Feeling: wistful
Listening to: Belle and Sebastian - Burning Flies
Reading/Watching: nothing

Someone found my journal today by googling "Don't Call Me Irwin," and it made me smile.

I wonder who it is. Did you know me on the TP boards, mystery person? Did you read DCMI as I posted it a chapter at a time, or was I just the TPO Junior Editor that wrote that book that one time?

...Or were you looking for info on the Lakers, which seemed to be the content of all the other links?

I feel triumphant, though. When the publishers told me the ending needed something extra, I was baffled, because the book was already 60,000 words and I knew that was pushing it, length-wise, for a YA novel. But over time I've been going back through and trimming off the fat, taking out anecdotes that were only silly and interesting at the time and don't do much to develop the story. The book is now down to 50,000 or so.

But I was utterly stumped on what sort of ending to give it. Because as a sixteen-year-old, there was no ending for me. Life just kept going, with the same insecurities and fears. Melissa had it all figured out by the end of her story, and I had no idea how better to illustrate it, because I honestly didn't know how it worked. Jake's was a bit more solid, since the majority of his struggle was inferred (and/or fictional), based on the lives of Edward and Chris, my two closest male friends. I could write a good ending, because I wasn't in their skin.

The other day I looked through my highschool yearbooks, and found a letter from a friend that surprised me, talking about how I seemed to know what I was doing and where I was going, and she admired me for that. I'd completely discounted it, because I honestly thought she was either being polite or just plain insane, but now I think that might be the window opening.

Perhaps Melissa can come into her own as I did, albeit a smidge faster. I can write it, now that I know how it goes.

I feel like I owe it to you, DCMI-googler, to put it out there again. It was such a good little book. I want my TPO girls to find it on a bookstore shelf one day and remember. "Remember the March Sisters? Remember the round-robin stories? Remember Cold French Fries and Brityn and the entire Blossvale series? Remember Where Does My Heart Beat Now and Hopeless and the huge drama begun when EnigMArch's first chapter of French Toast received twenty-seven replies?"

I remember when I spent an evening talking with the oldest member of the boards, a seasoned veteran of the written word, a wise and intimidating eighteen-year-old. She talked about leaving for college, and I oohed and aahed, thinking in a misty way of where I might go in three years when I graduated highschool. Back then, being twenty-two was old.

...Dear God, my previous me thinks I'm old.

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