Creating in Chaos

Facebook memories can remind you of lovely things and heartaches. My Facebook memories lately have reminded me that in April and May of 2015, my life was a bit chaotic. My husband was at a new job 5 hours away. The kids and I were finishing out the school year with our house on the market. I was working full-time and sad to be leaving dear friends and family. We were searching for a new house in a new location. I was applying and interviewing for jobs. And I was hoping to make a career change. I was leaving behind a job as a classroom teacher and entering the school library field. I was excited and terrified. I was overwhelmed with the minutiae of moving.

More than anything I wanted to hang on to my writing. Writing gave me an anchor. I could write when I couldn’t think of what to say. I could write through all my anxieties of moving.

I had plans to revise a novel in the spring of 2015. I remember finally giving myself permission to put it away. I didn’t have the bandwidth for revision of a big project.

But there was another project I’d been thinking of writing for a few years. My students had to learn about dormancy—specifically plant dormancy—but I could never find any kid-friendly information about it. I needed a book. I’d started researching it at some point before April 2015.

I was looking through my folders of drafts. Each draft is dated. It said DORMANCY DRAFT 1 4.11.2015.

April 11, 2015 was right in the middle of the chaos. The moving chaos. The house that had to be constantly kept clean. The applications, the interviews, the parenting solo five days a week.

It was also two months before I said goodbye to teaching fourth grade—the very reason I wanted to write the book to begin with.

When I look back on that time, I remember giving up on my middle grade novel revision. I remember the sadness, the excitement, the moving emotions. I don’t remember that I was drafting a new book.

I didn’t finish anything big during that time. I had to give myself permission to let a lot of things go. It was less than ideal.

But looking back, I did start something.

I started a really rough draft of a book that I felt like I needed as a teacher. It was a love letter to my old grade level, I just didn’t realize it until this week.

Even in the midst of chaos, I created.

Fast forward four years.

That book which started in chaos is coming out September 3, 2019.

There were many revisions. There was a ton of self-doubt. The book got put in a drawer because I got a lot of “this book is very well-written, but it will never sell” rejections.

I’m grateful for Carol Hinz and Allison Juda at Millbrook for seeing the vision for the book. I’m grateful my agent, Roseanne Wells, saw the vision.

I’m glad that I kept writing in the midst of chaos.

WAIT, REST, PAUSE: DORMANCY IN NATURE just received a starred review from Kirkus. You can read the full review here.

Want to pre-order a signed copy? Preorder from my local indie bookstore, One More Page Books, here.