge you can level against any film set in the past.

As is often the case, my thoughts may be summed up thusly: it’s not that deep. (Some things are, but not this, not “should Matt Damon be wearing that helmet in this scene with a twenty foot cyclops”.) The film is, ultimately, an Odyssey for 2026; it’s not perfect—it leaves behind the magic, sex, and humor in the text—but it is an incredible feat of cinema. And if it gets more people walking down to their local bookstore to pick up a classic and realizing that the humanities just might be important after all, so much the better.

The last couple of months comprised what felt like the longest winter of my life, due in large part to the advent of not one, but two major blizzards that did gave me two Mondays off from work, but also made commuting to work on each following Tuesday feel akin to a 19th century Antarctic expedition. It was a long winter for other reasons, too, which challenged myself and my family during the time of year when we all seem to already have the least amount of resilience to deal with just about anything.

Every year at the beginning of December, I claim proudly that I, unlike everyone else, actually enjoy the 4pm sunsets, the biting cold, and the cumulative 10 feet of snow over 90 days because it means I finally have an excuse not to go anywhere in the evenings. I can, instead, curl up and read a book or watch a movie, and go to bed with a hot water bottle every night. Unfortunately, I also discover every year that none of these things, not even in sum, are enough to counteract the gnawing and unrelenting gloom, pessimism, and melancholy that manifests rapidly around halfway through January—an affliction known to many as SAD. (Has an acronym ever been more apt?)

Never fear! I shall not, I promise, add to the April showers with a maudlin reflection on my season of frost and mellow listlessness. I shall instead present you with some of the art and culture I consumed this winter that kept my spirit alive.

Reading

While I’ve yet to top the grand total of seven books I read in January (I managed five books in February and only FOUR books in March, quelle horreur), I did get around to picking up some particular titles that I’ve been wanting to read for ages, and began to make good on my resolution to read more nonfiction this year.

I finally picked up Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, furthering my dedication to Irish literature and making me nostalgic for the one cold and rainy day I spent in Cork in January of 2023. I’m eagerly awaiting the end to O’Donoghue’s podcasting hiatus (humorously titled Sentimental Garbage; there’s an extensive backlog for anyone interested), since she’s currently on set for The Rachel Incident’s television adaptation (!)

In February, my book club read Heart the Lover, which we were unanimously ambivalent about, but my interest in Lily King was piqued and I may try some of her other titles sometime. Our March pick was more of a winner: Madeline Miller’s Circe, another title I’ve been meaning to pick up for ages, and which has now become a favorite for me.

Every year on Christmases and birthdays, my godmother, who lives in London (I always feel glamorous writing that) sends me a new book to read. This Christmas, it was Jobs for Girls (full title + author below), which leant itself toward my nonfiction resolution and served as a pertinent reminder that simply allowing the admittance of women to certain jobs and into certain fields has not always been (and still is not) enough; the active encouragement of young women throughout their education is just as (if not more) vital to their employment and advancement as simply allowing them to apply.

A full list of everything I read in February and March: (more reviews on my Goodreads)

1. The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

2. Heart the Lover by Lily King

3. The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty by Tracy Borman

4. Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England by Kate Hubbard

5. Jobs for Girls: How We Set Out to Work in the Typewriter Age by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

6. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

7. The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

8. Circe by Madeline Miller

9. Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

Watching

With the release of Emerald Fennell’s polarizing yet mania-inducing “Wuthering Heights”, alongside The Moment, a mockumentary featuring Charli XCX as a fictionalized version of herself, February shed its reputation as a cinema desert and became a month where everyone wanted to be at the theater. Including me!

March was, of course, the biggest month of the year for the film industry, with the 98th Academy Awards on the 15th, though this year’s broadcast experienced a drop in viewership. (Was everyone at the ballet or the opera, trying to prove Timothée Chalamet wrong?) I was thrilled to see Sinners win 4 awards from their record-breaking 16 nominations, and to see Sentimental Value take home Best International Feature. Despite there being a longer than usual time between nomination day and the ceremony this year, I left my Oscars homework until the very last minute, watching about half of the ten Best Picture nominees over the course of one week. Hence the extensive list below.

A full list of all the films I watched in February and March: (Oscar nominees starred once; new releases starred twice. More reviews on my Letterboxd)

1. The Moment**

2. Woman of the Year

3. A Private Life (French: Vie Privée)**

4. “Wuthering Heights”** (If you really want to hear my full thoughts on this adaptation (that barely warrants the name), see my full review here.)

5. Bugonia *

6. Pillion**

7. Fackham Hall

8. One Battle After Another *

9. Train Dreams *

10. The Secret Agent *

11. Sinners *

12. F1 *

13. The Choral**

14. Ella McCay

15. The History Boys

Listening

Wuthering Heights - album by Charli XCX. It is a strange feat, indeed, when the “Wuthering Heights” companion album ends up being better than the “Wuthering Heights” film itself. And even more so when the 4-minute music video for the lead single on said album ends up being a better Wuthering Heights adaptation than the Wuthering Heights film adaptation the album was made for in the first place.

I am, as usual, constantly listening to podcasts, and have a few in particular that I’d like to shout out! If you like your history with a healthy dose of gossip and scandal, try out Betwixt the Sheets, hosted by sex historian Kate Lister. If you’re looking for thoughtful, in-depth analyses of current trends in pop culture, usually explored through the lens of a recent release in literature, film/television, or music, I highly recommend the New Yorker’s Critics at Large (which was recommended to me in turn by a good friend of mine).

Visiting

The Gardner Museum just opened their new exhibition, Picturing Isabella, featuring a small but dynamic collection of photographs featuring the museum’s iconic and eponymous founder.

Located in the Fenway Gallery, the exhibit offers an intimate exploration into Isabella’s careful curation of her own image. Famously averse to appearing on camera, when she did agree to pose, she often kept her face covered in a veil of ghostly white or haunting black. These images in which she appears voilée are both eerie and magnetic; I found it hard to look away.

While visiting a friend in NYC for our annual Oscars viewing, I managed to get in just in time to see the Met Cloisters’ Spectrum of Desire, a similarly intimate exhibition featuring objects on the theme of love, sex, and gender in the Middle Ages. Medieval Europe is often painted as a chaste and conservative (small c) world, but this exhibition did an effective job of reminding visitors what is also true: that church doctrine did not always reflect the everyday beliefs and actions of the general Christian populace, with scripture often interpreted through literature, art, and music in erotic and unconventional ways.

My (by no means original) thesis: Good art will see you through.

Until next time!

Caroline xx

Unfortunately, she decided to call it “Wuthering Heights”.

The quotations around the title could not be more appropriate; what Fennell creates in her third feature as writer-director is something that scarcely resembles its source material, the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. It barely even warrants its title—scare quotes or not.

My (perhaps formerly premature, but now at last justified) gripes with this adaptation can be traced back to the moment of its conception, and to the promotional image of two intertwined skeletons engaged in, if you look closely, a very obvious sexual act.

Words scribbled ominously at the bottom, “a film by Emerald Fennell”, felt more a threat than an announcement. Then came the news that the lead characters would be played by Hollywood royalty Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and the confirmation that Fennell had no interest in engaging with Heathcliff’s non-white (likely South Asian or Romani) identity in the text. Then came some blurry set photos featuring some very…interesting gowns on Robbie as Cathy. (One of them gives Diana Spencer a run for her money.) In late 2025, the first trailer was released, scored by a cinematic rendition of a Charli XCX song (which quickly took over my Reels feed), confirming everyone’s suspicions: that this adaptation had no intention of being a faithful one.

A second trailer advertised Fennell’s film as an adaptation of “the greatest love story of all time”, which raised many an eyebrow. The promotional material seemed to suggest that this adaptation would not be your grandmother’s Wuthering Heights; indeed, in interviews, Fennell has repeatedly insisted that her take would instead represent the novel as she herself read and understood it as a teenage girl.

I fear that in sitting down to record my thoughts before, during, and after my viewing of the film, that I will be adding to the already flooding river of commentary out there right now, and I’ve been struggling to come up with a fresh, new angle that hasn’t already been done to death. And to be honest, I don’t know that I have one. I’m not going to write about the (willing?) ignorance of casting a white actor as Heathcliff; that’s been done to death. I won’t write, either, about how the casting of beautiful, 35-year-old, star-of-Barbie Margot Robbie as bratty, strange, and teenage Catherine Earnshaw sucks any sympathy you might have for the character right out of you. That, too, has been done to death. Swapping out Heathcliff’s domestic abuse of Isabella for kinky roleplay; romanticizing and sanitizing a novel originally about obsession, class, race, and generational cycles of abuse; etc., etc. Done. To. Death. (How Wuthering Heights is that phrase?!)

Instead, I’m going to talk about the fact that when I came out of the theater last Saturday after watching the movie with some friends, we were all completely and totally underwhelmed. Underwhelmed, I should point out, not because we’d thought it would be good. (As you’ll have gathered, that was never the expectation.) Underwhelmed, because we naively thought, “well, even if we already know it’s going to be bad, at least we’ll be in for a wild ride.” Reader, we were not.

“Wuthering Heights” was lukewarm. And to be honest, given that this was an Emerald Fennell original, that fact is what everyone should really be talking about.

There was nothing lukewarm about the twisted manifestation of Cassie’s revenge in Promising Young Woman, and there was absolutely, positively nothing lukewarm about the things that Barry Keoghan did to Jacob Elordi’s grave in Saltburn. (Which, in a way, was an act a lot more in tune, plot-wise, with Wuthering Heights than Fennell’s actual adaptation.)

Emerald Fennell’s films assault their viewers. They are beautifully grotesque; they make you squirm in your seat and screw your eyes shut, only to open them again a moment later when she presents you with a striking, if meaningless, image. And while “Wuthering Heights” certainly has its moments of meaningless aesthetic pleasure (the rooms at Thrushcross Grange are quite decadent), I, at no point during the film, found myself averting my eyes.

I don’t believe that she owes us this; directors are, after all, allowed to break out of the aesthetic and thematic boxes in which we often like to capture them, and if Fennell had given any indication that she’d intended this adaptation to be less shocking than her other works, I might have been less surprised by an R-rated movie that felt firmly PG-13.

Perhaps Fennell believed that the historical setting and much-beloved literary inspiration for her adaptation would be enough to render any moment of eroticism startling. What she seemed to forget as she conceptualized the sex in “Wuthering Heights” was that, in this day and age, it’s not the presence of sex itself that shocks and disgusts audiences into titillation—it is, instead, often the circumstances that bring it to pass, or the concept of what is actually happening. What’s shocking about that infamous scene in Saltburn is not Oliver’s lust for Felix, or even the fact that he is watching through the door as Felix masturbates in a bathtub; it is when we catch him licking the tub later, after the bath has been drained. (The grave scene, which happens later in the film, speaks for itself in its ability to shock us.)

Even the servants who Cathy watches through cracks in the attic floor as they engage in some bondage involving a bridle feels strangely tame, especially after their assignation is hidden from the audience once Heathcliff appears behind Cathy and covers her eyes and mouth (in what ends up being the closest equivalent to true eroticism the film manages to conjure up).

When Cathy and Heathcliff finally begin a physical affair (in another perplexing deviation from the novel) and consummate their passion, it is done through the medium of (for lack of a better word) a sex montage—in carriages, against walls, and of course, on the moors—all to the tune of a Charli XCX song, which does nothing else but remind us that Bridgerton did it first, and better.

If Fennell wished to incite in us the same titillating shock and disgust she extracted from her audiences with Saltburn, she failed to do so here. Even the close-up shots of fingers in egg yolks, of slugs trailing slime across a window, and of bread being vigorously and sensually kneaded, don’t feel particularly repulsive, and not at all erotic.

Dare I defend Saltburn? Never did I think I would see the day, and nor did my poor parents, who sat down one evening to watch it expecting a romping Brideshead spoof, and were, I fear, permanently scarred. It certainly wasn’t to my taste; I prefer aesthetics and debauchery accompanied with a bit more meaning, but the film felt totally unapologetic and wholly Fennell. With “Wuthering Heights”, it feels as if she held back; I would have almost preferred a version where, despite deviating egregiously from the novel, it had me gleefully clutching my metaphorical pearls a bit in the theater. Strangely, I would have liked to be a bit more shocked.

BONUS:

In addition to the release in bookstores everywhere of the movie tie-in edition, featuring the Gone With the Wind style image from the poster, Simon & Schuster has also released their own tie-in, as the first installment in their Female Filmmakers Collection, which will feature forewords from female directors who have tried their hand at adapting various literary classics. See below: featuring the aforementioned bridle, the sparse design is reminiscent of a Jilly Cooper cover.

In fact, I think I’ll go read some Jilly Cooper right now. Maybe one day she’ll get the Emerald Fennell treatment…

Awards season! (Winter’s nice, too, I guess.)

On Thursday morning, I sprang out of bed, pressed play on an energetic playlist, made myself an iced coffee, and left early to get on the train. It was important I be on time.

To work, you might be thinking. No. (Well, yes, that too.)

I wanted to be settled on the train by 8:30am so I could watch this year’s Oscar nominations be announced live on Youtube with no interruptions. (I did this last year, too.)

2025 was a great year for movies. Despite the recent (and ongoing) shenanigans surrounding Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros., despite streamers asking writers to dumb down their scripts, and despite increasing anxiety about what, if any, role AI should be playing in the arts, 2025 was also a year for stand-out independent films—Sorry, Baby, Train Dreams, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, among myriad others—and a year for reassuring proof, in the form of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, that big studios are still willing to finance original content that isn’t a sequel, prequel, or remake.

And so, at 8:30am on January 22nd, I was ready to watch Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman (swoon) announce this year’s nominees. This is the third awards season I’ve followed with dedication (thanks in large part to the awards correspondents at Vanity Fair and their Little Gold Men podcast), and every year I like to think I get a little better at making my own predictions, recognizing successful (and unsuccessful) campaigns, and identifying what factors set up a film or a performance to help it go all the way toward the most coveted prize of the awards season.

This year’s Academy Awards promise to be particularly exciting, with the introduction of a brand-new category (for Achievement in Casting), and a new record set for most nominations ever received by a film. Read on, if you’re interested, for some general thoughts and analyses from yours truly.

A new record!

That’s right. Move over, Titanic. With a whopping 16 nominations (out of a possible 17 that it was eligible for), Ryan Coogler’s historical vampire horror, Sinners (set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932), just made Oscars history.

After its release in April, Sinners quickly proved that potential hurdles in the form of genre and a spring release date were no match for its critical acclaim, popularity, and sustained momentum. The film held onto its cultural relevance all summer long, ready to be dropped neatly into the awards conversation when September came around.

The fact that Sinners was an entirely original work, tied to no existing IP, and financed by a major studio to boot, gives us every reason to be optimistic about the future of original creative works in the industry. If enough of its nominations turn into wins on Oscars night, I think we can expect to see a lot more exciting, high-concept, and original works greenlit over the next few years.

Best Actress (everyone’s favorite race)

I’m sure they’re already engraving Jessie Buckley’s golden statuette as we speak. Critics, pundits, and industry insiders alike can all pretty safely say that the Oscar will be hers, and very deservingly so. (Though Rose Byrne may give her a run for her money.) Every year, without fail, the Best Actress race is the most glamorous part of the night–of the whole season! If you were an optimist, you’d say it’s because we love to watch women win. If you were a pessimist, you’d say it’s because we love to pit women against each other. I think it’s because they give the best speeches.

But just because Jessie has the Oscar (and every other award she’s nominated for this season) locked up, doesn’t mean there weren’t room for some surprises on nomination day, and I can say, at least on my part, there were certainly gasps uttered when Kate Hudson’s name was announced and Chase Infiniti’s wasn’t. I, like many, thought that Chase had her spot locked, and that Emma Stone, Amanda Seyfried (who I was quite disappointed to see miss out, after watching her incredible performance in The Testament of Ann Lee the night before) and maybe Kate would be competing for the fifth and final slot. It’s clear, though, that I underestimated Emma Stone’s momentum from two recent wins, and that it was Chase’s spot, not Emma’s, that was most vulnerable. To Kate, and to the publicists at Focus Features: brava. I guess all of the caroling worked.

The Academy revs its engines

Once again, The Academy proves just how much it loves car movies. Truly, if you had asked me for one hundred possible combinations for the Best Picture category this year, I can assure you that F1—the 3-hour, Apple TV-produced movie featuring Brad Pitt as, shocker, a Formula One driver—would not have appeared on a single one of them.

Unfortunately, a surprise on nomination day means that another film must go. In this case, most everyone agrees that the victim was It Was Just An Accident, France’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category, in which it did receive a nomination. (Yes, international films can be and have often been nominated in both Best Picture and Best International Feature. Here’s the Oscar rulebook on the subject.) Helmed by Jafar Panahi, an Iranian director who has faced prison and censorship in Iran for his fierce criticism of the government, the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and its spot amongst the Best Picture nominees was, until now, considered safe.

It seems that despite the makeup of the Academy shifting in recent years to be more international, it’s still a harder path to the top for foreign films. But of course, there’s still The Secret Agent (Brazil) and Sentimental Value (Norway)—two films nominated in both categories this year— to celebrate!

And who will I be rooting for on Oscars night? Catch me riding the Sentimental Value train all the way. (I was thrilled to see all four performances nominated!) It could be that One Battle After Another follows in the footsteps of Oppenheimer and sweeps the night, but until the card comes out of the envelope, there’s always room for a few surprises. And believe me, I’ll be watching with bated breath.

Until March 15th!

Caroline

See the full list of this year’s Academy Award Nominations here.

Apparently, Substack is cringe. (?) Judging by the expressions the word draws forth from many of my acquaintances when it is invoked, Substack appears to have become the new SoundCloud: where aspiring Joan Didions and David Foster Wallaces can direct friends, vague acquaintances, and people they meet at parties, after admitting they haven’t yet finished their attempt at the next Great American Novel.

“But I’m on Substack!”, they cry, desperately trying to prove that they’ve produced something and that it’s being read. (By you, they hope.)

My observations of Substack’s entrance into the zeitgeist and subsequent evolution are as follows: it seems to have manifested as a new platform from which influencers could launch their newsletters, then slowly evolved into a new form of slow, long-form, social media, where every student, journalist, author, actor, comedian, chef, or CEO could build a platform based more on the written word than on aesthetics.

It’s like a blog, but more subscription based. It’s also like social media (there’s an app!), but with more words. (And no Reels.)

And apparently, now, it’s cringe. (Again: ???)

I hear my mother in my head. “WHO CARES!?!” And I don’t. I’ve actually come to the end of my rope when it comes to the recent social and cultural trend of synonymizing earnestness and the act of trying hard - and being proud of it - with “being cringe”. Are there some poorly written, pretentious publications rolling around on Substack, that could use another pass (or two) for grammar? Of course. But we have those in the New York Times, too. (I’ve lately been seeing too many addendums at the end of NYT articles apologizing for misprints and factual errors for my liking. And too many typos in novels that I pick up in the recent releases section at the bookstore.)

So yes, I’m sure you’ll find yourself at a party one night and someone you don’t really like but find yourself compelled to talk to will say something you find pretentious and will follow it up with, “I wrote about it on my Substack”. You’ll politely ask for its name, and promise to sign up for their newsletter, and guess what? When you get home, you don’t have to. But if you poke around on the app even just a little bit, you’ll very likely find a newsletter or think piece or essay that does interest you, and you’ll start to spend more time reading interesting things than scrolling on TikTok, and when you find you have something interesting you want to say, you’ll start your own, and decide that if people are going to call you cringe, you’re just going to have to embrace it.

There have always been bloggers we’ve rolled our eyes at, and there have also always been little gems of articles and newsletters and Instagram accounts that we never would have seen in the first place if the writers and creators hadn’t decided to try really hard.

Basically, I’m ready for all of us (especially us women) to stop thinking that trying at something and announcing that you want to be good at it is the worst kind of social transgression. (If Timothée Chalamet can say it, so can we.)

Because truthfully, I don’t even think Substack is cringe, at all. It’s a bit of a gold mine, really, and no matter how niche your research/cultural/health/lifestyle interest may be, you’ll find a creator who has a year’s backlog of posts on the subject.

I experimented a bit with short-form writing during the pandemic, when, in a lockdown-induced craze, I started an ill-fated blog. (Ill-fated in that, after writing approximately 4 posts on what was supposed to become a primary source record of life during COVID, I promptly abandoned it.) I wrote a few articles for my college paper, and I sometimes regret leaving the opinions team sophomore year when my schedule started to get too hectic.

When I started writing my first novel this year, it was hard. Well, at first it was easy and exciting, and for about 10,000 words I thought, “this is great, I could be done by June!”. And then I hit a wall that I’ve since learned many writers hit at around the 5-10k mark with a new project, and then I kept hitting other, thicker walls, and then in late summer, I took a whole month off writing. I even, at one point, thought about packing it all in to write a smutty historical romance instead. (I’ll do that at some point. You can look forward to it.)

But while I was on this month-long hiatus, and worrying more and more every day that went by with no words written, I started thinking a lot more about the whole “writing is a muscle” theory, and how weak that muscle might become if I took too long a break from my current WIP. I started working, sporadically, on article ideas I had, often beginning as in-depth reviews of movies I’d seen that summer, and while a few weeks later I was thankfully back on track, the itch to start producing some shorter-form content had not quite been scratched.

So here I am. Maybe when I find the strength and will to produce enough regular content that might warrant a paid subscription (or even enough content that someone might find it worth it to pay for), I’ll monetize this endeavor. For now, enjoy the freebies in a world where nearly everything you want to read lies behind a paywall.

I might not be consistent, in theme or in frequency, but you can comfortably expect the occasional ponderings of a chronic (and proud) culture vulture in your inbox, should you choose to subscribe. Maybe I’ll discuss my writing process, or whatever historical rabbit hole I’m currently down. Maybe I’ll defend my love of 90s romance novels and 80s fantasy films. Substack is my metaphorical oyster.

Thanks for reading :)

Caroline