To celebrate the cover reveal of Code Name Badass (I love it, don’t you?), I wrote a fun little piece for Forever YA’s “Your Fake Historical Girlfriend” segment to introduce you to Virginia Hall.
BADASS comes out in September 2021 from Simon & Schuster. You can learn more here. I can’t wait for you to get to know your new shero.
In celebration of my new book, Little Universes, the Author’s Guild invited me to do a Member Spotlight interview. Their questions were fantastic and I loved how I got to speak to WHY I write, who I write for, and share a couple of my most treasured writing practices.
I’ve posted the interview below, or you can find it here.
I write in order to awaken my readers to the deepest parts of themselves, ignite their imaginations, and hold space for them as they grapple with what it means to be human. My goal as a writer--whether it's a book or a blog post--is to inspire my readers on their life's journey, to aid in their continual discovery of their place in the universal story, and help them strengthen their connection to others. I want my words to be a refuge when one is needed and a light in the darkness when none can be found: a bit of good, old-fashioned magic. Also? I want to entertain the heck out of each person whose eyes land on my pages. Life is hard. Books help. I really love how Alice Walker talked about how her activism was the way she paid rent for being on the planet. I feel like writing is that for me. In my recent novel, Little Universes, the characters are figuring out how to "do right by the miracle." The miracle being the mind-blowing amount of things that had to come together so an individual human being exists. I think of my ancestors and the sacrifices they made and the natural or cosmic events and every micro choice in my parents' lives that led to my particular self. I want to honor--to live up--to all of that, and words are the way I've chosen to do right by the miracle.
I write. I don't believe in writer's block. I think that's the monster under every writer's bed. That's not to say I don't ever feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark. But we're writers, right? We know the power of language. So I try to avoid using language that makes me feel constricted, limited, shackled. I don't say "blocked" with myself or the writers I work with. I say "stuck." If you're stuck, there's room for movement: you'll eventually hit upon a way to wiggle out. If you're "blocked," suddenly you're at a military checkpoint, no movement allowed. At the end of the day, I believe showing up is the key. Write a lot. Be consistent. Treat your writing as a practice--one you're devoted to. As Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." It's a simple equation, really: Intention + Devotion = Flow. However, I do have a couple tried and true practices when I'm stuck: I meditate almost daily, which works the same muscles in your brain as creative flow. I use mindful practices to work with my Inner Critic, self-doubt, fear, etc. And I take a weekly writer's sabbath to fill the well. A whole day where I let my curiosity run the show. It works every time. You can't draw creative water from an empty well. Finally, I cultivate a healthy relationship with my writing: In my life, writing is the harbor, not the storm.
I love writing in the morning. Most of the time, when I'm on my most healthy schedule, it's the first thing I do after my morning coffee and walk around the lake near my house. The walk primes the pump--not quite as good as meditation, but it does the trick. I get ideas on the walk, get in touch with nature, tap into flow. Doing my writing first thing is necessary on a few levels. First, as it's the most important thing to me and in my day, I put it first to ensure I actually get that writing done (this avoids the terrible I-didn't-write-today guilt/panic/shame ride). I like to meditate between my writing sessions so I can keep that flow and focus going. I write BEFORE I open my email and certainly before I go on social media or take a call. Nothing kills flow like our phones and apps and inboxes. I'm also signaling to myself and those around me that writing is the priority. And I'm getting the best of me when I sit down to write first thing. I'm not drained from social interactions or the hellscape of the inbox. I haven't been knocked about by social media or news from publishers or the world at large. Writing first thing keeps me honest, too. If I'm a writer, then I need to write. Plain and simple.
One of my mentors, the novelist A.S. King, gifted me a poem that keeps me grounded in the ups and downs of the writer's life. I was working on my MFA at the time and juggling deadlines with my publisher, while also feeling the whiplash of the debut author's first rodeo of publication. I'm a big Whitman fan and she encouraged me to keep this treasure trove of wisdom in mind from "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer," which is basically about having that little blue dot, cosmic perspective. It's great for building and maintaining a healthy mindset, to having perspective about what matters most (the writing):
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
I recite this to myself when I get lost and worried about my status in publishing, my sales, my "brand"--all that. This brings me back to why I write in the first place (doing right by the miracle).
The absolute best thing about writing in 2020 is how easy it is for readers to reach out to me. Just [recently] I received a beautiful, heartfelt message on Instagram from a hurting teen who'd read my recent novel, Little Universes, which delves into topics ranging from the Big Questions to addiction to suicide. One of the characters, Hannah, talks about feeling invisible. Zero followers, zero purpose. And this reader, she identified with that. And as Hannah begins to sort out for herself how to flourish as a human being on Earth in the digital age, this reader said she was able to get some clarity for herself too. I don't know if this reader would have taken the time to write a letter, find an envelope and a stamp, figure out my address, and then remember to mail it to me. I love snail mail, but most people these days are not going to go to that effort. But because I'm on social media, she could reach out to me right away, right after finishing the book, and tell me how my words landed. Receiving a message like that, it's everything. It's why I do this. It's what makes all the effort and heartache and joy and confusion and terror of putting your words into the world worth it. To know my words, my story, helped shine some light in the darkness of another person's life? That's the ultimate mic drop.
***
The Author’s Guild is a fantastic organization that, if you’re a writer, I highly encourage you to support and join. They have incredible resources for us and fight hard on our behalf against piracy and other injustices. You can learn more about membership here.
My new book, Little Universes, came out today. On a day in the middle of a global pandemic, when all bookstores and libraries are closed, much of the world is in some form of quarantine, when readers spend more time devouring updates on the CDC website than novels, when getting a package in the mail is a cause for stress and Lysol wipes.
I’ve done one signing: I wore gloves while I signed a cart of books, pushed toward me from a safe distance by a masked bookseller at my local indie. There will be no book launch, no events, no pictures with my cheek squished next to readers holding my novel in their hands. That’s as it should be: My book is pubbing on the week that COVID19 is projected to hit my country the worst thus far.
The woman it’s dedicated to—my best friend—is a nurse whose hospital does not have a mask for her to use during one of the worst pandemics the world has ever known.
My sister, who inspired much of this story about sisters, is a single mom trying to homeschool two kids. My entire publishing team is in New York City, which is expected to be pummeled by the pandemic this very day, trying to keep themselves out of medical tents set up in Central Park while also somehow finding the bandwidth to promote a book to a world that is falling apart.
The only person in my family who will likely be able to read my book is my dad, who’s a truck driver who loves audiobooks. The last picture I got of him was a selfie in a laundromat in which he wore gloves and a mask. We had a discussion about whether or not he was applying enough bleach on the surfaces of the public showers he has to use at truck stops—showers used by people from all over the country crossing multiple state lines—and how he had to cancel a load going to Brooklyn because he’d have to quarantine for two weeks after and he can’t afford to do that. Should he get that small business loan the government is offering? What would he do if he got sick? Where would he even live, since his truck is his home?
Is it okay to feel sad about what having this book come out now means for me and my career when the entire world is suffering through a shared crisis? Is it okay to celebrate the long, hard road I’ve walked to write a book that, to me, distills everything I know to be true?
Since most of the people reading this are writers, I will tell you what I tell the writers I work with, and tell myself. I will tell you how I answered the questions above:
Right now, the people on the front lines of this crisis are our health care workers, scientists, and policy experts. Our job as writers is to bear witness to what’s happening, and to be foot soldiers in the fight for morale. Hold space for others through our words, whether they provide escape or solace or clarity.
The artists who will be keeping the world afloat through the waves of grief and loss and uncertainty that will threaten to drown us all. When the people of the world open their doors and step back out into the world en masse, a world that will no doubt be significantly different, it is the writers and painters and musicians and makers of things who will be taking their place to do battle with humanity’s greatest enemy: The fact that we and everyone we love is going to die, and to be okay in the face of that. To thrive in the inhospitable environment of mortality.
And that’s where Little Universes comes in.
I think my book and the universe conspired together to have Little Universes come out during a global pandemic.
Just look at the epigraph, a piece of Tracy K. Smith’s devastatingly brilliant poem, The Universe As Primal Scream:
I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long.
Like all good teachers, it never stops instructing me. Little Universes is about impermanence, about how nothing is for keeps; but the deeper lesson, the one in its tender beating heart, is how to be okay with loss and uncertainty. Really okay. No matter how much of it you experience. No matter how many times the rug is pulled out from under your feet.
In the book, Hannah and Mae lose their parents to a tsunami—the experience is as horrible as it sounds. But they learn something vital as they rage and grieve and curse and question—a truth I believe only the hardest lessons can teach us:
I won’t lie: Publishing has been a painful experience for me from my first book to this, my seventh. Many of you read a piece I wrote last year that went viral, about how bewildering the ups and downs have been. Perhaps, with a different sort of book, helmed by the Heather of olden days who did not meditate, having a novel come out in the midst of COVID19 would have been the wave that killed me dead.
We are made of the stuff of stars and, if that’s not WOW enough for you, then consider how many atoms and choices and people and loss and gain and luck and tragedy and mystery had to conspire for you—your individual self—to be here on this planet, at this time. Whether you bow to the Buddha, pray to Jesus, or tip your cap to Carl Sagan, the fact of the matter is that in order to do right by all that brought you into being, you’ve got to show up. Right here, right now.
Little Universes is one humble attempt I’ve made to do right by the miracle. An offering. I like to imagine placing it before my readers as though they are an altar or doorway in Bali, the novel resting on a banana leaf covered with flowers. To me, it has already done its work because I’ve done my work, the hard inner work of not placing my value or the value of the art I made on how well it sells, or how good the reviews are, or whether it stays in print. I made the thing to help us all navigate this thing, life, a little easier. Mission accomplished.
I sort of feel like God on the seventh day: It is good.
Tough: This book and, by extension, the books your yourself might one day write, might totally sink. Drown in the waves of “content” in the world. This book might be a tinier blip than I or anyone close to it hoped for.
Tender: That’s okay. Because we did our job—we did right by the miracle by offering our words to the world, to help make it a little less confusing and a little more bearable for those in it.
As Jo, one of the characters in the book says:
I finished the first draft of the book during a major depression, unaware that a new medication I was on for migraine had a side effect of suicidal thoughts. It was a great wave and as I clawed for the surface, I, like Hannah, realized something very important:
“Under the wave, I found out what I was made of. Realized nobody is going to save me but me, that there is sometimes a choice—to stay or go—and that you might not know what you’ll choose until the breath has left your lungs and…you suddenly come face-to-face with the voice in your head, the hidden you, that spark of light that has been singing you out of the darkness for as long as you can remember. And she is wise and beautiful—maiden and mother and crone—and she says, she says, You are enough. And now you have a choice: to float or drown, and if you are enough, then drowning isn’t an option.”
Little Universes was borne out of a lifetime of spiritual questing, my own relentless search for meaning in an incomprehensible universe. From walking with monks in a Korean rice field to poking about the oldest magick shops in London, from temples in Calcutta to Midnight Mass in Rome, I have searched and searched only to have my book teach me the most important lesson of all in my darkest hour of need:
So what is it like to publish a book during COVID19? It…is. It’s what happening right here and right now. It is a wave and I am riding it to wherever it will take me.
When I began working on this book, I was ready to meet what refuses to let us keep anything for long.
Today? I have met that great What. I greet her / him / they / it with one of Hannah’s poems from the book:
So reader, and fellow writer: Thank you. I love you.
Tonight there is a super moon. A time for release. For moving on. I think I’ll go sit outside with Hannah and Mae. Together, we’ll look up, as Whitman says, in perfect silence at the stars, many of which shine though long dead.
Gone, but we can still see their light.
Below is the playlist I listened to on repeat as I wrote this book. It is, as Hannah says, sound medicine. From my heart to yours.
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