I Hope You Read This

Hopes and Expectations

So much about putting a book out into the world is managing your hopes and your expectations.

That's true when the world is on fire and also true in a calmer world (though, in truth, even if you had a nice time of it, when was the world ever calm for all?). Through seven published books and sixteen years as an author in this industry, I've learned to manage my expectations when I have a new book about to come out and keep them in the realm of realism. This might be superstition. I also think it's a healthier way to face this career.

This way, when something good and even great happens (a signing at a library conference, a mention in a big paper, an actual live in-person book tour), I'm delighted and appreciative and so very pleased. I don't allow myself to have any expectations for things like bestseller lists or trophies or book clubs or foreign editions or whatever scale of measurement we see others celebrating and the industry informs us we need in order to be "successful." It's safer for me this way and leads to a healthier relationship with the book I wrote.

Wild Conversations, Interviews, Confessions

Reflections from book tour! A collection of interviews! An essay in LitHub! An upcoming workshop! A grateful yet exhausted author!

The Words Around UsNova Ren Suma

But, to me, hopes and expectations are two very different things.

Hopes are harder to manage and keep from verging into the fantastical. My hopes swirl and dance and leap to ferocious heights. My hopes are dashed, often. My hopes laugh in my face sometimes, but that's okay. My hopes are shameful, even. Silly. Supernatural. Surreal. If I hoped less, I'd feel less pain. But if I hoped less, I wouldn't care as much, and I wouldn't put so much effort/passion/heartache into my books, and this moment would mean very little to me. Even with all the risks and jump-scares and the pitiful amount of money in my bank account at different alarming points in my life, I have no regrets about choosing to chase my hopes and a career in writing. I guess I like being hopeful. I guess I kind of need it.

To be an author and pursue this career you need, deep down, to believe in yourself like nobody else does. You need that well of hope to draw from every unfathomable day—from the writing to the revising to the querying to the publishing to the (probably a lot more) revising to the publicizing. You need to put yourself out there and hope someone will notice or care. You need to send newsletters like this one even though you're shy and private and, let's admit, exhausted at the idea of talking about yourself. You need to hope that someone who's not your best friend or your mother thinks, Hey, that sounds interesting... I'll go get her book at my library, or buy it from Bookshop.org! You need to think you're worthy of what can often feel like out-of-reach, outrageous things.

There's such whiplash between being confident, being delusional, and loathing every syllable you write. But my hopes keep me at it, they lead me toward moments of being brave on the page, and that's when I love being a writer most of all.

So I faced the publication of Wake the Wild Creatures with realism and with a few buried jars full of secret hopes. I'll say one more thing about that. One small secret hope came true last month. I still haven't allowed myself to celebrate it because it doesn't feel real yet, but you'll know it when I share it.

The news came by email at the precise moment I needed to hear something good. Isn't it funny how that happens? Isn't it like a beam of light suddenly casting through the grimy window glass to find you when you thought you'd safely surrounded yourself in an impenetrable coat of gloom? It means so much more because I didn't expect it. A secret, unspoken hope come true.

Building Worlds, Feeling Strange, and Proving I Exist

I've been thinking a lot about worldbuilding lately. I mean this practically, in terms of writing craft, as I prep for a generative writing intensive I'm teaching called Strange Places. (Thank you to everyone who signed up! We're sold out! Looking forward to writing with you this weekend!)

I'm also thinking about worldbuilding as I work on developing two new projects with definitive worlds and worldviews of their own. So much of it has to do with the eye of the beholder. I look to the books that inspire me in the precise and often strange ways they reveal their own particular worlds, such as Earthlings by Sayaka Murata and Model Home by Rivers Solomon and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami and The Morningside by Téa Obrecht and Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías and always, always, always My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and The Seas by Samantha Hunt.

So I'm thinking about worldbuilding. But I'm also thinking about unbuilding. About unraveling.

I'm thinking about the unbuilding of a world as so many things around me are being dismantled and people are being kidnapped in the streets and disappeared. Doing this—crafting my little stories, writing my particular worlds—feels useless, feels absurd in this moment. And yet here I am, writing a newsletter and hoping you'll read it.

Last week I woke to a strike in Philadelphia, the city where I’ve found myself living, because the workers who collect our garbage, who answer our emergency calls, the workers who maintain our water pipes, who staff our community libraries, which in the pit of summer act as cooling centers and offer free lunch to hungry kids, these workers were not offered a fair living wage and they chose to strike until a deal could be reached. I support them 100%.

That day I woke to the strike, I had an errand. My mission that morning was to prove I exist. I was to show an accepted form of identification at an I-9 verification center because I have a new job teaching a course for a university out west. I can’t go in person to prove my existence, so I had to do it this way.

I walked out into the heat—already the garbage left out the day before had not been collected—and I tried (against all better judgment after having seen a glimpse of the morning’s news about what was happening in the wretched congress) to think positive things. One was that ever since my last bout of COVID a few years ago, my sense of smell has stayed weak to such a degree that I worry I can’t smell my own bagel burning in the toaster. But the plus side of this scentless existence is that I wouldn't be able to smell garbage wafting through the streets.

This was the morning there was footage on the news of a concentration camp surrounded by alligators, and sick people were acting gleeful about it.

This was the morning I ordered a copy of my birth certificate from the city of New York, just to have on my person, just in case.

This was the morning I sat down at my computer to write and felt useless, felt like my hands were made of stone, felt estranged from my own existence in this neighborhood where I happen to live but do not call home, in this room I know is temporary, in this life I wish to change.

I long for a more permanent teaching job, a cushion, a home base. I don't expect these things. But I hope for them every day.

As I walked toward the I-9 verification center in the heat, needing to prove I existed to a stranger, a man walked head-on toward me down the sidewalk. The passageway was narrow, due to the mounds of garbage sitting at the curb that were not going to be picked up anytime soon. We both walked a straight line—him toward me, and I toward him, waiting for one of us to veer off and let the other pass. I kept walking. He kept walking. Eventually I'm the one who folded and I veered a little to the side, but not enough, and our shoulders collided. Sorry, I said, but he said nothing, just kept going as if he'd touched no one and nothing. As if I didn't exist.

Fuck you too, I said under my breath—sometimes I guess I fit well enough in South Philly—and I kept going. But what I was thinking about was feeling strange in a strange place and not knowing where I belonged in this world.

The I-9 verification process took minutes. I exist, easily, without question, and it's not lost on me that this is a great privilege in this fascist country and this world. The strike ended nine days later with a tentative deal for the union and literal mountains of garbage still to be cleaned up. My birth certificate arrived from the city I no longer live in, just in case I ever need it. The world I've built for myself needs to be remade, and the expectations I've set out for myself need to be rethought, and I hope I'm up for the challenge.

A New Craft Webinar with the Writing Barn

Fellow writers: Are you interested in illuminating the characters in your fiction? Then this webinar is for you!

Some years ago, I had the joy of leading a workshop at the Writing Barn in Austin, Texas, and I've never forgotten that experience. I'm excited to return to the Writing Barn (if virtually) with a character-focused webinar that features my own personal tips, tricks, and creative exercises to develop and deepen the young characters in your novels. These are prompts, approaches, and ways of looking at character that I used when writing Wake the Wild Creatures, and they are for writers of all genres who are looking to create dynamic, layered characters in your coming-of-age stories.


Join me for this webinar on Friday, August 22 for a craft talk full of writing sparks and a Q&A! But if you can't attend live that day, not to worry—you can still register to watch a replay when it fits your schedule! The webinar is only $35!

More details and register here!

I'm a Cosmic Writers Author Ambassador!

Do you know about Cosmic Writers, the fantastic nonprofit that provides accessible creative writing education for kids? They create monster-making activity books, offer Cosmic Coaching for young writers, and every summer hold Word Camp, with the coolest writing workshops for kids I could imagine (I wish this existed when I was writing my illustrated stories about aliens from Venus when I was young!). I also love that their workshops are taught by undergraduate writers from different universities, sharing their creativity and working with kids to find their own voice as workshop leaders and teachers.

I'm honored to be one of the Cosmic Writers founding Author Ambassadors, along with Nancy Krulik and Jennifer Egan! One of my incredible former students at Penn, Rowana Miller, is the executive director, and a few of my other incredible former students at Penn are current or former instructors in this program.

If Cosmic Writers sounds exciting to you, please consider donating to support the young writers of tomorrow here. And if you have a young writer in your life, encourage them to look into next summer's Word Camp!