under pressure
You know every time I go to send one of these lately I'm like, fuck, fuck, don't fuck this one up, you have subscribers now. Not that I didn't always-- some, hi, guys, I love you!-- but every week there are more, and the new people are people I don't know, and I don't understand what you're doing here, and for whatever reason I feel very responsible to all of you? I think it's because being allowed into someone's email feels intimate, or more intimate than being followed on Twitter or Tumblr, anyway. This is probably one of those micro-generational relationships to technology but it seems very distinct to me. Like there's a difference between being in someone's feed, where you're just as likely to get lost in the scroll as be seen, and the ever-so-slightly more sacrosanct space of an inbox.
Either way, that's not really what we're here to talk about, is it. The book is out now. It's a lot like the book not being out except that more of my friends have read it and sent me nice texts about it, or pictures of themselves with it, and I feel like 100% less crazy than I did there for a while. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still feel plenty crazy, but, like, the day after the release I sat down and opened my laptop and realized that I had just forgotten to write any emails for the past week. A full week! I would have sworn to you that I had done this for two days, maximum. When I try to think back on what I was doing instead it's like trying to recall the details of days spent in a fever: my skin tight, all experience queasy, surreal, fragmented. I think maybe I yelled a lot? Like I talked and talked, and I had to keep talking, because I could never remember what I'd just been saying but also I was pretty sure that whatever it was, I was about to figure something out. I mean, it was not dissimilar to the way people behave when they're on drugs.
Not being in that place feels so good, it really is like a fever breaking, like the passing of the spins. But also it's not like anything is actually over; life goes on the way it always does. And what happens now, as far as I can tell, is that people stop asking me how excited I am, and instead start asking what I expect to become of the book. (And by extension myself!!) Do I think the book will sell? They want to know, closely followed by, What would it mean for the book to sell? In terms of numbers?
At which point I do the dance: it could mean a lot of things. The standard for every book is different. The standard for every author is different. This is a polite, conversation-prolonging way of saying Actually, I do not know. It's not like anyone gave me deliverables. The numbers vary by writer, by book, by what you've already done and what you're hoping to do next.
Really what I keep thinking is: I just don't want to disappoint anyone. My agent, my editor, my friends who let me come over and talk and talk and talk at them, all of you nice weirdos who signed up for a digest of my thoughts once a week. You're all counting on me! You believe I can do this! Technically I am doing it! It is very hard not to be afraid that this will stop being true, without warning, at any moment!
A book's first birthday party is called its launch, and the language feels especially accurate to me: like after years of staring down a cliff's edge I went ahead and leapt. Now I'm hanging, suspended, in space. There's so much open air between where I am and where I'm going; there's nothing to do but wait and see if this jump will carry me there.
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Everything I've written and said and thought recently is book related:
You can read an interview with the folks at Adventures in YA Publishing here, and another, with my very best friend Miranda, for Google Play Books, here.
If you'd rather listen to me talking out loud, there's plenty of that on my episode of First Draft podcast, here.
If you're in New York, come see me in person exactly one month from today! I just made an appointment to get another tattoo earlier that day, so either I'll have something beautiful to show you, or a good story about a very bad mistake.