The longest month in history

Hello, friends.

It was a hard January. January through March is always hard for me, but this was a truly terrible month. If you’re in Minnesota, my heart is with you. If you’re outside of Minnesota, here are some ways you can help.

Outside of leaving increasingly angry voicemails for Chuck Schumer, I’ve been trying to focus on writing. I have a few projects in the mix right now, including a YA fantasy that I put down last summer to cool its heels for a bit. Part of why I put it down was because the second draft was on track to break 100k words, which seemed like way too much. I took a step back, identified some problem areas (this involved Excel and a calculator, probably the least artistic tools possible), made plans to cut, and, uh, wrote an entirely different novel instead.

Recently, I reread what I have so far on the YA, and you guys…I think I need those sections I was planning to cut.

This has me thinking a lot about pacing, and plotting, and what is necessary versus what is filler. The upper limit for YA has definitely grown since I started paying attention to these things about 15 years ago, especially for fantasy, which is what I write. (For adult, too—Fourth Wing is apparently 206k, which is insane to me.) Even though I’ve internalized a maximum word count of about 85k, a look at popular YA books over the past few years shows plenty of titles well past 110k and even 120k. Six of Crows is a whopping 136k, and also one of the tightest, zippiest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

However, I will also admit that I’ve read more than one very long YA novel in the past couple of years that…really didn’t feel like it needed to be that long. The trend I noticed in particular was lots of short, punchy, action-filled chapters that ended on cliffhangers that didn’t actually advance the plot or develop the characters. I.e. the heroine is captured by the villain, escapes—and is immediately recaptured. You can get two short, exciting chapters out of this—one ending with her breaking free, and one ending with her recapture—but ultimately it’s 2-4k of filler that hasn’t advanced the narrative at all. And if you do it too many times, the heroine stops feeling plucky and starts feeling kind of incompetent. These books were all over 400 pages and felt like they could have easily sat at 350 instead, or even 300.

I don’t want to do that, even if I could theoretically “get away with it.” So as I’m diving back into this revision, I’m trying to be really ruthless. Do I actually need this scene/chapter, or am I refusing to kill a darling? Am I advancing the plot, or am I being self-indulgent?

We’ll find out when I reach the end and the final word count, I guess. But it’s a good reminder to think about what my book truly needs—and that when someone else’s book isn’t working for me, to think about why.

What’s New?

Over at Book Riot, I talked about some major changes at Archie Comics, including the death of my beloved digests.

And I guested on Superhero Ethics to take a look back at superhero media in 2025, and look ahead at what’s to come in 2026.

What I’m Reading

Books: My first read of the year was one I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now: Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe. It was worth the wait. It’s exactly what it says on the tin—a history of Marvel Comics—but it’s impeccably thorough, deeply researched, and so well-written that it turns what is essentially eighty years of artistic exploitation, corporate mismanagement, and nerd infighting into a breathless saga. I may have shed a tear when I reached the photo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at the end, and I’m a DC girl at heart! If you’re at all interested in comics or pop culture history in general, I can’t recommend this book enough.

Comics: I’m not typically a huge fan of either DC’s Black Label or Batman, but I have been loving Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia by Gabriel Hardman. (I do love Green Arrow enough to make up for my Bat-ambivalence.) This comic feels like the absolute best of the 80s’ moody, complicated, character-driven stories, so much so that I have to remind myself after every issue that it’s actually a new comic and not an 80s book I just haven’t read before. It’s also extremely satisfying to immerse myself in a book where Green Arrow and the Question get to be the relentless, passionate, bleeding-heart crusaders we need right now. If you’re angry about the state of the world, you should be reading this comic.

Stay safe, stay warm, stay angry. We’ll get through this together.

<3

Jessica