writing

unfolding

This is how my horoscope started this morning:

Even if your life seems to be unfolding as planned, you still aren’t sure that you should trust the good news.

Sometimes my horoscopes are amusingly spot-on.

I mentioned it on Twitter which started a conversation with a longtime writer friend, Alexis Kienlen, about feeling overwhelmed by this whole publication process and fear and anxiety and how people don’t seem to talk about that part of it much.

I said I’d blog about it, so here we go.

I was lucky enough to know a few people who had been on this publication ride before, so the fact that success feels so much like nausea did not come as a complete surprise, even though the practical advice was often hard to focus on with all the head-spinning.

But it hasn’t worn off. It’s mostly gotten worse.

I am still overwhelmed. I keep waiting to get back down to whelmed, but that does not seem to be happening.

I didn’t really expect that after your wildest dreams come true you end up in this post-dream land that just keeps going and there is an extreme lack of informative signage to direct the way forward and you can’t really go back.

And I keep thinking to myself, I don’t know what I’m doing here.

All I did was write a book.

Remember this post? Yeah, I’m still there, expecting to be mauled or stabbed or something. I have good days and I have not-so-good days and I spend a great deal of time wanting to crawl under my desk and cry.

To date, I have not yet crawled under the desk. I’ve cried a lot, but I’m a crier anyway.

I find it surprisingly difficult to react with equal enthusiasm when someone says to me “this is so Exciting!” because it is Exciting but it’s also kind of Terrifying and in my head, Terrifying usually wins out because Exciting tires easily.

I said in that post from way back in September that the best thing I can do is be honest.

So this is me being honest.

Today there is only a sad snowball worth of snow left by the tree outside my window. There is a fluffy kitten curled up in between my scanner and my printer because she seems to find that comfortable. I have half a cup of slowly cooling coffee on my desk and all my Arcade Fire albums on repeat.

I have two Scrivener documents open, one with tomorrow’s flax-golden tale which needs one more sentence and a title, and the other with what appears to be my next novel. I am simultaneously in love with this not-quite-novel-yet and petrified that it will not be as good as the circus because it is very, very different. It’s glass where the circus is paper. It needs more plot.

I am starting to get responses from readers with advance copies of THE NIGHT CIRCUS and they are amazing and delightful and they mean more to me than I can express properly. There should be better ways to say thank you.

I feel like there are a million things I am supposed to be doing but I don’t know what they are so I end up confused and anxious rather frequently.

I had a mild panic attack the other day just trying to make dinner reservations. I am still upset about last night’s Top Chef elimination.

I am wondering to myself why I feel the need to inform the internet that I’m scared, but I do.

And I feel like I need to resist the urge to fold my life back up again. Just a little.

The aforementioned horoscope for today ends with:

make a choice and then take a few healthy steps in the direction you want to go.

Still working on that. But I have new shoes. That should help.

By erin, ago

night circus advance copies

I received a rather rained-on cardboard box this morning.

This is what was inside:

These are Advance Reader Copies of THE NIGHT CIRCUS. Commonly referred to as ARCs, which I’m still not entirely sure stands for Advanced Reading or Advance Reader or some combination thereof. I’m pretty certain that the C is for Copy, though. Even though these say “Edition” on the front.


They’re hard to photograph because all of the silver is metallic and shiny. They’re really gorgeous, and this isn’t even the final cover.

I have been dying to share a look at the interior design ever since saw a preview of it ages ago, because I absolutely adore it, and now I have permission to share.

I’d tell you I love it so much because I think it’s evocative of both the Stargazer and the bonfire, but that wouldn’t make sense to that many of you yet. Ah well.

I only have ten copies so I am thinking very carefully about what to do with each one. There will likely be some sort of contest/giveaway at some point.

And I kind of want to leave one in some mysterious location somewhere and give clues to find it. Maybe after the snow melts.

By erin, ago

mostly posting for the antelope

Change of scenery! This is where I’m sitting this week, going over my first pass pages. I will likely not be online all that much while I read and re-read pretty, pretty pages. Tessa keeps stealing my chair if I abandon it for too long, so I should probably get back there.

(And I should really throw away that mini pumpkin on the windowsill. It’s been there since October. It’s probably frozen.)

Also, if you click this link you will find a baby antelope with the littlest legs and teensy feets and I don’t even know how he’s standing up and I love him.

By erin, ago

also, today is my half birthday & i should really have half a cake

As you may have noticed, I was in NYC for the past few days.

I met my agent and my editor in person for the first time. They are, in fact, actual people and not just lovely disembodied telephone voices.

I drank a lot of wine with my sister. I got snowed on in Times Square. I met the resident kitty at the Algonquin.

I generally felt like I’d wandered into someone else’s life.

It’s going to take awhile for this to fit on me properly. Like breaking in new boots.

And then last night, while I was on the train back to Boston, my Google alerts kind of exploded with the Summit film option announcement.

I’m thrilled about it, of course. It’s not helping that whole endeavoring to become more of a believer thing, though. Every time I think this whole journey might get less surreal eventually, things like this happen and I’m reduced to blinky-eyed deer in headlights mode and I say “yay” a lot, because I’m articulate like that.

Oh, and since some of the announcements have mentioned it as such, I should probably clarify that The Night Circus is not a young adult novel. It will probably have a lot of appeal for teenage readers & fans of YA, but it is indeed an adult-market book.

Home now, with kittens who claim not to have missed me. Fluffy little liars.

By erin, ago