I’m a notoriously fast drafter. There have been times in my career when I’ve gotten the spark of an idea, started writing, and had a finished draft days later. (Don’t hate me too much—you always make up the time somewhere, and I spend a lot of time revising.) There have also been times when I’ve taken a run at an idea, realized I wasn’t ready, and set it aside for a few months, a few years, or maybe forever.
Mister Magic is a book I couldn’t have written earlier in my career for two reasons. The first is personal: I wasn’t ready to engage with the themes until I had not only broken with the high control religion I was raised in, but also had a few years to sit with that change and everything it meant. But the second was purely down to skill. I had to write a lot of other books before I was ready for this one. The idea was ambitious; the structure, even more so. But I’d put in the time and cut my teeth on a wide variety of tense, POV, and genre. I wrote a draft and confidently turned it in.
The revision letter I got back from my brilliant editor was brutally extensive. Almost nothing about the draft was working—setting, pacing, characters, structure, even themes. I wanted to do too much with a single book, and I ended up not accomplishing any of it.
This makes it sound like I wasn’t ready to write Mister Magic, after all. But I knew that I could tackle a daunting revision. I could go back to the heart of the story, whittle, refine, rewrite, and come out on the other side with what I wanted the book to be all along. I had the hard-won confidence of experience to know that the revision was going to suck, and that I could do it anyway.
That wasn’t the end of my struggles with this book. After figuring out what it was supposed to be, I questioned whether I was ready to engage with the world on topics that were still so tender and raw. I had regrets when the book was nearing publication; I wished I’d chosen an easier route and wondered if maybe how hard the book was to get right was a sign I shouldn’t have tried at all.
But when we push ourselves to the limits of what we’re capable of, unexpected things happen. I get more notes about Mister Magic than the rest of my books combined. It was the most personal for me, and it’s also the most personal for many of my readers. As if that wasn’t enough (though readers connecting with what I write is always enough, it’s the one thing I hope for), I got to see it transformed into graphic novel form thanks to Ten Speed Graphic. Working with Scott Peterson on the adaptation, and then seeing everything reimagined through Veronica Fish and Andy Fish’s art was a dream. In a way, it allowed me to experience the story as a reader, too. This time when it made me cry, it was out of happiness and emotion, rather than frustration and despair.
I couldn’t have written Mister Magic at any earlier point in my career, and I’m glad. There’s no time limit to creativity. One of the greatest joys of an author’s life is that we’re never finished. There’s always another story waiting ahead of us in the dark for when we’re ready to find it. And so often, thanks to editors, readers, and other creatives like Scott, Veronica, and Andy, we have help along the way.
