The Opposite of "Flow"

Some books kind of flow. You know, you sit down at your computer every day, and the story just kind of unspools through your fingers, like you’re not so much writing as just tugging on a long ribbon that reveals itself in print.

WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCY VALE was not one of those books. First of all, I switched publishers like a billion times (actually three), because this book almost defeated me. I just could not finish the d*mn thing. I was dealing with a bunch of personal issues simultaneously, to be fair — getting sober; getting divorced; getting breast cancer — and my headspace looked a bit like a cross between the TV show Hoarders and Disney’s Haunted Mansion. I’ll get into this more deeply later, as it ultimately offered profound and important mid-life lessons that I hope will be valuable to share. But at the time it felt like I was wandering a hallway without end, i.e. without any clear sense of where I was going, or even that there was “somewhere” to go. (Spoiler alert: that was actually part of the lesson.)

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Also, the book kept changing: in scope and ambition, in theme and message. I was dealing with themes and events that were both personally resonant and, I felt, really important to handle fairly and truly. Point is, I had to go through a lot—a LOT—of pain and drafting to finish WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCY VALE.

And that’s okay. Some books flow, sure. Some seasons flow, too—auspicious events seem to jostle into place as if they’re on a receiving line waiting to greet you; everything falls into place.

But some books, like some seasons, are just thorny. They’re hard and barren, or wildly confused. Those are the books—and seasons—that teach you how to stay there on your knees, fingernails caked in dirt, even when your heart is bursting with fear and your instincts tell you to run.

Ultimately, states of flow teach us about the garden. About the giver. About the mysterious source of all inspiration. But states of struggle teach us about ourselves.

I finished the book (obviously). And the season has begun to shift in my personal life, too. I moved states to be closer to my sister and my family. I got new (fake) boobs, and a clean bill of health from my doctor. My next book, which comes out in May 2026, absolutely flowed—I drafted it in four months, and it’s great and so much fun. I bought a sweet little house, and decorated it mostly in pink—a benefit, my sister pointed out, to being divorced. I didn’t date for a long time. Then, mysteriously, I was ready. Recently I started dating someone who truly makes my soul come alive, and simultaneously makes it stretch out in peace and comfort, like a cat in the sun. It’s an incredible gift.

I would never have gotten here unless I’d stuck it out through that season of mud and wilderness, forced to ask every day what was really worth planting, and what could be pruned away.

So to celebrate that necessary season of hardship, here are some excerpts from a 2021 Draft that never made it into the finished novel.

They had to be pruned, ultimately.

But they still taught me something important about where I was going.