Conversations with time capsules & letting go with books you love
This post was originally shared in my newsletter on 9.10.24. My newsletter is free! Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.
The paperback of Mossheart is out today, and all I can think about are time capsules.
An aspect of publishing no one can entirely prepare for is the odd dance of having people perpetually engage with “old” work, and by extension, a version of yourself and your craft that no longer exists. There is a necessary lag time in publishing — by the time a reader picks up a book on it’s shiny new-release Tuesday, that author has moved on. The book was finished anywhere from six months to a year or more prior.
I consider a book finished when pass pages have been completed. Pass pages are the phase where you’re going through the book in a PDF line by precious line largely to catch errors and make tiny tweaks. You do your very best not to change too much and ruin your designer’s life and cringe when you have to cut a line anyway.
This is not the stage to reinvent the wheel. By the time I’m in pass pages, I’m in the home stretch. For my own self-preservation, I’m falling in love with something else. Whatever book I’m doing pass pages for is not me is not where my heart is — that’s busy bleeding all over whatever unnamed WIP is hiding in my Scrivener mega-folder. It’s a funny thing. When a book comes out, to the world, it’s brand new. But to me, it’s old news.
Maybe this is why publishing can sometimes feels like you’re shouting down a very, very long tunnel, and when people respond, they’re not responding to your most recent shout — they’re responding to an echo from two years ago. I think, often, of the idea of light years. This concept that if you were on a different planet from earth and the right distance away, and you managed to catch a glimpse of our chaotic little blue dot at the perfect time, you wouldn’t see us. You’d see dinosaurs1. You’d see the beginning of the planet or the ice age or nothing at all. That doesn’t make what you see any less real.
But, still. You’re behind my current reality.
So let me give you a concrete example of just how much that reality has changed.
Today, the paperback of THE MOSSHEART’S PROMISE publishes. I first wrote that book in 2020. But for the readers that will pick it up for the first time — and I sincerely hope there will be many readers picking it up for the first time! — that story will be brand new, and the twenty-five-year old version of myself that sat down to write that story in a moldy, peeling apartment is brand new, too.
To paint a picture of just how much has changed from when I first drafted Mossheart back in 2020 to it’s paperback release today — here’s where my life is at.
I have:
Healed from a very bad brain injury
Gotten engaged to the love of my life
Moved three times (ugh!), the most recent of which involved buying my first home with my fiance (yay!)
Change dayjobs three times
Quit said dayjob to write full time
Made friends, lost friends, started planning a wedding, got back on Tumblr, for Christ’s sake, what more example of times changing do you need?!
Even if my craft didn’t grow in that gap, I have. When I look back at the twenty five year old that sat down to first write about lost little fairies trapped in a big, moldy terrarium, I see a very ill girl drowning in uncertainty. I still spend a lot of my time uncertain — but I can say with confidence I’m much healthier and happier now. If I wrote Mossheart today, it would come out different. Maybe not better, but definitely different.
And if I wrote Mossheart today, there’d be a huge change in my craft. How big? Well, I can paint a picture for that, too.
Between that first draft of Mossheart and it’s paperback release, I’ve:
Pitched, outline, written, and revised my next YA novel, I KILLED THE KING
Started outlining it’s sequel
Pitched, outlined, and written my first IP graphic novel for Neopets, NEOPETS: THE OMELETTE FAERIE
Pitched, outlined, and written my second graphic novel for Neopets…more on that one soon!
Pitched, outlined, written and revised a 30k proposal for my next middlegrade
Pitched, outlined, and started writing my first proper crack at an adult novel. I’m at 79k at the time of this newsletter with a goal to finish before November, so we’ll see how that shakes out.
Soup to nuts, that’s like, four entire books, half of a fifth, and 3/4 of a sixth created in the gap between my first attempt at putting Mossheart to paper! If my craft hasn’t improved by leaps and bounds across those five books, I’m doing something wrong. It’s inevitable that every book I write is going to act as a kind of time capsule, with who I was and what I was capable of is frozen in time forever.
So I’ve chosen to love it.
With every reader, with every book and passing year, every story I put out will become less about me and more about whoever is diving into those pages. I know this isn’t how every author feels. For some, it drives them nuts to have readers reacting to elements of their craft they believe they’ve since fixed. While I’m loathe to give prescriptive advice, I feel like I can here: the sooner you learn to let go of a book, the sooner you can appreciate that people are going to give you far too much credit and far too little credit in the same breath. The only thing you can do is try to write something you’re proud of to the best of your abilities at the time — and move on. Trust that long after you’ve set a beloved world down, someone else will pick it up. And go love something new.
My process of letting go of a book feels a lot like this: like I’m stepping out of a cottage I once loved and lived in, but have since outgrown. On the kitchen table, I’ve left out some lemon bars, my favorite tea, a key to the front door, and a note that reads: To whoever ends up in here next, enjoy. I hope you like the weird wallpaper, but if not, all good. I was in a Phase.
Maybe whoever stumbles it across it will love it. Maybe they’ll burn the place down. It’s not really my business what they do with it. I’ve got a different home to work on, and right now, the entire kitchen needs to go.
For me, this way lies sanity. And don’t get me wrong — I hope whoever finds my books loves them! I want that very much! I hope people can get some meaning out of my art, and enjoy it, maybe even enough to share it with someone they love or leave a kind review. But I can’t make them. What am I supposed to do? Stand in the doorway like a realtor and correct their opinions?
(Some authors may feel tempted to do this. Do not do this.)
If someone picks Mossheart up for the very first time today and they absolutely hate it…oh well! They’re reacting to something I wrote 4.75 books ago. You’re talking to a ghost, and she’s got bigger problems — mainly, that her apartment at the time is full of black mold. (The universe loves it’s irony.) My goal with every book is to tell the best story possible with the tools I have at the time. I can say with confidence I did that with Mossheart. I published that book fully believing it was my Best Work Yet. I loved — and still love — that book. Are there things I’d do differently now? Sure! But the past is in the past, baby. And that wallpaper is permanent.
Maybe that’s why today, I’m filled with nothing but calm gratitude and tiny flashes of hope. Because now I get to set down another key. Mossheart is done; it’s been done for a long time now. I’m thrilled that it’s being ferried into the world in a cheaper, more accessible form, and hopeful, that it’ll land in the hands of the parents, teachers, librarians, and booksellers that know exactly what kind of kid will love my funky, moldy little world.
The door’s open wide open. You can say whatever you want about my countertop choices. And if you hate my lemon bars, it’s all good. I’m just happy you stepped through a door.
Happy paperback day, Ary. Sorry again about all the mold.