Maddy Monroe // Guest Writer
When people ask me when I started Always Winter, I usually tell them I started last spring – that’s when I first started writing. However, I don’t personally think that’s where the writing process begins, because I’ve been thinking about this story for…ever.
I remember listening to “Moon Song” by Phoebe Bridgers (which is playing as I write this, by a complete coincidence) quite a bit the summer before my senior year of high school. When I listened, I had this recurring vision of a couple walking home from a party in the middle of the night and ending up in a pool. Which is, more or less, exactly what happens in the first section of Always Winter. (Apologies for the spoilers.)
Eventually, I turned my mental music video into a story. I wrote what is now the first ten pages of Always Winter, submitted it for a workshop in my Intro to Creative Writing course, got some feedback, revised it, and, completely unsatisfied with this draft, decided to lengthen it. Looking back, I think I mostly just wanted to give Maeve and Ethan (my main characters, and my babies) the complicated backstory I spent so much time alluding to in those first ten pages, but I did have Wilde Press in the back of my mind. Still, if you told me then I’d now be sitting here, writing this blog post, as copies of my story with my name on the cover sit in a box on Emerson’s campus waiting for me to breathe in their fresh book sent…well, I would have laughed in your face.
I wrote at least half of Always Winter last summer, in between days wrangling first graders at summer camp and working shifts at my dad’s veterinary hospital. I told myself I was going to have the first draft done by August 12th, so I had a month to look it over before Wilde Press submissions were due. I don’t think I made my deadline, which I knew would happen the second I set it.
The email letting me know that my manuscript was going to be published is easily the best email I’ve ever received. It’s been starred, screenshotted, imported into my Google Drive, and sent to every member of my family. I was silly enough to think all I had to do from that point on was kick my feet up and imagine what it was going to be like to hold a story I wrote in my very own hands. Is it obvious now that I’ve never taken a publishing class?
Author Night was my first step in the publication process. There, I got to meet the incredible students that make up Pub Club, as well as Karina Jha, the author of Lisoyid, the other Wilde Press manuscript for this semester (which I am so stoked to get my hands on a copy of!!!). As I answered questions about the writing process, I felt dumbfounded that so many people liked my writing enough to help get it published. Afterward, Karina and I sat down with our publishers, Charlotte Drummond and Arienne Dinh, to sign our contracts. I remember feeling both extremely professional (I’d never been to a contract signing before!) and a bit overwhelmed as I read about all the tasks in front of me. Overall, though, I was mostly just excited.
First came the editorial letters. I don’t care what any other author may say: receiving an eight-page document full of all the things that need to change in your story, with a two-week period to make all those changes, is terrifying. I’ve had a hard time being the writer that embraces critiques with open arms. Leaving a workshop, I’ll take the suggestions I was given and I will make them, but I almost never do so enthusiastically. Luckily, my editorial team gave nothing but incredible suggestions. Even though I was working with such a short time period to get those substantive edits in, I truly felt like Always Winter was getting better with each change I made. (Even if I dragged my feet in making them, just a little.)
Next, I got to write my first set of author extras: a bio, a dedication page, and an acknowledgements section. I probably read over those more times than anything in Always Winter, oddly enough. I had a hometown friend take my first author photo on a meetup in Salem, and shortly after, I jumped into the copyediting process with my team. Then came my cover options, which was maybe what I had been most eagerly awaiting all along. I was laying in my bed, inside a completely dark dorm room, fighting off a dose of Nyquil, when the covers came in. I had told myself I wasn’t going to show anyone which cover I had chosen until the official reveal, but I didn’t do a great job of holding myself to that: I was too excited! By the next morning, several of my friends and family had been texted the cover I liked the most, the one that’s now wrapped around a hundred copies of Always Winter.
Since then, it’s been mostly marketing, which has been, unexpectedly, one of my favorite parts. Karina and I went on EIV Evening News, and our interviews will be available for viewing soon. We have Instagram takeovers and more interviews to come. Before long, it’ll be December, and we’ll be off to the launch (December 8th, Lion’s Den, 8:30 PM – be there!!!).
It feels ridiculous that in just a matter of weeks, the whole process will be finished. Everyone will have their copies, I’ll have mastered my author signature, and real-life people will hold a real life book with a story that I wrote in it. I’m so full of excitement and gratitude that I might explode.
Come by the Lion’s Den on December 8th and grab a copy of Always Winter! Proceeds will go to the Team Awareness Combatting Overdose, a non-profit committed to minimizing overdose deaths by providing access to neutral, scientific data and subsidized harm reduction tools.
About the Author: Madeline Monroe currently splits her time between her hometown, South Lake Tahoe, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, where she’s earning her BFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. Both her west coast and east coast homes are close to her heart. She writes Realistic Fiction, and almost all of her stories start with a relationship. She denies all allegations that her characters are based on real people, and she has never been to a destination that didn’t inspire her. When she’s not writing, she likes to go to concerts, visit coffee shops, take walks, and think way too hard about things that really aren’t that deep.