Personal Space Issues and Writing through Hard Times

As the queen, Hayley Williams, would sing, we'll kick it when I hit the ground

First things first, I want to take a moment and celebrate the dream that is selling a YA book. Personal Space Issues will be my Young Adult debut, and my third book, which means that I am working on it! I am spending my one wild beautiful life writing books, alongside other things.

Look this one is for my students, former and current.

In the spirit of honesty, I’m going through a tough time. The TLDR is that my sense of autonomy and the plans I had for my life have been completely upended.

So I am actively making space to celebrate this new book, even though it feels a little bit like trying to shove open a door that has a stubborn teenager pushing with all of their weight on the other side of that door.

It’s an image that actually was me at times, as a teenager, feeling deeply unstable and angry all the damn time. As an adult, I now know this had to do with the bodily impact of the stress of food and housing insecurity, and as I enter this scary period of my life, which I will share more about when I am ready, part of my overwhelming fear is that someone else’s choices can put me in a position that might send me into similar insecurity.

And, much like I did when I was desperately depressed and struggling at age 14, here I am at 38, also using books to survive it. Seriously, the reason I love books is that they have saved my life, again and again. They have given me a passion, and two careers now. The joy of sharing reading with my students and my own kids is a life raft I am clinging to at the moment.

Sorry to tell you (spoiling the movie almost 30 years later MY GOD how has it been 30 years? I saw this in the theater! I was ten! ) that some of my plans are at the bottom of the ocean, just like Jack.

I know that sounds terribly depressing, but if anything, it is also motivation to fight even harder and continue to read, write, and share books. This is why we should all be so against book bans that limit representation in literature. Simply put, books save lives.

I have personally handed children books that are banned somewhere else in this country and WATCHED their lives change, either because they see themselves reflected, or they have to grapple with something difficult that someone else experienced, or they are transported to a different world when they need that escape most.

THIS is why Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop said that books should be windows and mirrors and doors. We need all of those things to survive, to thrive, and to treat each other well. And I am starting to realize more and more that just like reading, writing many different books can also help us to understand not only the craft of writing, but how to be a better and more compassionate human.

I felt this deeply while drafting and revising Vengefully Matched, and I feel it now revising Personal Space Issues. I know what I am doing more and more, but part of that is also knowing what I don’t know, which seems paradoxical, but also kind of inspiring because it means that there’s always something to reach out for.

The English teacher part of me is a little concerned that the thing is Gatsby’s green light and we know how that ends for him.

Sorry to spoil a book that has been out for a full century, but this guy ends up dead in a pool by the end of the novel. He comes SO CLOSE to his dreams; tldr he only threw this party 4 u, and then you [daisy] screwed him over so massively that it ended in his DEATH. Unfair.

I am just now realizing I have inadvertently illustrated this entire newsletter in Leonardo DiCaprio movies, so the important thing to know here is that yes, sometimes life is terribly unfair and we cannot control the green lights or the size of the door in the freezing ocean or what choices the people we love make without us. BUT, we still live in a world of beauty.

And, as a good friend of mine reminded me, no matter how awful this time is, personally, politically, and globally, I will one day get to look back and feel proud that I continued to make art. I have to believe that counts for something. I have to believe that art can mend the world, stitch by stitch.

For example, while we are talking about Leo movies, we live in a timeline that has the greatest performance of Mercutio that ever has been and ever will be, thank you to Harold Perrineau. Yes, I know that it doesn’t end well for him in this play, but also, honestly, as I told students for years, the reason so many people die in books is that death comes to us all.

When we read a narrative, we see the entire span of the character’s story, so naturally it often ends in death, because that is the human experience. It’s not meant to be depressing, but rather a reminder not to take it for granted. That is why I try as much as possible to remember Mary Oliver. But I will take this opportunity to note that I have written a YA romcom and two adult romcoms, and all three of them have a happy ending. You’re welcome.

Here is the moment of joy: the greatest actor to ever portray Mercutio; my gosh.

I hope you keep writing and reading, and make choices that leave you and the people around you with more choices in the future, not less. I hope you are well, and that een when you are faced with sadness you can frame it as awful, AND more reason still to enjoy the time you have with the people you love.

And, because it is a job I love and would like to continue to do, I hope you order Hopelessly Teavoted, preorder Vengefully Matched, and when it’s available, preorder Personal Space Issues so that I can keep writing books. You can also request from your local library! We love libraries.

Stay tuned for a newsletter with updates. Order Hopelessly Teavoted, leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads if you have read it, or even just add it on goodreads. And now you can also preorder Vengefully Matched and add it on goodreads, too! Follow me on instagram for tolerable cat, dog, and book content. You can find my socials and other fun stuff here.