Backtrack, I guess, because I haven't done a newsletter in months and now I'm coming back with angst ! I've got like a thousand newsletter drafts I haven't been able to finish and post. But consider this a stocktake of myself in this process, nine-ish months into selling THE DARK WE KNOW.
The thing is that you spend so long with the sale as the singular goal. There’s so much hype around the vague tweet, the announcement, the debut status, the ostensible reaching of the ultimate goal. I'm proud of this book. I drafted it at 21/22 in the middle of the pandemic and in every revision I try and preserve the original voice, while honing with the writer I am now. After these revisions, it will be a stronger book. I'm thankful to everyone who has and will spend their time working on it.
But jesus christ, I also hate it so often.
This isn’t even a “your first book isn’t the make or break” post. It’s not even an imposter syndrome post, although both of those play into my doubts constantly. Basically every writer acknowledges how weird it is for release cycles to be essentially two years behind you as a person and artist. But even knowing it in theory, no one can really prepare you for the emotional disconnect between drumming up excitement for the release and feeling so absolutely nowhere with it behind the scenes. People I know are telling me they're excited to read it and I'm excited for them to read it !
But also there's so much waiting. There's so much feeling untethered and out of the loop. Besides the anxiety about getting the book done on deadlines, often for periods without a contract, there’s also the stress of aligning visions with your team while preserving your own heart, not wanting to come off as the author that's difficult to work with, worrying about socials/newsletters/trying to get on tiktok/talking to influencers/talking to booksellers/[insert any marketing thing here], even as you’re probably mentally 1-2 projects ahead of this book already. If you take TDWK as Book 1, Book 2’s already done. I’m already thinking about 3, 4, 5.
In this process of something that was just yours becoming everyone else's, a team effort, a product, you're never really prepared for trying to keep other people on board when you just want to be done with it. And it’s not just readers, but also the publication team, because if your pub team loves it they will go in for it. I’ve never been a brainstormer; I do all the hammering out and idea-tossing on my own and present full drafts for critique, so being open to discussion as part of the drafting process has been a whole new thing to learn to accommodate. Ironically, it’s right before the book becomes a material object with my name plastered on it in perpetuity that it also feels like the least mine.
I guess it's also made difficult by the fact that TDWK started off so personal. I've started categorising the things I write into Idea Piece and Emotion Piece--the former actually stemming from some sort of storyline or theme, something that’s already more impersonal and a bit more of a craft/intellectual exercise, and the emotion pieces being very much a story scaffolded on a feeling I want to get off my chest. TDWK came from a place of grief and separation and isolation. It’s been several rounds of (necessary) plot and worldbuilding; layering, tightening, enriching, structuring beyond the emotion. I’ve improved a ton as a writer in the 2 years since I drafted it. It is a stronger book, but I'd also be lying if I said I didn't wonder if I was sometimes losing a core of it.
I’m on my second round of post-sale developmental edits. As I think about ways to address the feedback, re-immersing myself in the story world and figuring out where compromises lie, I think about all the ways I could do it differently, then wonder if I should. Storymaking can be a mix and match. I have all these characters, their backstories, their archetypes, their relationships; I have this lore, this setting, this sandbox that has proven to be incredibly inspiring in different directions. Throughout revisions I’ve uncovered new layers, but I could, even now, switch up plots entirely with endless permutations playing out in different ways. In my most doubtful moments, I feel compelled to rewrite the entire book. I could’ve done this instead. Maybe even should’ve.
But would I have? I think that’s the question that grounds me. This book is a snapshot of who I was at 21 and I intend to honour that. Ironically, TDWK itself is about a girl reluctantly returning home after two years away and confronting and reconciling with her demons there. I think if an art piece is an expression, then at some point you have to let it remain reflective of the person who first expressed it, not a constantly evolving live feed of your changing tastes. Art can be long, but at some point it needs to be done. As I sketch out these revisions, I resist the urge to throw out the story 21-year-old me wanted to tell. I want to be holding her hand and guiding her more surely as an older writer, not speaking over her entirely. I think that would be doing myself a disservice, too.
Maybe those multiverse plots will become spinoffs. Maybe they’ll become bonus content. Maybe not everything has to be content. Maybe I’ll throw them on AO3 under a pseudonym (for legal reasons this is a joke). But The Dark We Know will still be the book I wanted to share in 2021, and I’ll write more things as the me in 2023.
As for the everpresent debut doubt and the insanity that is something so personal becoming the world’s—I’m sure it’ll only get worse closer to publication next year, but that’s all I can do about it. I can’t emphasise enough having people you can go to who understand exactly how it feels (see above). I’m being carried through and I hope I’m helping carry my friends through in return. So maybe debut is a bit of a group project in a good way after all.
things I’m consuming and would like to consume
Books I loved in the past couple months include Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, Even Though I Knew The End by CL Polk, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White, catskull by Myle Yan Tay, and the latest Singing Hills novella, Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo. I recently (finally!) watched the Sharp Objects adaptation, and I’m currently on the new season of The Witcher. I’ve been listening to a lot of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), as well as a bit of the Hadestown album, for TDWK-related reasons. (If you’ve never heard of Hadestown, it’s a folksy/jazzy/completely gorgeous musical retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice)
Meanwhile, two YAs I recently devoured excerpts of and can’t wait to get my hands on are Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington (July 27), and I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea (Aug 29), a deliciously dark ballet horror. Another book I’m shoving onto everyone’s radar is the recently-announced Asunder by my friend Kerstin Hall (2024), which is adventurous and magical with a thread of darkness and stabby demon women and a ship dynamic I’m obsessed with.
I’m going to be back in the UK next week for the first time since 2021 and I’m so excited about it!! Mostly I’m going to go on a West End and book-buying spree (because books are ridiculously cheaper there, and I’m grabbing at my Waterstones special editions), so maybe the next post will be a haul.