There is a folder on my laptop named Essays. It has outlasted two of my books. Most mornings, before anyone else is awake, I open it.
I was writing long before I called myself a writer. The book reviews came first, then the workshops, then a book deal, then the actual education of learning what to take out.
This is a hub for the writing about writing: the long road to a book, the years of reading that fed it, and the craft I am still, every morning, trying to get right.
The Long Road to a Book
The book deal arrived in 2019 and the book itself the year after. The Writing Journey traces the years before that; It’s Here, My Book the ones since. The road is longer than anyone tells you and shorter than it feels while you are walking it.
What I Read
Before I wrote, I read, and I wrote about what I read. The Help. Before We Visit the Goddess. Everything I Never Told You. The reviews gathered here are a fifteen-year record of what a book can do to a reader who lets it.
Craft
The newest essays are the most technical and the most personal at once. What You Take Out is about revision as subtraction. The Folder Named Essays is about the work that never gets published. The publishing essays are me thinking aloud about how a book reaches a reader at all.