Nothing Grows Without a Fight

How to stay on the path when there is no road

Today is the day. DUST is out, my third novel and first YA clifi.

Don’t be like me, I jokingly—but not really—begged a former student when she once said she was modeling her career path after mine. I meant because it was a hard road. I meant because the road was twisting, dark, and so very long. I wrote plays and music. I wrote poetry. I tried to be a professor. All I ever really wanted was to tell stories.

But things kept getting in the way: a difficult marriage, a dismal job market, single motherhood. Unless you’re independently wealthy, life really doesn’t want you to make art—in any form. And life keeps happening.

DUST is the first book I wrote in and about Colorado. It’s the first work where I fictionalized my own disability. It’s also the first book I wrote with Long COVID.

In the middle of writing the first draft, I got sick, very sick. My publisher, editor, and agent could not have been kinder, more patient, or understanding. We pushed the deadlines back. They told me to prioritize my health, always, and meant it.

I forgot my birthdate. My blood felt like it was boiling. The symptoms were so severe, doctors worried I’d had a stroke and sent me for a brain MRI (yes, that experience will find its way into a book someday). I got better slowly.

The two things that helped me the most? Acupuncture and this book.

Writing DUST helped. Returning to a world I made up, thinking hard about how to make it better, puzzling through plot points, inventing the community of the Bloodless Valley and falling in love with its inhabitants—all of it strengthened my brain. I had something to look forward to. I had people (yes, they were made-up but still), counting on me.

We know that the flow state of artistic or other consuming work is important for mental health. I also think it’s important for physical health: to have something—anything—to lose yourself in, especially now. We all need escape hatches, wardrobes, or magic mirrors, even if we’re the ones building the magic so that others might pass through.

But things couldn’t be the same for me. I am not the same. My process couldn’t be either. In the thick of COVID, like many people who have severe cases, I couldn’t even read. I turned to audiobooks. And afterward, I applied the same process to my work. I edited DUST using the Read-Aloud function of my laptop.

It’s funny but a book about a deaf girl, written by a deaf girl, was built by reading aloud. I do have it rather loud (sorry, teen child), but it works for me. It continues to work. I am much better. And yes I am writing something new, and yes, I still use Read-Aloud to revise.

Sometimes your process changes. Sometimes life forces that change on you. I’m grateful that this book taught me to go on, that whatever happens, storytelling will be there for me, even in the midst of great personal and physical upheaval.

This is the road that brought me here, and I’m glad I’m still on it.

The road is not only winding and long but weird. And you might be on a side path or a fire road or a road that isn’t even really a road. Not paved, not marked on any map. You might be forging your own path through the trees, and that’s OK. Just keep going. Use the light you have—your phone, a match, a weak flashlight, or guide yourself by feel—and keep going.

I hope this story finds a home in you and helps you too. If you’re in Ohio, I’m reading tonight TUES 12/3 at 7pm at the West End Ciderhouse in Athens, Ohio, and on TH 12/5 at Books-A-Million in North Canton, Ohio. Other states and places to follow. Maybe yours.