I Stopped Writing to Protect a Number 🙅‍♀️

Why I built an audience and then went quiet for two years

Prefer to listen? There’s an audio version above.

---

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline. I write dystopian fiction set in a flooded world — and this is where I show my work.

---

I stopped writing to you because I was embarrassed. What fixed it was a spoon.

🌊

I have a set of nice silver cutlery that my mother gifted me long ago. It claims a full drawer in my kitchen, taking up space, but I never use it. Because it’s FANCY. I should only use it for special occasions.

So, I never use it.

Until one day, I hadn’t run my dishwasher, I needed a spoon, I was out of spoons, and lo and behold—I used a fancy spoon.

It was not a special day. It was just me and a single-serve Greek yogurt. Coconut flavored, and I added blueberries. Which, honestly, to me, is quite fancy.

And that’s when I realized. . . How silly to wait.

I am the fancy!

My Other Silver Drawer

And in my bout of realizing realizations, I realized I have a much bigger “silver drawer”.

You.

Here.

My Substack newsletter.

Something Sensitive

I am going to tell you something sensitive now. Please be kind.

Remember back when I had signed with my first literary agent for my first novel (a YA dystopian sci-fi), with the agency that represented the Hunger Games, and I did a year of revisions with her, and then we were finalllllly about to pitch the book to publishers?

I was so close. So full of hope and determination and grit. I would do anything that might possibly help me.

Well, publishing is a business, and a bigger platform can get you a bigger book deal.

So, every night, after finishing my freelance consulting work for the day and after chipping away at this “final” revision (lol, I thought so many revisions were the “final” one), I sat at my computer and reached out to friends one-on-one, asking them to subscribe to this newsletter to help support me in my mission of impressing publishers with my newsletter subscriber stats (wow, such a “big platform”!) as my dear agent and I prepared to pitch them my book in a few months.

For the 2nd half of 2023, I slowly reached out to many of you. Chip-chipping away.

That might be why you are here. Because I asked you directly.

Thank you.

Thank you for supporting me. Each subscription felt like a digitally shouted, “you go girl, you got this!” It truly meant a lot. Nearly 400 of you said yes!

And I’m sorry I overpromised. It’s definitely been more than “a few months”….

But that’s where the Fear of the Fancy Silverware kicked in.

I had worked so hard to attain this NUMBER. (That’s you, sorry. I’m referring to you as a number. . . And don’t get me wrong, it was so lovely to check in on your latest life updates and reconnect and learn what you’d been up to), but oh, how that number became scary.

Because, as I was riding this high of “I’m doing it!! It’s actually happening! Sweet, sweet victory shall finally be mine!” . . .

And Then She Dropped Me

That’s when my agent dropped me.

All of a sudden, I no longer was “about to pitch my book to publishers,” the exact thing I had promised you when I asked you to support me here.

Now, I was a liar. And embarrassed. An embarrassed liar.

I had worked so hard, every night, chip-chipping away, to accumulate “this number” that I didn’t want to lose.

So I froze. I left the fancy silverware untouched in the drawer.

I stopped sending newsletters.

I sent four newsletters in 2023. One in 2024. One in 2025. Looking at this, seeing how my enthusiasm waned, makes me sad :( I’m a writer. I love writing.

Eat Your Best Food First

On the very first day of freshman year, one of my new college roommates returned from a pre-orientation camping trip, all stinky, and shared with me a lesson they had taught her there: “Eat your best food first, because then you’ll always be eating your best.”

Maybe that’s an obvious one, but I’m not gonna lie, it took me a few minutes to process the meaning. Eat the yummiest thing now, and then out of whatever food you have left, you’ll have a new favorite. Now eat your new yummiest. And repeat. Yumminess all the way down. How joyful!

The Epic Twist

That memory popped up for me back when I was revising MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA to send out to literary agents.

I had this EPIC twist planned, and I was going to have it be the opening to the sequel. Oh sure, the first book was going to end in a great way, but not the epic twist. I only have one epic twist, I have to save it. Space it out. Don’t eat the best food yet.

But then as I was getting my hundreds of rejections, and pasting them on the wall, I thought, “gosh darn it, why am I holding back? I may never get to write the sequel if they don’t like the first book!”

So I pulled that epic twist into the end of book 1, right where it belonged. I pulled out my tastiest treat, and I ate it with the fanciest of silverware. It’s a great ending, and. . .

Well, my agent still dropped me.

(Despite my numerous references to that incident in this singular newsletter, I truly am over it.)

The point is—I’m here to tell you:

I'm Pulling Out the Fancy Silver

I’ll be writing here more. Weekly. Sometimes an essay like this one, sometimes some nerdy research behind my books.

Because at the end of the day, I like writing, and in the last year, I’ve lost that.

In high school, I wrote in a journal while traveling through China, then I moved it to a blog called the traveling bird. I even blogged throughout college.

in 2009, while studying in China, I wrote my daily journal in Mandarin, so I also used a dictionary to help me with characters I couldn’t recall.

I have always found joy and catharsis through writing, so why did I leave it stuffed away in a drawer?

When it comes to publishing and book updates, I haven’t had any special occasions, but you know what?

I feel like eating a yummy Greek yogurt on a sunny San Diego day, writing here, to people I love, who care enough to support me with my dream of writing dystopian fiction. . . so yeah, that seems like a great occasion to me!

You Are Not a Number

My “number” might go down. And that’s okay. Because, you, dear friend, are not a number.

At some point, I heard the phrase “1,000 true fans” and I fixated on the wrong part. The 1,000. Not the true fans.

If you’re not excited to be here and I roped you into an awkward pity-subscribe, be free! Be gone! You are released from your obligation. You might not even think there was an obligation. Perhaps this was all in my head.

But I feel freer. I hope you do too.

One More Tasty Treat (since we’re eating those first now)

I’ve been working on something. It’s about my books, it involves a decision I’ve been ruminating and perseverating on for most of this year, and it starts in three weeks.

I’ll tell you all about it on September 8th. Eeks!!

🌊❤️,

Caroline

P.S. do you have something special you’ve been saving for a future special day? Why not enjoy it today?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Fancy, fancy

In case you missed the last three years: