the end of the brb

all year we’ve had to drop out of writing main Sunday posts to write the book, just constantly brb brb, but i think we have done the last major edit of the book and now we are just /back/

icymi: we did a podcast episode recently about how we got a book deal

Anyway, that was HOPEFULLY the last big edit before we finesse, which I imagine is going to feel less like arranging the furniture and more like cleaning the skirting boards. I’m very exhausted from arranging the furniture, and donating stuff, and sending unusable shit to the dump. In this latest edit, I took the book down from 103K words to 67K!!! and 3.4K of those are footnotes!

I was speaking to a friend about it — Holly Gramazio, whose book The Husbands is also coming out next year (I’ve read The Husbands and every time I think about other people getting to read it, I feel myself beaming. Even the way I’ve just written that — they’re going to get to read it, they’re going to get the good time experience. Anyway!) — and Holly said that when you first start writing a book, you’re still figuring out what that book is going to be. (Ofc! You don’t know it word for word so it doesn’t come out of you fully formed). You have two or three goes at each sentence. When it comes to editing, you pick the best one and delete the failed attempts. I know exactly what clever witty soon to be prize-winning author Holly is talking about. When I was doing the latest edit, I was doing a multiple choice exam on my own writing. The funny thing is, I thought the last draft was good. I didn’t realise I’d left all three sentence options on the page. That’s so embarrassing! Imagine if I hadn’t realised. God, I’m not really one to take selfies anymore. That’s a bit… early 20s behaviour. Or single people behaviour (I mean that with all the love in the world). But I imagine it would feel like everyone seeing the picture you chose to post as well as the outtakes, posted in one long carousel of different angles and bad lighting and maybes and nos. I think this draft is a decent selfie, and a clean room, and a shorter, tighter, better book than it used to be. I’m glad it’s nearly done!!!!!

I’m also glad I took time away from our Sunday posts and blog posts and podcast and Youtube and Instagram responsibilities because I was also able to come up with a new name for the book and our publishers had a meeting about it and they like it! New name decided. Feels like we have an address now. The new name made it a lot easier to edit because I knew which direction all the words had to go in. I hope we can announce it soon. I’m very ready.

This is my return post to say: the white pube tap is back on in my brain and i’m ready to write more Sunday texts and shit out a load of blogs and ay, I might even start Tears of the Kingdom and relax like a normal person. I have had the fear of god in me for the entirety of 2023 trying to get this done. Omg, I’m going to play Beat Saber for exactly 3 minutes and then not play it again for 6 months.

💆🏻‍♀️