Filling the tank, summer adventures, in-person events, one excellent Beatles cover, and more!
Before I forget: I have two in-person events coming up really soon, both in Pittsburgh. One’s on May 7th at Riverstone Books in McCandless and the other’s on May 14th at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books (both in conversation with Rachel). More on those below!
It’s been a while since I’ve sent one of these emails.
That’s what happens after a book publishes: everything feels like it’s happening at once—sometimes everything actually is happening all at once—and then one day you find yourself sitting at your desk with your book launch behind you and a couple of blank pages on your calendar, trying to decide what you’re going to do next.
In my last update I wrote about some new projects I’ve been working on—there’s some really fun stuff on the horizon that I’m super excited about!—but I can’t really talk about any of it yet since everything in publishing takes so long…
What I’ve been doing in the meantime, in between Zoom visits and waiting to hear back about The Next Thing, is trying to lay some groundwork for creativity.
Somewhere along the way—I think it must have been in the organic gardening class I took at the University of Florida!—I learned that in agriculture, it’s important to let fields fallow.
That means letting the land grow wild for a season or two between crops to let the soil recover and regain the nutrients it loses during especially productive periods.
I’m definitely not the first person to make this connection—exhibit A: one of my favorite headlines, “You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything” (New York Times)—but I’m a big believer in fallowing for creativity as well.
When I’m working on a project, I tend to be hyper-focused.
Like, to the point that it’s kind of a running joke in our house.
I don’t engage too much with other stories while I'm writing: I don’t read a lot of fiction or watch shows that require a lot of thought or attention. If I’m sticking with the farming metaphor, I guess I’m about as single-minded as a tractor. Which means that when I'm finally in between projects, my brain feels like a sponge. These past few weeks, I’ve been reading my way through all the books on my to-be-read stack, trying to find the best French radio stations to stream, and binging so many movies on the 𝒞𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒𝓇𝒾𝑜𝓃 channel that I’ve started dreaming with subtitles.
I even got into a couple video games!
But I don’t really think of creative fallowing as “taking it easy.”
For me, it’s more of a break from creative output than a full-stop break. I’m not great at sitting still, so I painted and reorganized our basement first, then started on the garden. I did a little consulting work with publishers and literary non-profits. I spent a couple of days exploring a network of local trails.
If you’re a goal-oriented kind of person, it’s easy to feel guilty when you’re not explicitly working toward something. But if you don’t take breaks, it’s so—so!—easy to burn out, especially when it comes to creative stuff. So if you’re reading this and you’re anything like me, I’m just popping by to remind us both that endless productivity isn’t just exhausting… I think it’s actually kind of unnatural.
Every field needs to fallow!
For me, at the end of a fallow period—and I think I’m getting to the end of mine now, you can kind of sense the turn—the idea is to feel fresh and excited to tackle another big creative project. I’m definitely feeling pretty charged up and ready to get back into my Word docs, so I’m hoping to be able to share some fun news soon!
In the meantime: I have two in-person events coming up in the Pittsburgh area. One is on May 7th at Riverstone Books...
And the other is at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books:
Registration is required for the Book Festival event, and both events will be in conversation with Rachel (these are my favorite kinds of events, so they should be fun — I hope I’ll see some of you there!).
Speaking of spending some time getting lost in the woods, I recently wrote a letter for The Rumpus’ Letters for Kids subscription program.
If you’re not familiar with this program, basically: for $10/month, you or your classroom or library gets two letters from some of your favorite authors and illustrators. It’s a super cool service and if you’re interested in getting my letter, I think it’s going to be mailed at the end of summer.
Whenever I see a picture of a bookshelf, I always zoom in to see what’s on it…
So it was super-cool to spot Storm Blown in this article about independent bookstores in Time for Kids! And shucks: face-out but just out of frame, a stack of Snow Struck (you can see ‘em if you’re looking for them, though) :)
Our Little Free Library: Spring Update! 🌷📖✨
Three cheers for Springfield Middle!
I wasn’t able to read this article without a subscription, but I love this picture of Battle of the Books readers holding their trophies and copies of Snow Struck. If it was up to me, they’d be airing book battles on ESPN!
And finally, some very small copies of Storm Blown and Snow Struck (I’ve been calling them “very slightly abridged” editions) courtesy of Christiana Doucette:
For anyone who might need to hear it: don’t forget to fallow!
Your friend,
