Prickly and Frosty and Peevish

On being mean in your writing.

If you’re in New Orleans tonight, I’m interviewing Olufunke Grace Bankole about her wonderful debut novel The Edge of Water at local gem Community Book Center. More details here.

If you’re an e-book reader and haven’t snagged my new novel A Reason to See You Again yet, it’s $1.99 across all online retailers for the week, including Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. An actual bargain!

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Hi friends.

Good morning from Super Bowl Central, where we have helicopters overhead and troops in the French Quarter. We are feeling their presence even if we do not venture downtown.

Case in point: I saw a brilliant conversation between Imani Perry¹ and Maurice Ruffin the other night on behalf of her celebrated new book Black in Blues. We were outdoors on Baldwin & Co’s patio, and the copters were flying over us throughout the event. I was so impressed with how Maurice and Imani maintained their composure. Imani wasn’t talking about the helicopters when she said, “We cannot be moved by the hysteria of the moment,” but it certainly added to the scene.

Such is the book tour life in modern America.

Anyway, here’s a nice profile of Imani, too.

Otherwise, I’ve been working up a storm over here, dividing my day between generating new work and editing some older chapters. Things are starting to add up. I have about 150 clean pages, and by “clean” I mean there is a beginning, middle, and end to each chapter, but they are by no means perfect.

Still, I do not hate these pages, and that feels good. Some days all we are striving for is not hating our work.

But also we hope for a few good surprises with our writing! I had a funny little moment a few days ago while I was getting into my characters mindset and choices at a particular moment. It was less a thing she did than thought. (Although thoughts can truly be actions, especially when you’re writing in first person or a close third.) My narrator laser-eyed in on another character and had some hypercritical ideas about them.

I thought: Wow, she sounds mean. And then I thought: Do I want to do anything about that?