Navigate the Joy of First Love with Melissa See

Q & A with Melissa See

• What is your writing process like and how has it  changed from your first book to your second book? 
• Okay. I honestly don’t have one. I realize that’s a copout or boring, but I really don’t have that. It’s really just like, “I want to write right now.” So I sit down, I find whatever music I’m currently listening to or something, and I write until my hands don’t want to write anymore. Until my brain is like, “No, I need a break.” My eyes tell me, “No, we need a break. We can’t do this.” So honestly, I don’t really have one, which I realize could be a way of me skirting around the elephant in the room. But I promise it’s not. I genuinely don’t have a process.
  
  Which you would think after, you know having You, Me, and Our Heartstrings come out and then Love Letters for Joy. Because Love Letters for Joy went from proposal to to probably finished draft in maybe six months. Plus balancing a full-time job and moving to New York City. Just give yourself grace—however you write, you’re a writer, no matter what you have going on. Giving yourself grace is also a big part of the process because if you write until you’re burned out, where you don’t want to look at these characters anymore, you’re like, “Oh my God, I hate everything I’ve written. Do I even know how to do this anymore?” You do. You do! What you need to do now, as you’re realizing those feelings is close your word doc. Close your Google doc, just close everything  down and go do something else, and you’re going to come back and you’ll be fine.
  
  Just basically giving yourself grace and realizing when you’re close to burnout is part of my process. Regardless of if I recognize it myself, sometimes my roommate will be like, “No, you’re spiraling, you’re spiraling, you’re fine.” I’m like, “Okay, okay, I’ve got this.” So burnout is part of the process, though, but what you’re going to get, what you need to do, is just recognize that and then give yourself grace to calm down and to realize that you’re going to be okay and you’re going to be able to come back to this.
• What are some things that inspire you while writing?
• That’s a good question. I’ve never really thought about that before, which is very strange. But I think what inspires me in terms of writing Love Letters for Joy, because Love Letters for Joy, when I initially had the idea, I wasn’t intending for it to be a retelling of Cyrano [de Bergerac]. Then I realized, “Wait, it is, okay.” So me, being an unabashed theater kid, is entirely in this book. But it’s just, with Love Letters for Joy, it was my love of romance and my love of theater, and also my love of tropes that are in that book. I was like, “Let me just take this book full of as many tropes as I want and let me do this really intricate relationship dynamic for the first time and see if I can pull it off.” And I did, so it’s very much to the point of me taking in the world around me, taking in things that I love, and my favorite thing in the world is character creation. That is my favorite thing in the world. Whether I am making my 11th cleric in DnD or I am working on characters for a book or something else, I love character creation. So honestly, just knowing what I love about the whole process of being creative and writing is what inspires me.
  
  So my advice, if anyone is looking for advice on this matter, just find what you love. If you love character work, have fun with it. It is literally whatever you make it, whatever you want to do. If you are someone who loves plot, number one, please tell me what plot is. Number two, just enjoy that and embrace your love of plot and your love of intricate worldbuilding. Just find what speaks to you and that will be your inspiration forward. I promise. 
• You said you write whenever you’re inspired, but how do you handle when you have no motivation to write, when you feel like you’ll never finish what you’re writing? If you have felt that, how do you move through this?
• I let myself stop because pushing myself is not good for me, it’s not good for my anxiety, it’s not good for my depression. And I speak openly about my mental illnesses because it’s important to break the stigma. And that’s just not good on my body because especially as someone who is chronically ill on top of anxiety and depression, it’s not good for you to be physically stressed and mental stress turns into physical stress for me. And cerebral palsy affects your muscles. My muscles are tight right now. And it just doesn’t feel conducive to working properly and really anything. So why push myself when I am knowing my body is telling me, “You need to stop. It’s okay. Just step away from your computer. Go get your cat, go sit on your couch, go eat something good, rewatch The Unsleeping City for the umpteenth time, you’re going to be fine. You just need a bit of a break.” So I handle that by knowing I need a break. I don’t let myself kind of push through that because that’s just not going to get me, personally, anywhere. And it’s important that I recognize that. 
• What is your favorite book or movie, and if you have multiples, tell us, what do you like to read? What do you like to watch?
• The book that got me into YA romance. It’s 13 years old now, as I say that I feel as if I have to walk into the sea because I’m 32 years old. So the book that got me into YA romance was Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. The love confession scene in that book is one of my favorite love confession scenes in all of fiction ever.
  
  I love that book so much, but I also am a huge, huge fan of The Bone Houses, which is a YA fantasy horror about these two kids who go across a medieval Wales to uncover this mystery of these creatures called the bone houses, which are anthropomorphic skeletons. And the girl is a gravedigger, she has an ax. The boy is a mapmaker and he has chronic pain. And there’s also an undead goat. And it’s just so much fun. And there are moments, as a disabled person, where you’re reading it, and Ellis, the male character, says stuff about disability. And I had to put the book down like, “Okay, I’m reading this book at 10:30 at night and it’s hitting me where I live.” And so there’s that and there’s romance in that book. So it’s very, very sweet if you like your horror with a little bit of romance, you know, and some skeletons, that’s also good. 
  
  I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by my friend Jonny Garza Villa. That book is incredible. And I’ve also read Ander & Santi Were Here, which is their next book coming out very soon, and I love that, too. So I’m just so blessed to have writer friends in my life who I just love and whose books I love. And it’s just so sweet. So I hope that everyone here finds that community and it feels like you guys are cultivating it here. So that’s just really special. So take that to heart. 
• Have you used sensitivity readers? And if so, how do you find them?
• I haven’t used sensitivity readers for Love Letters for Joy. But as far as how you can find them, there’s a lot of networking online. My roommate is a sensitivity reader, actually, and I’ve worked as a sensitivity reader before, because I’ve worked and I’m coming up on my first full year of publishing, but I’ve been in children’s publishing for a little bit before that, so I worked as a sensitivity reader. And so my advice on finding them is I know there are networks out there online, so you can seek them out that way. There might have been a database somewhere at some point, but I honestly can’t remember. I hope that answers your question at least somewhat. I apologize if it does not.
• I would love to hear about how much input or control you had about this beautiful cover because I’m obsessed with it. What was the process of that? Did they kind of give you a say in what this cover looks like? How do you feel about it? Do you feel like it represents the story?
• So I was on my way to sign stock at Books of Wonder for the launch of You, Me, and Our Heartstrings the day of the launch event, I believe. So I was getting ready to go. I was like, “Okay, I have to get in the Uber and go, go, go, and then I have to come back and get ready.” Like, I’m like, I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off. “Let me just do this. I’m so busy.” And as I was getting ready to leave, my editor told me, she’s like, “Here’s the final cover for Love Letters for Joy.” So the first time I saw the cover, it looked like this. And I just started screaming. Like what? Like it’s absolutely gorgeous. I love it so much. And it definitely embodies the book. And because Union Square is a pretty big part of the book, it’s one of my favorite places in New York City, but also it’s where Joy lives. And to have Union Square on the cover, and I know exactly where this is, if you go to Union Square, you know exactly where this part is. And so to have Union Square on the cover is amazing.
  
  To have Joy as her beautiful fat self with her ace pride bag is amazing. Even just down to her freckles. They got everything. And even having just simple things, like a dog, because there is a scene with Golden Retrievers in this book, and they have a dog on the cover, and there’s also casual wheelchair rep in the background. And the fact that the thought of that even happened just overjoys me because there is a character in Love Letters for Joy who is a wheelchair user. I will not spoil who he is, but I love him very much. And so to have that representation on the cover is amazing and just Joy. And, you know, whoever Cupid is, they’re adorable. And I love the height difference because they do have a considerable height difference. Height difference is one of my favorite tropes in the world, I love it. I put it in basically everything. So I just love this cover so much, and it’s just so special to me.