The scene: it’s mid-March, I’m drafting something new, the weather in Colorado is flirting with spring. I recently bought a four-pound bag of Jelly Bellys from Costco. To sum it up:

And then ARCs happened

Advance reader copies (ARCs) are the earliest publicly consumable version of a book. Sometimes printed, sometimes digital, these tend to appear about six months before pub so that reviewers, librarians, booksellers, and good people like that can engage with a story before it enters the world at large.

To me, the ARC stage of a book’s life feels basically like this, and then like this:

The Heartbreak Hotel started as a tiny little flicker in my brain, and now it’s a real thing I can hold in my hands. If that’s not magic, tell me what is?

Preorder The Heartbreak Hotel

But ARC season is not only breezy photoshoots on blue-sky days (though I think that should be a big part of it, for all of us!). It’s also when the book goes up on NetGalley and Edelweiss, publishing-industry platforms where readers can request ARCs for early review.

Essentially, this marks a seismic shift in The Heartbreak Hotel’s life—from being received only by readers I know to being released into the wider world for public consumption.

To me, sending a book into the world is a practice in saying: Here is something I made using the most vulnerable parts of myself. Would you like to judge it?

An impossible act, if I think about it too closely. A paralyzing brain spiral waiting to happen.

And yet the dichotomy is, of course, that sharing our stories is the reason many of us do this at all. We write books to share them and to be known through them. To chase that special sort of communion created between human beings consuming art and feeling seen. There isn’t communion without vulnerability; I can’t have one of these things without the other. This career is both the best and hardest part of my life rolled into one experience.

Reviewer spaces (like NetGalley) are for readers, and much of what happens to The Heartbreak Hotel from this point is A) out of my control and B) none of my beeswax. But loosening my hold on something that I’ve spent so much time caring desperately about is, in a word, tough. Other people’s wisdom helps.

I read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act last year and jotted down a few resonant lines from it in the notes app on my computer, where I can easily cling to them when I’m feeling despondent about my own creative acts. Here are two of those:

“The goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world.”

“When we’re making things we love, our mission is accomplished. There’s nothing at all to figure out.”

Over the many months these have sat on my computer, my brain has congealed them into one piece of advice: The goal of art is to share who we are, and how we see the world. If I’m making things I love, there’s nothing else for me to figure out.

And yet every stage of the publishing process gives me a new thing I think I should be figuring out. These tend to sound like:

• Will people love this story as much as I do, or am I delusional?

• Did I phrase that Instagram caption like an absolute dingus?

• Should I be reading my book’s Goodreads stats as if they’re tea leaves?

If these examples sound hyperbolic to you, please know my brain loves to operate in hyperbole. There’s no thrill like a life-or-death situation I have made up from nothing! (I’m working on it.)

I think all of these questions boil down to one, which is: Am I doing this right?

It’s a whisper that rises from the dark basement of myself—a young, terrified part of me that needs reassurance. Every milestone in publishing gets me frantic to figure these things out, but I don’t need to. It’s not my job to write a book that everyone will love (impossible), or to be present online in any inauthentic way, or to track Goodreads stats. There is no objective “right” in art at all.

My brain is trying to collect data to prove something to myself that I already know: I want to spend my life doing this work.

A writer’s job is actually quite simple: Write stories that share who they are, and how they see the world. Make things they love. The goal of art isn’t perfection—not even goodness—it’s just that.

There’s nothing at all to figure out.

Okay, pivoting to one of the more surreal things that has ever happened to me

Jodi Picoult read The Heartbreak Hotel. Not going to bury the lede on that one. Jodi Picoult!

The night before I got this news, I was at the ER until two o’clock in the morning with one of my dogs. Puffin is a high-maintenance queen and we often find ourselves seeking medical care in the wee hours.

She’s fine now, and (importantly) cute as ever. But when that email hit my inbox I was a sleep-deprived puddle on my living room couch and I actually thought I might be hallucinating.

Jodi Picoult is one of those authors whose books feel foundational to my life. I have a visceral memory of overstaying my welcome on an exercise bike at the gym in high school because I couldn’t put Nineteen Minutes down. I finished it, then immediately went back to the first page to start again. I reached the finale of My Sister’s Keeper on an airplane and cried so conspicuously that the flight attendant came to check on me. Jodi’s books have kept me company through all the phases of my life, through every version of me that I’ve been.

All this to say: I’m deeply humbled by, and grateful for, Jodi’s blurb. Words can’t quite do it justice, so I’m going to stop here.

Let’s round this out with my March bookshelf

I spent this month in the company of some deeply excellent books. When my brain gets a-spinnin’, there’s nothing better for it than to dig into other people’s smart words.

An extra moment, here, for B.K. Borison’s First-Time Caller, which takes place in Baltimore and tugged me so keenly backward to the four years I lived there in college. While I did not hook up with a hot radio host (shame) during my tenure in Charm City, I did do a lot of the other things FTC’s cast loves to do: eat Bertha’s Mussels, house a full pack of Berger cookies, walk through the Inner Harbor feeling silly in love and completely lit up by it.

I met my husband when we were students in Baltimore; the pure magic of Becs’s writing coupled with my own nostalgia made First-Time Caller an absolute knockout for me. This book recently hit the New York Times list, and it’s no wonder—B.K. Borison is a gift we’re so lucky to have.

Okay, back to my draft (and my Jelly Bellys). Until next time. ❤️

xo, Ellen

P.S. I’ve received a few questions about signed preorders for The Heartbreak Hotel and yes, you can order one right this very moment! They’re available from my local indie, Boulder Bookstore, and will come with special goodies (more on that soon).