Moby Bytes: Permission to -ish.

Dispatch #2: Behind the Quiet Scenes

So maybe the best time to create a newsletter wasn’t the month before my book was due to my editor?

Or maybe I created a newsletter because my book was almost due and I needed to catch my breath in a convenient distraction?

Either way, this “monthly” dispatch just shifted to “monthly-ish.” Which is okay, because we all have too much-ness in our lives. And if I’m not in the mood to chatter (wars and mass shootings and intolerable politics tend to shutter me up), I think we should all have permission to be quiet.

If you need this permission, here you go: It’s okay to take a slow walk. To wipe away a tear or let it fall. To not post. To not scream. To be quiet. To feel in whatever ways and shapes you feel. To add an “-ish” to whichever verb you need a little less of. To stoop and inspect feathered icicles for too long, and only post quotes about grief on your Instagram…

I’ve been reading Francis Weller again because, this week, I reached out to his publisher for permission to use a quote from his (astounding) book of essays for an epigraph in MY OCEANS. (He wrote back personally to say yes, which sent me right over the moon.)

But did you know this? That authors, themselves, have to secure legal permissions to use quotes/epigraphs from publishing houses? And that authors are responsible for fact-checking their own books? And that authors have to procure documentation proving the rights of everything they have ever published have been reverted to their own?

I didn’t. So this final month of preparing my manuscript has been an extensive list of technical tasks with steep learning curves. And on December 1st, when I turn in my manuscript and marketing plan and book cover concepts and bibliography and permissions documentation and… (well, everything), I’ll be returning to this newsletter with fresh eyes and fingers. And probably more pictures of feathered snow. Because that’s just me. Before and after the book. :)

Scroll on for some more writer-ly, reader-ly, and oceanic bits & bytes…

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For the Writers

• Grammerly’s AI Citation Generator saved me this month. Their Plagiarism Check is also worth a run-through for those with projects integrating lots of cited research.

• The Spun Yarn Beta Reading Service has very smart readers and provides a super comprehensive report of audience feedback based on customized questions. Great for people, like me, who hate pestering friends to be beta readers, and who also want objective and instrumental feedback a.s.a.y. (*yesterday)

• (Ps. No one sponsors me. Those are unsolicited and authentic references.)

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Creature Feature

Today, I’m marveling this swirl of milk from a lactating mother whale as captured by Karim Iliya along with this caption: “Humpback whales do not have lips, so calves can be clumsy, and on very rare occasions the calf can miss some of the milk. After this abandoned swirl of milk floated in the depths for a while I dove down to film and photograph it.”

karimiliya

A post shared by @karimiliya

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What I’m Reading/Watching/Loving this Month:

• The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat, by Ian Urbina at The New Yorker

• What Your Bank Really Does with Your Money, by Climate Town

• Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, a collection of essays “bringing together voices from Buddhism, Sufism, Christianity, and Native American traditions, as well as from physics, deep psychology, and other environmental disciplines…” Which reminds me: I created reading/book lists on Bookshop.org!

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For the Feelers

If you’re drowning in ecological grief, I can’t more highly recommend the Good Grief 10-step program. They have many new sessions starting soon, including offerings for those with financial hardships. Thicket’s “Emotional Resiliency” training programs are equally gentle, educational, and full of wonderful, resonating, humans.

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Enough Scrolling: Share a Thought?

Today, I’m thinking about book clubs. Do you have one? How did it form and how have the intentions shifted over time? How do you pick your books? And do book clubs ever stray from novels? Subtext: Do you think your book club would ever take on a book of essays? ;)

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Where Am I?

If you’re new to Moby Bytes, I’m Christina Rivera and MY OCEANS is my debut book of sea-linked essays investigating endangered marine life and exploring the oceanic kinship of bodies of water and beings. MY OCEANS is forthcoming from NUPress/Curbstone Books in the Spring of 2025 and Moby Bytes is where I’m building a superpod of those willing to deep dive with me into the waters of interconnection in which we swim. Please share Moby Bytes with a friend who might enjoy more pod in their life?

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