It's been two weeks since my dad died, and I barely recognize the person I've become in the days since. The stories I couldn't wait to tell have gone quiet, the things I once loved feel strangely distant, and the only words I can seem to find are poems. Grief is a peculiar thing, especially when you're mourning someone whose place in your life was complicated. In my latest Writing About Writing article, I'm sharing what it feels like when the world keeps turning but yours has changed completely, when you miss someone you can never speak to again, and when, perhaps most unexpectedly, you begin to miss yourself, too.

Apparently, my creative process involves finishing a novel, announcing a publication date and then deciding the whole thing needs to be rewritten. An excellent system, really, if your goal is to drive yourself completely mad. Unfortunately, Even the Fire Loves You Until You Are Ash won't be arriving on November 13th, and I've made a rather important decision about how I'll approach publishing from now on. In my latest Writing About Writing article, I'm sharing what's been happening behind the scenes, why I'm putting down the deadlines, and how I'm learning to give both my stories and myself a little more breathing room.

What do you do when you're deep into the final formatting edits of a novel and suddenly decide the best course of action is to tear most of it apart and start again? Apparently, if you're me, you question your life choices, contemplate the need for adult supervision and then get straight to work undoing months of progress. In my latest Writing About Writing article, I'm sharing the frustration of making a decision I know is right, the terrifying vulnerability of publishing a book, and why I seem determined to make finishing a novel as difficult as humanly possible.

Yesterday, I spent an entire day writing three paragraphs. Three. And because the universe has a sense of humour, they happened to be part of a sex scene—which is particularly unfortunate for a romance author who never actually intended to write romance. From my childhood love of horror to the challenges of inhabiting characters whose minds are nothing like my own, I'm sharing why writing Even the Fire Loves You Until You Are Ash has occasionally made me question my life choices, and why those three infuriating paragraphs might have been worth every minute.

What happens when writing a character means spending hours inside a mind that works nothing like your own? While writing Even the Fire Loves You Until You Are Ash, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to understand a character without agreeing with them, why Cersei Lannister is so brilliantly written, and the strange experience of trying to make someone completely believable when you’d really rather they leave your office.

What do huskies, calatheas and a 99,000-word romance novel have in common? Apparently, they’re all things I was warned would be difficult. I’ve been thinking about the advice we’re given, the anxiety it can sometimes create, and the surprisingly difficult task of learning when to listen, when to trust yourself, and when to stick to your guns.

I rewrote On the Edge of After after realizing the version I had published wasn’t actually the book I wanted to write. Here’s what happened when I stopped worrying about what a romance novel was supposed to be, started trusting my own story again, and encountered one of the greatest challenges in fiction writing: finding a way to remove a character’s underpants without ever having to use the word underpants.