RE: About Tomorrow (TOTWT Release Day)

This is a photo from 2018 hence the quality.

You know the scene in Love Actually where Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman are listening to Joni Mitchell in their living room, and Harry (Rickman) asks, "What is this we're listening to?" To which Thompson, as Karen, replies, "Joni Mitchell...Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel." I am convinced that if the movie was remade today (which it definitely should not be as the original is a classic, will never get old and cannot be improved in any way, shape or form–but I digress), the artist they would be listening to is Taylor Swift. Maybe this is just a personal preference, but I think over 277 million people, Travis Kelce included, would agree with me because the sentiment in the scene would ring true the world around. If any artist taught me how to feel, it is Taylor Swift.

Taylor has songs for every emotion. There are tracks that make me feel in love (Daylight), sad (Bigger Than The Whole Sky), angry (My Tears Richocet), nostalgic (Fearless), and everything in between. But my favorite feeling that she was able to invoke is hope.

I think a lot about hope. As someone who has never been romantically in love, is obsessed with the overarching idea of love, and has been lucky enough to experience an abundance of platonic love, I find hope to be very similar. In the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:13 links hope and love with faith, stating, "Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." As a society, we focus a lot on love, with bits of its companions sprinkled throughout our stories. Faith is surety without fact. It's Wendy Darling believing she can fly to Neverland. It happens in the present. Hope deals more with the future state of affairs. Not to steal from Coriolanus Snow, but, as an avid and intense dreamer, “a little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous.”

Hope is addictive. It is the thought that maybe, this time, everything will work out or that whatever is heading your way will be better than what you are dealing with now. It is seeing the things you want begin to take shape just out of reach and attempting to move toward them. If faith is paired with trust and a little pixie dust, hope requires bravery and the right amount of luck, be that in the form of an algorithm, an acquaintance or a circumstance. Because it deals with things to come, hope is fickle. It makes no guarantees. There will always come a time when the things you have been hoping for either become a reality or simply don't. It's James standing on Betty's porch in Swift's ballad, Betty: Betty, I'm here on your doorstep / And I planned it out for weeks now / But it's finally sinkin' in / Betty, right now is the last time / I can dream about what happens when / You see my face again.

You can pre-order/ purchase The Ones That Write Themselves here.

Right now, on the eve of my first novel being published, I feel very much like Taylor's protagonist. I am reaching out to ring the doorbell about to show up at the party, and there's nothing I can do but see how it goes from here. I may have ideas of how I want it to go–who am I kidding? I definitely do– but from here on out, it is out of my hands. Tomorrow, The Ones That Write Themselves, this story that I dreamt up during the pandemic and fostered into what it is now, will cease to be only mine and will become everyone else's to either love and cherish, ultimately ignore or even pick apart. That's a very scary thing to know you voluntarily are going to experience.

But, for me, the thing that is proving harder to grapple with is the loss of the 'What if?' I love a 'what if?' I can live inside of a 'what if?' In complete honesty, The Ones That Write Themselves began as a 'What if?' scenario.

I love the idea of a grand master plan. The idea that doing this could lead to this, which could lead to this and so on, is very enticing. But, taking that first step in order to put one into action? I'll do it, but I'll likely throw up at least once. Because in making something real, you lose the ability to dream about what it could be. You lose that 'what if?', which is a very safe space for me. For better or for worse, I am very good a pivot. If Plan A does not seem like it is going to yield the result I am hoping for, I may take a day or two to mourn, but I will come up with Plan B, C, D, E, into perpetuity if I must. However, that never makes this part any easier.

Am I excited that I will be a published author tomorrow? Yes. Am I scared? Yes. Am I a little bit sad? Yes. Are there other emotions swirling around inside me that I haven't identified? Yes.

In the morning, my life will be a little bit different, but in a lot of ways, it will also remain the same. I will have written a book that anyone can read should they choose to and will no longer be able to harbor a very specific set of hopes I've held on to for almost three years. But I will be open to entirely new ones, and no matter what, I will still have Taylor Swift and her massive catalog of songs to soundtrack whatever comes next.

<3,

Sydney