Notes on Writing CRYBABY: Finishing a Book (Sort Of)
At the end of the summer, two weeks before September hit, I handed in the final manuscript draft of CRYBABY to my publisher. Right before, my agent read the draft and told me, “this must have been a lot of work!” It was. It toppled 70,000 words. It took years of thinking and further years of critical writing and reflection. It was awesome. I miss it dearly.
Right now, I’m waiting for my editor to send me back thoughts and notes on the text. The wait has been so agonizing, I’ve started writing a novel. I’m about a third of the way done with it—but who knows whether or not that will go anywhere, it was mostly a comfort thing. Anyway.
This dispatch is really about the anxiety of finishing a book. You spend all your time thinking about how good it will feel to cross the finish line and then… The overwhelming feeling of “What now?” takes over, and you wonder if you even exist without a book project. Maybe that’s just me. I think projects are wonderful, wonderful things. Something to give yourself externalized purpose, to give yourself direction, something stable to pour yourself into when general purpose madness atrophies your brain daily.
Wrapping up the material writing of a book is weird because it’s not really done. I have however many months of editing to go to hit our Spring 2024 goal of getting CRYBABY to the people. But in a lot of ways, I am done. I’m not writing it anymore. I’m not editing, either, if we’re being pedantic. I’m just sitting—waiting—and wondering what comes next. This is probably why we—I—shouldn’t root our entire existence and value in productivity or creative pursuits, but that’s a conversation for me and one of my three therapists.
Writing CRYBABY taught me a lot. For one, I learned that I could write another book. Once you finish a book project, there is the fear that the well has gone dry. Not so! Releasing something as big and laborious as THE BOOK OF MAC left me wondering if I would still be a writer by the end of the process. I am still a writer—that never goes away, I’ve gathered.
Writing CRYBABY also taught me I have the capacity to add to a canon I love. In the very early stages of the book, I was worried all I was doing was synthesizing information I’d spent countless hours researching and compiling. Not so! CRYBABY, I am confident, is an original text with original thoughts, and a strong point of view.
Speaking of confidence, CRYBABY was also an exercise in not listening to myself. Meaning, whenever I would have a crisis of ability, I had to learn to tune it out and just do the work. Even when the writing itself was painful, I had to just keep writing. Working on this history left me feeling, at times, like the silliest little girl in the world. At others, though, it made me feel like a true scholar. Around the spring of 2023, I realized I couldn’t live in either world. I had to dwell in a third space of my own making, wherein I could simply work on the text without emotional distractions. That said, after a writing session I particularly enjoyed, there was some gloating to my audience (my wife and our cats). They seemed to appreciate it.
This book taught me the value of taking your writing practice in stride. I sit down every day and set a timer for 15 minutes—if I can just focus for 15 minutes, the momentum will carry me through entire passages, chapters, sections. Sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes the 15 minutes elapse and I want to drink Grouse out of my Star Trek glass and pretend I am anything other than a writer. I learned to be okay with that outcome as well. More than anything, CRYBABY taught me I am not a writing machine; I am just a person. And it’s hard to be a people, and it’s rewarding to be a people.
I feel beyond fulfilled to have completed a second book. I can’t wait for people to hold it and see what I see in the fabric of emo rap. And before anyone asks—yes, I am percolating on another book. But I’m always percolating on another book. Such is my vocation.