please read the subject line of this message in the cadence used by the starfish in finding nemo who goes “wake up everybody the sun is shining today’s the daaaaay”
that starfish. listen i was 11 when that movie came out. some things just stick in your brain forever.
anyway the point is that my fifth book kill creatures published today in the US and also canada (and maybe some other places?) and that’s a really big deal for me because getting here, to this day, with this book, was incredibly difficult, and i’d like to tell you about it.
2019. i finish writing my second YA book, burn our bodies down, in the fall, and after a small break, i get started on my next YA book, a project that does have assorted titles at various points in the next few years but that i will always think of as just Ice Book. Ice Book is…. not going well. i sit hunched at the back of my preferred coffee shop and rewrite the same scenes over and over. i type “you’re a hack” in a margin comment to myself, hitting the H key so hard that i break it. i cry as i work, feel nauseous whenever i open scrivener. but that’s probably just because this draft is so bad, right? if i can get through it, get to revisions, surely all that will go away.
2020—2021. it doesn’t go away. i revise. i rewrite. i turn in a draft and promptly throw up. i am so swallowed whole that i don’t notice a spider bite the size of a baseball in the middle of my back until it makes me feverish. maybe some of what i write is good; maybe it isn’t. i can’t tell. it all ends up in the trash anyway.
in early summer, after another misfire, i give up for good. that’s it. this is impossible. i’m out. i have an adult fantasy book to revise, yes, but as soon as i’m finished with it, i’m tearing my whole life up and starting over.
the fantasy book, which was drafted in 2019, requires mostly spot checks—fixing a paragraph or adding a line here and there. revising it feels like finishing a jigsaw puzzle. the corners and edges already done, an end product right there on the box for me to shoot for. it is all i can handle. i finish it and spend the autumn on the phone with friends. i ask them to tell me what they love about writing. i don’t understand their answers.
2022. with the adult fantasy done, i have to write its sequel. i spend the winter on my couch in the dark, writing only past midnight. i pretend i don’t exist; i pretend nobody will ever read this book. i have no outline, but i have characters and a world and the threads i left undone in the first book, and that’s enough to carry me. the job feels smaller. secret. i finish it before spring.
by summer it’s been a year since i worked on anything YA. i know i can’t avoid it much longer—i have a contract to fulfill and rent to pay—but i also don’t think i want to avoid it. there’s an itch. nerve endings regrowing under my skin. i send friends half-baked ideas. i write a 100-word opening i love, only to realize it’s just a weird paraphrasing of the bridge to the song “colors” by halsey.1 but it’s something.
slowly, a snowball. a title. a setting. names for four girls. by october i feel ready to start in earnest.
i pick a different coffee shop to work from. haunt it all autumn in those last two empty hours before close. there are no other customers; there is no wifi. just me and the page. that’s all that matters. sometimes i love what i’ve written and have to resist the urge to share it. sometimes i hate it and wonder if it’s a mistake to keep trying.
but i don’t break my keyboard. i don’t cry in public.
2023. i finish the first draft of kill creatures.2
there’s a lot more after that of course—half-rewrites and revisions and one time where i overthought it and said “what if i do a sixth sense thing where nan’s been dead the whole time” (thankfully i was immediately talked down)—but what has struck me throughout this book’s lifespan is that i always just… liked it. not without complication or reservation or doubt, but on a core level, i have always Wanted To Work On It. and considering i used to have stress dreams about the simple act of opening microsoft word, that feels really fucking meaningful.
i love this book. i love what it gave back to me. i love that i think it’s the best thing i’ve ever written, and i love that after i finish whatever comes next, i won’t feel that way anymore.
in 2021 i kept asking my friends what they love about writing. where they find joy, where the reward comes from, for them, in this job where so little is guaranteed. i didn’t have my own answer to those questions then. i think i’m a lot closer to one now.
and as a reminder if you’re in the boston area i’d love to see you at my launch event on friday!
2014/2015 tumblr you will run in my veins forever
this time, i do cry