Every section is the hardest section

This is going to be a little chaotic

Today I wrote the hardest section of the book. Tomorrow I will also write the hardest section of the book. And the day after that, and the day after that, and every day thereafter. The book is hard and terrifying: how do I write about what happened, after everything that has happened? Writing about family is so much, all the time, because on some level, you are still living it, in there, in the book, making the words and putting the sections together; these are real people and they have thoughts and ideas and it’s hard to make sense of the shape of it all. I am just telling the story of what happened. Mostly the book is about me and my experiences; at Iowa, my professor said my schtick was “the world according to Emily.” I was offended at the time. She’s not wrong. I can’t talk specifics; I’m in too deep, and also my mother subscribes to this newsletter. Hi mom!

A couple weeks ago I asked my agent if I could maybe try to get a little more time to finish the book. I think this may be possible. Books get pushed out all the time; I know what I’m asking is not unrealistic, but it’s still not guaranteed. It’s still theoretically possible that I might be able to finish on my original deadline, but I would love to have more time, to make the book better, or at least more finished. To wrap my arms around the story I need to tell.

I wrote that a few days ago. Long story short, I’m getting an extension. As I keep telling everyone I know, I need more time to be sad about this book. It’s pretty intense.

I am trying, too, to keep moving. I am gutted by what is happening in Gaza and Israel right now. I am someone who is Jewish and whose ancestors were stripped of their citizenship, or never awarded citizenship, and so they had to leave, mostly at the end of the 19^th century. In particular, my grandfather’s family is originally from Bessarabia, we think, a country that no longer exists, now parts of Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. For many years, in order to be considered Romanian, and get citizenship, you had to be Catholic. Out of the Romanian Jews who were not murdered in pogroms, or who didn’t flee to the US, or who weren’t murdered in the Holocaust, or after, in the Soviet years, many now live in Israel. The current situation is complicated and horrible. I think Palestinians and Israelis almost entirely do not represent their governments and need places to live and to not be oppressed or kidnapped or murdered or bombed into oblivion. I am against murdering, particularly when it comes to civilians. I feel like this is a low bar but some people do not. I am worried about a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. Mostly I am sad and angry. I try to limit my exposure to the internet, but of course I can’t do that either. There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there.

In ceramics news, the super thixotropic clay I ordered came in, and I’ve picked it up and started working with it. It is fun to work with, though exceptionally sticky. This is the clay I’m mixing 50/50 with another cone 6 porcelain so as to try to make translucent things in my electric kiln. In moving from a cone 10 gas kiln to a cone 6 electric, the transition has been rough. I love and miss the colors and translucency I can get in the gas kiln. In picking up a piece and examining it, I can immediately tell if it’s been made in a gas kiln vs an electric kiln. It doesn’t feel the same, or wear the same, because the chemical process used to make it into a glazed, finished piece was different. I’m trying to blur that boundary in using these clays. Making test pieces. Making new pieces. Firing some strange experiments. Weird glazes that feel like gas glazes but fired electric. Some colored and stained clays too.

I still hope to fire work in my old electric kiln if I can convert it to propane, maybe at cone 6 so it uses less energy and takes less time to get to the right temperature. It can be difficult to get a reduction atmosphere in that kind of kiln conversion—because you have to make the chamber so that it’s deprived of oxygen during a specific point in the firing process, and there can be cold spots or spots that don’t get reduced properly. Propane burns marginally hotter than natural gas, and so you have to account for that too. Electric kilns weren’t originally made to be airtight, so there’s some remodeling (read: high temperature cement) required. I would need to build a chimney and a damper, and figure out a way to decrease smoke during reduction, so as not to alarm my neighbors. But I have some ideas, and with a little physics and a digital pyrometer, and maybe a couple of small venturi burners, we’ll see what shakes out.

Been going through a lot of old notes lately, so I can figure out the best way to convert kilns, reformulate glaze recipes, and everything else.

But mostly I am writing my book, and it’s horrible and hard, and I wish it wasn’t, but I’m doing it anyway.