He blushed a bit there, which I didn’t get at the time. “It’s how you talk about yourself, it’s hard not to pick up the habit.” He smiled.
I was still April May, the snarky BFA grad, but that’s not who I wanted the world to see. That wasn’t the person who would establish First Contact with an alien race. So I was also April May, the surprising, quirky, unassuming, but passionately intelligent speaker for the Carls.
“So you don’t think I should have it ghostwritten.”
“It does not seem like the sort of thing April May would do,” he repeated.
“UGH! I completely agree with you and it is so annoying. How long are books? How much do the NaNoWriMo people write?”
“I’ll look it up.” He started to get out his laptop.
“Fifty thousand,” Andy shouted from the living room without missing a beat.
I turned back to Robin with a smirk. “Always use all the tools at your disposal. So that means I only need to write one word fifty thousand times. I mean, not the same word over and over. How many words are in the average tweet? Like twenty? So that’s just like twenty-five hundred tweets. I can tweet twenty-five hundred times. Oh god, I probably have. Can we just publish a book of my tweets?”
“No, but there are degrees of doing this on your own. You don’t have to sit in here by yourself for a month straight doing nothing but writing. I think what we need to do is get you a great editor, someone who has worked on books like these. If they end up writing a significant part of the book, you can credit them as a coauthor because that’s the sort of thing April May would do.” He smiled at me.
Robin had a narrow frame and bright, bright blue eyes. He didn’t smile much, so when it happened it felt good.
I leaned toward him a bit. “I’m glad you think so highly of me.”
He leaned away, pulling his laptop onto his lap. “I’ll email Jennifer about getting you some meetings with editors. You’ll have your pick, I think.”
I watched his hands move over his keyboard and thought to myself, We should put him in videos more.
February 19
@AprilMaybeNot: What do you think is the best profession for your spouse to have?
@AprilMaybeNot: Everyone is saying “Masseuse!” or “Doctor!” But I think it’s “Political Pundit” because that way you can shake them awake tomorrow morning and tell them that you’re going to divorce them if they don’t quit their terrible job that is destroying America.
@AprilMaybeNot: And yes, I am aware that I am a political pundit.
I’m sitting in a Pret A Manger in midtown. Because of the constant stress of being April May, I have forgotten what sleeping a full night is like and I am now a huge fan of coffee. I usually get an Americano with two shots, no room for cream. But I dump sugar in it because it makes it taste like hot chocolate.
At the table with me are Robin and Sylvia Stone, who is the second editor we’ve met with. The first guy was sure he knew exactly what I wanted to do with my book and got frustrated when I disagreed with him. I hated the meeting so much I pretended like I had diarrhea to get out of it. Sylvia, in her midthirties, dressed in a black silk button-down and jeans, with dark glasses around her gray eyes, was fitting my image of whom I wanted to work with a lot better.
“You’ve got two big problems with this story,” Sylvia was saying. “First, it’s too big. The whole world is in it, and people will be looking to you for a full story. You can’t just crank out some piece of slop because the whole world will want to read it. There’s an obligation, and that can be a lot of weight.”
Robin looked at me. I nodded, knowing that this was at least part of the problem I had been having.
“Second, it’s not over. You’re in the middle right now. If the Dream had never happened, there would be a clear narrative arc of this thing. It would end in some mystery, but in an appropriate amount of resolved mystery. Instead, there are millions of people working hard every day trying to solve the puzzles in the Dream and more of them are indeed getting solved every day. We can’t even endeavor to tell the whole story because we’re in the middle of it.”
“OK, I think you’ve put your fingers on at least two of the many problems I have,” I said to her. “That doesn’t necessarily help me, though.”
“You have to define a timeline and you have to decide what you want to get across. What are your goals with the book? What do you want everyone to think when they finish it? Do you want them to understand you? Do you want them to understand your story?”
“Honestly I just want them to come away feeling like this is an opportunity for humanity and that the Carls are a good thing, not some alien nightmare.”
“Oh, that’s really good, actually. Say that again but more.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, sorry, I . . .” She looked a little flustered. “I was editing you. I’m sorry, it’s a habit. I just mean, tell me more about that idea.”
I laughed. “That’s pretty great, actually. That was a good note. I’m honestly worried, because I think we’re just starting to get used to the impact that the social internet is having on us culturally and emotionally and socially. It wasn’t exactly bringing us together before this, right? But now I’m worried we have this whole other massive change to get used to. If we keep driving wedges, if we keep getting more and more scared . . .” I trailed off because I didn’t actually know what that would mean; I just knew it would be bad. “It’s like when winter comes and it sucks outside and the sun starts going down at 4:30 and you can look at that and get pissed and sad and grumpy. Or you can invite some friends over and make hot chocolate and share blankets and light candles and tell dumb high school stories. Both of those are natural ways to respond to it getting fucking gross outside, both fit really well with winter, but one is great and one sucks. It’s like that, except with space aliens instead of winter.
“Did I take your note well?” I asked, finally taking a breath.
“April, I want to help you write this book. And the good news is that a manifesto is probably the easiest book for you to write. You can put in moments of your story, but more than anything you’re making an argument. That’s a very traditional format for a book, and one that does not have to be long. You talk to experts, who will all take your calls. You quote them, you build an argument, and you publish the book. I could write the outline for that book this afternoon. Probably faster if you helped me.”
Robin had said this lady was no-nonsense. She had bylines in every major newspaper and magazine in the world and had several books as well, the most popular of which I had downloaded on Audible and listened to a bit of, called Luck Be a Liar. It was about how people are fooled by imagined or insignificant patterns into believing things that are very wrong. I liked it.
“OK, let’s do it,” I said.
“OK,” Sylvia replied, “your place or mine?”
“Why not right here? Let’s build an outline,” I said, not really knowing what that meant.
Robin said nothing. I think he was terrified of showing me how pleased he was because he thought maybe I’d notice and change my mind just to spite him.
In an hour’s time, we had built a book. It wasn’t written, but it was constructed. It had an introduction in which I talked a bit about me, but other than that, the chapters were basically arguments against being afraid of the Carls and that was that. Easy! I took the outline home that night and I fleshed out some of the sections. Sylvia sent them back to me with some comments and ideas for whom we could talk to to get quotes and more robust backing for my ideas.
March 10
@TheCADDY95: April May is pretty cute, but she completely ruins it by being so full of herself.