That’s what I always tell my seniors when we start brainstorming and drafting their college essays, that holiest of academic assignments that may determine the course of their personal and professional futures beyond high school. I didn’t come up with the phrase. That credit goes to Mr. Richard Edgar, associate dean of admissions at my alma mater, St. Mary’s College of Maryland. It is the advice he gave when I, as a baby teacher first trying to tackle this monumental unit of instruction, asked him for his thoughts on how I might guide my students.

“Tell them to write with the skill of an adult and the mind of a child,” he’d said. “Pull from that part of themselves that wanted to do anything, be anything, before the world told them they couldn’t. That they had to be a doctor or lawyer and any other profession was unacceptable… certainly something as absurd as a cookie maker or fire fighter.”

I cannot ask less of myself than I do of them.

The college essay is always our first major writing task when we return to school in September because most of my seniors want to submit their college applications for the November 1st deadlines. So in addition to the general stress of writing this bizarre assignment – which I would argue isn’t an essay at all, at least not the kind they’re familiar with – they are asked to do it under the guidance of a new teacher who most of them don’t even know.

Tackle a completely new writing style of creative nonfiction with a highly personal topic and offer all of that up to a stranger who is going to read it and stick a score on it, cementing judgment of not only your writing ability but the very depths of your character and experience.

It’s shitty, if you think about it.

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I don’t hold it against my seniors when they are at first hesitant, reluctant, anxious, resistant to the assignment. Most of them come in knowing nothing about me other than my name, and I’m asking for a tremendous amount of trust and vulnerability from them right off the bat. To be fair, I’m doing it to help them succeed in their college goals, and I do emphasize that intention. But it doesn’t change the monumental academic and emotional task I’m asking of them.

Writing is deeply personal. At least, good writing is. And during senior year, when my students are inching toward adulthood while desperately grasping for the last shreds of their childhood, the college essay is likely the most personal thing they’ve ever been asked to write.

I’ve wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember, certainly as long as I’ve been able to physically write. I spent hours in the backseat of our family car during road trips scribbling in my ever-present journal. Even more hours in my elementary school computer lab typing out stories I was certain at the time were future Pulitzer Prize winners. But actual publication always felt like a pipe dream, as elusive as going to the moon. Ironically, it was during COVID, when the rest of the world was shutting down, that I finally found the time to reconnect with my writing and finish my first ever novel. Sure, it took me five years to get the manuscript ready to query, but I did it.

I queried over one hundred agents. And I got one hundred rejections.

That was a punch to the gut. I received plenty of encouraging responses explaining that while they liked my story, it just “didn’t quite fit.” But to keep trying. Keep querying. Keep writing.

Is that not the very thing I ask of my students every single day?

And it’s a hard ask. Every rejection I received was another blow to my already fragile author ego. But my students are in an, arguably, even more stressful position. Agent rejections of my writing don’t hold nearly the amount of social pressure that my students feel. Institutions of higher learning aren’t going to determine my worth to their communities based on my writing hobby. No one is going to stick a score on my manuscript, then print that score on a piece of paper and file it away in a folder with my name on it, forever cementing it as a reflection of my ability. My friends aren’t going to make fun of me if they receive book deals and I don’t. My parents aren’t going to yell at me or ground me if I show them another rejection. (I mean, yeah, I’m 43 years old, so they can’t ground me anymore, but you get my point.)

I want to show my students that writing can be a safe place to explore, to risk, to question, to share. Yes, I have to grade them, but I’ve found ways to lessen the fear around those grades and develop my assignments in a way that (hopefully) leads my students to the grades they want while emphasizing skills and learning over scores. And in return, I ask them to keep trying, to keep writing, to keep coming back to me with questions and worries and trust.

I cannot ask less of myself than I do of them.

I finished my second novel in a year and half. I’ve sent it to editors and their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, but also challenging. Over the course of this process I started in 2019 to achieve my childhood dream, I’ve had plenty of moments of self-doubt, lack of motivation, frustration when my skills aren’t sharp enough to do what my story demands. Undoubtedly the same insecurities that plague my students. If I want them to trust me enough to guide them through this process, shouldn’t I also trust myself?

With that in mind, I’m turning my online spaces into my own ‘Writing Lab.’ I want to share the steps I’m taking to finish this second novel, the lessons I’m learning along the way, and how I’m trying to stay resilient when the ADHD fog rolls in or life pushes back. I hope that my own stumblings, struggles, and little victories may support others who feel the desperate pull to pursue a dream that seems completely out of reach.

After all, in case you haven’t heard, a lot more people are finding new ways to make it to the moon.

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I’ve been seeing clips of it everywhere for weeks; Instagram and YouTube are flooded with snippets of Alex and Poppy in the rain, in the bathroom, breathlessly confessing their love in the middle of a busy intersection. I’ll admit it, I got curious. My hype allergy fought back the whole time: No! NO! It’s going to be cheesy, cliche, underdeveloped, insta-love with no depth!

But, I argued, you told me the same things about Fourth Wing and Throne of Glass. And they’re both really good and I now love them.

Ok, yeah, maybe that’s a good point. But those have been around for years! They’re been tested! This movie is brand new. The hype is fresh! At its strongest and most icky!

Yeah, but it’s the weekend and really cold outside and I’m bored so, shut up.

Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

As I write this, my hype allergy is huddled over my shoulder, smirking and taunting, Told you so.

People We Meet On Vacation was… fine. I didn’t hate it. I don’t regret watching it, other than that it gives my hype allergy an excuse to gloat. It was fine, even cute at some points. Is it the next When Harry Met Sally? Absolutely not.

To be clear, I love Emily Bader and Tom Blythe, so my review/reaction has nothing to do with their performances. Honestly, they are the only reason I didn’t turn the film off at the 50% point and go to bed. They are both talented, compelling actors, and I think they did excellent work with what they were given. That’s my problem — they weren’t given much.

And to be fair, I haven’t read the book, but I found the film People We Meet On Vacation to be a classic example of why “show, don’t tell” is one of the cardinal rules of story telling.

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Show me the “friends” before the “lovers”

In order for Friends to Lovers to work as a trope, the friendship needs to be established. For me, People We Meet On Vacation didn’t do that. As viewers, we constantly hear that Poppy and Alex are best friends — from his brother, her spin companion (Was she a friend? We weren’t actually introduced and never saw her again, so I honestly spent about three minutes assuming she was a random person who was unfortunate enough to pick the bike next to Poppy while she’s in guy-crisis-mode) and their parents. But the only time we actually SEE their friendship is in the tail end of their initial road trip from Boston to Linfield, as they fall asleep confiding to each other about dark points in their pasts. I loved this scene! Especially because the road trip was so horrendous that this scene finally hinted at how these two characters might actually build something deeper together.

But then… nothing.

We see them together on their annual trips. They’re having fun, enjoying their time together, but not to any degree that seemed particularly special, especially from Poppy. I imagined subbing in any one of her other friends (although, based on the film, one would think both she and Alex didn’t have any) and her travel time would have been nearly identical. Alex’s girlfriend mentions how they text all the time, Poppy’s boyfriend says how much he hears about Alex, but viewers don’t SEE any of that. We don’t see them hanging out with mutual friends, keeping in touch throughout the year, planning their trips. Do they send Christmas cards? Birthday cards? Do they call each other after a shitty day at work to commiserate, or after an awesome day to share great news? When they’re bored and alone on a Tuesday night, so they send silly memes back and forth just because “This made me think of you”? Some of the greatest scenes in When Harry Met Sally are the ones in which Harry and Sally watch TV together on the phone, from their separate apartments. Nothin major as far as plot goes on in those scenes, but the character and relationship development is huge. They’re literally just two people, in their PJs, watching TV, both bored and unimpressed by what’s on, but neither one wants to hang up because they are sharing the boring evening with their favorite person.

I wanted to see that kind of friendship development for Alex and Poppy, and I didn’t get it.

Without that foundation, all of Emily and Tom’s excellent expressions of longing, angst, and tension felt like any other romantic interest. But their romantic distance didn’t make sense, because there wasn’t a foundation of friendship at risk. I saw two people who enjoyed being together, who trusted each other, were attracted to each other, but I didn’t see two best friends terrified of risking this relationship that is so vital to each of them as to hold them back from pursuing something more.

For Friends to Lovers to work, the audience/reader has to feel that same terror of “What if I lose my best friend?” And that didn’t come through, at least, not for me. Even the two years that Alex and Poppy were apart didn’t land because we don’t SEE it. We don’t see her reaching out and not receiving replies. We don’t see her scrolling through her missed calls list looking for Alex’s number. We don’t see her crying at night not understanding why her best friend isn’t responding. We don’t see him reaching for phone, ready to call or text her, then setting it aside. We hear, “You ghosted me for two years,” and that’s it. There was no emotional build up, and so no catharsis at the end.

I also took issue with what I think was meant to be Poppy’s big thematic character arc at the end. And I’ll go ahead and warn of spoilers, although this clip is all over the internet anyway. (See below) Poppy confesses her love for Alex, and reveals that she held back because she was afraid of being “too much” for someone to want a deeper relationship.

Sorry, where was that introduced or developed?

We know she wants to travel. We know she felt stifled in Linfield because her middle school peers were assholes and bullied her pretty horribly. But at no point during the film did I get any sense that she felt like “too much,” unlovable or overwhelming or overbearing. She tells Alex that she pulls away from potential love interests when they get to close, but… SHOW ME THAT! Show her running, show her trying to squash her quirks, show her trying to make herself small with everyone but Alex because he is the only one who fully embraces her for who she is. Her two boyfriends were jerks, but I didn’t see any evidence that she didn’t feel “good enough” for them or Alex.

Overall, People We Meet On Vacation seemed a sweet, albeit superficial flick about two friends who eventually get together. But I didn’t find it to be the earthshattering, genre-reviving masterpiece that social media claims it is.

See? Told you so. 😏

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My character Askuwheteau is a Yaococomico, one of the native peoples of southern Maryland, including St. Mary’s City. However, the Yaococomico no longer exist. They were wiped out in the early 1700s by white diseases (#colonistscausingproblems), and there are very few records about the Yaococomico because they didn’t have a written language, at least that we know of. The only written accounts of the Yaococomico are journal entries by a Jesuit priest who came over on the Ark and Dove with the original colonists. I’ve read some of his entries – he describes their appearance and clothing a bit – but his observations are, shall we say, incomplete. So, I’m really limited on the historical information available to help me develop Askuwheteau as an authentic character.

Enter the Piscataway.

The Pisacataway people lived in the region from southern and central Maryland, parts of northern Virginia, up into Pennsylvania. They are still very much alive, though sadly their lands and numbers have declined because #colonistscausingproblems. The Piscataway were neighbors to the Yaococomico, sort of like “cousins,” if you will. Most of the information on the Yaococomico available at Historic St. Mary’s City comes from the Piscataway, either their oral traditions or their own historical records.

The Piscataway are the ones performing at SMCM on Tuesday night, and I’m hoping that getting a chance to see their culture in action – dances, songs, stories, etc – will help me flesh out Askuwheteau a bit more. I’m particularly hoping that they’ll include some discussion of traditional religious beliefs, because I really want to include that in Ashkuwheteau’s story. The Piscataway were Algonquin, and through my research I learned a lot about Algonquin beliefs around the spiritual connection of all things – land, animals, humans, etc. But it’s a pretty complex concept, and I want to be sure I’m understanding it correctly before I go write it down in a book.

If you’re interested in the Piscataway event, the Museum of Native American History in DC has an excellent exhibit.

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What else am I working on?

Still researching for Ashkuwheteau, and trying to work in edits for my new ghost, Nsómi. I’ve rewritten a couple chapters, replacing Mathias de Sousa with Nsómi, and I have to admit that Nsómi’s personality comes through much easier than Mathias’ did. It’s almost like this fictional character was just waiting for me to figure out that he is supposed to be in this story, not Mathias (sorry, dude), and now he is all over it.

That being said, I definitely underestimated how hard it would be write a character based on an enslaved person. Nsómi’s personality is working, but I’m second-guessing myself on every line of dialogue, every physical description, every thematic connection that I try to tie in to his story. I desperately want to do justice to the man who inspired him, and I feel overwhelmingly unqualified. How can I possibly imagine and re-create the mindset and experience of an enslaved Bakongo man from the 17th century in a way that is sensitive and respectful to his reality AND conscious of my own privilege and ignorance? This is going to require all my booknerd creativity and skill plus my history dork obsession with factual detail and nuance of context.

My fabulous SMCM English and History advisors would be having a field day over this conundrum I’ve gotten myself into.

I got a lot of positive feedback, which was a much needed and appreciated boost to my author imposter syndrome. They liked my characters and humor, were intrigued to see where the story goes. But the group ended up in a twelve minute debate about the pitfalls or benefits of setting a story in an actual location — in my case, St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

MEET ME IN THE GRAVEYARD is set on the actual campus, and the ghosts featured in the story are all based on real historical figures and documented sightings. The campus itself isn’t integral to the plot (I could just as easily set it at any college) but the ghosts are. Their real history directly relates to themes I want to address in the book, and they are connected to this area and this school. But the group brought up some interesting questions about whether the setting might limit interest to only local readers (which honestly wouldn’t really bother me, but I guess I should theoretically be pursuing a wider audience). Half the class argued that most readers wouldn’t care, or would assume that St. Mary’s was a fictional college if they weren’t familiar with the area. Those readers would stay (hopefully) because they were invested in my story. The other half of the class argued that if readers have a preconceived impression of the school or area that it might conflict with their ability to fully connect with the story. Ultimately, the group advised me to consider how important this specific setting is to my story’s intention, and then make whatever decision best supports the narrative.

“We are thus of that ancient and honorable company of wise men of the tribe, of bards and story-tellers and minstrels, of soothsayers and priests, to whom in successive ages has been entrusted the keeping of the useful myths..”

~ “Every man his own historian,” by Carl Becker

History and Literature seem to be always bumping up against each other. I remember when I was a senior here working on my St. Mary’s Project, the culminating thesis that seniors are expected to complete, and I decided to write a historical novel. My history and literature advisors were two of my favorite professors, and also good friends with each other, and made a habit of meeting for coffee to debate my project: To what degree do I take artistic license with history in favor of story? With MEET ME IN THE GRAVEYARD, this question has a new layer. I mean, I’m writing a ghost story, so it’s not exactly going to be realistically accurate. But I do want to authentically portray my ghosts, particularly Moll Dyer, the “Winter Witch” of Leonardtown, Askuwheteau, a Yaocomaco (YA-koko-meeco) Indian, and Mathias de Sousa, the first African man in the Maryland colony, who was also elected to the Maryland Colonial Assembly and served for four years. Mathias isn’t actually on record as being sighted as a ghost, but I think he’s cool and I want him in my story so I made him a ghost. I’m doing extensive research on these three figures (there are three other ghosts, but they’re not of well-known historical figures, so I have more wiggle room there) and I want to portray them as accurately as possible. Especially Askuwheteau, since our knowledge of the Yaocomaco people of early Maryland is incredibly limited. I visited Historic St. Mary’s City yesterday and even their archeology team said there is unfortunately very little concrete information about the Yaocomaco, a branch of the Piscataway Nation that occupied the land south into Virginia and north to Baltimore, even stretching into Pennsylvania at some points. Accurate portrayals of these people are important to me, first out of respect, but second to hopefully encourage more interest in Maryland’s native history. Askuwheteau holds a special place in my heart as a representative of his people. I pray that my meager writing skills can do justice to these amazing individuals and their place in Maryland’s history. I plan to work my ass off to make sure I do.

For their final project, my senior English students have to make videos reflecting on their academic experience and connecting it to texts and topics we studied in class. One of my favorite submissions this year came from a member of our varsity swim and dive team who made his entire video about his belly flops. Clip after clip of him slipping off the board, flipping, flailing, and meeting the water with a resounding smack. It was horrible to watch. I mean, the video was excellent, but my own torso was aching after watching it. He spliced in plenty of his skateboarding crashes too, just to keep things extra spicy, so my knees, hips, back, and neck also suffered sympathy pain watching him face plant and crash on concrete and skateboard ramps. The worst was definitely the clip when he tried to do a vertical flip and ended up landing on his back on the top edge of the ramp. I had to get up and stretch out after watching it.

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because
each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

~ “The Guest House,” by Jalaluddin Rumi

I kept waiting for the clips to change, to inevitably show him improving. He’s one of the top divers in our county, so at some point he had to stop screwing up, right? Nope. Flop after brutal flop for five full minutes. Only the final thirty seconds featured clips of sophisticated, successful dives, twists, and flips. The relief was palpable as he successfully landed each one.

But through every horrific and painful clip, his narration reflected on perseverance, how working through his mistakes, injuries, and setbacks helped him develop a mindset and will tough enough to reach his goal of diving at the collegiate level. That is one of the things I love about teaching seniors. Senior year itself is a testament to the perseverance of these kids. Sure, they get goofy, distracted, oversleep, skip class. But many of them also manage a course load double that of college students while also excelling at the extracurriculars they love and savoring their dwindling time with childhood friends. The adults in their lives urge them to grow up, mature, get ready for “real life,” and they do. Not perfectly by any means; “perfectly” doesn’t exist. Life is mistakes, missed chances, stress, and screw ups, stitched together into a patchwork of progress. I hope my seniors start seeing the glimmer of this reality as they prepare to graduate: that success is covered in scabs, and happiness often waits behind tears.

I’m not sure how people learn perseverance, but I’m beginning to understand how to teach it. Create an environment where students (and teachers!) feel safe to make mistakes, where they feel secure in the knowledge that they won’t face punishment or shame for those mistakes. Ask questions: lots of them! And leave some unanswered. We can survive without all the answers, sometimes even thrive because we don’t have them. Emphasize revision and risk, but mean it and maintain policies that support it: time to brainstorm, draft, revise, delete, rewrite. Point out our own mistakes; educators aren’t perfect, particularly Yours Truly. What do the kids think of our lessons? How we deliver information? What can change, or improve? We have to be willing to release some control, to admit we don’t know all the answers and never will, in order to grow. We can’t feign perfection if we want to cultivate perseverance.

I’ve had dreams of publishing glory since I was eight years old, and finishing my first novel was a fantasy fulfilled. But writing the story is Step One, and waiting through rejection after rejection feels like Prometheus’ eagle coming to gnaw on my ego every day. Perseverance grows it back, a bit humbler than before, but less brittle; more malleable, and less fragile. Sharing art with the world is vulnerability itself; we display a piece of ourselves to so many who will criticize and reject it, while praying that our piece finds the unknown person who needs it to feel more put together. We share the parts that make us human; not just the pretty parts, but the struggle too, and hope that our part will foster a bit more empathy in the world.

So like I said, while all this was going on in my head, one day I was chatting with a colleague about anxiety. And she said something that stayed with me. She said that she sometimes thought of her own anxiety as a “super power, because it makes me better able to sympathize with other people. It makes me able to see if someone is struggling, when other people might miss the signs.”

I liked the concept, and agreed with it. While anxiety can be crippling, it can also be a bridge of empathy, if it is kept on a leash and not allowed to run wild, ripping apart personality pillows and peeing on mindset rugs.

The comment stuck with me for weeks. I reflected on it, filed it away in my long term memory as a piece of advice I might use to comfort anxious students in the future.

Then, the pandemic hit. Quarantine began. While I was not physically alone (thanks, Mom and Dad :), I did have a lot of time to think. So did everyone else. And suddenly, it seemed like everyone was thinking and talking about the two topics I wanted to write about -- mental health, and education.

On every news broadcast we heard advice from doctors, therapists, religious leaders, politicians, even teachers and students, about ways to keep ourselves safe and sane in quarantine:

• Take care of your physical health. Eat right. Get exercise. Wash your hands. Wear your mask.

• Get outside. Go for walks in nature. (Those walks were clutch.) Play with your pets.

• Find someone to talk to. Use Zoom. Call friends and family. When your stressful feelings become overwhelming, confide in someone. Help each other through it.

In between teaching my virtual classes from my parents’ dining room table and helping my mother hunt down elusive rolls of toilet paper that were suddenly more valuable than gold, I started reflecting on this mental health advice. I even considered the negative side of mental health struggles: the misunderstood looks or tones or delayed contact that make us assume we know exactly what someone is thinking (always critical of us, right?), and the days when our brains feel so heavy that we can barely lift ourselves off the couch, let alone cook or clean anything.

Then my brain pulled out the file of the old conversation with my colleague as if to say, “This is what you’ve been looking for, ma’am.”

What would these mental health elements look like as “super powers”?

With that question, the five Gifts were born.

Ok, so I had a fantasy idea. I have never in my life considered writing a fantasy book. I’m a proud history nerd; I read, write, love historical fiction. Don’t give me elves and fairies and magic beans. I want facts, and source citations, and just enough intentional anachronisms to keep things entertaining. But the Gifts wouldn’t go away. I played with them, wondering which one I would prefer (Movement, 100%).

But I didn’t want to write a fantasy. I wanted to write about our education system, about the trends and troubles that I’d been seeing long before COVID started, but that had only gotten worse as we worked through quarantine and tried to come back from it.

Then my brain brought up another key point: Every teenager (I knew I wanted my MC to be a teen) wants super powers. They love talking about them, debating them, making up new ones.

But what if a teen lived in a world where super powers were common, but they didn’t have one? How would they feel, wanting that ability and knowing they couldn’t get it? And then what if, by some twist of fate, they discovered they might be able to learn the super powers?

A foggy image of a protagonist began taking shape in my head: a smart, determined teen who has no Gifts, but wants one, and is prepared to work hard to get one. This kid hasn’t been bitten by a magic spider, isn’t fulfilling any prophecies or fighting against a demonic villain bent on world destruction. This kid just wants to learn a super power, because really, who wouldn’t?!

I still didn’t have a plot, but I decided to get to know this foggy character, meaning I decided to give them a name. For me personally, naming a character is what makes them real. Find the right name, and the story will come together.

I started researching names. I knew I wanted a name that had meaning behind it, insight into who this character was and what they valued. I started first with “learning,” and then with “love.” My character loves to learn. That love of learning is what will get them through the struggle of learning a Gift.

After a lot of research, I found two names that clicked:

The name “Alima” has meanings in several different languages. In Arabic, it means “knowledgeable scholar.” In Hebrew, it means “strong, cultured, and wise.” In Urdu, it means “an intellectual, learned woman.”

The Welsh surname “Edevane” means “the young happy one.” I added an -i on the end for originality, and my heroine was born.

As soon as I saw her name -- Alima Edevani -- a sentence popped into my head and wouldn’t go away:

“Alima Edevani was eight years old when she learned she was not Gifted.”

And just like that, the plot started filling in. It was like she wanted her story told. I started keeping Post-It note pads around my house, because scenes would pop into my head at bizarre times and I would need to write them down. My phone was overflowing with Notes and Voice Recordings of scene ideas, secondary characters, side conflicts, dialogue.
I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

Gifted has been just that -- a gift. It is the first novel I have successfully finished, and like an anxious parent dropping her little one off to the first day of kindergarten, I am excited and terrified to send it out into the world. But I believe in this story, I believe in these characters, and I hope that others may find solace and understanding from my anxious, determined, loveably nerdy protagonist who refuses to stop just because society tells her to.

Before I explain the trickiness, I need to preface that it is really important to me as a writer to give my characters names that mean something. Names matter. Think about your name: Where did it come from? Who gave it to you? What does it mean? Names can shape our sense of self, and I try to choose names for my characters that embody some aspect of their deeper identity. Sometimes a character name’s meaning is privately special to me, but more often I like the names to have a meaning that readers can discover. For example, the name “Askuwheteau” means “He who watches” in Algonquin. That meaning is integral to his character, though I can’t tell you why yet because spoilers. But it is important. Just trust me on this.

My new character is replacing Mathias de Sousa. After hitting several roadblocks in my research on Mathias, I reached out to the fabulous Julia King, professor of archeology at SMCM, with my concerns. She suggested dropping Mathias, since there is actually a lot of disagreement in the academic community about his background, race, etc., information I would need to develop his character. She suggested instead a man named “Antonio,” who was enslaved at the St. John’s plantation in 1655. Antonio outright refused to do any work for his owner, a man named Simon Oversee, and ran away several times. Oversee ended up killing Antonio, and was charged with manslaughter by another member of the colony, but eventually acquitted. Antonio’s story is not nearly as well known as Mathias de Sousa’s – the little information I’ve found about him is from the legal charges against Oversee – but as soon as I read Professor King’s short description of him, I knew Antonio needed to be one of my ghosts.

But I can’t call him Antonio. That was the name given to him by Oversee at the start of his enslavement. And that just won’t do.

I know from Oversee’s records that Antonio was brought to the colonies on the Dutch slave ship Witte Paert from Loango slave port in present day Republic of the Congo, which means he was likely Bantu. I started researching traditional African names from the time period, and found one I absolutely loved: “Afamefuna” which means “May my name not be lost.” Ugh, it was perfect! So many layers of connection to Antonio’s character personally, but also wider commentary on the evils and lasting trauma of slavery. Only one problem: Afamefuna is an Igbo name, not Bantu. The Igbo are from present day Nigeria, far to the north from where Antonio likely came from. For comparison, it would be like someone living in Washington state connecting with someone in Arizona, except back before we had cars or planes or trains or any relatively easy form of transportation. And my well-trained inner history dork can’t just pick a name I like if I can’t back it up with facts.

I scoured the furthest corners of the internet for any connection between the Igbo and Loango slave port, but every source I found gave me a resounding No. There are no records of the Igbo and Bantu peoples interacting, through war or trade or anything else, and no records of Igbo peoples being taken to Loango.

Well, shit. Back to the drawing board.

I did eventually find a Bantu name that I think will work for Antonio: “Nsómi.” The name’s meaning reflects independence, resilience, and a strong, free spirit, all of which I think fit this character as I’m shaping him into my story. More importantly, I hope that it more faithfully represents the real person I am trying to recreate. GRAVEYARD might be a fictional paranormal mystery, but my ghost characters are based on real people, each of whom embody real struggles of their societies. I owe it to those individuals to do my best to accurately represent their stories. If I’m fortunate enough to get this story published, I pray that my ghosts will spark readers’ interest into the real history behind their characters.

I love Xaden Riorson. I’m on board. I’m not surprised by the level of obsession for this character on Instagram and Booktok, the flurry of AI-generated pictures and videos and clips of audiobook dialogue and millions of posts declaring love for this character punctuated by a dozen heart-eye emojis. But what does surprise me is the narrow focus of the obsessive content on him as merely a fictional romance/sex symbol while completely ignoring his literary depth. I’m not so naive to misunderstand the sex symbol obsession — Rebecca Yarros writes good looking men, but there is so much more to Xaden that makes him swoon-worthy, and I can’t help but wonder… where’s the love for all that??

I just recently finished Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm. I resisted reading them for ages because of my hype-allergy: anything that is hyped too much turns me off. I guess subconsciously I don’t believe that anything could be good enough to live up to that level of hype. But Fourth Wing did. Xaden did. And the reason he did has nothing to do with physical descriptions or graphic love scenes with Violet. I would argue that Xaden would be equally engaging, compelling, and attractive without a single graphic scene. There are plenty of male characters floating around Literature World with similar story elements, but they can’t touch Xaden for popularity among fans. And that is because of Yarros’ nuanced characterization of her anti-hero.

When we first meet Xaden at the top of the Parapet, he is a lovely enigma. Obviously attractive, but practically silent and an immediate threat to our heroine, Violet. Over the course of the story, Yarros peels back Xaden’s layers, slowly enough to feel authentic and believable. The reader learns, along with Violet, about Xaden’s troubled background as the son of a high-ranking rebellion leader, the loss and isolation that set him up for, yet the sense of responsibility he feels to continue his father’s good work. He sets himself as a guardian over all the Marked Ones; he freely chooses this role, despite the pressure it puts on him, and actively offers his support to these kids from the minute they enter Basgiath and throughout their covert missions. He schedules regular (illegal) mentoring meetings with the First Years, when one could argue that, as the strongest Third Year rider, First Years are beneath his pay grade and could be pushed off to lesser officers or cadets for help. From her hidden perch in the tree, even Violet concedes, “it would be nice if a high-ranking rider from my province gave a shit if the rest of us lived or died.” She acknowledges the quality of his character despite her plethora of reasons for disliking and distrusting him: “Damn it, I don’t want to find a single thing about Xaden Riorson admirable, and yet here he is, being all annoyingly admirable. Asshole.”

Xaden is an admirable leader because he doesn’t see any of his people as beneath him. He is invested in every Marked One who makes it across the Parapet, and as long as they are willing to fight for themselves, he will fight at their side.

His relationship with Violet is a study in healthy relationship psychology… literally. Readers get to see them grow beyond base attraction and learn how to be in a relationship together. Indeed, they teach each other how to be partners in every sense of the word. He pushes her, both physically and mentally, to sharpen her critical thinking and improve her strength and fighting strategy. He refuses to see her as weak or in need of protection, but he also doesn’t ignore the fact that she is at a physical disadvantage because of her condition and size.

He acknowledges that she’s small, but doesn’t push her to reach for the same fighting style as other cadets. He teaches her how to adapt to her unique strengths:

“You’re tiny.” He says it like an insult.

“Well aware.” My eyes narrow.

“So stop going for bigger moves that expose you.” He drags the tip of the dagger down his side. “A rib shot would have worked just fine.” Then he guides our hands around his back, making himself vulnerable. “Kidneys are a good fit from this angle, too.”

Perhaps most endearing is when he takes the initiative to craft daggers specifically for her size and strength; in Education, we call this a “differentiation” or “accommodation,” providing a student with adjusted work or resources to help them achieve the same standard of learning as other students. Xaden would make an excellent Special Educator, if he could stop slinging obscenities at his students and threatening to kill them when they’re frustrating.

Violet is also smart, which he loves (And I love that he loves it!) so he never gives her “answers” to her problems and challenges. When she struggles on the Gauntlet, he guides her to consider alternative options for assent, but he doesn’t tell her what to do. Likewise, in Iron Flame and Onyx Storm, he encourages Violet’s out-of-the-box plans. He goes beyond merely trusting her to actively encouraging her to improve plans and strategy: “Whatever is going through that beautiful mind, I’m here for it.”

He doesn’t ignore the things that make her different, things that others see as weakness. He doesn’t give her any cliche, patronizing lip service about accepting it or overcoming it. He urges her to work with and within her unique circumstance. He admires every part of her, encourages her and supports her in becoming more herself.

I think the best example of my point about Xaden are his parallels to Tairn. Tairn encourages Violet in much the same way Xaden does, but as a father-figure rather than a love interest, and readers adore Tairn and his unflinching support and loyalty to Violet. Tairn modifies his own flying style for her, accepts a saddle for her, even willingly bows to make it easier for her to mount. Not because he sees her as weak, but rather because he knows she is strong and simply needs these adjustments to reach her full potential. Just like Xaden, he doesn’t coddle her insecurities or physical limitations like Dain; indeed, he doesn’t see them as limitations, merely details to work with. When she argues that, “’Dragons value strength and cunning and…ferocity in their riders.’ None of which defines me.” Tairn is quick to cut off her doubts: “Please, do tell me more about what I should value.”

Both Tairn and Xaden love, respect, and embrace Violent as she is and as she can be as she grows into her own power. That kind of belief in someone is the essence of healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise. And while Xaden certainly possesses an extra layer of complexity because of the romance element, I don’t doubt he would respond the same as Tairn when Violent argued that she’s “not as strong as the other riders.”

“I know exactly who and what you are, Violet Sorrengail.”

But standing between me and finishing is a deep chasm of darkness and despair. Writers call it... LINE EDITING.

Line editing is like the marathon of writing. Well, the entire writing process is a marathon, but line editing is the part where you’re three-quarters of the way done and your right knee keeps creaking and your lungs are burning and sweat is stinging your eyes and the t-shirt you chose that seemed really comfortable this morning is chaffing in an unnaturally annoying way. But you’re so close! Just finish!

That’s where I’m at. Ten words stand between me and victory.

“Turns. Try. Only. Nod. Is. As. Was. Know. And. To.”

These are my “crutch words,” words that aren’t always necessary but come up in our natural pattern of speech. In conversation, they’re fine. In writing, they cost ink and paper inches, so they need to go. But getting rid of them can be tricky... and tiiiiiiiiiiiiime consuming.

So here are a few of my favorite hacks that I’ve discovered to help ease the editing process. Each of these have been a balm on my sore fingers and brain.

1. Go chapter by chapter, NOT word by word
   
   When I first started line editing, I opened my Google Doc, hit Ctrl+F, found all 3467 occurrences of the word “and,” and got to work. This was a terrible idea. It was at best, inefficient, and at worst, torturous. But a fabulous editor friend of my suggested a different strategy: chapter by chapter, not word by word.
   
   Copy/Paste each individual chapter into a new Google Doc, then Ctrl+F for my ten target words. Edit those words in the one chapter, then Copy/Paste the finished chapter into my Final Draft document before moving on to the next chapter. It creates a sense of accomplishment with every chapter that gets checked off, which helps with my motivation (because anyone else with ADHD knows that if you don’t feel like you’re making progress, progress is going to STOP). It also keeps my focus fresh because I’m not looking for thousands of occurrences of one word, I’m just looking for twenty occurrences in this one chapter. I got this!

2. Hemingway app
   As a general rule, AI frightens me. We have an entire film franchise that has already proven to us why AI is a bad idea. But it looks like it is here to stay, and the Hemingway app is one AI that seems like an ally rather than a terminator. At least, right now it does...
   
   You can copy/paste your writing into the Hemingway app free version and the AI will diagram out all your sentences for clarity, reading difficulty level, overuse of adverbs, passive voice, etc. It makes editing so much easier, because it finds the stuff you can cut to improve your writing, and offers suggestions about how to fix revision issues.

3. Scribophile
   Scribophile is an online forum where writers can post up to 3000-words of their work at a time and receive “critiques” from other writers. Every time you critique someone’s work, you receive karma points, which allow you to post more words. The more karma you earn, the more you can post! Of course, these are strangers (everyone uses pen names) so take the suggestions with a grain of salt. But I’ve been on Scrib for about a year and I’ve developed some great pen-pal friendships with other talented writers who have helped me so much with improving my story and my style. Plus, it’s a great place to post a note when you’re feeling frustrated or doubting yourself -- your fellow writers are always ready with a much needed boost to the ego!

4. Writing With Abbie
   This sweet, fabulous lady posts regular videos with helpful hints and guidance for writers. Her advice has been amazing with getting me through this intimidating process. This particular video made line editing feel like something I could actually handle back when it seemed like the most daunting task ever. Abbie, bless you and thank you!