Finding North: March 2024
On how to fill the well, with bonus ice cream 🍦
Note: The recording above is a reading of this newsletter — there’s no different content, and it’s not produced, so you’ll hear the occasional stumble, or sounds of daily life in the background. If you’re someone who needs or prefers to hear their news, then I hope it’s helpful.
Hi there! I’m Amie Kaufman, NYT and internationally bestselling author of The Isles of the Gods, Illuminae, Aurora Rising, These Broken Stars, and many more books besides. This newsletter is the place to learn about my latest releases or events, and to follow along behind the scenes as I find my way through writing, and through life.
Hi, my friends.
In my last newsletter, I talked about that feeling of everything being up in the air — I was waiting to see where it would land, and trying to enjoy the time in between.
This month much of it has landed, and how. I’m going to be wonderfully busy over the next few years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in over a decade of this strange job, it’s that what I need to do right now is prepare for that coming flurry of activity.
So, in this newsletter I’m talking about how I fill my well and updating you on what I’ve been writing, and of course there’s the usual book rec — plus a giveaway winner!
Let’s get started.
What I’ve Been Up To
So, filling your well. First things first: what is your well?
It’s where it all comes from — your creativity, your motivation, and your resilience (which I know is a buzzword, but also a really handy thing to have.) Your well is where all the good fuel comes from, the stuff that lets you do things without burning out.
I’m a person who loves a list, so I keep an actual spreadsheet pinned to the top of my browser, where I’m always just one click away from my list of ideas. I thought that this month I’d share some of them — whether you’re an artist, or just trying to get through the next week, I think this kind of list might be helpful for everyone
The first column is actions that will help me fill my well in the next five minutes.
o Stretch my body
o Make a cup of tea (and focus on doing it)
o Take a shower
o Dance to one song
o Text someone a compliment out of the blue
o Tidy up my desk, which is usually a mess when I’m also a mess
o Go find a family member I can hug
o Get dressed
o Close my eyes, and spend a couple of minutes mentally walking through somewhere I love
The next column is a list of things I can do that day to fill my well.
o Go for a walk at the beach
o Plan a movie night – it doesn’t have to be for tonight, even the planning’s a lift!
o Borrow a library book and take some time to browse
o Ride my bike somewhere (or honestly just round the streets and back again)
o Organise a catch-up with a friend
o Try (emphasis on ‘try’) baking something
o Play a board game
Now, for our third column, we come to a different category. This isn’t the stuff that I pull out in response to feeling like my well is getting empty. This is the stuff that I make part of the fabric of my life, because I know that if I do it consistently, my well will keep on refilling.
In many ways, these are the things that are hardest to do. When you have a headache, it’s easy to take a painkiller. When you’re feeling like your feet are dragging, it’s easy to see you should take five minutes, or even an hour, to do something that will pick you up. These things, though, often seem like they’re not having much of an impact — in part because if you do them all the time, then you feel fine! Maybe it’s like taking your medication – if it works, it just seems like you’re perfectly healthy. Except that when you don’t take it, it turns out it was doing something after all!
My list of regular activities to keep my well full includes:
o Having dinner, in person, with friends — not every night, obviously, but often
o Giving my kid her bath at night, and putting her to bed – something I find really mindful
o Eating dinner at the table with my family, instead of wolfing it down wherever
o A regular meditation practice
o Going for hikes
o Reading, uninterrupted
For other people, this part of the list might be about a regular yoga practice, or for one of my friends, it’s about spending a lot of time gardening. For someone else, it might be walking for part of their commute, rather than taking the train the whole way.
I’d love to hear what you do to keep your well full — in five minutes, or an hour, or on a regular basis. Please share something that helps!
What I’m Writing
I am writing a lot of things, and most of them I can’t talk about yet! You can rest assured that my newsletter will be the first place I share the news, though. I can say that Project LK — my 2025 book with Meg Spooner — has landed at an amazing home in the UK, after a pretty intense auction process. This means the book will release simultaneously in the US, UK and Australia, and I couldn’t be more delighted!
To keep my feet firmly on the floor, I’ve also been dealing with my pass pages for The Heart of the World. I love to admire pass pages — it’s so amazing to see the book typeset, like a real novel! — but boy, do I hate the slow, detailed reading.
I kept bouncing off them and doing anything but what I was supposed to, so in the end I printed them off and have been carrying them around, working on them away from my laptop. Here’s a picture I took in a cafe before I went to Jay Kristoff’s launch for Empire of the Damned, taken right before a couple of readers rumbled me and came to say hi. (I absolutely took the excuse to stop working.)
What I’ve Loved Lately
I love (love!) audiobooks, and this month I listened to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto. It was absolutely amazing, and I recommend it no matter what kinds of books you like. Eunice Wong’s narration elevated an already amazing book even further — read it any way you can, but listen if you get a chance.
News and Events
Listeners to the
podcast will be delighted to know that season two has officially kicked off! In this podcast, co-host Kate and I take you behind the scenes and show you how publishing works — we talk about everything from edits to worldbuilding to developing ideas, and we interview literary agents, editors, cover designers and many more.Season two kicks off with The Story So Far, a catch-up episode that recaps season one — perfect for those who haven’t listened in a while, or who’d like to jump on board. Grab it wherever you get your podcasts.
Meanwhile, as some of you will have seen over on instagram, I’m starting a monthly newsletter giveaway — I’ll be including books and swag, and it will be open internationally. You’re entered just by subscribing.
One of the problems with pulling a random subscriber is that Substack doesn’t list anyone’s name — but if your email address refers to cracked spines, then look out for an email from my assistant next week, chasing up your mailing address!
And that’s it for this month! Don’t forget to leave me a comment and let me know how you fill your well — and thanks for reading!
Ah, Amie! This is lovely. You know my everyday creativity—yarn! Sometimes it’s actually making something, and sometimes it’s just planning something, like yesterday when I took out all my yarn to look at it and decide what I want to weave next. It gave me a chance to remember some of the yarns I’d spun over the years, plus imagine how a project with them might look. It was really relaxing…even when I was winding a super fine lace weight and had a tangle to fix. It’s still meditative!
I have kept this in my in-box until tonight, because I knew I wanted to actually read it - and when I finally had 5 minutes, it was completely worth it. Thank you. I need to attend to filling my well more than I have been, because I'm back in school and it is challenging me in all kinds of ways.
I also want to share that on my Christmas card from one of my daughters, she told me I was the best mom in the "Way," taken directly from the Aurora Cycle, so your books have entered our family culture on multiple levels!