gnawing through the tree
on missing people and the run-up to debuting
Hi friends 🌱🍵
I’ve been missing people a little, or a lot, these days. I also miss wandering around by myself, on foot. My pandemic life is as calm as it’s ever been, my routine is good, and I’m healthy. I’m grateful to be with family, and to have friends and colleagues I can video-call regularly, but—I do miss people. I miss the serendipity of seeing where my hunger takes me for a solo meal. I miss walking down a street side-by-side with a friend, pausing at stoplights, asking if they want ice cream, when in truth I’m the one that wants ice cream. I miss my classmates and the standing conversations we’d have in hallways, how a simple “hello” would turn into a ten-minute catch-up of inexplicable depth before we hurried off to other things—all those other things. I miss bookstores. I miss playing my ukulele in a crowded living room or by a campfire, fielding requests, hearing the hiss of a beer can pop open. How strange to think we’ve been here for so long!
I’ve been doing some interviews and attempting other writings for the book, which apparently draws from the same part of my brain that generates these newsletters, so I haven’t had much gas in the tank. I think for this year a monthly cadence will have to do. But! I did want to share a few things that have helped me the last few weeks.
First, though: what have the last few weeks been like? It’s a strange time—having a book come out is weird enough, I think, but there’s all the extra weirdness of the pandemic (as we’ve established); then there’s additional weirdness because I have been intensively quarantining since June, and once we get through that there’s the weirdness that is just me, just my own particular neuroses around writing and publishing.
I’ve been doing that thing I sometimes do when Life Stuff Is Occurring: I split into two people, the person going through it, and another self who studies that person and says, very clinically, “Ah! That was a thing you were feeling. And that is a bad habit you’re indulging. And now, oh dear, you’re wasting time.” This self-examination seems to do a good job of keeping me together, because at least I’m awake, but it’s also tiring. I’m a pretty calm person—I think friends would agree with this—and I don’t like games. I try to stay honest, generally. But the result of that honesty is that I’m so aware how this whole time I’ve been slightly annoyed with myself for feeling flustered or panicky. Then when I try to deaden those feelings, I get annoyed with myself for having dead feelings. In sum: there is no pleasing the me that is doing the examination. All I can do is shrug and keep going.
Observantly Harsh Me is not always loud at least. I think I’d take her over the heaping dosage of guilt—not out of left field, exactly, but I don’t know that I was expecting it to this degree. I feel very lucky and privileged to have this book coming out, which is, in bad moments, converting to guilt in the minefield of my brain. I know how hard I’ve worked. I know how long it’s taken. I know what I’ve done to get here, that it wasn’t just pure luck, but still—it’s been quite a trip, to unwind these feelings, inspect them, figure out some way around them. To believe that it’s okay to want the book to do well. To think I’ve earned that right.
Talking it out with some trusted people has helped. Letting myself feel things, but not to the point of overwhelm. I’m better served not fueling the guilt, and instead thinking in a clear-eyed way about the things I can do. Improving my writing is on that list—so that I feel up to the generosity and praise of others. Helping people, in the specific ways I can, is another.
This all must sound very intense and worrying, but 70% of the time I don’t feel it at all! I'm occupying myself with work—both writing and product management—and reading, and indulging in rest (like FF7:R or kpop). So, like, I’m fine. And I’ve taken comfort during these baffling debut-times from the following things:
This thread from Brandon G. Taylor. (The replies and QTs to the tweet that sparked this are excellent too.)
This thread from K.M. Szpara.
Uncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks, by Joy Williams.
Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve—hopelessly he writes in the hope he might serve—not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us.
This advice.
Words, as always. I’m reading Upstream by Mary Oliver in the morning, listening to Cleanness by Garth Greenwell on audio, and at night I’ve started getting in a few pages of Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book. Good words do good, healing things to my brain.
I have also been buoyed, as per usual, by friends and my family (mostly because they really help me cling to normalcy!). But one of the great rewards of having a book come out is that I’ve now also had kind words from strangers, or people I know less well, telling me they’re excited, or that they’ve read an early copy and have enjoyed it. It won’t work for everyone, but I know it’s already worked for some people, and that is terrifically gratifying.
And as a last resort I have a stash of some very kind fanfic comments—so now you know what I’ll be turning to when my careful defense mechanisms go haywire. 🙂
News and things
February 23 is in less than two weeks! 😱
Never Have I Ever received a starred review from Booklist! 🌟 I am absolutely delighted by this, especially because I feel the reviewer really got it. The full review will be up on the 15th, but in the meantime, I can share this:
Yap’s characters foster fierce protective love, and her ability to channel those emotions into extraordinary, strange tales is what makes Never Have I Ever such a joy to read.
I did an interview with Polly Goss that includes how the book came about, how I’ve managed to write during the pandemic, and how hard it is to write novels. 😬
The collection has appeared on reading lists from Book Marks, Tor.com, Ms. Magazine, California Reading, Lambda Literary, and maybe some other places I have missed! 🙏
Arley Sorg reviewed my book on Lightspeed Magazine, and said:
Collections such as this one are like ordering the tasting menu at a fine restaurant. After you finish that first story, you will sit in silence, letting it sink in, completely taken by the lingering effects. And when that hunger to read more tugs at you: Thankfully, there’s more on offer, carefully curated via the exacting standards of Gavin Grant and Kelly Link of Small Beer Press.
I’ll be a bit of a walking 🔜 emoji until the book is out, I’m afraid. Despite all the nerves I’ve detailed here I am also incredibly excited to be able to share these stories with a broader swathe of people. Until then, you can pre-order for yourself or for a friend! ❤️
Thanks as always for reading! Wishing a safe and kind February to you all. The title of this newsletter is also from the Joy Williams essay. If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others, or sign up if you haven’t yet.