Friday, March 29, 2013

FML Fridays - The Countdown Begins

In less than 90 days, FML will belong to the world.

It's been so long since Deathday that I've forgotten all the jittery, mind-blowing anxiety that comes along with releasing a book.

I know that it's said that a lot of authors (and musicians and other artsy types) tend to stumble on their sophomore release.  There's a lot of pressure to put out the next thing and to put it out quickly.  There's pressure to do in a few months what most writers spend years perfecting.

In a lot of ways, my path was the reverse.  The distance from writing Deathday to selling it was just over a year.  I didn't spend years writing, revising, and polishing Deathday.  I got lucky.  But with FML, I had to find my voice, find what I wanted to say, and then figure out how to say it.

All that took way longer than expected.

FML may be a comedy, it may revolve around a party, the central conceit of multiple alternating storylines may seem strange, and since no one dies it may feel like it's lacking the gravity of Deathday, but FML definitely has something to say.

I guess that's what I'm most proud of.  In some ways, FML is a much quieter book than Deathday.  In some ways, it's more serious.  But I think that I succeeded in saying something about life and love and growing up that I may not have communicated quite as clearly in Deathday.

FML is a book about those tiny choices that we look back on later and realize they've had a profound impact on who we ended up becoming.  About those moments that we forget about until we trace the path from who we are to who we were and realize how important they really were.  And in its own way, I think FML is a book not unlike those moments.  It may seem breezy and inconsequential until you reach the end and look back and connect all the moments, the way Simon does, and realize what it all means.

In 90 days, FML will belong to the world.  But the truth is that it always did.

2 comments:

  1. Well said, Shaun.

    And it's interesting, because Deathday was so funny, you almost didn't realize how serious and sad it was until long after you finished reading, you know?

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    Replies
    1. And really, I wouldn't change a thing. But I do think that some of the questions that I tried to explore in Deathday got lost in potty humor. Subtle, I wasn't.

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