Released

Well, hot damn! The book is out at last. And it feels…cool.

Sorry. That’s not—I’m not great at feelings. Let me try again.

It was a cold and blustery autumn day when my book took its first, intrepid steps into a harsh, unfeeling world, and I felt…pretty neat about it.

Oof. That’s somehow worse.

Okay. One more try.

After eight years of writing, editing, rewriting, re-editing, second-guessing, and panic-proofing, the silly little book I wrote is an actual thing. A material object you can use as a coaster or a shim to hold a tottery table steady. It’s out there. Exposed. For people to read. Strangers. And people I know. Which is obviously the scarier of the two.

I’m feeling…everything. All of the things. All at once. All the different voices in my head are piping up to give their varied opinions and it is getting a bit loud in here.

Thrilled! Sheephish! Terrified! Nauseous! They’re all over the place. One’s like, HOW PRESUMPTUOUS. NOBODY ASKED YOU TO WRITE A GROCERY LIST, MUCH LESS AN ENTIRE BOOK, and she has a posh British accent so you know she really means it.

This morning I went down to the river to sit on a large rock and try to sort things out. The water glittered at me in the sunlight and I felt a little wobbly as I reflected on all the people who’ve helped and supported me, everyone whose compassion or humor has inspired some part of the book even if they didn’t know it. It overwhelmed me, all the people with their good hearts.

But then sixteen-year-old Carrie appeared beside me.

“This rock is kinda small, huh?” she said, crouching on the edge of it.

“There’s another rock over there,” I said, pointing. “We don’t have to share this one.”

She spared it a perfunctory glance, then stared at me meaningfully until I shifted to the other rock. She settled herself down and asked what was up.

“Well…as it so happens, I have written a book. And it’s been published. This very day.”

“I know.” She pulled a baggie of dry cereal out of nowhere and offered me one.

“You do.”

“Yuh.”

“Oh.” I took a piece of cereal and crunched into it. “Well, what do you think about that?”

“Pretty cool.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty cool.”

She stopped chomping and eyed me wryly. “You didn’t think you would actually do it, did you?”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I have done it.”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s why it feels like a surprise. You didn’t think you’d ever actually do anything like this.”

“What, write a book?”

She considered her words carefully. “Act in such a way that you have an impact on the world, rather than allowing yourself to be acted upon.”

Frowning, I whispered, “You are so annoying.”

She was right, though. I’ve spent much of my life letting things happen to me rather than acting as a decisive force in my own life. For whatever reason, I have let countless opportunities in my life slide past me while I stood stock-still and made a big, ineffectual show of saying, “Oh, nooo!” as they drifted out of sight.

I could’ve done that with this book. It would have been easy. Seeing as I have so much practice. When it was rejected by literary agents, I could’ve decided to (and almost briefly did) fold myself up into a small origami box of despair. But for some unfathomable reason, I said “Screw it” and published it anyway. What sort of maniac does that? I’d been gatekept! Where was my pride? Who did I think I was?

Really, it’s all because of sixteen-year-old Carrie. The whippersnapper. This is a book I needed to read when I was her age: confused, socially maladroit, desperate for connection but utterly at a loss as to how to receive it. The book is for her, really. If anyone else happens to read it, and if they happen to enjoy it, then that’s just a bonus.

(No, not “just.” It’s a huge, massive, incomprehensibly enormous bonus. It’ll be the thrill of my lifetime if this book gives you even a bit of a giggle.)

Now. One of the voices in my head is a cranky old man who tells me this is nothin’ special. “Get back to work!” he barks. He sounds like my tenth-grade English teacher, actually. Equal parts grumpy and strangely encouraging. And you know what? He’s right. Time is a-wastin’.

So thank you, thank you, especially today, for reading.

Time for me to get back to work.

The Panics

The other day I was watching a show that had a Spanish word on the side of a truck. I paused the scene and gaped at the screen for a moment, dismayed.

Is that really how you spell that word? I asked my mom, who spent her high school years living in Mexico and still knows quite a bit of Spanish.

She looked at me wide-eyed, because…that’s a weird question. “Yes…?”

“Oh,” I said. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Actually, I’d made a lot of terrible mistakes. I scrabbled for my laptop and pulled up the manuscript—the manuscript I’d already dubbed “Final” and turned in for formatting—and began triple-checking all the foreign-language phrases that teenage linguaphile Tracy uses in the book. What I found made me LOSE MY DAMN MIND. Accents were missing! Pronouns were misplaced! Words that should be capitalized weren’t and words that shouldn’t be capitalized were! It was my literal nightmare.

How could this have happened? I thought, in utter embarrassment and despair. I was so careful.

At least, I thought I’d been careful. I’d gone over the text probably close to forty times, in addition to sending it out for editing/proofing. But clearly, my scrupulosity was bested only by my hubris.

Why hadn’t I asked a Spanish speaker if “diálogo” needed an accent? (It does!) Why didn’t I double-check my subject-object pronouns with someone who speaks German? (Ein Deutschsprecher!) Why would I just blithely trust Google Translate with so many foreign-language phrases, yet devote hours to researching the appropriate use of a hyphen? (It’s a complicated matter that can’t be summed up in a pithy parenthetical remark—ask me later!)

Over the next few minutes I spiraled into paranoia. I HAVE TO CHECK THE ENTIRE THING AGAIN, I wailed. OTHERWISE EVERYONE’S GONNA KNOW HOW CARELESS I AM. WHY DID I EVEN ATTEMPT TO ADD FOREIGN-LANGUAGE PHRASES WITHOUT COMPLETING RIGOROUS COURSES IN ALL LANGUAGES WORLDWIDE? I AM AN ABSOLUTE AMATEUR.

Bill tried his best to calm me down. “You can’t even be expected to find every typo in English,” he said, “and you speak English, Carrie.”

This didn’t have the effect he thought it would.

I’LL CHECK IT TEN MORE TIMES, I thundered. A HUNDRED! I’LL SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE PROOFREADING THIS MANUSCRIPT UNTIL I’M CERTAIN THERE ARE NO…MORE…MISTAKES.

But Carrie, a little voice said in my ear, you can never guarantee there will be no mistakes. And do you know why?

“Why?” I said, my voice a-quiver.

Because languages are made up. In English we can’t agree on the Oxford comma or the pronunciation of “-ough” or whether to spell it “flavor” or “flavour.” Languages are complex and inconsistent and you simply cannot please everyone when it comes to words. If an error does slip through, all you have to do is correct it. You are a human and your readers are humans. They will understand.

Well. Except for the French. Just make sure you get the French right, or l’Académie Française will send its agents after you in the nighttime and they will cudgel you with cabbages and baguettes, shouting, <<Utilisez l’accent circonflexe, s’il vous plaît!>> It will be humiliating, but you won’t want to cry lest the ruthless Académie agents call you a pleurnicheuse.

Somehow, this managed to reassure me when nothing else could.

Realistically, I told myself, not that many people will read my book. I mean, I hope a lot of people will read it, but compared to how many people there are in the world? Compared to how many people have existed on the planet throughout time? Only like half will end up reading it, tops. Of those, how many know enough Spanish or German or French or Italian or Mandarin to even know whether I’ve used the permanent or temporary form of “to be”? I mean, plenty of people from history were wholly illiterate, so they would have to listen to the audiobook anyway, and spelling wouldn’t matter at all in that case. So really, when you think about it, considering the entire history of the world and the significance my tiny book holds within it, is any of this really a big deal at all?

Yes.

In my small world, it is a huge deal. So I will continue to quadruple- and quintuple-check every phrase in the book like a neurotic little humbug until the formatter is forced to rip my laptop from my gnarled, cramped, carpal-tunnel-ridden hands so I can’t make any more changes.

At which point I will fold my hands in my lap and rock back and forth, muttering, “Estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están…” until August 30th, when I’ll be free to fret about the next book, focusing all my neurotic energy on Shakespeare quotes and Prince trivia.

Danke schön

I’m sort of coming up on the end of Things I Need to Write before the release of YA friendship-rom-com (platoni-com?) A Dazzle of Zebras. I have my novel…my title…my back cover description…my dedication…all that’s left, really, are the acknowledgments.

But how—HOW?—does a person even begin to mention everyone who’s contributed to writing a book? Writers have to prioritize their direct contributors, I guess, otherwise this section would be longer than the book itself and you’d get acknowledgments like, “Thank you to the girl in the ladies’ room in Terminal C at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport whose loud phone conversation inspired several funny exchanges in the third chapter.” Or something like, “Big shout-out to all my ancestors whose biological imperatives ultimately resulted in my birth. I owe ya one, guys.”

Then again, I would enjoy seeing an author who goes completely the other way and just says, “Um, how about thank you to ME, the person who put in all the sweat, blood, and tears—mostly tears—almost entirely tears—so much crying—in fact, at one point I became severely dehydrated—spent three days in the hospital—cost me a fortune in medical bills—to write this book in the first place? And NO thanks to all the haters who laughed at me because I spelled ‘tomorrow’ wrong in the second-grade spelling bee. Look at me now, suckas!”

In the end, however, one ought perhaps to play it safe and just thank everything. The universe, as a great and terrible whole, has created me, and I have created this book (though whether the book merits that sort of thanks remains to be seen). So thank you, everything. For everything.

You’re the best.