Adventures in Publishing: Proof

A few weeks ago, I received a rather large packet in the mail:

My manuscript! But covered in strange markings, done in mauve pencil. This, my friends, was the copy edited copy of Still Life Las Vegas, ready for perusal.

A bit daunting at first glance, this document was nonetheless exhilarating to look at. After all, the publisher had cared enough about me and my project to pore over it and discover all the ways in which I might appear sadly ignorant of the basics tenets of English grammar. And thank God for that, I soon discovered. They were making it fit for public consumption.

The manuscript came with a SLLV style sheet, a little bible on the rules of the world of the novel, for the purpose of consistency. How did I use italics? Denote titles? Spell "Fudgsicle"? This was pretty cool to read, especially the list of proper nouns in the book. All the people and places I’d made up, written down just like they were real! 

I had no idea who some of these characters were—
Heinz Leipzig? 

Onto the manuscript itself. This was my time to review all the marks and remarks left by the proof editor and decide if they were what I wanted: vet or stet (stet is a proofing term which means “Leave it as it is— I meant to transgress grammatical laws at this point.”) It was also my last chance to wipe away any wince-inducing passages, ungainly sentences, redundancies, and any other literary detritus I discovered on the way. 

Looking at all the minute edits and questions was like entering the the Merry Old Land of Oz/St. Martins, where my book was shampooed, manicured, re-stuffed, and buffed free of all errant spaces and double dashes.

Can you even change the tense to match my noun? Jolly good town!

My proofreader was listed as one Bethany Reis, with whom I felt intimately connected these past weeks. After all, she’d gone over my book more thoroughly and minutely than anyone else, including me (including I? Including myself? Bethany would know). She’d scrutinized every word, looked up every reference,

and had laid out her findings, a secret map for me in hieroglyphic code. As I went through the pages and her notes, I imagined her whispering in my ear. She would have a voice not unlike Scarlet Johansson. “Are you really sure you want to echo the word 'propelled,' as you’ve just used it in the previous paragraph?” she would ask huskily. I would brandish my purple pencil and slash out the word, scribble in “incited” instead. Magic! We twirled our way through the pages, this duet of STET’s and checkmarks. I may not have agreed with her every note, but I appreciated them all. I was lucky for her discretion; her gentle admonishments rarely made me feel like a total idiot. I’d love for her to read this post, but I’m afraid she’ll make me rewrite it. In fact, I’m sure she’d make me rewrite it. (“Did you mean to repeat the word “rewrite”? Is the repetition intentional?”)

My List of Most Oft-Used Mistakes

• Constantly mixing up “farther” and “further.”
• Adding the unnecessary word “of” to “off” (“He picked the bag off of  the floor.”)
• Capitalizing the seasons (did we learn to capitalize seasons as children?)
• Adding a “d” to “size,” as in “travel-sized.”
• Playing fast and loose with using the Oxford comma (the final comma before “and” in a series of things).
• Adding an “s” to the end of “upward,” “backward,” and most especially, ever and always, “toward.” 

Who knew? Bethany did. I wonder if she enjoyed the book. I wonder if you can enjoy a book you're proofing, because you're reading for such a different purpose. It might even be a conflict of interest. 

I finished reviewing the changes. It took a lot of time, but it was quite satisfying work. I added an acknowledgment page, a dedication, and shipped it off. Next up: bound galleys!

Adventures in Publishing: Please Judge My Book by Its Cover

IT'S HERE.

When I first opened the email attachment that had the possible cover of "Still Life Las Vegas" in it, I gasped and slammed my computer shut. It was nothing that I expected: there was so many images, so much color, and it was oddly...

Perfect. 

I've never met Young Lim, the designer at St. Martin's Press, but he seemed to take all the disparate ideas we had about the cover ("Could we maybe use both real images and drawn?" "Maybe an accordion on the side of the road?" "Could there be some sexy statue?"), pour them into the crucible of his own considerable talent and come up with a perfect encapsulation of what the book is all about: 

There's the graphic novel element (with the beautiful drawings by Sungyoon Choi), the whimsy, the melancholy. . . and Vegas, baby, Vegas!

I'd heard so many horror stories about authors hating their book jackets that I was prepared for the worst; it was such a gift to be presented with a prototype that looked almost exactly like this. A little tweaking, and we were good to go. Now, I don't know how much toil and back-and-forth went on in-house, but for me, it was like opening a present on Christmas day. 

It's so much more of a tangible thing now, you know? And the book's presence is starting to pop up unexpectedly online, like seedlings: a goodreads listing, and now one on Amazon! My friend Derek alerted me to the pre-order status of the book on Amazon, where I also found out that it's being released on August 11, four days earlier than I thought. Amazon settled its fight with Hachette and listed me for preorder on the same day? That Prime Membership must be kicking in!

Now, you know. . .  preorders are a way for the publisher to gauge buzz about the book, so if you have any curiosity about Still Life Las Vegas, this would be an excellent time to order it. Think of it as securing your end-of-the-summer-read now! You can strike it off your list!

Truly, though, I feel so happy. Such support and talent going on over at the Flatiron Building. I am extremely grateful. 

PS. See that photo of a balloon on the cover? I took that!

Songs in the Key of Grief

“I like a look of Agony, 
Because I know it’s true—
Men do not sham Convulsion
Nor simulate, a Throe—
The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death—
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish Strung.“ 

        —Emily Dickinson

To say I was looking forward to reading Edward Hirsch’s new book Gabriel: A Poem is not quite apt, but it’s not far from the truth, either. It is, after all, an elegy to his son, who was found dead of an overdose at the age twenty-two. It is a sometimes harrowing, sometimes heartbreaking, look back at the life of a boy, from time of adoption to time of death. We watch him grow up, moment to moment, much like the movie “Boyhood,” except instead of ending with promise and possibility, we are left at a graveside. In propulsive three-line stanzas, Hirsch details a childhood gone awry, through the caprice of internal chemistry and behavioral disorders. There are moments of joy and much dark humor, but it is mostly a narrative of a troubled childhood that starts difficult and does not get easier. There is also, not surprisingly, quite a bit of tenderness. It pierces the heart. Throughout the poem are interspersed tales of other famous artists who have lost their children too soon, as if Hirsch is trying to make some sense of the death, give it some context, but in the end the universal cannot illuminate the specific. The poet is left alone to say goodbye to his singular son. 

               “I did not know the work of mourning

               Is a labor in the dark

               We carry deep inside ourselves

               Though sometimes when I sleep

               I am with him again

               And then I wake

               Poor Sisyphus grief

               I am not ready for your heaviness

               Cemented to my body

               Look closely and you will see

               Almost everyone carrying bags

               Of cement on their shoulders

               That’s why it takes courage

               To get out of bed in the morning

               And climb into the day”

               —Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: a Poem

   

It is beautifully written, insightful and lucid, but there are quite a few people who would not even open the book. “Why on earth would you want to go through that?” they ask. I suspect there are those reading this who feel the same. Not I. I gravitate towards the stuff. I am someone who could watch Emma Thompson die of cancer every year in “Wit.” 

Who has read, in quick succession, in hardback, the grief memoirs of both Joyce Carol Oates (A Widow’s Story), who lost her husband to a secondary infection at a hospital, and Joan Didion, who has had the great misfortune to have written two such memoirs, following the death not only of her husband (The Year of Magical Thinking) but of her daughter (Blue Nights).

I am not ghoulish. I don’t wallow in misery, exactly, but I do gravitate towards stories of loss, and grief. Those chords resonate within me. My upcoming novel, Still Life Las Vegas, is permeated with it, no matter how fantastical or whimsical the story gets. (It’s funny too! Promise!) I guess my Humor tends towards the Melancholic. I am someone who is ever waiting for the other shoe to fall, no matter how many of them have already rained down. Perhaps I read these type of books for the same reason I read travelogues: I’m going to be taking the same journey, sooner or later, and I’d like to check out the terrain. 

But it’s more than that. There is a clarity in devastation, a stark honesty that can present itself in times of loss. We are stripped of the trappings of our day-to-day and are asked to confront the deeper truths of life— its impermanence, its fragility, and its many overlooked small kindnesses. There is a strange beauty in it all, especially as refracted through the discerning eye of a skilled writer. We may not have the austere, piercing insight of Didion, or the caustic humor of Oates, or the anguished imagery of Hirsch, but in reading their words on loss, we are connected to them all, and to each other. We are all of us huddled in a cave, staring out into the impenetrable darkness, and the poet's lamentations illuminate our own coupled hands. 

Am I Blue?

"It always starts with a blue Volvo, driving away." 

—Still Life Las Vegas

In some ways, my book must be a big pain in the ass for my publishers. I mean, they bought a novel, but it's not just a straight up novel. There's narrative art in it as well (the twenty-buck term for cartoons). Plus sketches. Plus color. Plus colored text. All those pluses add an expense to the printing, and for a debut novel, it takes an extra measure of faith. So, when my editor, Sara Goodman, wrote in July that she was waiting on approval for adding color, I wasn't holding my breath. 

I also took a preemptive dip into anxiety. I knew that Sungyoon Choi's amazing illustrations would certainly hold up on their own, but a POP! of color could add that much more to a reader's experience. It also served as a subtle but pervasive thematic element that wove several strands of narrative together. At least, this is the argument for color that I imagined myself giving as I threw myself on the conference room table of St. Martin's Press in a last ditch appeal for a CRUCIAL element, just as I was resigning myself to the idea of black-and-white art.

Two weeks ago Sara wrote me again. Color was in. 

She had just gotten approval for one other color, plus black (YAY Sara!). This color had to be derived from a single Pantone shade, not comprised of several colors together. We needed to send the colorized art files to the book's interior designer and the whole production process would begin.

The hunt for Blue was on. 

What followed was a ridiculous amount of emails propagated by me in the dark of night and hurled towards Choi, Sara and my agent, all about what shade of blue was the perfect shade of blue. Was this blue too gray? Was this blue serious enough? Didn't this one look like it came from a mimeograph machine?  (Only my agent got this reference.) And not only what shade, but where the blue was going to be used. Should this text be in blue? What was it saying if it wasn't blue? Or should it be a blue box? Could the blue of the hat match the blue of the car window?  I had a sudden appreciation for my husband's futile attempt to get me interested in the color of the dining room trim. 

Luckily, everyone humored my molehill preoccupations and gave sage, considered advice. Choi doled out color revision after color revision with the patience of a Baskin-Robbins scooper handing out samples. And the winner?:

It really is a lovely blue. And what Choi can do with one shade of blue is nothing short of miraculous.

Color does make a difference. A big difference. I am the luckiest guy in the world. Who has developed a sudden craving for panettone.

Billie Holiday, Augusten Burroughs, and Underwater Dogs: Business and Pleasure in New York

A week on the East Coast. One last hurrah before the blessed regularity of school kicks in.

Four moves in six days. Beds of varying comfort. Uniformly good showers (except the one at that hotel where the water was perpetually tepid). These are the ways older folks measure their vacations.

First stop: Rhinecliff, in upstate New York, where the Morton Library was showcasing my son Ben's photographic work. Ben has a series of underwater photos of our dog, Rowdy, who dives to the bottom of our pool in an obsessive quest for The Ball. This was Ben's first public viewing, the first time his photos have ever been by frames and red dots. The reception was a big success, well attended. As per the artist's request, Hawaiian punch and cheese puffs (both crunchy and puffy) were served. 

Could not. Be prouder.

His Auntie Sue arranged the whole event. We stayed at her beautiful home, ate from her garden and watched Swallowtail Caterpillars munching on her fennel. 

Back down to the City, where we stayed at our friends Denis & Hugo's most comfortable digs in Ft. Green, Brooklyn. I had some business of my own in Manhattan. Took the N train down to the Flatiron Building, where I had my first visit to St. Martin’s Press. My editor Sara was away on vacation (as almost everyone is in Manhattan during August) but I was warmly welcomed by her assistant, the young and impossibly refreshed-looking Alicia Adkins-Clancy, who looked as if she had just stepped from a meadow filled with daisies instead of from a tiny white office in the warren of St. Martin's in the heat of summer. 

I then enjoyed a lunch with Ivan Lett, the tall, poised Marketing Manager of “Team Still Life.” He gave me all manner of good advice (hint: it involves social media) and I left lunch armed and reassured. Did you know I now have a tumblr account? And a Facebook Author page? There's also tin cans connected by string dangling from my window so you can connect with me no matter where you are!

Ivan Lett, the man who will make me talk to people.

A quick stop to Eataly, Mario Batali’s food-court-on-steroids emporium of Italian gourmet food. It's like a Disneyland for foodies: Pastaland! Torroneville! Proscuitti of the Caribbean! I want to book a room and eat my way through every department. If you had seen the delicacies on display, you would not blame me for taking away a caprese panini even though I had JUST MOMENTS BEFORE eaten lunch. Mario must bring one to Los Angeles, we are a poorer town without one.

Lunch the next day with my agent, Christopher Schelling. It was our first meeting after more than a year of phone calls and email correspondences, and it had the possibility of becoming Momentous; luckily Mr. Schelling was as warm and friendly as his phone persona, and a good time was had by all.  He brought along Augusten Burroughs, the author ("Running with Scissors,” "Dry") with the piercing eyes and a mordant wit, whose perception of family hews close to mine own. I tried not to burble like the fanboy I am. 

I swear, I did not cripple Christopher. He came that way. 

The 9-11 Museum and Memorial: profound, and sensitively rendered. Also, intensely immersive. Fear not the commercialization and Disneyfication of the event, native New Yorkers—I think they got it right. 

Husband Doug also had a reason to be in New York: a long-awaited birthday present of seeing Audra McDonald in “Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill.” We saw it the night before we left, and spent most of the performance agape at Ms. McDonald's vocal transformation into Billie Holiday. A great capper to a whirlwind trip. 

A year 'til my book is out! The countdown begins!

Robin Williams and the Under Toad

“But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.” 

—The World According to Garp

I knew it was going to be sad, but I didn’t realize how sad it would be. Tuesday, I took myself to the Arclight Cinema to see a special showing of “The World According to Garp” as part of a Robin Williams celebration. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

I don’t think I’d seen that movie since it had come out in theaters in 1982. I remember, at the time, liking the movie, but not too much. It would have been impossible for any film version to please me, given my utter devotion to the source material. “The World According to Garp” was one of the first contemporary adult novels I read that wasn’t for a class, and that didn’t include space travel, wizards or the supernatural. It was about Life, its terrors and joys, humor suffused with melancholy, and it perfectly encapsulated my world view at the time. John Irving is a masterful storyteller— the worlds he creates are so complete and rich and textured, his characters are so full of life you feel like they live on beyond the page. “Garp” was also the first book I read that described the life of a writer and the creative process in a way that felt both honest and aspirational. It was, and continues to be, a touchstone novel for me.

It’s a lot for any movie to live up to. When I first saw it as a college student all I could concentrate on was what was changed from the book (where was “The Pension Grillparzer”?) and the fact that the guy from “Mork and Mindy,” was playing T.S. Garp.  I remember being unimpressed with his performance, and also thinking he looked waaay too old to play a high school student.

What a difference thirty years, and a tragedy, makes.

In the Arclight theater, watching him make his first appearance onscreen, the first thing I thought was “God, look how young he looks.” His smooth, baby face, the long lashes, the bright clear eyes. It didn’t get any easier from there.

The movie was much, much better than I remember, full of great peformances (Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Marybeth Hurt, even a young Amanda Plummer). It was touching and funny and surprisingly faithful to much of the book. But of course I was watching it through the lens of grief. I laughed a lot, but wept almost as often. In the movie, there is tragedy hiding around every corner, and no matter how much Robin William’s Garp tries to protect his family from harm’s way he of course never can, because death is waiting for us all, the Under Toad ready to suck you out to sea. 

It’s impossible to watch the movie and not imagine that Williams felt the Under Toad swirling at his feet, even then. There’s a sadness, or so I perceive now, lurking in his twinkling eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. And I appreciate his performance much more, his restraint (no John Wayne impressions here) and simplicity. I’ve come to believe he was perfectly cast in the role, a man trying to hold it all together in a world filled with absurdity and horror. The world, according to Garp, is full of terminal cases, and in the end Williams became one of them. 

Early on in the movie, before Garp becomes Robin Williams, Glenn Close, as Garp’s mother, takes a young Garp aside and tells him, “Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure, having a life.”

Thank you, Robin Williams, for sharing so much of your life with us. It’s been quite an adventure.

Adventures in Publishing: Seedling

Remember those germination experiments in elementary school? The ones where you press a sunflower seed or mung bean into wet paper towels and watch as they sprout, their softened bodies cracking open to release delicate tendrils of life?

That’s what’s happening now with my novel, Still Life, Las Vegas. 

We’re slowly starting to move from the theoretical to the real. My editor at St. Martin’s Press, Sara Goodman, warned me that the route to getting a book published is notoriously slow, and for authors there’s always a “hurry up and wait” element (actor friends, does this sound familiar?). My agent Christopher added, “The black hole between the book being completely off your desk and actual being published is ALWAYS a slog.” But now the first roots are starting to appear. 

Hi. I'm friendly. Buy my book.

I was asked to okay some copy, a bio and a book description, for the catalog that St. Martin’s sends out to booksellers. It’s a unique sensation, reading someone else’s synopsis on your story. Oh! so THAT’S what it’s about! I’ve had to submit photos of myself for publicity, and lucky for me, my old friend AND headshot photographer Suzanne Plunkett from Chicago just happened to be in town, so I got her to make me look all, you know, authorial. 

Conversation is also beginning about the book cover art, and the idea of this is exciting beyond measure. I’m sure there will be angst down the road, but now, the idea of a graphic designer reading the book— it makes me squee. Isn’t that the word the kids are using these days? 

This was when I was still trying different titles.
It's the equivalent of a teenage girl writing
her married name in script.

Best thing so far? Working on my acknowledgements. It’s just the warmest feeling, sitting and writing down the names of all the people who have helped me along the way. I see a flip-book of faces who have offered me advice and given me these great nuggets of information to sprinkle into my book. All those who have nurtured this concept, this impossibility, of getting a novel to print. Of course, I’m already nervous about how many people I have inadvertently left out, but I am grateful for each and every one, acknowledged and otherwise. 

Little leaves are unfurling…

Tongue Tied

Once, many years ago, I had a screenplay I was flogging around town. It was an amusing little ditty about being Asian-American in Hollywood. I had a manager involved, it placed in a screenplay competition, there was actually some interest in the project, but I needed a director to make it happen. A director to, you know, push it forward, talk it up, make the dogs and ponies prance about. Which was not really my strong suit, as the following story will illustrate:

One potential director I met with was someone with whom I had worked closely in my Chicago days. We were in the same theater company for years. He had directed me in a play. We were friends. We had history. (I also had a slight crush on him, but that was beside the point. Or was it?) This director and I had both recently relocated to Los Angeles, where he was making inroads into the film community. I was looking for a film director. Perfect, right?

We agreed to meet at his house and talk about the project. I stayed up late the night before, getting the script in perfect shape. The morning of the meeting, I trundled over to his home, a bohemian California bungalow rental in Silverlake. He made coffee and I made chit-chat (in my signature Barbara Walter’s interview style) while we tried to negotiate that odd tonal terrain between friendly catch-up and commerce.

What was he up to? I asked. A lot, apparently. The director smoothly unspooled a long list of projects— upcoming, completed or conjectured—all while casually opening the refrigerator, hauling out the Brita, handing me my glass of water. He presented a verbal resumé without it ever sounding like a recitation, making it sound, like, well, conversation.

“And what have you been doing?” he asked, all friendly-like. I stared blankly, like he had just asked me to recite the Gettysburg Address in Portuguese. “Oh, well, I, uh, oh you know, just the, trying to… get…stuff… done.” Never mind that there were accomplishments I could have ticked off— my one man show, my nascent voiceover career, anything—no, it was as if I had just that morning awoken from a three-year coma. I took the longest swig of water ever known to man.

And that was just the chit-chat portion.

We made our way to the living room. There, on the coffee table, was the script I had so diligently worked on the night before. Without words, we both knew, instinctively, that we had at last wended our way to the business portion of our meeting. “So,” the director said, settling down on the couch, “tell me what the screenplay’s about.”

You’d think I might have anticipated that question.

“Oh! Well, it’s about, um, there’s this girl, she’s half-Asian, and she’s got a fixation on this up-and-coming Hollywood star, and, well, you think it’s a crush, but it’s not really, he’s, um, I mean, it turns out he’s got this secret, um, and it's that she’s his sister, I mean, that’s not the secret, I mean, though no one knows that, but the secret is that, like, he’s half-Asian, and so, in Hollywood, they don’t know, and, um—“

This is not the most painful part. The most painful part is when I actually interrupt my rambling to bury my face in my hands, sigh the weariest of sighs, and mutter the three words guaranteed to sell your pitch: “I’m so tired…”

I’m. So. Tired.

But I was!

Needless to say, he passed on the project.

This cautionary tale continues to haunt me, especially now, as my book is entering its long gestational period before publication. I want to speak eloquently about “Still Life Las Vegas” in conversation or interviews. I want to chat it up at a moment’s notice. I love my book, and I need to think of it like it’s my own son, about whom I can talk proudly and endlessly.

So here’s where you come in.

If, in the next year, we happen to be conversing, and you find a propitious moment, could you casually ask me what my book is about? I won’t go on too long, I promise, and we needn’t dwell on the matter.

It’s just that, you know, I might need the practice.

In Which we Bid Adieu to Zac Efron, and 90-Day Challenges

It's finished. Three long months ago, I undertook a challenge to write a novel in 90 days, with the aid of a book called, uncannily enough, "The 90-Day Novel." I took with my on my journey my friend and colleague Holly Myer, who was going to draw ninety illustrations in that same time period. How did we do? Well, let's just say, I waited the WHOLE night, but Rumpelstiltskin did not show up to rescue me and spin my straw into narrative gold. Damn him. Holly fared better:

James Sie: Saw your blog. The Olsen twins. You really want to finish this whole thing with the Olsen twins?

Holly Myer: I don't know why it had to end with the Olsens. It just happened. I’ve been watching a lot of Full House.

JS: I'm so sorry. Trauma conditioning? Or John Stamos?

HM: I love John Stamos more than words can say. I've done extensive studies on his face, and I've discovered many similarities between his Full House-years face and Zac Efron's current face.

This is the last Efron photo
I will ever post on my blog.
Hand to God.

JS: You definitely have a type.. He's like an early Efron prototype.

HM:  Exactly.

JS: Glad to see the technology has advanced.

So, how did the challenge end for you? Cross the finish line?

HM: I ended up with 90 drawings. I aimed for 100, but 90 is still good!

JS: A drawing a day! Perfect!

HM:  Yep! Very proud of the collection overall.

JS: You've got quite a lot of stuff to work with! What were some of your favorites?

HM: : One of a family photo of my dad and brother, the OITNB characters, and one from the last week-a portrait of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of Girl Scouts.

JS: You talked about how it ended up being waaaay different than you imagined it being when you started out. How?

HM:  My original idea was to illustrate all my blog entries/essays thus far, based on GIFs I've used, but most ended up being based on random family photos, frames from TV/movies, or historical portraits. Though, I still did some based on the GIFs.

JS: Why did it go that way? And do you wish you had done more of the GIF's, or is this new direction giving you more?

HM:  I think by starting with that idea was a good warm-up, but getting exercise with the digital art made me want to just run wild and abandon the path I'd set out on… but that’s okay, because I ended up with a series of illustrations that still says something! And maybe I can incorporate them into a collection with the essays so far.

JS: Certainly the iconic TV images can be in a section all their own. Maybe with commentary.

HM: Definitely.
How about YOUUU, sir? Do you have a first draft??

JS: Well, I wrote just shy of 27000 words. I have 108 pages completed.

HM: THAT'S SO MANY PAGES!

JS: Yah, but it's only about a third of the way done. HOWEVER, if I'm being honest, judging from my last book, it ended up being about my usual pace— a little more than a page a day… So my natural tendencies pulled stronger than my self-imposed challenge.

HM: Nature wins once again!

JS: "Nature, Mr. Allnut, was what we were put on this earth to rise above."

HM: Um…

JS: Say it with a quavering, strident voice and you might get it.

HM: When I said it out loud, it was accidentally in Maya Rudolph's Whitney Houston impersonation voice. Is that close?

JS:  Not even.

HM: Sorry. I had to google that.

JS: I will do my Katharine Hepburn impression for you some time. You will be impressed.

"Maybe you'd get a little more writing done without this Satan juice."

JS: ANYWAY, I do have enough of a start, and enough research, that I can continue. The challenge did give me that-- a flying leap.

HM: Oh well. But YES! See, we both made big plans that were super optimistic.

JS: You know what the big downfall for me was? The whole seven days a week thing. I needed one day to get the rest of my life in order. One day of respite. I struggled to write every day, and once I transgressed that rule, it was easy to let the whole thing slide. Like, "Oh well, if I'm not getting this part of it done I'm already screwed so..."

HM: Yeah, it's easy to feel like you're sliding, so you may as well give up.

JS: Exactly. Today, however, feels DELICIOUS. So many possibilities of things to do, with no guilt. How 'bout you? Are you going to miss the pressure?

HM: Nope, not one bit. Now I feel great, since I have some good samples… which I wouldn't have if I didn't do this whole thing

JS: And what's your plan for going forward?

HM: Build a portfolio website, and try to connect to people in the world of editorial illustration. But also/mostly, write! I missed writing. I still worked on essays, but didn't post them. I'm excited to go back to sharing.

And you? Will you keep working on the book?

JS: I think so, though now there’s also a short story I've been wanting to revise, plus an old stage adaptation that I’ve got to revamp for a production next year. And selling the book that’s already written. It’s all in the realm of good productive stuff.

HM: Awesome!! You've got the writing activated, so keep going, even if it's on other projects!

JS: Well, I'm glad we went through this together.

HM: Me too. Thank you so much for inviting me to do this with you!

JS: It was MUCH less lonely a venture.

HM: Agreed.

JS: Until next time... any final thoughts?

HM: When I was little, I got very frustrated when I didn't have time to create every picture/craft/play I wanted to. My mom would tell me, "Holly, it's okay. You don't have to do ALL your ideas. Some ideas just stay ideas. And the ones that become real things are the best ones anyway."

I think about that all the time, even now.

JS: Wise words, Mom. I think she trumps Zac Efron. Speaking of which, how many Efrons got created?

HM: Only 4, surprisingly.

JS: He was such a part of this whole challenge, sadly. Our patron saint. No wonder I was doomed.

HM:

JS: Nice. It's like he's looking down from the heavens. Good night, Ms. Golightly.

HM: Goodnight!