Hell(o) Summer

I’ll keep things brief this year. After all, I’ve said a lot about summer in previous years, and I think by now my feelings are painfully clear.

As another summer dawns, I find myself thinking of hell.

Like you do, I suppose.

If hell were a real place, and people did in fact end up there, it would only make sense for it to be tailored to provide the most unpleasant experience possible for each specific person.

For instance, all the summer-lovers who did things like evade their taxes and kick small animals would find no fireflies, no barbecues, no hikes or sailing trips or bonfires on the beach. There’d be no long afternoons by the pool or picnics in the grass. No roses would bloom, no bees would flit among the flowers, no birds would titter and call in the golden glow of another summer morning.

I don’t know what would be in their place—maybe an icy sidewalk that never ends—but you can be sure there would be none of the summery things they cherish so dearly.

On the other hand, for someone like me who views the summer with anger and suspicion, the entirety of hell would likely be one company barbecue after another. Heat and humidity, sunburns and heat stroke. Sweating crowds and fried carnival foods and spilled lemonade and melting ice cream. Interminable games of cornhole. And the mosquitoes…the mosquitoes would be everywhere. Taunting me. Nipping at me mercilessly. And because it’s hell, they’d probably have tiny pitchforks in place of a proboscis, and they’d poke me and laugh and then poke me again. For eternity.

It’s a sobering image. In fact, it’s spooked me a bit. I’ve been Jacob Marley-ed by my own imagination.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on summer. Maybe I should try to enjoy some of the nicer aspects of the season. Like the crop of gooseberries in the garden that are blushing deeper by the day and will soon be ready to transform into lip-puckering gooseberry pie. Or fireflies, which have always been summer’s major redeeming quality.

Here in Pennsylvania, rain clouds are rolling in for the solstice. The air is cool, the sky is dark. Summer seems to be meeting me halfway. I appreciate the gesture. With an olive branch like that, I suppose I can tolerate summer. For a few weeks, at least.

Donut Day

[Today is National Donut Day! So here’s a bit of festive flash fiction for you. Tracy and her friends are characters in a book I’ll be releasing soon, A Dazzle of Zebras. Here’s your chance to meet them in advance—I hope you like ‘em! I mean, like…I really hope you like them. If you don’t, that’ll be…a significant bummer. So…fingers crossed!]

A fan is humming when we walk into Duchess Donuts, but I’m not sure it’s doing much to cool the place down. The air is thick and sticky with sugar; the homey scent of yeast ushers us farther inside the little shop. I run my fingers along the glass display case, all the shiny donuts waiting there in rows to be eaten. By meee!

“Hey, Hank,” I say to the droopy-eyed man behind the register. “A very merry Donut Day to you.”

He nods. “Traaacy. Your usual?” He’s already reaching for a pink cardboard box.

“You know it.”

I lean against the counter and look back at my friends. Sophia smirks at me.

“You know the donut guy’s name?”

“You have a usual?” Alfie says.

Nick says nothing. He knows me too well to be surprised.

“Oh, yeah,” Hank says with his light Cambodian accent as he loads sprinkled cake donuts into the box. “Tracy’s been coming here for years. We’re like family. My wife’s like her second mom. What can I get for the rest of you?”

“I’ll take one of everything,” Alfie says.

Hank looks at me and I shrug like, What do you expect? The boy has taste. “It is National Donut Day.”

“We’re gonna need a bigger box,” he says.

Nick leans over to me and mumbles, “I’m getting a Snapple.”

As he slinks over to the fridge, I announce, “Nick’s getting a Snapple!” to the entire shop.

“Congratulations,” says Hank.

Nick glares at me over his shoulder and I say, “Sorry. I’m all hyped up.”

Scooting into one of the booths by the window, Sophia says, “Nick, you should work here this summer.”

“That means we’d get free donuts, right?” Alfie slaps his palm on the counter. “Hank! Get this man an application!”

“He’s too tall,” Hank says. “Make me look too short.”

Nick gives me a look like, Who is this jamoke? But Hank has a point. Nick was five-foot-six in third grade, and he’s only grown taller since then.

Alfie helps me heft the two boxes of donuts over to the table.

“So what’re we planning to do with these bad boys?” Sophia asks as she opens the lid and picks out a sour cream donut.

“We are going to sit here,” Alfie says, “until we finish every—single—one.”

“Then we can have dessert,” I chirp.

“Great,” she says, taking a bite. “Too bad this isn’t a real holiday.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that like, obviously I love the idea of Donut Day, I just wish it were an actual holiday.”

Nick purses his lips and scrunches his eyes shut. “Easy, Sophe.”

“But like…this isn’t a real holiday, right? Like, this is one of those Tracy holidays that you make up and then force everyone to celebrate. Like Hug a Fish Day.”

“Hug a Fish Day suuucks,” Nick groans.

“Or like last year,” Alfie says, “when you made us hang tissues from your bedroom ceiling because you wanted Flu Season to be a little more festive.”

“Actually it is a real holiday.”

Sophia tilts her head skeptically.

“It is! I promise.” I start in on a second sprinkled donut.

They peer at each other silently for a moment.

Finally Alfie sighs. “Okay, fine. Tell us the history of Donut Day then, Tracy.”

I straighten up in my seat. “I thought you’d never ask!”

Nick shakes his head quietly and crosses his arms. “I donut think you want to hear it.”

I shush him and begin my story. “Once upon a time there lived a woman named Marchu.”

“Marchu?”

“Gesundheit. This was a poor woman, you see, and she had little to feed her twenty-six children.”

“Twenty-six?!”

“One for every letter of the alphabet. But after years of drought and famine and locusts and the inevitable blood rain, she decided to set out for the king’s castle to plead for help.”

“What country is this?”

“So Marchu set out toward the castle, and the journey took weeks and was fraught with terrors: the ice fields and the fearsome giant hopping toads and the wide chasms she must cross with only the aid of a rickety rope bridge. Finally, though, she made it to the castle. But when the guards saw her bedraggled state, they refused to let her enter, much less have an audience with the king. ‘Servants’ entrance is in the back,’ they told her.”

“Rude.”

“I know. But Marchu was used to this type of treatment, and she went around to the servants’ entrance, which happened to open into the kitchen. The door was open, and as she stood in the doorway, she filled her lungs with the most wonderful scent. Rich, yeasty, wholesome…her mouth watered and her stomach growled so loudly that the head chef looked up in surprise. ‘You zere!’ he said. He was French, this chef. He said, ‘Beggar woman! Get ahway from mah keetchen!’ But Marchu was clever. Not to mention desperate. She told the French head chef that she was a new cook just hired by the king.”

“That seems like it would be pretty easy to fact-check.”

“The head chef of the castle didn’t have time to fact-check, Alfie! He just told her to come inside and get started kneading. But of course, Marchu didn’t know what that meant. She’d never seen anything like this before.”

“Wait. You’re saying she didn’t know what bread is? Nobody in her entire village had ever heard of yeast?”

“Not everyone has heard of things, Sophe. Now, Marchu knew if she could only get her hands on a small morsel of this remarkable substance, it would keep growing and growing, and she’d be able to feed all her twenty-six children for eternity. So she quickly learned the ins and outs kneading and cutting out the circle buns the king liked and frying them up all golden-brown, and every night when the work was done, she secreted away the extra dough that got caught under her fingernails.”

“Gross. Call the health inspector.”

“Finally she had enough and returned to her village. She fried up the dough as her twenty-six children looked on in amazement, and that night they all ate until their bellies were stuffed. And that would have been that, except that the youngest, Zachariah, accidentally dropped his in the sugar pond. At first Marchu scolded him, but when she tasted it, she realized what an opportunity this was! She started selling her buns, dipped in the sugar pond, far and wide, and that’s how we got donuts.”

Alfie spews crumbs all over the table. “Wait, what! They had a sugar pond this whole time?”

“But no dentist in town, so it wasn’t like they could just eat that all day.”

“Well, what did they use to fry the donuts?”

“Oh, they just fried them in the hot oil springs in the caves near the village.”

“Oh, of course. Wasn’t that obvious, Alfie?”

“So anyway,” I say, “that’s the story of Marchu and the donuts. Every year on Donut Day we stuff ourselves with donuts of all sorts to commemorate her daring heist and ingenuity. You know, I kind of hope that eventually, every day will be Donut Day, all across the globe. That is my dream for this troubled world. I mean, yes, diabetes and obesity rates would soar, but it will be worth it.”

When I finish, Sophia and Alfie gape silently at me. They look mad. Grinning, Nick reaches across me for a bear claw.

“A very merry Donut Day to us all,” he says.

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.

BOOK DESIGN (and such)

Last week I had a meeting about book formatting and cover art. IT WAS VERY EXCITING.

…By which I mean it was Totally Normal since, as a Modern Businesswoman, I am Entirely Accustomed to Taking Meetings…with Professionals…about Business Matters.

Anyway.

It’s a bit intimidating, this part. This is where it goes from being an idea in my head to a tangible thing that exists in the world for other people to look at and pick up and put back on the shelf and thumb through with sticky fingers and shove in a backpack and callously dog-ear and drop in a puddle and set in front of a fan to dry and press under other heavy books that will never quite straighten out the wavy pages. Maybe someone will hollow it out to use as a book safe to hide Secret Things. A girl can dream, anyway.

My point is you want to get it right if you’re aiming for book safe status. You want the font to be readable, you want the running head not to trip, you want the cover to look professional and enticing, like a petit bonbon in a French patisserie.

But writers, for the most part, are not designers. We don’t know how to achieve any of those things. All we know about are stupid words, which are only worth 1/1000 of a picture. So we have to bring in a professional artiste and try to paint a word-picture that they can then translate into a picture-picture.

It’s hard to let go of control and trust someone else. It’s like getting a tattoo—you don’t want to put yourself in the hands of someone who says, “Gimme twenty bucks and a ballpoint pen.” But a talented designer knows what they’re about, and writers can still influence the final product. A cover brief outlines writers’ preferences, ideas, thematic elements…all the Word Stuff that helps the designer do their Mysterious Art Things and magic up a cover that makes you go, “AWWWW YEAH” and then cough quietly because that was a very unprofessional reaction.

While I won’t tell you what we discussed in the meeting because I don’t want to spoil the cover reveal, I will suggest some phrases you can use to communicate effectively with an artist:

• I don’t know what I like, but I know what I don’t like, so maybe you could just show me some ideas and we’ll go from there.

• I want a font that feels playful, but also a little sullen? Like a teenage girl who goes to get ice cream with her dad but then the cool kids from school show up. You know what I mean?

• Yeah, I watched a couple YouTube videos about Photoshop. I could probably do your job.

• I really like the cover of this book here. What if we just take it and replace the words with my title?

• Can you get this done by tomorrow morning?

• You know the feeling when you’re on a boat and the sea air rushes through your hair, and it stings to open your eyes but you do it anyway, and the sun on the water makes you feel a little dazzled and dizzy, and your breath catches at the sheer vastness of the ocean? That’s the sense I want people to get when they look at the cover.

• Just make it look good.

Blurb

I took a break from edits to write out a book description for the back cover. As if that would be a nice, quick, simple task to bolster and re-motivate me.

It’s just 150 words about a book that’s already written, I thought. That’s like a second-grade book report. Easy-peasy.

But it was not easy-peasy. It was in fact difficult-pifficult.

[Ed: I’m a little worried that these posts make it seem like I’m not enjoying the process of publishing this book. In some ways, that’s true! Like anything else, this is work! But it’s satisfying work. I like the feeling of giving my brain a workout every day. I like piecing words together like a puzzle until everything fits just right. It does drive me crazy, but in a way that compels me to keep going. It’s a sickness! But I’m a jolly little invalid.]

If writing a book is like carving away marble until you reach the shape of a human figure that’s lurking inside it, then writing a book blurb is like taking that sculpture’s thumb and carving another miniature figure out of it, but the smaller figure is doing KARATE MOVES! and TAMING A LION! and UNICYCLING ON A TIGHTROPE! This little guy has all the responsibility of catching people’s interest so they will spend some time and money to look at the bigger sculpture.

…That metaphor left something to be desired.

Maybe it’s more like cooking a gourmet meal. You have all these elements that go into it, and you work and experiment and adjust the components to get them all complementary and balanced just right so they make a harmonious whole, a taste that’s richer and more satisfying than the sum of its parts. This is a meal that means something—this is art! But then, to get people invested enough to take a bite, you have to first take that meal and boil it down (so to speak) into a single bite that hints at the complexity of the entire meal, but doesn’t entirely give away the best bits. A blurb is an amuse-bouche, if you will. (Will you? Is this metaphor working?)

It takes skill to write an effective blurb. You can’t lie, or the reader will be confused and annoyed, but you can strategically focus on the most intriguing elements of your story, like so:

1. First you have to find a HOOK. (If you’re writing a book about pirates, you’re already halfway there.) Maybe that’s a punchy, intriguing concept. Or, if you have them, you could lead with accolades like, FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR G.D. FERNHAVEN COMES A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER THAT WILL “LITERALLY MAKE YOU SCREAM UNTIL YOUR THROAT FALLS OUT. THIS BOOK COST ME THOUSANDS IN MEDICAL BILLS.”

2. Then you backtrack. The reader’s like, SAY WHAT? THAT FIRST SENTENCE HAS MY INTEREST PIQUED! This is where you reel ‘em in. You set up a SCENE. This is the NORMAL WORLD. We find out who the main character is (briefly) and what they WANT. We learn in a pithy sentence or two why we should CONNECT WITH and ROOT FOR this total stranger.

3. But of course, it isn’t a story unless something HAPPENS. There are OBSTACLES to whatever it is the character wants. UH-OH, we say. WHAT’S THE CHARACTER GONNA DO?

4. WELL, THE BLURB’S NOT GONNA TELL. It leaves us on a cliffhanger, echoing our question and setting the stakes: WILL CORNELIUS FIND OUT THE TRUTH…BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? CAN EUGENIA UNLOCK THE SECRET…BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? DOES SHERYL HAVE A CHANCE IN HELL OF DOING WHATEVER SHE NEEDS TO DO…BEFORE WHATEVER CLOCK THAT’S TICKING DOWN RUNS OUT AND A HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCE BEFALLS HER AND/OR OTHERS?

It can get extra tough, however, when you have a story where the changes happen (mostly) internally. How do you make a plot sound exciting when the obstacle is, This character wants to have an okay time, but instead she’s having a bummer of a time! Like, what are the stakes? If she doesn’t figure something out, then…I mean, things will keep on being a bummer! Which sucks, right? Is that…are you interested? In hearing more? About that? Please?

It took a few weeks and lots of reluctantly critical feedback from friends and family, but I think I’ve finally got a passable description. “I’d read that book,” someone said (I assume with a shrug), and that’s all I can ask for.

Now I just have to finish all my other publishing tasks and get this bad boy out there…BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

UUUUGGGGHHHHHH—

—HHHHHHHHHHHH. ugh.

I put it off for as long as I could. I hemmed and I hawed and really put in some of my very best procrastination, but there’s nothing for it. The time is here.

BOOK EDITS.

The part that requires the most work is the first chapter, which needs to be cut in half and shaved down by a third.

A third.

Do you realize how many jokes that is?! Just like…so many. So many. All my darlings, lined up for execution. And I’m just ambling down the row, handing out cigarettes.

I’ve tried bargaining with myself. NO, NO—NOT THAT PART! I cry as I hastily stuff sentences into pockets and squirrel adverbs away in my cheeks. DON’T CUT THAT PART! IT’S IMPORTANT FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! YOU DON’T WANT TO CUT THAT PARAGRAPH—REMEMBER HOW LONG IT TOOK US TO FIGURE OUT THAT JOKE? THIS CHAPTER ISN’T REALLY THAT BLOATED, ANYWAY—THE FONT ADDS THREE PAGES!

But as it turns out, I am quite ruthless. “What must be done…” I pronounce gravely, “shall be done.” Then I begin to slash. AND EVERY TIME I CUT THE CHAPTER DOWN ANOTHER PAGE, I REWARD MYSELF BY DRINKING RED INK FROM THE SKULLS OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS.

(Luckily, no one edits these posts, so I get to lump as much self-indulgent nonsense in HERE as I like—and there’s nothing I can do to stop me!)

Anyway. That’s not the point. I didn’t start writing this just to complain dramatically at you. The reason I started writing this was to ask for your help. So here I go.

HELP!

While an editor is incredibly helpful when it comes to pointing out what works and what doesn’t, there are always some bits that are left up to the writer. “This didn’t work for me,” the editor says, “but it’s your choice if you want to change it or keep it.”

WHICH IS A HIDEOUS THING TO LEAVE WITH SOMEONE AS NEUROTIC AS A WRITER-TYPE.

So I need some feedback. From you. Hopefully. If it’s not too much trouble. Just a few questions, totally anonymous, opinion-based, easy-peasy. And if you happen to be a teenager, you get BONUS POINTS. Because these are questions about a YOUNG ADULT BOOK, and I am in an awkward stage in life where my youngest siblings are in their twenties and my oldest niblings haven’t reached double-digits yets. So where do I go for teenage opinions? THE INTERNET!

READY?

Thanks, friends! This helps a whole bunch. You’re the best. (Look for your name in the acknowledgments when the book comes out—you’ll be listed as “Anonymous Survey-Taker.”)

---

UPDATE: I drafted this a few weeks ago, and since then, instead of cutting down that first chapter, I have written two new chapters.

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO PLAN.

Flirting Tips for Human People, Vol. IV

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all—as we remember with gratitude that long-ago day when St. Valentine chopped down a cherry tree to drive all the snakes out of our hearts. What could say “ROMANCE” louder than that? A bullhorn? Don’t be cute. That was a rhetorical question and you know it.

Anyway.

Over the past few years, we’ve covered lots of flirting tips for all the normal human people out there. What we haven’t talked about (because it’s frankly kind of a bummer) is what to do when you find yourself in the awkward position of having to rebuff unwanted romantic gestures.

Fortunately, I have a wealth of experience in this area. Not in being rebuffed, because in my mind only a psychopath would risk the sort of vulnerability that leads to the possibility of rejection, but I do know a bit about rebuffing. In fact, you might call me the Rebuff Kid. It’s not a great name, but we’re just spitballing here.

I’m not proud of my role as the Rebuff Kid.

Just that other people’s crushes have always seemed a sort of imposition. They’re so much pressure. Someone would offer me their fragile little paper heart and I’d just stand there stammering like, YOU DARE TO—WHO GAVE YOU THE RI—THE AUDACITY—! and I’d nervously tear their heart to shreds and place each piece inside my mouth and gum it around until it formed a soggy mass and then I’d swallow it in one disgusting gulp.

Really what I meant as I stared at them in horror was, YOU WHAT?! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? HOW CAN I TRUST YOUR JUDGMENT IF YOU’RE THE TYPE OF MANIAC TO PICK ME AS YOUR VALENTINE? ARE YOU…I MEAN, ARE YOU LIKE A LITTLE BIT STUPID OR SOMETHING?

I know. It’s dumb. Think of all the candy I could have eaten if I’d only been a little more mature. But the whole thing just felt so grotesque. The other kids in school were always watching, waiting to POUNCE and MAKE A HUGE DEAL out of any tiny show of sentimentality. I felt constantly hunted. And as a result, I turned into a beast.

In order to protect myself and those around me (but mostly, let’s be honest, myself), I decided to BOYCOTT VALENTINE’S DAY. Every February 14th I wore all black and scoffed derisively at couples being mushy and was generally a bit of a teenage ass.

Except that wasn’t the whole story. Since we were little, my mom has always made a big to-do of the holiday, decorating the table with hearts and flowers before school, leaving us notes on pink construction-paper hearts along with a bundle of Hershey’s kisses. I’m not sure how I managed the cognitive dissonance of scowling at anyone who dared mention love while surreptitiously sneaking chocolate kisses between classes. It took a confrontation from an exasperated boyfriend to finally convince me that I…was being…a fool.

There’s nothing wrong with telling someone about your feelings. In fact, it’s unspeakably brave. And it deserves a more measured response than backing slowly away as if they are a dinosaur that can sense movement so the only way to escape the situation is to inch your way silently, sweatily past until you can break into a sprint.

So let’s get into it. (Finally.)

REJECTION TIPS FOR HUMAN PEOPLE
WHO DON’T CARE FOR OTHER HUMAN PEOPLE
DOING THEM A FLIRT

1. We’ve already touched on the first step: Remember how much courage it took to put themselves out there. To approach you and reveal their most secret, most tender feelings for you. The apple of their eye. The knees of their bees. Their sweet little cabbage of love.

2. Now you feel terrible, don’t you? Like your insides have melted and slithered down to puddle in your socks, leaving you a cold, empty, heartless husk. Well, GOOD. YOU DESERVE IT.

3. I’m mostly kidding. Nobody deserves that. It’s just an unfortunate situation all around. You can’t manufacture feelings just to avoid hurting someone else.

4. OR CAN YOU? Why not take a little trip down to the Feelings Factory and watch through a large window as their state-of-the-art facility assembles customized feelings for you WHILE YOU WAIT? You’ll be experiencing romantic reciprocity in no time—FINALLY! A SOLUTION FOR PERMANENT REQUITED LOVE! THANKS, FEELINGS FACTORY!

5. Except you can’t do that. The Feelings Factory is a made-up place. Like Neverland. And Nebraska. However, you can still follow fiction’s lead and employ a TROPE. Like the old Pretend-You-Have-Feelings-For-Them-Too-Until-It-Goes-Too-Far-and-You-Have-to-Break-Up-Thus-Hurting-Them-More-Than-If-You’d-Just-Been-Truthful-In-the-First-Place trope—a classic! Or the old Fake-Your-Own-Death trope. What could go wrong?

6. Hire a bodyguard to keep all would-be suitors at bay. You never have to be responsible for hurting anyone’s feelings if you never give them the chance to tell you how they feel, right? That’s a mature way to handle your issues, right?

7. Right??

8. In a similar vein, you could try wearing a disguise and talking loudly about how terrible and gross you are until all their feelings for you have dried up like a grimy old sponge. This approach has a relatively low success rate, but it’s worth a try. Plus it’s always fun to wear a disguise.

9. Pretend you’re a ghost. Get your friends to play along. Practice your spooky ghost noises. Convince them it would never work out between you because you are a spirit and they are still bound to this mortal coil. Is this gaslighting? YES. TECHNICALLY. But does it also add a sense of wistful mystery to their lives? MAYBE. I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY TRIED THIS APPROACH SO IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY. PLEASE REPORT BACK WITH YOUR FINDINGS IF YOU CHOOSE THIS TECHNIQUE.

10. As a last resort, try being honest and straightforward with them. If you truly don’t like them, say, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS HONOR BUT I MUST DECLINE. If you like them but don’t know how to say it, don’t say anything, just GIVE ‘EM A SMOOCH. And if you find yourself panicking, try something like, EXCUSE ME BUT YOU HAVE DONE ME A FRIGHT. PLEASE WAIT WHILE I RUN AROUND FOR TEN MINUTES, AT WHICH POINT I WILL RETURN WITH LESS ADRENALINE AND MORE COMPOSURE TO ADDRESS THE MATTER AT HAND—FOR NOW, I MUST BID YOU ADIEU! Make sure you wear sneakers on V-Day for just this situation.

11. Whatever you do, make sure to be kind. Let them down gently. You might want to give them some flowers and chocolate in return, to soften the blow. Hire a string quartet to nurse them through their heartbreak. Buy them a teddy bear. Give them your car. Give them anything—anything to take away the crestfallen look on their face—good God, make it stop! What kind of world is this?!

And if you find yourself rejected this Valentine’s Day, please know I wish I could gather you up in a big hug and give you a squeeze. You are brave. You are thoughtful. But most importantly, remember that plenty of people love you just because you’re you.

Now have another Hershey’s kiss, my sweet little cabbage.

A Pleasant Evening at Home

SCENE: We’re sitting at the dining room table. Bill’s putting together a LEGO model of the Space Station, and I am pretending to get some writing done. The dogs are snoozing in the next room. One of them is doing tiny sleep-woofs.

“Little in the middle,” Bill said slowly, apropos of nothing. “But she’s got much back.”

“Skittles in the middle,” I replied. We often start out our gentle little rhyming games this way, entirely out of the blue.

“Brittle in the middle. Because she has osteoporosis.”

“Brittle in the middle…but she’s got a humpback.”

“Just like you!”

“I have a humpback?”

“You’re at risk for osteoporosis.”

“Oh. I am! Women over thirty really have to watch their backs.”

“The back bones are the first to go.”

“It’s really a nightmare disease when you think about it.”

“Your bones just…go bad.”

“They dissolve inside of you…”

“But you get new ones.”

“No, Bill. No, you don’t.”

“They don’t grow back? Are you sure?”

“You’re thinking of teeth.” I tapped my front tooth with my fingernail. “It’s two sets of teeth, one set of bones.”

“Are you sure? How many do you have?”

“Two hundred and six.”

(I’m only realizing now that he may have meant how many teeth, not how many bones.)

“Really?” he said skeptically.

“Really. Two hundred six bones.”

He tilted his head smarmily. “I don’t know about that. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

“I didn’t read about it on the internet. I learned it in a song in second grade.”

“That is the standard of trustworthy information,” he said, nodding solemnly. “Learning about it in a song in second grade.”

After some time when the only sound was my furiously typing out this conversation, he made a comment about the texture that LEGO gave to the model. “It’s neat,” he said.

“That is neat,” I agreed, giving a very good impression of someone who had been listening all along.

“You know what’s not neat?” He looked up at me, as serious as I’ve ever seen him. “Osteoporosis. The silent killer.”

Not a Creature Was Stirring

As you may know by now, we’ve had a mouse problem—the problem being that innumerable mice are living in our basement and eating all our food, and they don’t even have the decency to pay rent.

(This is a Christmas post, I promise. Stay with me.)

Ever since our best possum friend Patches abandoned us for the open road and set off to find his possum destiny, that mouse problem has slowly worsened. We’ve had to find creative ways to address the issue.

At first, I tried to be diplomatic.

When my friendly notice proved inexplicably ineffective, I cleared out the pantry entirely and stashed all our tempting noodles and crackers and flours and things in plastic bins. I cleaned out the mouse droppings, sanitized it all, and then we set The Traps.

What we use as a pantry in our c. 1812 house was once a set of stairs that led to a small bedroom above the kitchen. Nothing about our house is particularly well insulated, and with feral cats roaming freely around the town, this place is a winter haven for rodents of all sorts.

With so many possible entrance points, our best option was to lay down a barrage, a relentless siege to starve the enemy out of their holes and into our clutches. We learned, and we adjusted, and we gained ground. Guilt burrowed inside me with each snap of a trap, but then I’d try to cook a meal with all our dry goods scattered across four heavy boxes, and my resolve would strengthen. But our efforts did little good, anyway: the vermin were too light and quick. Most mornings we woke to still-armed traps licked clean of peanut butter.

“ARE THEY TINY MAGICIANS?” I’d shout in amazement.

Now, at this point it would be fair to ask, “But what about your dogs?”

A fine question. It was, indeed, time to send in the hounds.

What you need to know first is these are not small-prey dogs. Traditionally, ridgebacks have worked in packs to bay lions, which makes them a poor match for scuttly, nimble creatures. Several times I watched a mouse skitter right past them. They didn’t even lift their heads.

These girls have taken down squirrels, chickens, and deer in the wild, but I don’t think they quite understand it’s possible to hunt something inside the house. Inside is for toys. Which feel and squeak suspiciously like a mouse. And so all they really did when I gave them the command to KILL! was woof in confusion and sniff curiously at the hidey-holes in the wall, long after tiny tails had whipped out of sight.

So I released them from their duties. It seemed an interminable and pointless struggle, anyway. How do you get rid of mice, in the winter, especially when they reproduce like…well, like mice?

Before we went away for the holidays, we cleared all our traps and called a Christmas truce with the mice. I’m not ashamed to admit that after weeks, the fight had worn me down. A severe CHEER drought meant we struggled to muster up even the barest motivation to light a candle or pick out a tree. We’re not even going to be here for Christmas, we reasoned. We can skip all the rigmarole this year.

“We’ll be back after the new year,” I told the mice as we headed out the door. “Back with a vengeance.” Which would’ve been a pretty cool line had I not tripped immediately after.

Unfortunately, our holiday plans were dashed by COVID. Not twenty-four hours after we'd left, we returned home to empty cabinets and a house entirely devoid of cheer.

We sank into the couch. Exhausted. Worried. Defeated. Content to stay in that exact spot and hibernate until spring. At least.

We were far from alone in this situation. All around us, we heard stories of holidays deferred, flights canceled, and plans upended. It's a “muddle-through-somehow” sort of year, made all the more difficult because of the hope that this year would be better, that the fates would allow us all to be together.

Ours was a small inconvenience, all things considered.

“At least we can resume our ground campaign on the mice,” I pointed out.

“And break our Christmas truce?” Bill said reproachfully.

“Oh. Right.”

He thought for a moment, then leaped to his feet, crying, “Woman!”—(he didn’t actually say that, I just added it for DRAMATIC EFFECT)—“What is this nonsense? Are we so jaded we can’t even put on a jolly face for one night? So what if we have mice? So what if a virus changed our plans? So what if everyone has been running a low-grade depression for the past two years?

“I tell you, when things are at their bleakest, that’s when Christmas steps in to shine! Are we going to give up just because it’s been a tough year? Surely not! Surely not, I say! We need some Christmas!”

With that, he threw on the Sufjan Christmas album, I popped some corn for stringin’, and within the hour we’d whipped up this!

That’s an asparagus fern standing in for a Christmas tree. Its little limbs were almost too delicate to hold up the popcorn strings, but it is Doing Its Best.

And this!

Nothing says CHEER like strewing a poisonous woody dioecious angiosperm about the house!

And also, for some reason, this!

Zhdun-ta Claus doesn’t make a list. He just sits patiently and waits for the children to come to him. No, no, it’s fine—take your time.

It felt simple. Spontaneous. Joyful. And it's definitely the very twee-est Christmas we've ever had.

I even managed to make cookies and we left one out for Santa, fully aware that the mice might creep over for a nibble (with all the risks that would entail). By this point it didn’t matter. I just wanted us—all of us—to have a gentler time of it. A bit of peace and goodwill.

This truce can't last forever; we all know that. Nothing does, good or bad. And yet, I'm pretty sure, if you listen carefully tonight, you'll just be able to make out a tiny, mouse-sized voice somewhere in the darkness singing “Stille Nacht,” like a little hopeful prayer.

And so Merry Christmas to you, wherever you are and however you keep it. I wish you a gentler holiday season and a softer, sweeter new year.

How to Eat a Rotten Fish Sandwich

So. You’ve just received professional edits on your manuscript. WHAT NOW?

Well, before we get into all that, it’s time for an unsavory metaphor. You see, criticism is like a rotten fish sandwich. On the outside, the bread may be delightfully springy with a nice, chewy crust, maybe even sprinkled with seeds for a little extra crunch. But there’s no getting around that putrid filling gently sogging it all up.

The rule with criticism is to start and end with praise and slip the constructive bit somewhere in the middle—as if it will not be noticed, as if people will be tricked into focusing on the positive and let the negative settle like a feather on their palm. But what they've actually been given is more akin to a coupon for a free dental cleaning. Yes, it’s a bargain, but look at what they're getting.

Last Wednesday, I received edits for the first chapter of my book because, and I paraphrase, THAT WAS THE ONE THAT NEEDED THE MOST WORK, and my editor wanted to give me a head start on considering the changes. After a quick glance at her comments, I found myself paddling frantically through:

The Five Stages of Criticism

1. Feigned acceptance

2. Secret dismay

3. Nausea

4. Positive mantras

5. Snacking

This kept up for over a week, until I started to annoy even myself. Plenty of edits were still to come, and I couldn’t let myself fall apart like this again. I needed a PLAN. Some sort of COPING MECHANISM. To give some PERSPECTIVE in a MILDLY CHALLENGING TIME. And so, on the back of a bag of tortilla chips, I hastily jotted down:

How to Accept Constructive Criticism Gracefully (When You Are in Fact a Fragile Bird)

1. As they say (“they” being folksy-type optimists), an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. How does this apply to our situation? Well, first, we can deduce that the unit rate of prevention to cure is 16:1, so file that away for future use. Second, you can (and should) prepare yourself in advance for this harrowing experience. Namely, you’ll want to develop a thick skin—as thick as possible. This may involve different techniques of long-term exposure to the elements, but for a quick fix, try rubbing coarse salt all over yourself. Really get it into all the nooks and crannies. Maybe give it a good scrub with steel wool. Yes, you may experience some minor irritation and sensitivity at first, but it's worth it in end.

2. When it comes time to receive the criticism, you’ll want to drench your callused skin in oil. (Coconut oil works best here, but whatever you have handy will do the trick!) This will allow all feelings of shame and inadequacy to slip right off you like water off a duck’s oily back. All that will remain is the useful meat of the critique.

3. Fill up on a healthy meal so you’re less tempted to rage-snack. (Also maybe write yourself some reminders that your work does not define your worth and perfection isn’t a requirement of any creative endeavor.) Don’t forget to hydrate!

4. Once you get yourself in a good place emotionally, inject some humor into the situation. Put on a deep, movie-trailer-voiceover voice and pick out comments to read like they’re starred reviews.

   Critics call it “a literal page-turner…except for that first chapterrrr.”

   “Unrelenting banterrr.”

   “Bluntly, way too loooong.”

   “I really wanted the story…to move onnn.”

   (Not that any of these are direct quotes from any critique I’ve ever received. Let’s not be ridiculous, now. Such things do not become us.)

5. Remember, above all, YOUR EDITOR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. Not that they should call you names and kick you, but don’t expect them to coddle you, either. It may seem cruel that they would painstakingly craft this rotten fish sandwich and serve it to you with a flourish, but ultimately, if you can pinch your nose and get it down, it will make you smarter and your work better. After all, it’s got all those omega-3s. (This metaphor may be falling apart.)

Tomorrow I can expect feedback on the rest of the manuscript. I’m going to arrange an elegant table setting, tuck the corner of the tablecloth into my collar, and get ready for the biggest rotten fish sandwich of my life.