Page 6 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

My literary agent gives me exactly three days to enjoy my sabbatical before insisting on flying down to Chapel Hill from New York to discuss my book and summer plans.

She arrives in time for lunch on my final day of freedom before the school year ends.

Felicity is nothing if not determined to keep me on schedule.

When the book offers came flying in after my viral Modern Love essay, I naively assumed that I would get to dictate the direction of the book.

The initial pitch was a memoir composed of essays (different from my regular column, but still essays), which the publisher rejected outright.

Essays are a comfort zone for me, if that’s not obvious.

“They want you, but not that book,” I remember Felicity telling me, emphasizing that we would find the right formula for everyone.

Eventually, we landed on a traditional-style memoir, but one that would be focused on a single year of my life: the one I’m living right now.

The goal is for me to write in as close to real time as possible, mirroring the raw and unsteady tone of my essays.

The end product, hopefully, will tell the honest story of the first year or so of grief.

Someone at the publisher said, “Think Joan Didion for millennials,” and I just about had my own heart attack from the anxiety of living up to that.

I’m twirling the straw around in my sweet tea when I see Felicity bound into this Mediterranean café—pushing through the double doors with flair instead of just calmly opening one.

Here’s what you need to know: Felicity Hines is a classic New York creature.

That is, at least what we non–New Yorkers perceive they all look like.

If I were to write a novel set in New York City, Felicity would be my protagonist. She’s tall, slim, always dressed in black, and her perpetually tan skin is glistening like she just left her facialist. Her hair is pulled tightly into a low bun.

This woman just got off an airplane! When I get off a plane—even after a quick flight—my skin is dried up like a roasted almond. She looks perfectly dewy and fully rested, despite the fact she was probably up around 5 a.m. to get to the airport in time for her flight.

I wave her over and stand to greet her with a big hug. I like Felicity—she’s honest, funny, and knows her stuff. I can’t think of a better person to have in my corner, even if she is sometimes the messenger of bad tidings between the publisher and me.

“It’s so wonderful to see you in real life,” she says. “Video chat doesn’t do you justice, my love.”

“Likewise. I’m glad you were able to get down here on such short notice,” I respond as we take our seats on the bistro-style chairs.

“Anything for my current favorite writer,” she says with a devious smile. “Plus, I’m going to visit my old stomping grounds down the street in Durham.”

Felicity did undergrad at Duke but left for New York the week after graduation and never looked back.

And yet even people who aren’t particularly nostalgic find it fun to return to the places that made them into adults.

If you close your eyes in the quad, you can almost feel young again.

What I would give to be eighteen again with Ben.

“Let’s order,” I say firmly. “And then we can get down to business and talk about the book. I assume you’re here for a reason.”

She nods. It’s a Greek salad for me and falafel for her. She wastes no time jumping into book talk.

“Okay, let’s start with the stats. Where are you?” she asks.

The answer to this question is not Chapel Hill. It’s not North Carolina. It’s not even a state of persistent stress and delusion. She means how many words have I written—this is the currency we deal in.

“Fifty thousand words done,” I answer, pretending to be proud despite the fact that when combined, those words as a whole are a disjointed mess.

“Phenomenal,” she replies, borderline giddy. “Most of my authors are not as on the ball as you are, Gracie. I’m basically begging for words. Do you still feel good about the mid-August deadline for the first draft?”

I nod but add, “I’m not sure what condition the overall narrative arc will be in. You and Jeannie will really need to help me work through this. I know the timeline is tight.”

Jeannie is my editor. She has helped birth five bestselling memoirs in as many years and has a sixth sense for what works and what doesn’t.

She’s the one who killed my book-of-essays idea.

I still remember what she said: “We can’t be so obvious and predictable.

” She’s a tough but fair editor and the type of person I claimed I needed to get me through my debut book.

I don’t need her to hold my hand; that’s what Felicity is for.

“Have you thought any more about her prologue idea?” Felicity asks, avoiding both eye contact and any emotion in her voice as she reaches for a piece of freshly baked focaccia from the basket between us.

Jeannie is convinced that my prologue needs to be an emotional kick in the balls: a no-holds-barred description of Ben’s death.

“I know why she wants it and what it adds,” I say, looking directly at Felicity so that she knows I’m serious. “I won’t pretend that I don’t, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to write it just yet.”

That’s a lie. I’ve just lied to her face.

I’ve written Jeannie’s prologue concept three times and deleted it completely three times.

I can’t be certain, but judging by word counts before I hit the Delete key, it was nearly the exact same each time.

Each detail. Each memory. Seared into my brain.

But as long as I keep deleting it, I keep protecting myself.

The biggest concern the publisher has about my manuscript is that it will be too close to the content of the New York Times essays.

I’ve never written about Ben’s death, so using that for a prologue seems like a truly fresh idea.

Bonus stress: after an underwhelming essay a few weeks ago, my editor at the paper has now voiced concerns that I’m leaving the good stuff for the book.

And today, a few days before I need to throw two camp trunks and tons of luggage into the back of my SUV and get myself and the kids to Canopy, I’m sitting here trying to convince Felicity that I’ve got the memoir fully handled (I don’t) and that I will be emotionally strong enough to write about the worst day of my life (I won’t be).

“To be clear, though, you do agree that it’s a strong and captivating way to start the book, right?

” she asks with the tone of a rhetorical question.

“There’s a reason Maisy tried to get you to share the story.

It’s the type of emotional pull that will make someone buy the book if they pick it up in a store and read the first few pages.

That matters, Gracie, because memoirs are a tough sell even with an online following like yours. ”

My following . Felicity is referring to the nearly five hundred thousand people and counting who now follow me on Instagram.

Every time an essay goes viral or I do a notable media appearance, my follower count grows by a few thousand more.

Organic new followers trigger algorithmic magic that can, over the span of a few days, turn five thousand people who found me from my latest column into triple that number.

One of the only good things to come out of the recent appearance on The Maisy Show was the nearly fifty thousand new followers in just a few days.

My followers are mostly women, almost exclusively between the ages of thirty and fifty years old, and people with expendable income to do fun things—like buy books.

It’s impossible to truly quantify, but Jeannie believes that nearly all of my presales can be attributed to my social media following.

When it comes to the book and prospective sales, my followers matter.

A lot. But hopefully, they won’t be the only people who buy the book.

“I trust the experts,” I say. “I will write the version that Jeannie wants to see, but don’t be surprised if I deliver the manuscript with an alternate beginning in there as well.”

“Fair enough,” Felicity responds, although it’s obvious she also thinks the death scene will be money in the bank for all of us. It just doesn’t feel right.

“Are you going to ask me about the interview?” I jump in, knowing she won’t want to be the one to bring it up.

“Honestly? I’m not sure there is anything I could say that you haven’t probably already heard,” she states matter-of-factly. “You must be sick of conversations where people tell you it wasn’t that bad—and you don’t believe them, obviously.”

“You’ve only known me for a year and yet you know me so well.”

“Maisy has always been one to go off script just a bit,” she reminds me. “There is a lot of pressure on her to figure out how to grow her audience. I’m not surprised they booked you—your readers are exactly the people they want. She certainly got their attention.”

“She sure did,” I respond, before adding, “You’ll be happy to know that, at my request, Lucia has lined up lots of small-time interviews for the summer.

I need to work my way up to another big appearance like that.

The Maisy Show was a lot for me. I want to be fully ready for the big time by next spring when the book comes out, and I need to get better at speaking off the cuff. ”

“I will say this,” Felicity begins. “If there is one thing you know how to do, it’s capture the internet’s attention for a day. There are worse ways to sell books.”

“For my sake, let’s hope I don’t discover what any of those are.”

We both let out a laugh. If it had been really bad, Felicity would be honest with me. The fact that she’s being so casual about it makes me think that perhaps it really was just normal bad.