Book-iversary

One year ago today I was staring at bookshelves all over New York City with tears in my eyes. My name in library computers, my characters playing the brains of teens, my work having a cover: this was the crazy. ME, HIM, THEM AND IT was published, my lifelong dream was real. And I do mean lifelong.

A full year later it still feels surreal. It still feels like a dream come true and there are some days I still can’t believe it. But this year has been real. And surprising.

These are this seven biggest lessons I learned from my first year on the shelves.

Lesson 7: I can’t just eat cake, but I need to be happy. Six months before my book came out, I got married. Which was also (obviously) a dream come true. But since August 2012, I’ve spent very little time thinking about what it means to “be married.” He makes me happy, it’s easy and fun, end of story. In that area of life, happiness is not scary. However, since February 2013 I’ve spent countless moments thinking about what it means to “be a writer.” I have to keep writing. It’s hard not to drown in the pile of goals that immediately swooped into the space this One Lifelong Dream had once occupied: so many ideas, so many books, so many ways to connect with readers and other writers. It would be so easy to forget all about that One Lifelong Dream and to focus on everything that has not happened yet. It would also be so simple to eat cake and be happy: dream accomplished. I want to live somewhere in the middle. I want to be happy but not so happy that I rest. I’ve sought this balance every day for the past year.

Lesson 6: It’s impossible for me to chat and write at the same time. The challenge to signing books I never saw coming.

Lesson 5: I killed my book. I had to. But that’s ok, it’ll keep living over and over again.  By the time ME, HIM, THEM AND IT was edited and covered and printed and distributed and for sale, I’d been finished with the original draft for over two years. I’d drafted two novels between the time when I wrote “The End” on Evelyn’s story and when anyone read the first word. So I was a bit shell-shocked when the people I love began to read it and discuss it with me. For me Evelyn and Todd and Bean and Aunt Linda were old news. It was shell-shocking and fun to be pulled back into their world which had once consumed me so fully. But, in my own mind, I had to kill that book. I had to let Evelyn go in order to fully commit to Colette and Sadie (who you can read about in June when MY BEST FRIEND MAYBE comes out.) I’m so glad Evelyn is still living. But I have to let her live outside my own brain.

Lesson 4: A writer can be at a loss for words. I weirdly feel like I have no authority to speak about a book authored by myself (though I’d go on for hours about a book authored by anyone else that I either love or hate). My lovely husband threw a party to celebrate the publication of ME, HIM, THEM AND IT with my family and close friends and my favorite part of that party was listening as my aunt Mary Lou, cousin Sarah, lifelong friend, Kristin and her mother, Lori, discussed the novel in detail. I soaked it in. They talked for minutes before they looked at me. They wanted me to say something. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. It’s the most delicious form of torture when someone I love tells me all about their reading experience. My ears will soak it all in. But I’m rendered speechless.

 

Lesson 3: How to smile through a well-intentioned insult. I also don’t say anything when I get the many, many comments like these:

“I don’t know why this is supposed to be for high school kids. I think adults can enjoy it too.”

“I didn’t expect to like a book for teens but it’s like you wrote a real book.”

“This is so good maybe you can write for adults one day. If you keep practicing.”

We YA authors all get this. “Young” is a compliment in almost every other entertainment industry. In publishing, for some reason, it’s an insult. Oh well. For me, writing for teens is exactly what I want to do and I don’t let it get to me when people (even people I love) don’t understand that. I can’t let that stupidity interrupt my precarious happy-balance!

Lesson 3: TV is not the enemy. Or at least not my enemy. This year, I have learned to lean on other forms of entertainment. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I still am, but reading for me has changed. I remember what it was like to lose myself in a book and I don’t think I can do that anymore. I’m always analyzing, dissecting, scrutinizing why they work. That’s ok. It’s a small price to pay. But my brain has only two speeds: productive or distracted. When I am not distracted by either television or conversation, I’m writing in my brain. Always. Constantly. All these words inside my ears don’t stop until I silence them with ones outside my ears. I hear a lot of writers disparage television and I respect them for it. But I need it. I need the breathing room that a good TV show offers at the end of the day.

Lesson 2: Access to teens is essential to me. For a while I tried writing for teens without having them in my life, hearing from them every day, having individual teenagers whom I cared about. That didn’t work for me. I missed their energy. They are exhausting but they put a face on my writing. I’m so glad to have found a teaching position that allows me to fully commit to both.

Lesson 1: Life is not perfect. Well, no duh. But still, this is the most important (and wonderful) lesson from my year. Upon reflection, I now recognize that I thought for years that if I were to ever be a published writer, life would be perfect. Obviously this was not conscious. It makes no sense. I know perfect is impossible. I am not crazy or stupid.

But I didn’t realize that was how I was thinking until ME, HIM, THEM AND IT sold and, lo and behold, things were not perfect. That didn’t surprise me but I was shocked to realize how crazy Past Caela had been.

For a while I thought that the Perfection Illusion was a good one. That because I had this crazy perception, I worked as hard as I could to be the best writer I could be.

But now I think the Perfection Illusion held me back. I knew my life would never be perfect. Therefore, I thought I would never be published. So, for many years, I didn’t even try. This life isn’t perfect, and that’s good. Because perfect isn’t possible.

This life, my life, is good. At its best moments it is the right balance of happy and stressful. And that’s good. Because that’s possible.