References and Relationships

A personal essay, and a new paid resource posted!

Happy August! First up: paid subscribers, check out the Lessons & Resources page for a new “Book Reference Template” to give you one handy spot for all your metadata and organizational needs. Think of it as Part Two of the “Publishing Checklist” from last month. Enjoy!

And now, for everybody: take a deep breath with me. Phew! Times lately have been busy, hot, confusing, stressful, worrisome, sad, and scary—but also, I hope, rewarding in little bits here and there. For me, it’s moments watching fireflies, writing a really earnest scene, or feeling like I’ve helped someone. I hope you have found these glimmers, too.

I thought a lot about what to share today. I expected, honestly, to write something book metadata-related, in honor of the new template I just uploaded. But my head is so full that whenever I get in front of a screen lately, words pour out. (Even when I’m not in front of one. Does anyone else compose letters in their minds when they should be falling asleep??)

So here’s my message for today: be gentle with yourself.

And here’s my essay on why that’s important . . .

For me, this year has been intense. Let’s set aside politics or business or anything else, and just be really personal and introspective for a moment. Last fall, I got married. My husband is a miracle to me, my number one fan and supporter, and we put our hearts into making a ceremony and reception that truly reflected us. A month or so prior to the big day, my mother chose not to attend. (Listen, I told you we were going personal! But it comes back around to writing: hold on.)

Honestly, that was the outcome that I had anticipated, deep in my heart. But it’s not what others expected. It’s your mother, they’d say. She’ll come around. She’ll want to be there for you. Carrying the weight of my own pessimistic—or ultimately realistic—predictions alongside the hopes of everyone else involved in the wedding planning was a heavy dissonance. Sometime during that year, I became estranged from the outcome. Whether she came or didn’t, it was so overwhelming that I couldn’t care, not at a surface level. There weren’t any words for what I was feeling.

The wedding was wonderful; the holidays afterward, a rush; then spring came . . . and for the life of me, I could not write the next book in the Alchemical Tales. I pulled out every trick in the “writer’s block” book. I rested, I walked, I played, I traveled, for goodness’ sake. I planned, I plotted, I read, I set it aside entirely and wrote something else, then something else else, and so on. Finally I sat down and thought about the series. Was it time for it to end? No, surely not: I knew exactly the book I wanted to write, and the characters deserved it. It’s just that I’d sit down at the screen and stare listlessly at my outline until something else needed my attention. The story just didn’t have life.

But what gives a story life?

The characters, the world, the plot . . .

. . . and the reader.

When I wrote the very first stories in the Alchemical Tales, I didn’t have readers. I wrote for myself, mostly epic romantasy or fanfiction, things I would’ve died before publishing. But I’d been testing the waters of sharing some work. Once Red’s very first story was done, I sent it to my mother. Then the pandemic hit. She was distraught. I wrote her more stories.

Now, it wasn’t an altruistic endeavor. I loved Red, William, and Jade and Luca from the first, and each time I had an idea for another story with them, I wanted to see if I could do it. I was learning how to write short, how to write mystery. It was a fun challenge. A challenge I needed as I watched my career in museums implode.

But it also wasn’t something I was doing alone. I was sending each story to her. And that very act was making me feel like I had a place.

I’m in a very different place now. I’ve learned a lot, grown a lot, celebrated a lot, and let a lot slip away. Inconstancy was always my mother’s hallmark, one of the things that made it so very difficult to explain to others why I knew she wouldn’t come. For that reason and so many others, it feels almost impossible to say I won’t speak to her again. But I haven’t heard from her since she broke the news that she wasn’t coming. And traitorous as it sometimes seems, I don’t think I want to.

So this book would be the first in the series that I’d write alone.

And yet, I am the farthest thing from alone. I do have readers these days—real ones! And writing groups, editors, author friends! People who genuinely do want to know where Red goes next. We think of writing as a solitary occupation, and it is often physically solitary, but aside from that fact it’s anything but. There’s a lot of responsibility to being an author, but there’s an awful lot of humanity, too. Seeing that helped me get going again.

There are two things to take from this.

Well, at least two, the way I see it. ;) The first is don’t be afraid to really take a close look at things that are troubling you. Though it seems kind to yourself to avoid it, it’s kinder still to face it, and to get support. I often find that as I think something through, the answer becomes obvious (whether I want it to or not!).

The second is that carrying dissonance is hard. Being honest about it helps, at least! And I think a lot of us are doing that right now—carrying dissonance—not because of family dynamics, necessarily—but because of the news. We’re at a tumultuous point, all of us, culturally. (And I say that as a once-historian, and fully aware that everyone tends to think of their lifetime as a particularly important one in history!) There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of reason to be negative, and a lot of need to be positive. And at the end of the day, there’s a lot we simply don’t know.

But we’re not alone. Even if we lose those close to us.

So get out there and keep writing, and above all, know that it’s okay to be gentle. Even when things are scary and tough. Sometimes remaining gentle and open to learning is the strongest feat of all.