I wasn’t ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn’t wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did.
There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.
This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.
How ballsy it was to just assume you know, with one glance, the things another person could live without. As if it was the same for everyone, that simple.
It’s only advice. Ignore it if you want.
I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I’ve already done. So it’s a challenge to keep it fresh.
Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible.
Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.
Once I’m done with a book, I’m done! I’m just not a sequel kind of girl. By the time I’ve finished a book I’ve read it so many times that it’s time to move on.
How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.
I wondered if it was really because he cared about me, or if now I was just another challenge.
I never really know what I’m going to write next until it comes to me. So we’ll just have to see what happens.
Even if you couldn’t see it beneath the surface, molecules were bonding, energy pushing up slowly, as something worked do hare, all alone to grow.
You punched him by accident.
In my group of friends, I was always the one who remembered everything. The stories, the boys my friends and I dated, all the details. So I think a part of me was always filing them away, although at the time I wasn’t sure why.
It’s a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it’s over, and you’re sinking.
It’s a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.
So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.
In school, writing was the only thing that really came naturally to me, but it wasn’t until college that I realized that I could do it for more than just fun.
I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.