I’ve been thinking about time in narrative a lot, for various reasons. One way I always notice an author’s skill is in how they pass time — if they can get me through a semester of college in a few paragraphs, for example, I’m like damn, okay, look at you. If they spend four chapters on a single dinner scene. Those Isabel Allende books that span like, generations. I admire all the ways we stretch and condense time for the sake of a story, and I think those choices inform a lot of the way a story comes out.
After writing With Love, from Cold World — a book that takes place in a tight month, where I say it’s December 1 on the first page and then the last scene in the book proper takes place on New Year’s Eve — I told myself I would NEVER put myself in a bind like that again re time. Even that MONTH timeline was hard to keep straight, and I actually fucked it up and had to fix it in copyedits! (There’s a single line in that book that does a lot of heavy lifting lol, I don’t know that anyone will be admiring my prowess with narrative time, but *I* metaphorically lifted my own self on my shoulders for figuring out how to make it work!)
So yeah. NO MORE NAMING SPECIFIC DATES, I told myself!
And then I wrote a book that followed a baseball season.
I’ve had this newsletter in my head for a while, all about various things to do with time in The Art of Catching Feelings, so fair warning that spoilers ABOUND going forward. Let’s get into it.
Baseball Seasons
The baseball season in The Art of Catching Feelings is meant to be the 2024 season — I looked up the date of the All-Star Game and everything to match it up. Now, in my fictional version of the season, there are no see-through uniform pants (Chris has enough problems), there isn’t the pervasive normalization of sports betting that is going to be the ruination of sports if they’re not careful (/soapbox), and new rule changes were still being rolled out as I was writing so I literally have an edit note to myself at one point like, “Does Chris get a pitch clock violation for crying?” before I had to tell myself, Alicia. Just chill out.
It was important to me to construct the Battery’s season in my head, though, even if a lot of it wouldn’t make the page and you’d never even see it. It helped it all to feel real to me. Here’s a picture from my writing notebook, where I laid it all out:
You can see my note to myself that I based some of their record/season off an amalgamation of some recent Mariners seasons, because I love the Mariners (first KT Hoffman shoutout of the newsletter, there will be more where that came from lol). Basically, I imagined a season for the Battery where they start off rocky, even out to a .500 record around the All-Star Break, and then have a GREAT August/September to make a push for the Wild Card.
For the most part, I think my book is pretty realistic about stuff like: Mondays and Thursdays are often travel days, Sunday games are often played in the afternoon, series are usually 3-4 games, etc. etc. All that stuff tracks if you actually tried to follow it. One little secret I will tell you — a place where it DOESN’T track, and I just decided I didn’t care — there’s kinda no way they’d fly the Battery all the way to LA to play the Dodgers and then fly them right back to Charleston lol. They would definitely play more games on the West Coast first. But what can I say, I really wanted the bit about him playing in Dodger Stadium, and then I really wanted to get him home. You can forgive me this poetic license, I hope?
“What time is it in South Carolina?”
I’ll tell you another secret, which is that the editorial hill I was willing to DIE on, like the one edit I just COULD NOT TAKE . . . was about this one sentence.
What time is it in South Carolina?
The situation is that Daphne and Chris are freshly DM-ing — she reached out to say she was sorry but of course forgot the part where she ‘fessed up to being the heckler. She’s surprised he actually responded to her, and is already enjoying talking to him. Up until the point where he asks this question, they’ve had a bit of stop-and-start to their conversation, places where he tries to end it but then she’d already typed a reply and it crosses up with his “have a good night,” so then he picks it back up but SHE’s trying to be all “okay, you too!,” etc. (These dynamics are why I love writing text messages btw — it’s so fun, this little dance.)
So Chris, who’s currently on his flight to LA, asks her what time it is in South Carolina.
My editor (and this is a valid point, by the way! I am not trying to say I didn’t see what she was saying) thought this was a stupid question.
To which I guess I would say . . . I mean, yeah.
It is a stupid question! Even allowing for the fact that Chris is in the air and so part of the point is that he doesn’t know EXACTLY what time zone he’s in, this is something he could easily figure out. Also: who gives a fuck what time it is in South Carolina?!? What does that information even do?
(Well, let’s give Chris a little credit. It’s also one way to confirm that she does, in fact, live in South Carolina. It’s telling that he’s interested to know!)
To me, the stupidity of the question was the entire point. Chris just wants to keep talking to her. And I love my boy, but he’s not exactly the best conversationalist, off the bat. He has to work at it, overcome some of his natural reserve, overcome the way he’s been closing down and trying not to talk to people lately if he can help it. Later, when they are interacting in person, you’ll notice he ALSO uses time as an opening gambit with “You’re up late.” Chris saying something about the time is basically flirting! As far as he’s concerned!
Time Before They Meet in Person
Okay, there was actually another edit I was a little resistant to (I DID edit this book, I promise, including many changes that I’m very proud of and do think made the book better!1). There was some concern that it takes too long for Chris and Daphne to meet in person — like, technically, they meet on the page in the very first chapter, when she heckles him, but they don’t next interact in person until page 95, they don’t start working together until page 120, he doesn’t technically know her name until page 141.
One suggestion was to condense the time between those first DMs and when he gives her his number, because right now there’s a few days between those two events. Chris has time to drop a series on the road before he picks back up their conversation!
A super nerdy thing I did as I started living the book’s 2024 timeline, is I created very basic Instagram profiles for Daphne and Chris, and recreated their DMs in real time. So like I logged in on the dates they would’ve been talking, pulled up one of their profiles on my laptop and one on my phone, and I typed out the whole exchange. (I SAID IT WAS SUPER NERDY, OKAY?)
I’m not going to post pictures of the ENTIRE exchange — I guess you can read the book if you’re curious haha — but it was really powerful to type it out! I came across a few more slightly unrealistic mistakes on my part (no way would Instagram’s character limits let Daphne post that entire opening message in one go, for example, god why am I telling you all of the things I got wrong?!?!! someone needs to take this newsletter away from me), and it was also fun to imagine how it would really feel, getting these words on the screen without all the rest of the context you get from the book. Like YOU as a reader know what Daphne or Chris are thinking as they type them, if you’re in their POV chapter, but they wouldn’t know that about each other.
Like Chris’ final message, before he does sign off to lose a road series to the Dodgers and only THEN reach back out to give Daphne his number . . . well, it is a little brutal lol. It’s just so abrupt!
For me, those three days are crucial because they show that he was obviously still thinking about her. Boundaries were important to me in this book — both in the big one that Daphne crosses and then in the various ways they are very careful to navigate others — and Chris is a professional athlete. He doesn’t make a habit of just giving his phone number out. He is also really Going Through It and has a hard time reaching out to anyone, much less someone he barely knows. But yeah, he’s been thinking about her, and so it may take him a few days but he does make his move.
They had to get to know each other through the relative safety and distance — but the added intimacy and vulnerability — of text messages first. It was the only way their relationship would’ve unfolded the way it did.
The Time When They’re Broken Up
Full confession: I’m not only a third act break-up apologist, I’m a third act break-up enthusiast. I’m a third act break-up MASOCHIST. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I live for this shit!!! Make it hurt!2
I always knew that the third act break-up in this particular book was going to be a rough one, because she has been lying to him, and there are going to be consequences for that. And yes, I fully believe that if she had somehow found the right moment or gathered up the courage to tell him that she was also the person he’d been talking to online . . . he would’ve been upset, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. They could’ve gotten through it.
I get tagged in some variation of: “I just wish she’d told him earlier” every single day, and I’m going to be honest with you. It really gets me down. It’s one reason Instagram has not felt super pleasant to me lately. As a human being, I get it, I wish she’d told him earlier, too!! I also want to shake my own characters, believe me. But as an author, well . . . I like the way it narratively plays out.
I could write an entire novel about the two months they’re broken up tbh. I thought a lot about how long they would be apart. They see each other almost every single day, they have to talk to each other as part of their jobs, so sometimes I thought to myself they’d get back together after a few days, a week tops, surely? They’re both in so much pain, and it would be too hard for one of them not to break.
But again, Chris and Daphne are VERY good at boundaries. Almost too good sometimes. She knows she’s the one who fucked up and crossed a big one, so she’s not going to make the mistake of pushing too hard. She’s not going to make it awkward at work, she’s not going to show up outside his door and grand gesture him — even though it would’ve totally worked, to be honest, even though on some level he was waiting for her to — because he told her he was done. The most she’ll do is send him a DM where she lays everything out, apologizes for what she did, and hopes he checks it on his own time when he can process it. When he doesn’t respond to it, she’s like okay, message received, I won’t bother you anymore.
Typing out Daphne’s apology message into an Instagram DM was another really powerful moment for me, honestly. Because, fuck, it’s LONG! It feels long in the book, but when you actually see it in the DM box you really FEEL how long it is. She has a lot to say!
I hope it’s not weird that I’m talking about these words that *I* wrote as if they were somehow written by the characters themselves and I had nothing to do with it, but also I guess that ship has sailed, so I’ll just say that I do love that Daphne gets a very tiny dig in about “those words might not mean shit to you.” She fucked up, and she knows it, and she’s apologizing, but he also said some hurtful stuff to her, too, and I think he deserves to have to confront that a little.
Since I already revealed to you that Instagram tags sometimes bum me out, I’ll share one that I got and really enjoyed: a bookseller at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC (a CHARMING bookstore, if you’re in the area, go! you might even see Sarah Dessen, which is my personal dream since she apparently frequents it quite a bit) said that he got actual chills in the moment when Chris re-downloaded Instagram to check his DMs. I loved that! I get chills, too, just knowing that he’s about to read her message.
And he’s READY. He wants her back! He has for a while. But he’s also good at boundaries, and still trying to make sense of everything, and so he can’t help but worry that the fact that she HASN’T reached out again means that maybe she wasn’t as invested as he was, even though intellectually he knows that she’s just following the rules he himself set. I still maintain that one of the most romantic lines in the entire book (TO ME, a self-professed third act break-up masochist lolol) is: “Another time, she’d been laughing at something Beau Bummer had said after an interview and she’d looked up to catch Chris watching her, a momentary bleakness around the eyes until he blinked it away.” This is why I could write a novel about these two months alone, it’s the PINING. They really do just ache for each other.
The act of typing out Daphne’s long message — way back in mid-July — and then waiting until literally TONIGHT (I’m typing this late on September 24, for context) to check the message . . . well, again, it really did highlight for me just how much time that was. How much happened in their time apart (Daphne’s nephew was born! Chris is getting some much-needed therapy! The Battery are making a surprising playoff bid!). And this is one reason, I think, why I do defend the third act break-up. I think these two months are as important for the relationship, in the long run, as the time they were actually together. They had some shit to work out before they re-committed to each other.
Magic Numbers
At the end of the book, Chris’ teammate Randy references the Battery’s “Magic Number,” and if you’re following baseball right now you know we’re smack dab in the middle of Magic Numbers (I mean, *my* team doesn’t have one, because they don’t control their own destiny). The idea is that, at a certain point toward the end of the season, you can tell mathematically how many games you need to win to GUARANTEE that you’re going to make the playoffs, or clinch your division, or whatever. You don’t need to wait for any other teams to lose, you don’t have to watch the standings to see the result of this matchup or that matchup, if you win that number of games you’re going.
Realistically, if Chris has four games left to play, he should probably just focus and play them out and worry about reconnecting with Daphne afterward. I can be a very pragmatic person and I would certainly not hold it against him if he’d gone that route. But I like that, once he reads her message, he can’t wait any longer. Now it’s his turn to grand gesture her a bit, because he wronged her, too. And, as weird as it sounds, it was important to me that he does it after a game where they lost, because . . . well, sometimes that’s life. The game doesn’t go the way you wanted it to but it doesn’t have to be a sign or anything, in the scheme of things it’s not as important as telling someone you love them. Love is not a game of failure, as Chris says, and as my very LAST embarrassing secret about this book I’ll tell you that at one point that was my working title3, and it was so bad that when my editor said, “What’s the title, because they want to put it in the book deal announcement,” after I sent it over I got an email back that was basically, “. . . okay, let me see if I can get them to agree to announce with no title” hahahahahahahaha real swing and a miss on that one
As my last (and most important!) KT Hoffman shoutout in this newsletter, LOOK at this cross-stitched version of the Battery’s schedule that he made for me and sent when the book came out. He color-coded the home games, away games, travel days, All-Star Game, and everything. It’s so special to me, not least of which because he wrote one of my favorite baseball romances — favorite books, period — of all time in The Prospects. I feel like we came up through the farm together, commiserating in texts about the challenges of writing around a baseball season, imagining the ways our fictional players’ lives might intersect (there’s a little Easter egg in the Epilogue of my book, if you catch it!), and lately, bitching about the MLB Lineup email headlines lolol (I’m SORRY but to call a 20-4 blowout “possibly the Best Game EVER?” just because a star player hit some cool stats during it is like, an actual insult to the game! and surely there MUST be cool storylines happening in the run to the playoffs that exist outside of THE SAME FOUR INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS).
Anyway, I highly encourage you to buy The Prospects, and to subscribe to KT’s delightful newsletter if you haven’t already.
I’ve had “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher in my head this whole time btw. It’s such a banger of a song. I was obsessed with the entire Heart of Stone album as a kid, to be honest. I love the music video for this one — how could you not, it’s iconic — but I admit I *almost* included an audio-only version of this song instead. Because the vibes of the video are impeccable, I love Cher’s Frank-N-Furter get-up and energy, my favorite part is the close-up on her face when she turns and says I’d take back those words around 1:05 or so, it’s so weirdly jarring to me . . . but it’s also a deeply unserious video lol. When actually I think this song is genuinely very emotional and moving! It is when I belt it out in the car, anyway.
Speaking of time, though, I’m running out of it because it’s almost 1am, I’m only up this late because school is cancelled for the potential hurricane, so I hope you enjoyed this discussion of time in The Art of Catching Feelings and if you’re in the path of the storm, I hope you stay safe.
Currently reading . . . I just finished The Love Lyric by Kristina Forest. I’ve loved following the Greene sisters, including Lily in The Neighbor Favor and Violet in The Partner Plot, and I’ve been WAITING for eldest sister Iris’ story. I KNEW there were vibes between her and Violet’s client, the R&B singer Angel. AND I WAS RIGHT! VIBES FOR DAYS!!!! It was the perfect last installment to the series, and will come out February 4, 2024, so be on the lookout. (And in the meantime, you can read the first two books in the series if you haven’t already!)
btw Kristina happened to mention something in her book about a sunscreen that didn’t leave any white cast, and I was like DROP THE LINK because I went on that Baseball Book Tour putting literal clown makeup on with my white-ass Good Value SPF or whatever the fuck I’d bought, and she recommended Innisfree. Just thought I would share.
watching . . . My daughter has me watching Murder Drones because she’s obsessed. It’s been fun to chat with her about!
listening to . . . I’ve been listening to the playlist my son made of the set list from the Dinosaur Jr./Flaming Lips/Weezer concert we just went to. If I’ve talked to you in the past week, it’s been almost exclusively about Weezer and I’m sorry but also . . . I’m not. It was a great show. As proof that I can fuck up even my actual, literal, real life calendar as much as one in a book, though, I give you the cute little drawing I put on our family calendar for the wrong day. Which, luckily, my son pointed out before we just straight-up missed the concert, but not before I went around thinking it was on this day for MONTHS. (The Romance Book Club entry was correct, however.)
Just as an example: two edits I made were to add in the hit-by-pitch scene (I’d only referred to it off-page before, but you didn’t actually see it happen), and then to add in the part where the phone call heats up (which was something I’d WANTED to put in the first draft and just couldn’t figure out quite where or how to do it, so I was gratified when my editor said she thought something was needed and I was like you’re so right and I know just what to do).
I will say that the third act break-up in Never Been Shipped is one that I personally don’t even consider a “break-up!” It is very gentle! Partly because that’s what served the story and I think we should have all tools available to us to serve the individual story we’re trying to tell, and partly because . . . well, Chris and Daphne’s break-up did fuck me up a bit! I needed to be gentler for MYSELF lol.
IN MY DEFENSE, it was never a title I seriously considered for the book. I was just trying to come up with SOMETHING other than “Baseball Book,” which is what I was uncreatively calling it.
I read and loved The Art of Catching Feelings earlier this month and getting this insight into your writing process was such a delight! And one of my favorite things about it was how messy and complicated and true it felt--I loved that that they really got the space to figure themselves out.
"love is not a game of failure" does have strong k-drama title vibes to me, so you're all ready for when they adapt it for the korean silver screen! (something i assume is in the works, of course)