about being good

Hello, my friends!

I feel like I’ve written this particular newsletter a million times in my mind—usually while driving, because that seems to be the only time my brain feels safe enough to say things.

(I’m just going to tell you now, it’s going to be a winding road to get to the actual reason for this newsletter but I hope you’ll stay with me while I ramble for a bit.)

In some ways, it’s VERY weird that I ever became a published author; for as long as I can remember, I’ve been content to let other people talk. They’re going to say it better, smarter, more efficiently and interestingly, more [add any other word that’s complimentary to them and derogatory to me] anyway. Despite what Mary Oliver says in her (perfect, transformative, singular) poem “Wild Geese”, I DO have to be good, and there is always a gnawing fear in me that I won’t be. That, actually, I already am not good, so why am I trying?

When I wrote You, with a View, I was in a metaphorical car. I didn’t have an agent or a book deal. I was the only person who could hear the things I was saying, which meant I could fuck it up without witnesses. I could be wrong and go back and erase a sentence or a paragraph or a whole scene in pursuit of being good. It took me a breezy four months to draft it and wow, I wish I could take 2021 Jessica’s face in my hands and say, “remember what this feels like!!!” a la Jack in Lost when he’s screaming “We have to go back!!!”

Getting an agent and a book deal happened at the end of 2021. I started drafting TEV in 2022, and already it felt different. I wasn’t speaking to readers quite yet, but I had witnesses now. My ideas were slower to come because I questioned whether I was doing it right. Or rather, I questioned whether I was doing it good (I know this is grammatically incorrect, but thematically you get why I used it, right??) (see how I look for assurance even here?). Writing TEV over the course of eight months was like being in that car, except the car now had passengers, and it was so much harder to hear that voice in my brain—not because the passengers were loud, but because I got intimidated and quiet.

Sometimes I still get mad at myself for the way I froze up mentally when YWAV came out in 2023—like, my nervous system can’t tell the difference between publishing a book and being chased by a wild animal because WHY? But when I allow myself some grace, I remember that there’s actually no way to prepare for the way your brain is altered when you share your work publicly and you open yourself up to be perceived by people in positive and negative ways. It is so overwhelming, and for me, a person who really is content to let other people take the mic 9 times out of ten because I don’t want to fuck it up, that change in my life was almost debilitating. I wasn’t in my car anymore. I was on stage, mic in MY hand, while I projected Noelle’s story out to the world. It sounds so stupid to say this now, but when I got my book deal, I don’t think I realized I would be speaking. And I wasn’t prepared for readers to hear me.

Soon after YWAV came out, I signed another two-book contract with my publisher despite the additional pressure it presented in my post-pub brain. I pitched the idea for my third book, got it approved, sat down to write it in October of 2023—and drafted 30-something thousand words of nonsense. And then 15k of nonsense from a different angle. And then thirteen versions of a first chapter (I wish I was kidding).

I could not write a goddamn thing. It wasn’t my own voice in my head; it was everyone else’s. Every time I thought of an idea or wrote a word, all I heard—aside from my two brain cells banging off the sides of my skull—was: Would people like it if I executed a scene this way? Would they be annoyed by my main character if she reacted to something this way? Was my story idea too outlandish? What if I didn’t write a theme that resonated with people? I’d only ever turned in super clean first drafts to my editor; what would she think if I turned in a fucking mess?

What if I wasn’t good, and I had thousands of witnesses? Not to mention a publisher waiting for me to cough something up because I was, you know, LEGALLY BOUND to and a deadline to meet and—?

I cannot stress enough that this is a very bad way to write a book. So you know what I didn’t do in 2024? Write a book. You know what I still haven’t done in the first quarter of 2025? Write a book. To borrow (and twist) Mary’s words a bit, what I have been doing is walking on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. And, to bring this full circle, also looking for my fucking car!!

The truth is, I can’t go back to 2021 me who wrote a book while going 100 down the (metaphorical) freeway, windows down, her little brain screaming the story at her. If I’m going to continue as a published author, there will always be passengers, but I have to find a way back to the driver’s seat. I have to let my brain feel safe enough to say all the things it needs to say, even if those things aren’t good. Like Mary says, I don’t have to repent for that. I just have to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves, and I think somewhere deep down in there it still loves writing.

Okay, here’s where the road stops winding and I tell you why we’re all gathered here: I don’t know when I’ll be publishing another book. I was going to be the mysterious author where, a year or two from now, people would be like “Whatever happened to Jessica Joyce?!” but I’ve never been mysterious a day in my life. I’m a horrific oversharer and so this is the result.

Also, I’ve gotten a handful of requests to share timing and details and updates about book 3 and I have been stress sweating so bad, because I have none of that and am not sure when I will. I guess it all depends on when I find my car.

Until that happens, I hope you’re reading beautiful books (I just started Jamie Harrow’s Fun at Parties) and are staying safe and are finding little pieces of joy wherever you can. I’ll leave you with a reminder from our friend Mary, who I imagined holding my hand through writing this entire post.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

xoxo

Jess