My introduction to writing for an audience (and actually hearing them respond!) was magazine writing. In 2002 a group of us young’uns founded Hyphen magazine and began speaking to the world through the, at that time, only national pan-Asian American magazine. It’s still one of my proudest accomplishments, and when the letters to the editor started coming in, proving that people were hearing and talking back, the feeling was indescribable.
Two years later our editor-in-chief executively decided we’d start a group blog on our website, which I resisted vociferously: why start a specifically print magazine (especially after our predecessor, A. magazine, was killed by the internet star, as the Buggles might say) if we’re just going to give in to the demands of the world wide web? I was overruled, forced to choose my day to post, and, within two weeks of writing my first blog posts, and receiving my first comments, I was all in. I was a blogger.
I went on to convince another magazine I worked with, the lamented Other magazine, to (re)start its own group blog; start my own personal blog, SeeLight, and a mapping and urbanism blog, atlas(t)(both sadly defunct); blog professionally for KQED Arts and another blog service that launched and died in 2008 (respectively) before and after the crash; and join the nascent The Nerds of Color blog in its first few years.
Then two things happened, no, three: social media and smartphones, not at all unrelatedly, took off, and I got chronic fatigue syndrome, which dropped my energy levels–especially my brain energy levels, my writing energy levels–into the sub-basement. I stopped writing entirely for about three years. No fiction, no blogs, no nuthin’.
I realized, slowly, painfully, that I had to learn how to write differently. No more hand-digging idea-mines by the seat of my … er, shovel? I had to plan. I had to outline, so that my now-faulty brain could track my work across long days or weeks of inactivity caused by flare-ups.
This was how I wrote Monkey Around. That’s why I took on the pen name “Jadie Jang”: because the writing persona was so different as a result.
However, I have since gotten some treatment for my ME/CFS and have gotten some relief (prior to the pandemic, of course. All bets have been off the past two years. *sigh*) Maybe at some point I can go back-ish to some version of my previous process and some version of my previous style, the one “Claire Light” used.
Regardless of all of this, I’ve decided, partly out of practicality (everyone tells me writers with a mailing list should have a newsletter) and partly out of desire (a newsletter is like a blog except so. much. less. writing!) to start a bi-monthly newsletter! Yay! You can subscribe below at the bottom of this page. For those of you who REALLY only wanted news when there was some, the “unsubscribe” button will be at the bottom of every newsletter. Feel free to use it liberally and follow me (Jadie Jang) on Facebook instead. That will REALLY only be updated when there’s writing news.
Each newsletter edition, which will come every two months (I’m realizing that “bi-monthly” can mean two different things) will include a main essay that will be my “blog post” for the nonce, some news about my writing or my book/s (she said, with much hope), some short bits about things I’m liking right now, and a “recipe,” which might be food or a cocktail or just a prescription for something. And that’s it!
I hope it will be fun; I hope it’ll allow you to get to know me better; and I hope you will respond/talk back to me either privately via reply email, or publicly on Twitter, which is where I’m “at home” as a writer.
See you all out there!