Congratulations on the review, and thank you for sharing these reflections on your process. On the subject of pitches: this is in a somewhat different field, but the science writing site The Open Notebook maintains a "pitch database" that you and others might find interesting. (The examples I've read there suggest that there can be a *lot* of variation within the genre.) Link: https://www.theopennotebook.com/pitch-database/
I’m a fan of Sheila Heti and I was skeptical of the premise of this book until I read your review (AND this post about how the review came about and your process). Absolutely incredible research, distillation, and writing.
omg Dizzy how did I miss this comment earlier! Thank you for reading. I'm also a Heti fan—she never seems to do the same conceit twice (even though many of her books focus on her self and her aspirations/anxieties) which makes for very intriguingly structured books
oh! it really depends on what you're most interested in at the moment—but to characterize her 3 most well-known books:
How Should a Person Be? is focused on friendship, being creatively stuck, and trying to live artistically and ethically…Motherhood is about the conflict between love for another, love for oneself, and trying to decide whether parenting is for you…Pure Colour is a creation myth with extremely frank depictions of sexuality (I loved Judith Shulevitz's description of Heti as a "smutty mystic" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/sheila-heti-pure-colour-review/621312/) and is also about criticism, art and activism, grieving a parent's death
Congrats on the review!! I love this idea of applying some randomness through naive technology, but the randomness actually outputs some pattern or order for us to know something deeper.
Thank you!! And yes—there's something so intriguing and revealing about using a simple technique and seeing what comes out. I do think there's something to how randomization makes your own thoughts unfamiliar and new again, and creates interesting juxtapositions and narratives that invite new ways of encountering a work
I'm almost embarrassed to answer because it was a very primitive process! And it also exhibits how neurotic I am about organizing information…
For each of her books, I googled something like "sheila heti pure colour review" or "sheila heti pure colour interview" and then downloaded many of the articles as PDFs so I could highlight them and take notes. I also went through various websites (the LRB, NYRB, the Paris Review, Bookforum, NYT, the New Yorker, the Guardian, etc) and just searched "sheila heti" and saved those as well.
I organize most of my reading in Zotero—my folder structure for the review looked something like
📁 202401 Sheila Heti for ArtReview
↪ 📁 2010 How Should a Person Be
↪ ↪ 📁 Reviews
↪ ↪ 📁 Interviews
↪ 📁 2018 Motherhood
↪ ↪ 📁 Reviews
↪ ↪ 📁 Interviews
and then I also had folders for
↪ 📁 Other writing by Heti
↪ 📁 Reviews of autofiction as genre
↪ 📁 Books Heti likes
But some of the other essays were recommended to me—like the Lorentzen essay in Bookforum—and that was incredibly, incredibly helpful
Such a good read!! 1000 words was too short, I would’ve loved to hear more. Also, thank you for bringing such an interesting process to my attention :D I think I’m going to try this with my journals as a fun experiment..
If you alphabetize your own diaries, I'd be really interested in seeing the outcome! And what the experience is like of editing the raw, alphabetically sorted output into a final text.
I loved reading your review! Your observations are very sharp and interesting. Loved this line: "More striking, and moving, is the alphabetically ordered, temporally disordered narration: ‘Grandma died. Grandma has been sick. Grandma is ailing still’. Death, after all, comes before life in the dictionary."
omg this is very cool! I love your review—I have a special affection for criticism that includes the critic's own experiences, and the way you moved from your own diaristic experiences to reviewing Heti's is very elegantly done.
The observation you make about encountering "near-replicas" of older thought patterns is also so, so relatable—maybe a universal experience for anyone who keeps a diary? Philip Lopate also notices this about his own; in one of the essays collected in A Year and a Day, he writes: "I’ve had the disconcerting experience of reading old diaries and coming upon the same insight repeated every decade or so, with no recognition that I’d already entertained that thought before."
I loved your review too, Loré! Especially your own experience of reviewing your journals, “revealing the specific patterns of being I’m seemingly doomed to”. I had this exact feeling yesterday parsing through my old entries, looking for clarity, but disappointed to find only more circularity.
Congratulations on the review, and thank you for sharing these reflections on your process. On the subject of pitches: this is in a somewhat different field, but the science writing site The Open Notebook maintains a "pitch database" that you and others might find interesting. (The examples I've read there suggest that there can be a *lot* of variation within the genre.) Link: https://www.theopennotebook.com/pitch-database/
Thank you for sharing—so many incredibly helpful articles! I've been thinking a lot about how much research, ideation, and refinement to do before I actually send out a pitch email, so this article was especially useful: https://www.theopennotebook.com/2015/11/10/ask-ton-how-much-time-should-i-spend-preparing-a-pitch/
And thank you for reading!
"Another possible expansion" is brilliant - thank you for sharing your pitch.
thank you! tbh I should use that line more often…like just offering "here's another angle I could take!"
This is so delicious!!
thank you!!
Just found your newsletter! Love the detail you shared here about your thinking process
thank you so much for reading! I love reading about other people's processes, so wanted to share my own as well
congrats on the publication! and thank you for demystifying the process ✍️
I’m a fan of Sheila Heti and I was skeptical of the premise of this book until I read your review (AND this post about how the review came about and your process). Absolutely incredible research, distillation, and writing.
omg Dizzy how did I miss this comment earlier! Thank you for reading. I'm also a Heti fan—she never seems to do the same conceit twice (even though many of her books focus on her self and her aspirations/anxieties) which makes for very intriguingly structured books
What would you say Heti's best book is to start with? I was thinking 'Pure Color,' but I'm finding it hard to gauge.
oh! it really depends on what you're most interested in at the moment—but to characterize her 3 most well-known books:
How Should a Person Be? is focused on friendship, being creatively stuck, and trying to live artistically and ethically…Motherhood is about the conflict between love for another, love for oneself, and trying to decide whether parenting is for you…Pure Colour is a creation myth with extremely frank depictions of sexuality (I loved Judith Shulevitz's description of Heti as a "smutty mystic" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/sheila-heti-pure-colour-review/621312/) and is also about criticism, art and activism, grieving a parent's death
Thanks for the explanation - I think I'll probably check out 'Pure Color' based on that!
Congrats on the review!! I love this idea of applying some randomness through naive technology, but the randomness actually outputs some pattern or order for us to know something deeper.
Thank you!! And yes—there's something so intriguing and revealing about using a simple technique and seeing what comes out. I do think there's something to how randomization makes your own thoughts unfamiliar and new again, and creates interesting juxtapositions and narratives that invite new ways of encountering a work
congrats! so cool, i’ve been meaning to read this book.
small tactical question: how did you find all the great essays/reviews of her other/ related work during research?
I'm almost embarrassed to answer because it was a very primitive process! And it also exhibits how neurotic I am about organizing information…
For each of her books, I googled something like "sheila heti pure colour review" or "sheila heti pure colour interview" and then downloaded many of the articles as PDFs so I could highlight them and take notes. I also went through various websites (the LRB, NYRB, the Paris Review, Bookforum, NYT, the New Yorker, the Guardian, etc) and just searched "sheila heti" and saved those as well.
I organize most of my reading in Zotero—my folder structure for the review looked something like
📁 202401 Sheila Heti for ArtReview
↪ 📁 2010 How Should a Person Be
↪ ↪ 📁 Reviews
↪ ↪ 📁 Interviews
↪ 📁 2018 Motherhood
↪ ↪ 📁 Reviews
↪ ↪ 📁 Interviews
and then I also had folders for
↪ 📁 Other writing by Heti
↪ 📁 Reviews of autofiction as genre
↪ 📁 Books Heti likes
But some of the other essays were recommended to me—like the Lorentzen essay in Bookforum—and that was incredibly, incredibly helpful
haha no this is exactly what i was looking for! and i love the neuroticism
Such a good read!! 1000 words was too short, I would’ve loved to hear more. Also, thank you for bringing such an interesting process to my attention :D I think I’m going to try this with my journals as a fun experiment..
If you alphabetize your own diaries, I'd be really interested in seeing the outcome! And what the experience is like of editing the raw, alphabetically sorted output into a final text.
It seems like Heti spent quite a bit of time editing down the result—the LA Times article about the book (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-02-05/sheila-heti-new-book-alphabetical-diaries) mentions that she went from around 500,000 words to 55,000…
Congratulations on your review, and thank you so much for sharing the behind the scenes. I'm looking forward to reading it!
thank you for reading this post!! really appreciate it
Congrats on publishing the review! This piece was very illuminating. Wish I'd read something like it when I first started pitching.
Thank you! And same—my first pitches were very amateurish, partly because I didn't understand how to pitch an interesting angle/approach to a topic
I loved reading your review! Your observations are very sharp and interesting. Loved this line: "More striking, and moving, is the alphabetically ordered, temporally disordered narration: ‘Grandma died. Grandma has been sick. Grandma is ailing still’. Death, after all, comes before life in the dictionary."
Funny enough, I wrote a review of the book too: https://brooklynrail.org/2024/02/books/Sheila-Hetis-Alphabetical-Diaries. It's cool to be in conversation with each other across different publications. Congrats! <333
omg this is very cool! I love your review—I have a special affection for criticism that includes the critic's own experiences, and the way you moved from your own diaristic experiences to reviewing Heti's is very elegantly done.
The observation you make about encountering "near-replicas" of older thought patterns is also so, so relatable—maybe a universal experience for anyone who keeps a diary? Philip Lopate also notices this about his own; in one of the essays collected in A Year and a Day, he writes: "I’ve had the disconcerting experience of reading old diaries and coming upon the same insight repeated every decade or so, with no recognition that I’d already entertained that thought before."
Oooh, thanks for sharing that Lopate quote. This must be a universal experience which is sooo embarrassing for us all hahah.
I loved your review too, Loré! Especially your own experience of reviewing your journals, “revealing the specific patterns of being I’m seemingly doomed to”. I had this exact feeling yesterday parsing through my old entries, looking for clarity, but disappointed to find only more circularity.
Aw thank you so much!!