Jonathan Edward Durham's Blog

Those two words. I don't even want to write them. I don't even want to think them. Even the very mention is enough to send shivers up the most successful writers' spines and set their knees knocking. Writer's block is a truly terrifying prospect and it's something we've all had to deal with at one time or another…but if you've dealt with it enough, hopefully you've learned a trick or two to turn the tide of those battles in your favor, and while I may not be the most seasoned gladiator, I've seen my share of time in the coliseum, so I figured maybe I'd pass on a few things that have worked for me in the hopes that maybe they might work for you too.

For me, overcoming writer's block is all about prevention. It's about avoiding that battle altogether, because once you actually step into the ring…all bets are off. I'm not sure who said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face," but I probably would know if I hadn't been punched in the face so often. Anyway…where was I? Oh, that's right. For me, beating writer's block is all about being so prepared that it doesn't even want a piece of you in the first place. It's about making sure there's no crack in your armor big enough for a dagger to fit through. It's about being smart enough that you don't have to fight, which is the sweetest victory of all. So, without further ado, here is my art of war…

1) Outline, outline, outline! Outline everything. Everything. I spend no less than a month (and sometimes much, much more) outlining and annotating and developing before I even sit down at my keyboard. I fill dozens of yellow legal pads with pieces of dialogue and character traits and names and random ideas and plots and subplots and imagery and phrasings and literally anything that's even tangentially applicable to a story. And then…then I storyboard. And I storyboard it all. I have an entire wall in my home covered in cork and I lay out the entire narrative so that I can see exactly how it flows, how it begins, and also how it ends…and I don't stop until I think it's just about perfect. I leave as little room for flexibility as possible…that way I'm never at a loss as to what's happening next, because all I have to do is look at my wall. I'm never lost for plot, because the plot's already finished. In the end, it's like a Mad Libs and all I have to do is fill in the blanks with pretty words lol…and we all know that Mad Libs is the natural and sworn enemy of 'the block.'

2) Eat your frogs. Mark Twain once said that if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, you can be pretty sure that it'll be the worst thing that's going to happen to you that day. Now, he's a stone-cold genius, and I'm most certainly not, but I'm pretty sure that was his roundabout way of saying that it's best to get the hard stuff out of the way early, that was you don't have to worry about it…and I couldn't agree more. I write best when my mind is clear and my frogs have been eaten and I feel like I've earned the right to be creative…so that's what I do. I eat my frogs every bloody day before I even think about writing. Every…single…day before I write, I answer all my emails, exercise for two hours, run all my errands, return all my phone calls and eat any other itinerant frogs hopping about, and only then…only then when my belly is full of horrible, horrible frog…am I centered and clear-headed and ready to spill some ink. I mean, who could work with all that croaking going on anyway? Certainly not me…and certainly not Mark Twain, so at the very least we've got that in common.

3) Edit what you've written yesterday before you write anything new today. This honestly might be the tip that helps me the most. Every day when I sit down to write, the very first thing that I do is go back and do a quick edit of what I've written the day before. Nothing too intense, mind you—just a tightening of anything that reads loose and maybe a subtle reworking of anything that doesn't quite jive. There's a few different benefits here for me…one being that it lightens your editing load at the end of a section or chapter or draft, but the other is that it acts almost as a stretching session before a big run. It gets those muscles loose and gives you time to get focused and reacquainted with the rhythm of your story, so when it comes time to start churning out new content, your blood is already flowing and you're ready to go and you're much, much less likely to be stymied by…well, you know. After all, the surest way to lose any race is to pull up injured, and the best way to prevent injury is to be properly warmed up…so do some edit stretches before you toe the starting line and see how much better you feel when the gun goes boom.

4) Write in the same place at the same time as much as you can. This is a big one for me as my OCD just loves the warm and fuzzy feeling of environmental familiarity, so for me, the best place to be is usually the place I'm properly used to…and that goes double for when it's time to write. That sense of comfort is unspeakably important for me to be able to relax and for my mind to be at the right timbre of ease to be properly creative. I need that place that's not going to hold any surprises for me…that place that has just the right blend of silence and white noise…that place that makes me want to write. There's also something to be said for creative association—if you're used to being creative in a certain place, then eventually that place makes it easier for you to be creative because you now have a positive association with it. It's a bit Pavlovian, but he gave a lot of very good dogs a lot of very delicious treats over the course of his career, so he was a pretty great guy if you think about it that way. In short, write where you're comfortable, and try to make a habit of it.

5) So, this last pointer is a bit meta and not something that you can necessarily employ in any sort of immediate manner, so in the spirit of never being able to leave well enough alone…I'm going to do the opposite of leaving well enough alone. Besides, 'five' is a much more acceptable number than '4' for a list like this, so you can all thank my OCD for this last tip. Know Thy Self. See? I told you it was meta and troublesome, but that doesn't make it incorrect. There is so, so much truth in the fabric of fiction that it's almost impossible to get it to feel authentic if you don't feel authentic…and sometimes 'the block' is simply a writer's inability to make heads or tails of the feeling of inauthenticity in what they're crafting—failing to undo a knot they didn't mean to tie in the first place or the lack of insight into a character whose walls seem to hit a little too close to home.

Now, nobody's perfect, least of all me, but I can say without any manner of exaggeration that I've grown more over the last several years than I did in the several decades that preceded them. I came out…I began to confront and understand my myriad mental health challenges including anxiety, depression, and heavy OCD…I embraced the challenge of sharing my life with a loving partner…I began a search for my physical limits with some intense athletic pursuits…in short, I made a concerted effort to get to know myself for the first time in my life, and that, more than anything else, is the reason that I'm a better writer now than I was three years ago. That's the reason I don't stumble over motivations as much as I used to, the reason I don't feel awkward writing about relationships anymore, the reason I don't feel self-conscious about searching for a character's flaws, and the reason I don't see anything as off limits when it comes to creativity anymore. I used to have so many walls up in my life, and now that many of them are gone or (hopefully) on their way to being gone, I have less walls in my writing too. I have fewer stumbling blocks. I have fewer blocks of any kind, really…particularly that one that starts with a "w." Everything you write is a mirror is some way or another, and sometimes when there's a block on the page…there's also a block in the writer.

Well, that's all I've got for you good folks. I'd have more tips for you, but I didn't outline enough beforehand and I…just…can't…think of anything else to say ;) In any case, I hope my pitiful musings find you all in good health and maybe, just maybe they'll help you the next time you step into the right with the big bad you-know-what…or maybe they'll help you avoid having to put the gloves on altogether. Remember…work smart, not hard. Actually, do both…definitely do both. Cheers!

Those two words. I don't even want to write them. I don't even want to think them. Even the very mention is enough to send shivers up the most successful writers' spines and set their knees knocking. Writer's block is a truly terrifying prospect and it's something we've all had to deal with at one time or another…but if you've dealt with it enough, hopefully you've learned a trick or two to turn the tide of those battles in your favor, and while I may not be the most seasoned gladiator, I've seen my share of time in the coliseum, so I figured maybe I'd pass on a few things that have worked for me in the hopes that maybe they might work for you too.

For me, overcoming writer's block is all about prevention. It's about avoiding that battle altogether, because once you actually step into the ring…all bets are off. I'm not sure who said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face," but I probably would know if I hadn't been punched in the face so often. Anyway…where was I? Oh, that's right. For me, beating writer's block is all about being so prepared that it doesn't even want a piece of you in the first place. It's about making sure there's no crack in your armor big enough for a dagger to fit through. It's about being smart enough that you don't have to fight, which is the sweetest victory of all. So, without further ado, here is my art of war…

1) Outline, outline, outline! Outline everything. Everything. I spend no less than a month (and sometimes much, much more) outlining and annotating and developing before I even sit down at my keyboard. I fill dozens of yellow legal pads with pieces of dialogue and character traits and names and random ideas and plots and subplots and imagery and phrasings and literally anything that's even tangentially applicable to a story. And then…then I storyboard. And I storyboard it all. I have an entire wall in my home covered in cork and I lay out the entire narrative so that I can see exactly how it flows, how it begins, and also how it ends…and I don't stop until I think it's just about perfect. I leave as little room for flexibility as possible…that way I'm never at a loss as to what's happening next, because all I have to do is look at my wall. I'm never lost for plot, because the plot's already finished. In the end, it's like a Mad Libs and all I have to do is fill in the blanks with pretty words lol…and we all know that Mad Libs is the natural and sworn enemy of 'the block.'

2) Eat your frogs. Mark Twain once said that if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, you can be pretty sure that it'll be the worst thing that's going to happen to you that day. Now, he's a stone-cold genius, and I'm most certainly not, but I'm pretty sure that was his roundabout way of saying that it's best to get the hard stuff out of the way early, that was you don't have to worry about it…and I couldn't agree more. I write best when my mind is clear and my frogs have been eaten and I feel like I've earned the right to be creative…so that's what I do. I eat my frogs every bloody day before I even think about writing. Every…single…day before I write, I answer all my emails, exercise for two hours, run all my errands, return all my phone calls and eat any other itinerant frogs hopping about, and only then…only then when my belly is full of horrible, horrible frog…am I centered and clear-headed and ready to spill some ink. I mean, who could work with all that croaking going on anyway? Certainly not me…and certainly not Mark Twain, so at the very least we've got that in common.

3) Edit what you've written yesterday before you write anything new today. This honestly might be the tip that helps me the most. Every day when I sit down to write, the very first thing that I do is go back and do a quick edit of what I've written the day before. Nothing too intense, mind you—just a tightening of anything that reads loose and maybe a subtle reworking of anything that doesn't quite jive. There's a few different benefits here for me…one being that it lightens your editing load at the end of a section or chapter or draft, but the other is that it acts almost as a stretching session before a big run. It gets those muscles loose and gives you time to get focused and reacquainted with the rhythm of your story, so when it comes time to start churning out new content, your blood is already flowing and you're ready to go and you're much, much less likely to be stymied by…well, you know. After all, the surest way to lose any race is to pull up injured, and the best way to prevent injury is to be properly warmed up…so do some edit stretches before you toe the starting line and see how much better you feel when the gun goes boom.

4) Write in the same place at the same time as much as you can. This is a big one for me as my OCD just loves the warm and fuzzy feeling of environmental familiarity, so for me, the best place to be is usually the place I'm properly used to…and that goes double for when it's time to write. That sense of comfort is unspeakably important for me to be able to relax and for my mind to be at the right timbre of ease to be properly creative. I need that place that's not going to hold any surprises for me…that place that has just the right blend of silence and white noise…that place that makes me want to write. There's also something to be said for creative association—if you're used to being creative in a certain place, then eventually that place makes it easier for you to be creative because you now have a positive association with it. It's a bit Pavlovian, but he gave a lot of very good dogs a lot of very delicious treats over the course of his career, so he was a pretty great guy if you think about it that way. In short, write where you're comfortable, and try to make a habit of it.

5) So, this last pointer is a bit meta and not something that you can necessarily employ in any sort of immediate manner, so in the spirit of never being able to leave well enough alone…I'm going to do the opposite of leaving well enough alone. Besides, 'five' is a much more acceptable number than '4' for a list like this, so you can all thank my OCD for this last tip. Know Thy Self. See? I told you it was meta and troublesome, but that doesn't make it incorrect. There is so, so much truth in the fabric of fiction that it's almost impossible to get it to feel authentic if you don't feel authentic…and sometimes 'the block' is simply a writer's inability to make heads or tails of the feeling of inauthenticity in what they're crafting—failing to undo a knot they didn't mean to tie in the first place or the lack of insight into a character whose walls seem to hit a little too close to home.

Now, nobody's perfect, least of all me, but I can say without any manner of exaggeration that I've grown more over the last several years than I did in the several decades that preceded them. I came out…I began to confront and understand my myriad mental health challenges including anxiety, depression, and heavy OCD…I embraced the challenge of sharing my life with a loving partner…I began a search for my physical limits with some intense athletic pursuits…in short, I made a concerted effort to get to know myself for the first time in my life, and that, more than anything else, is the reason that I'm a better writer now than I was three years ago. That's the reason I don't stumble over motivations as much as I used to, the reason I don't feel awkward writing about relationships anymore, the reason I don't feel self-conscious about searching for a character's flaws, and the reason I don't see anything as off limits when it comes to creativity anymore. I used to have so many walls up in my life, and now that many of them are gone or (hopefully) on their way to being gone, I have less walls in my writing too. I have fewer stumbling blocks. I have fewer blocks of any kind, really…particularly that one that starts with a "w." Everything you write is a mirror is some way or another, and sometimes when there's a block on the page…there's also a block in the writer.

Well, that's all I've got for you good folks. I'd have more tips for you, but I didn't outline enough beforehand and I…just…can't…think of anything else to say ;) In any case, I hope my pitiful musings find you all in good health and maybe, just maybe they'll help you the next time you step into the right with the big bad you-know-what…or maybe they'll help you avoid having to put the gloves on altogether. Remember…work smart, not hard. Actually, do both…definitely do both. Cheers!

Peanut Butter and Jelly. Hall and Oates. Laurel and Hardy. Art and Anxiety. Now, I'm aware that I'm probably dating myself well beyond my actual years with some of those pairings, but I imagine everybody can at least appreciate the first one. The point is that there are certain things that just seem like they were made to go together…things that are somehow more powerful with their mate than they are alone…things that seem incomplete without their typical bedfellow…things that make me want a sandwich. Sorry, I should know better than to start an essay with an allusion to peanut butter, but there's no un-seeding that particular craving, so I'll be back in a minute to continue rambling about my anxieties both sandwich-adjacent and sandwich-independent.

In any case, almost everybody has some reference for an artistic endeavor they've undertaken, be it in the realm of professional or hobbyist, and so I imagine that almost everybody has at least some fossil of a sense memory attached to the anxiety that, little did they know, was already pre-packaged with said creative venture. Surprise! Is it done? Should I keep working on it? Is the color right? Is it too long? Is it too short? Is it ugly? Is it honest? Is it good? Did I unintentionally rip this idea off? Did I intentionally rip this idea off? Is it too derivative? Does it say what I want it to say? Was this worth it? Should I actually show this to anybody? Am I proud of this? Should I throw it out? Is this whole process worth this unending sense of dread? Why did I do this to myself? Where did I put the peanut butter? Sorry…be right back.

Honestly, with all of that on a tireless spin-cycle throughout the entire creative process, it's no wonder so many artists end up miserable shut-ins or alcoholics or high-society ego-hounds or worse…graphic designers. Just kidding, I love me some good graphic design, but I digress…my anxiety has been in overdrive since my book was released earlier this week, and this morning was particularly hard to get through with my sanity (somewhat) intact, so I thought I'd take a moment to open up that release valve a little and write about my particular artistic anxieties (not all of them, mind you…I simply do not have enough space rented on this website platform for that). So get ready for a face full of boiling hot cathartic steam, because these pipes are shaking from the pressure, and something's gotta give. Oh, also…hopefully this might help some of you folks who are going through the same thing. There, did that sound magnanimous enough? Is that base covered now? Great. Onward.

I've never met a camera that didn't make me hopelessly uncomfortable. I know that sounds silly, but it's a thing that's been with me as long as I've been self-aware enough to be self-conscious, which has been quite some time now. I just don't like having my picture taken—I don't like how I look in pictures, I don't like smiling on command, I don't like the process of posing—I hate it all. I've always been uncomfortable with my smile, and in more macro sense, with the way I look, and so even the very thought of any of that being immortalized makes my skin crawl even to this day. It's an issue I'm working on, but it's still an issue, and it's resulted in some of my favorite moments having gone undocumented, which is something that I now very much regret and have committed to try and change moving forward, but man, it still makes my heart beat through my chest in the very worst way when I see a camera come out…and I'm not sure that will ever go away.

It's a bit ironic that photography was a favorite pastime of mine when I was younger, even to the point where I took as many classes as I could on the subject when I was in school, but now that I think about it, it makes sense that I enjoyed it so much…because the space behind the camera is the only space that's not in front of the camera…and that's where I preferred to be. Now, at this point you're probably thinking that a fear of physical self-reflection isn't a terribly far walk from a fear of personal self-reflection, and whoa boy...are you ever correct. They go hand-in-hand like peanu—be right back. Anyway, yes, I have issues with that too. After all, I was very much 'in the closet' for the majority of my life, and part of that survival strategy is training yourself to be as un-self-reflective as possible, as well as using hyphens like they're going out of style, apparently. And that knot's not as unruly as it used to be, but it still isn't completely untied either, so now that you know a bit more about my particular brand of crazy…

The reason that my anxiety has been off the charts this week, apart from the more typical release week concerns that one would expect to sweat, is that from the author's point of view, a book is very much a camera. It's a camera that no matter where you point it…no matter what you frame inside the lens…no how many pictures of other things you take with it…they all come out of the developing room with a bit of you somewhere in every image. And the most terrifying part is that the more honesty you pour into those pages, the better they're sure to be…but also the clearer that inky picture of you is sure to be, and man, does that set my alarm bells ringing. Every criticism, every bit of praise, every indifferent impression, every first-edition error that gets pointed out…they all seem like referendums on you, even when you know they're not…and they all trigger a hailstorm of self-reflection, even when you know they shouldn't.

Everybody I know, and many I don't, now have my portrait in their hands, and against every instinct running through my veins, I've asked them to study it…and I've asked them to tell me exactly what they think about it…and it's utterly terrifying. It's knee-wobblingly scary and it's a door that can't be closed again, and that honestly may be the most frightening aspect of this entire endeavor. There's just no going back. There's no turning it off anymore. There's always a camera there now…and it's always aimed at me no matter where I point it…and even though I may never grow completely comfortable with that idea, and even though I might always feel sick at the sight of some stranger's gaze on the pictures…at least now I'll be able to remember these moments down the road, because I have a feeling they might turn out to be important.

In the spirit of never feeling truly comfortable being the one to initiate any conversation, interaction, or mode of communication in any situation in the entire history of ever, I thought I would begin this blog by simply saying hello and thank you and hello…and I sincerely hope that you enjoy the things I write, be they my books or even just this collection of ridiculous musings (but actually really hopefully my books). With that out of the way, I'm sure that most of you don't know anything about me, the things I create, or why I create them, so I figured it might make a good deal of sense to kick things off with a short explanation as to who I am and how I came to write my debut novel, Winterset Hollow, which I'm sure you've all purchased multiple copies of by now. And if for some reason you haven't, I highly recommend collecting them all. I mean, they're all exactly the same, but…still? Don't you want them all?! Go ahead and call me shameless, but I promise you there's a tremendous amount of shame involved in all of this, so you might as well save your breath.

Stories have been my favorite escape for as long as I can remember, and while I'm sure I'm by no means the first writer to say that in a blog that precisely nobody is going to read, that doesn't make it any less true. The first books I remember truly loving came very early on in life and consisted of a solid rotation of youth-oriented mystery novellas like The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown, and while none of them had a literary pedigree that would make them wise to mention in any sort of public forum like, say, a world-wide blog on your professional website…they were good stories and always had an interesting problem to solve and a proper resolution, and I always found them as fun as they were intriguing, so I read them all. And not for nothing, but there were hundreds of them…shelves and shelves lined with them…and if you know anything about me and my preferred brand of OCD, you know that I want what I want in limitless quantities and I DO NOT WANT ANYTHING DIFFERENT EVER. But I reluctantly digress…

As I got older, I found myself reading more adult-oriented books that were handed down from my father—a constant flow of Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and James Patterson novels—basically anything that was made into a movie in the 80's and 90's. I loved those books because their pop sensibilities gave me a much-needed breather from the stuffier, more essay-inducing reading that was required as I wormed my way through school. They balanced that weird little scale in my head and kept the "story and entertainment" side of things level with the "introspection I didn't ask for and remnants of latent childhood trauma that I also didn't ask for" side…and to this day, I'll still read anything starring Harrison Ford or Sam Neil. So, have I read all the classics that have been jammed into the various literary canons that span the last several hundred years? Yes. Did I enjoy them as much as a bunch of cloned dinosaurs rampaging across a millionaire's private Island as they yearn for the freedom that's been woven into their DNA? Nah, not really.

But while reading about said dinos on said rampage was thrilling enough…actually seeing said dinos rampaging around the big screen was literal magic, and I immediately wanted as much of that sorcery as my twelve-year-old, starburst-addled brain could handle. I think I saw all the movies as a kid. I actually mean that quite seriously, as there wasn't nearly as much content to absorb as there is today, so I'm pretty sure I saw them all. Everything that was in the theaters, everything that became available on home video—I watched as many of them as I could as often as I could with literally no regard for genre or rating or critical acclaim. I just wanted to see movies because movies were awesome, and you know damn well there's no need for me to be more articulate about that sentiment. I mean how many kids knew which day was new release day at their local Blockbuster Video? I'm not sure what the actual answer to that is, but I can tell you it was Tuesday, and I would literally hang out there and get high on the smell of stale popcorn while I waited for somebody in a blue shirt to start slipping actual VHS tapes behind the empty display covers. I know, I know…pretty wild ride, right? This is also why nobody's ever made a film about my childhood—because it would pretty much just be a movie about me watching other, better movies, and nobody would want to see that except for, well…me.

Stories were my world until they weren't, and it wasn't until I found myself in my twenties and patently unhappy with how patently unhappy I'd become that I decided to try and right that ship, and being that I had always been a very visual thinker and something of a natural writer, it only seemed correct that I take a stab at writing a few movies of my own…and BOY were they terrible. I think my fourth script was the first one that seemed reasonably professional and interesting enough to actually share, and as luck would have it, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. That screenplay won a number of national awards and ended up being optioned, and before I knew it, I found myself in L.A. on the precipice of just about every cliché, both positive and negative, that has ever been said about L.A. It was a different world than what I was used to, and while it was amazing in its own inimitable way, it just didn't feel like home, and as it turns out, neither did screenwriting.

Screenwriting is a fine enough profession if you're built for it, and although I am almost perfectly constructed for the solitude, self-loathing, and ego-fueled fits of creativity that come with the territory of being a writer…scripts are a very particular thing, and I am a very particular (some would pronounce that 'hyper-neurotic') person, and those waters were just hard for me to tread for innumerable reasons that may or may not be further explained in a later blog. Don't get me wrong, I wrote some fantastic scripts, worked with some wonderful producers, and even sold a series to a major network—but twelve-year-old me still wouldn't have been able to go to Blockbuster and rent one of my movies, because even after years of metaphorically backbreaking work, I still couldn't figure out how to get one produced. Eventually, I had an entire shelf full of stories that nobody was ever going to enjoy…and I knew that because those were all scripts, and the very first (and also the very last) thing you learn as a screenwriter is nobody wants to read a script…for any reason…ever. Some people have to, but really none of them want to, and those people included twelve-year-old me.

Now, I know what you're all thinking right now. You're thinking, "Jon, when are you gonna get around to shoehorning some sort of pseudo-intellectual nonsense into a narrative surrounding the pandemic we're all still mired in like one of those helpful Honda guys commercials?" Well, you're in luck, because I'm in the mood to just that…I'm in the mood now more than ever (ahem). Now, far be it from me to try and wax romantic about a situation that cost so many people their friends and family and livelihoods and health, but truthfully, that eighteen-month void is where Winterset Hollow really grew from. Suddenly, I had no job, I had no industry, and I had nowhere to go and nobody to see…but I had time…and I wanted to be sure that I was gonna use that time to create something that twelve-year-old me would be truly proud of. I wanted to make something exciting and broad yet contemplative. I wanted to make something funny and bold yet tender and nostalgic. I wanted to make something original and unique yet familiar and endearing…and I didn't want it to end up on that bloody shelf. I wanted it to end up on his shelf…on your shelf…and I hope I've done that with this book. I don't know, I guess sometimes lemons give you life too. Now that's some quality shoehorning ;)

I think that's what this book ended up being for me—yes it was a chance to roll my sleeves up and learn a (somewhat) new craft, a way to fill the void of feeling artistically useless, and an opportunity to flex some writerly muscles that I hadn't been able to flex in years—but it was also an exercise in putting out a story that was a little bit of everything that I loved growing up. It's a bit of a mystery, a bit of a thriller, a bit of a horror story, a bit of an 'everything falls apart' Michael Crichton narrative, and a bit of a timeless Roald Dahl-type fantasy tale. Now, one of the things I learned in the script business is that if your genre is hard to pin down, you don't have a shot in hell at getting produced, but I also learned that the stories that break rules the right way are the ones that get remembered, and I think maybe that's worth taking a swing at.

Winterset Hollow is a love letter to all the stories I've read. There was a time when they were everything to me, and while I can't go back and read any of those words for the first time and feel their sparks land fresh and lively against my skin, at least I can show them what they still mean to me after all this time. I truly hope that you enjoy this book…and I hope twelve-year-old me would too.