Allow me to reintroduce myself
Just in case you're new here
Allow me to reintroduce myself
I started this newsletter (originally called Stir Crazy) back in 2020. At the time I was writing about mental health and home cooking—two topics I still care a lot about, but which didn’t give me enough freedom to write everything I wanted to write. Also, I sort of backed myself into a corner where every newsletter had a recipe in it, which was not sustainable post-lockdown. Or ever. Recipes are hard and I’m more of a go-with-your-gut make-it-a-little-different-every-time kind of cook.
I eventually changed the title to Cut + Paste when I was sending out more freelance pitches and mostly getting ignored, thinking it would give me a place to use those ideas and serve as a showcase of what I could do writing-wise. Which was also it’s own kind of corner-backing. It’s not realistic to think you’ll give as much time and attention to a newsletter 10 people read as you would to a piece you’re getting paid to write for a publication with a much vaster distribution. (Is vaster a word? If I was getting paid to write this, I would check. But I’m not. Never mind, I just remembered the book The Vaster Wilds, which is so depressing I nearly ended things after reading it but does confirm that vaster is a word.) But now I find myself unemployed once again, so I have attention to spare, and there are more of you here now.
Here are some other things to know about me:
Between iterations of this newsletter, I left the cult I was raised in and was shunned by all my family and nearly all of my friends. My experience in a cult touches almost everything I write about, because once you leave a cult, you realize how many cults we’re all in, and how much of our lives are controlled by outside forces beyond the simple economic realities of living. Corporate work is my cult final boss. I’ll let you know when I make it out (unemployment doesn’t count.)
Still, I want to be able to write about more than negative experiences with high control religions. Cut + Paste is my place to do that right now. When pitching outlets, it’s been easier to sell cult essays than other ideas, and I want this newsletter to be the place for those lost ideas. I don’t want to work the cult beat forever. I like other things!
I’m currently editing my tragicomic memoir-in-essays about leaving a doomsday cult during the actual end of the world. I plan to start querying agents later this summer. The only book-writing advice I have to offer so far is: however long you think it’s going to take to write a book, it’s going to take 10x that.
My day job, when I have one, is in content marketing and social media which, if you’re currently considering me for a job, is my life’s passion and greatest aspiration. If you’re not in a position to hire me, I feel free to tell you that this dying field is hell and I need out. Do you work for a big five publisher and want to buy my book?
I will never know for sure if I’m autistic or if this personality of mine is just the natural result of being raised an isolated only child in a cult. My therapist isn’t sure either. Let’s find out together!
I do know that I have at least one brain disease: epilepsy. This is not a huge admission because I am writing about it in a book I’m hoping people will read one day and also it’s a pretty mild case that doesn’t effect my life much now that I take medication for it. I’m here to tell you epilepsy is not necessarily as scary as it sounds, but it can result in some really embarrassing moments. Buy my future book if you want to know more.
Now that I’ve more or less completed my memoir, I plan to publish more personal essays here as well. (It’s important to know which personal stories didn’t make the memoir cut before you go spoiling them elsewhere.) I plan on making the personal essays paid-only and I hope, given everything above, those of you who can will consider upgrading. But NO WORRIES IF NOT.
Hi, my name is Rebecca. I’m happy you’re here.