I'll be there soon

Why I haven't been writing much lately

My debut novel She Used to Be Nice is out now, and you can order it TODAY! If you’ve already read it and loved it, I’d be so honored if you left a review or rating on Goodreads or Amazon. It makes a huge difference. Thank you thank you thank you.

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Hello. How’s it going?

Remember me?

The last few months have been a lot. I’ve been navigating a pretty seismic shift in my day-to-day life that has made it difficult to find time to write. I think I’ve finally found my footing and become a person again, hence why I am “back” (though I’ve officially relinquished myself of any responsibility to post on Substack regularly—it’s simply too much). But the road has been long.

This past January, I got laid off from my full-time job in an industry I’d been a part of for over ten years. Media is a volatile business, and layoffs happen all the time; I’d survived many before this one. But I guess it was my turn.

One thing you should know about me is that I do not tolerate failure in myself. While it was heartbreaking to be told I will no longer work at the place I built my entire identity around for a decade, effective immediately, I did not waste time wallowing. The moment I lost access to Slack, my nervous system entered a vibrational frequency I had never before experienced. I was not simply in fight or flight: I was both the hunter and the hunted, employment my threat and my prey. I went from spending the hours of nine to five doing work that had become familiar and routine, to spending those same hours researching job postings, creating resumes and cover letters, stalking people on LinkedIn, and studying for interviews.

Luckily it paid off. After an intense couple of months, I got a new job.

My life looks different now. I commute to an office 3x a week instead of working from home. I wear smart casual and hard pants (sometimes). I am working on new challenges in a brand-new, fast-paced industry. I’m essentially back in the real world in a way I haven’t been since March 2020, when HR sent everyone to work from home indefinitely because the first case of Covid had come to my office building.

I’ve also picked up a new workout routine. I do Orangetheory a few times a week after work, because I’m in my thirties now and I gotta build muscle lest I risk osteoporosis.

And my friend is about to have another baby so I want to grab dinner with her before she goes back into the newborn trenches.

And now it’s summer, and on the weekends all I want to do is lounge by a pool and read books and eat seafood with my boyfriend.

And and and and and and.

What I’m trying to say is that my writing has taken a backseat.

I think every writer at some point or another goes through a period of recalibration. Some of it is born out of necessity: you lose your job, you have a kid, a family member falls ill. Your whole life—not just your writing—gets rearranged around this major moment.

But there’s always a part of the recalibration that is simply bullshit. I know that’s true for me. I am telling myself so many lies about why I can’t write right now. I have convinced myself that I don’t have thirty minutes in my day to sit down with my proposal for book 2. Some days, like when I was maniacally scouring the internet for job postings, it was true, or even if it wasn’t literally true, it felt true because of how much space my unemployment occupied in my brain.

Most days, however, it’s not true. Most days I spend those precious thirty minutes scrolling.

The problem is, the vast majority of writers do not write full-time. None of us are ever going to have the perfect writing schedule. And I don’t know if it’s my OCD or what that tells me I need to carve out a meaningful amount of time at the same hour every day in the same location or I can’t write—but that’s my plight. I can’t write unless the conditions are just so.

Maybe all the time I will have to write now is borrowed time, though. A few minutes here, an hour on a good day there. I don’t know. I’m older than I was when I was first drafting She Used to Be Nice. I’m in a much different place in my life. I have a new normal to contend with, thus new writing rules to create for myself.

But I miss writing. I think about my untouched proposal every day. The characters that have lived in my head for years and years deserve their moment in the spotlight. I’m thinking about them even more now because it’s July, and my new book is set against the backdrop of summer camp. I picture them playing capture the flag, having deep conversations by the fire pit, arguing in hushed tones so the campers don’t hear. I picture them beckoning me to come hang by the lake.

I’ll be there in a second, I tell them. I just need to grab my swimsuit.

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Recent Reads

Despite my new busy schedule, I have never stopped making time to read. It’s a bit more of an active effort now, especially before bed when all I want to do is close my eyes, but it is effort worth making.

Here are some great books I read in the last few months:

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: This book needs no introduction. Everyone’s talking about it. Not to brag but I’d heard about it well over a year ago and am pretty sure I was the first person to shoot it to the top of my TBR list. (I have no proof of this. I just know.) It fully exceeded my sky-high expectations. Yesteryear will go down as one of my favorite books of all time.

• Yours Always by Corinne Sullivan: The first book I blurbed! Yours Always was exactly what I needed when I read it. To quote myself: “Yours Always kept me on the edge of my seat through every twist and turn―and wow, were there many! With a wild cast of characters that feel extremely real and a tech-world setting that fills every chapter with simmering tension, Sullivan has crafted a juicy, well-plotted psychological thriller you’ll get completely lost in.”

• Have a Great Summer by Francesca Cocchi: I adored this summer romance set in my hometown of Monmouth County, New Jersey. This book filled me with so much nostalgia of being a teenager working a summer job while having a huge crush and going to the beach and sweating your ass off in someone’s backyard. So few summer books are set on the Jersey Shore—I loved being able to picture somewhere familiar as I read.

• Famesick by Lena Dunham: I always have been and always will be a fan of Lena Dunham, so I was very excited to crack open her latest memoir. I was fully engrossed in all the health and relationship crises Lena navigated while filming Girls. It feels like a miracle that she was able to produce such a masterful show.

• Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash: It’s rare that a book makes me actually laugh out loud, but Lost Lambs had me cackling multiple times. This book is about a dysfunctional family dealing with a billionaire creating mayhem in their town. It’s so absurd and dark and hilarious.