A letter to the universe: I finished writing my book!
What it was like, what's next, and what I'm looking for now. Happy winter solstice!
TL;DR: After over 3 years I’ve finished writing my manuscript and I’m now looking for some specific partners to help me bring it into the world. Read on for details!
How it started
It was mid-2021 when I started writing this book: a book about a girl who fell into her mom’s phone and got stuck there and couldn’t get out. I don’t know where that sentence came from, but it got stuck in my mind and couldn’t get out.
Who this book is for
This book is for people who want to immerse in speculative worlds that suggest gentle and viable ways of changing this world.
It’s for parents, educators, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who are sick of a world where devices have become parental proxies.
It’s for product managers, researchers, tech leaders who want to create responsible, ethical, developmentally appropriate products that don’t frack human attention.
And it’s for anyone who feels uncomfortable with how big a bite of their life their devices have taken out of them.
You’ll probably see yourself in it if you’ve dabbled in tango, if you yearn for community living, if you love Montessori vibes. Oh, yeah, also: if you think spiders are cool. And if you think dystopia is passé and are ready for new kinds of endings.
What the process has been like
Writing this book for the past forty-plus months has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It has taken excruciatingly longer than I expected. It has demanded the brightest part of my attention daily. It has seduced me to sacrifice many pleasant things in its service.
In the process, I’ve learned a lot. I learned why the first book I tried to write didn’t work. I have learned how to take better care of people who are generous enough to give you their attention. I’ve learned about how to let go of things I am attached to, in the service of a deeper order.
Allies along the way
Along the way, I have had so much encouragement and support from so many people in my life. My family has cheered my biannual New draft complete!! updates to our WhatsApp thread, one of the only forms of social media I have allowed myself during this time. They tried gamely to guess the title. (Which is still a secret ;)
I’ve also had three writerly super-allies on this long road! The first is Nesli. Magically, the birth of the book coincided with the birth of her baby and magically she has made space to help parent this book with her love, curiosity, enthusiasm, and art.
I met Charlotte at a UIowa writing workshop in 2022 and we became friends and sounding boards for each other. The presence of this mystic poet rebel weirdo in my life, and the genius of her writing, has been a continual provocation to me to notice more, feel more, accept more.
Third and most profoundly, Amy, my mentor, coach, angel. I still can’t believe my luck that she was willing to dive deep into the underworld with me, stay grounded when my characters quarreled with her, and ask the questions that challenged and liberated me.
What and who I’m looking for now
Now that I finished, I’m ready to expand the circle of allies. I want to find people who really get it and want to partner with me to bring it to the world in a beautiful way.
Here is who I am looking for next:
My future readers! I will keep growing my Substack here with content for exactly the kinds of people who I think will love my book.
Writers and thought leaders who are actively working in ethical/humane tech, attention health, parenting, and the future of education.
A visionary literary agent, who is excellent at relationship-building and focused on the long game, who loves speculative fiction and debuts.
A publishing rights lawyer with a creative background that bridges traditional publishing and online/interactive works with Web3 elements.
If you know people like this, I’d love to be introduced! If you work in the world of publishing and you are someone like this, let me know and I will send you my formal pitch which includes a query letter, plot synopsis, author bio, comps, all the things.
My incredible beta readers have suggested to me that they see this story having a life off the page, too! In the future, I may be seeking connections with designers in other domains, playful people who think in music, theater, video games, and code.
What I hope the impact will be
I hope this book will help create paradise on our planet by the year 2087.
I hope it will enable all of us to honor the sacredness of our finite attention.
I hope it will spark movement building among technologists, educators, parents, and kids.
I hope it will lead to sane forms of child-led governance.
Oh, yeah, and I hope we will be able to finally get that little girl out of the phone she has been stuck in for so long.
In closing
Throughout the past year I have been touched and emboldened by the visionary, expansive creative process of Jacob Collier.
“If you make really beautiful things that you love, and you articulate them really clearly and well and fearlessly, and you leave them in the world for people to find— there’s a particular kind of gravity that comes to those things, when they’re thrown with freedom, and abandon, and trust.” - Jacob Collier
These words ring true to me and will be guiding me as I practice sharing my work with the world “with freedom, abandon, and trust” — starting now.