consider the brainworms
perhaps the last newsletter before my book comes out!
Time until my debut novel comes out: 26 DAYS
Hi! Hello! A lot has been going on! Midnights With You comes out next month, oh my God!
(Also reminder that you have until November 7 to preorder from the Ripped Bodice and get a signed personalized copy, a character art postcard and two mini character art cards by jiyaneru, and a bookmark with the MWY cover art).
A debut year feelings update
In a lot of my newsletters this year, I’ve been angsty and stressed about the emotional rollercoaster that comes with putting a book out into the world. Recently, I got some good news—the Vague Publishing Tweet kind of news that I’ll have to keep secret for a while, but I’m excited to be able to tell you more about it at some point! I’m very relieved and grateful!
And I also wanted to talk (vaguely) about something I’ve been thinking about lately—why the good news moments in traditional publishing also make me anxious, just in a different way than the disappointing news moments.
I’ve been thinking a lot this year about the throughlines that connect writers across the different stages of publishing, and how there’s a lot that stays the same even after you pass big milestones. In a lot of ways, I’ve found it comforting to focus on what stays constant. How the great bulk of my writing life now looks kind of the same as it did before I got agented or before I had a book deal. It’s being alone with my words in front of the screen; it’s going around with my head in the clouds of the story; it’s connecting with writing friends, in group chats and Discord or meeting up in person at events or for coffee shop writing dates. (Maybe this is my attempt at an anti-arrival fallacy mindset—not trying to arrive, but trying to enjoy the day to day).
And another constant is that every stage seems to come with what some of my friends and I semi-affectionaly call brainworms—the fears and doubts and anxieties that your rational self knows don’t fully make sense, when examined in the light, but certain tradpub events still bring them out of the soil like a heavy rain. I think this is the case in traditional publishing particularly because it’s so precarious, unpredictable, and full of long, ambiguous, potentially agonizing waits.
I have found the brainworms don’t really go away as I get deeper into publishing—the worms just say different things. Sometimes they say mean things that can feel very powerful knocking around my head, but airing them out somewhere saps their power. Sometimes they say more interesting things, too—underneath the harsher voices, there are ones in there asking me: What kind of writer are you? What kind of writer do you want to be? My new Publishing Secret is a step toward a certain answer, and I’m a combination of nervous and hopeful and pins-and-needles, tingly-all-over excited for it.
Anyway, if you’re an author pursuing traditional publishing, I hope you have some people you trust who can help you hold those thoughts up to the light and say “Yup, looks wormy” or “Maybe that worm is pointing to an underlying interesting thing there, actually.” And I’ll have another tip in the craft section for how I’m dealing with all the noise in my brain that’s been getting louder the closer we get to my pub date.
But first, I have some updates!
I was fortunate enough to go on the Of the Publishing Persuasion podcast this month, and it was such a joy talking to Melanie and Angela about Midnights With you, about those long ambiguous waits of publishing, and about the absurd amount of thought I put into the car the characters drive. I’ve loved listening to this podcast for a long time—it’s one that I’ll put on while I’m taking my makeup off at night and doing my skin care routine, so it feels so warm and familiar to me—but until I was a guest, I didn’t fully appreciate just how good Angela and Melanie are at putting people at ease. They’re really the best! It was such a fun conversation—you can listen to it here. (And if you watch the video, please enjoy me changing backgrounds three times as I tried to find a spot with better internet).
And I’ll be having some launch events!
If you’re near any of these, I’d love to see you!!
Los Angeles, in conversation with Racquel Marie
Thursday, November 14, 7 p.m.
The Ripped Bodice
3806 Main St, Culver City, CA 90232
New York, in conversation with Shannon C.F. Rogers
Wednesday, November 20, 6:30 p.m.
Lofty Pigeon Books
743 Church Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218
Long Beach, in conversation with Hannah V. Sawyerr
Sunday, December 15, 4 p.m.
Belcanto Books (KUBO LB)
3976 Atlantic Ave, Long Beach, CA 90807
Ticketing details to come!
The Craft Department: Keeping a diary doc
When I feel stuck or intimidated by what I’m trying to write, I find it really helpful to write out my fears and chaotic thoughts in a running diary document. It’s pretty similar to the concept of morning pages from The Artist’s Way (I have been Influenced to read this along with Emily Charlotte as she does an end-of-year pass through the book) but it’s in a text document, perhaps more chaotic and lower-time-commitment (I tend to write a few very loose, stream-of-consciousness paragraphs each time), and it’s something I do at the start of every writing session, regardless of the time of day. I’ll date each one, and just keep going down the document till I get to the end of the draft or the revision round.
I keep one of these for each project, and in addition to helping me get all that brain noise that’s tripping me up out of my system and making it easier to launch into whatever I’m writing that day, it also serves as a nice time capsule of how I felt through all the stages of a draft or a revision. So the next time I’m starting a similar phase of a project, instead of romanticizing how easily I handled the last thing and spiralling about how much worse of a writer I must be now, I can go back and see Oh, yeah, it’s always like this. I was flailing then too, but it turned out okay. I’ve been in the early stages of a big overhaul on my second contracted YA book, and it was comforting to look back on my diary doc from when I was in a similar phase for MWY.
A thing I also really like to do in this doc is list what’s going well so far. I feel like it’s so easy to just forget everything you accomplished in a writing session once it’s over, and then soon you’re running for weeks on this feeling like you’re not doing anything or getting anywhere, no matter how hard you’re working. Keeping note of your word count progress is one way to fight that, but it’s so…quantitative, when a lot of things about writing are not. So I also like to pause and list out things I feel are getting better in a big revision, or things I’m excited about in terms of the direction of the overhaul, even if they’re not fully executed yet.
Six things people have loved about Midnights With You
I started this section of the newsletter to force myself to remember what I love about my debut novel, but since a bunch of authors I love and admire were kind enough to blurb MWY, I’ll let them do the talking for me this time.
1. Grace D. Li said reading Midnights With You “felt like going on a late-night road trip with your best friend.”
2. Hannah V. Sawyerr said that MWY “will leave readers in awe and thinking about the story long after the turn of the last page.”
3. Zoulfa Katouh said MWY is “a hauntingly beautiful story.”
4. Trang Thanh Tran said it’s “powerful, gorgeous, and intimate. A tender punch to the heart.”
5. Alex Brown said “this is a book you’ll revisit over and over again.”
6. Laura Taylor Namey said MWY is “a powerful debut. Raw and redemptive.”
On my TBR this fall
To be honest, this month was chaotic enough that I didn’t read or watch as much as I otherwise would!
But I wanted to shout about Jill Tew’s new book, The Dividing Sky, an inventive dystopian (the genre is back, baby!) with a sharp critique of capitalism and a swoony romance at the heart of it. Also Jill is just a wonderful human and you should pick up this book!
And some upcoming books and recent releases I’m excited to read include Alex Brown’s horror comedy Rest in Peaches; Our Shouts Echo, Jade Adia’s contemporary about existential dread and falling in love; Amanda Helander’s voicey romantic fantasy Divine Mortals; Tiffany Wang’s fiery fantasy with two (2!) heists, Inferno’s Heir; Crystal Seitz’s Norse-inspired fantasy Inheritance of Scars; S. Hati’s cli-fi And the Sky Bled (I have heard it’s gorgeous and devastating); A Cruel Thirst, Angela Montoya’s upcoming romantic fantasy featuring two vampires (speaking of genres that are back!); Shaina Veronica’s rom com, All About You; Jacquie Pham’s historical murder mystery Those Opulent Days; the next installment in Mia P. Manansala’s Tita Rosa’s Kitchen Mystery series, Guilt and Ginataan; and Jamison Shea’s I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call (the sequel to their gripping, lyrical debut horror, I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me).
I’ve found reading (and even sitting still to watch things) kind of difficult these days, but I am hyped for these books!
Alright, well—the next time you get a newsletter from me will probably be after my book is out!
See you on the other side 💜
Love always,
Clare
i'm hoping to make it to the event with you and shannon - i would love to celebrate two lovely humans <3 so excited for your debut, friend!