The Mad Beauty of Writing: How MY LAST FRIENDS on EARTH got to the finish line

I’m thrilled the novel is out, and grateful for the positive feedback it’s received.

But writing is a strange process. It’s not super natural for me. It’s not a gift. It’s not a wild talent.

It’s a compulsion.

I’m not always aware of it, but I write to examine myself and the world: what I believe, what I think, what I hope for, what moves me, what scares me.

In My Last Friends on Earth, a YA dystopian sci-fi/fantasy, the kids (15, 16 and 9) are up against existential threats—fictional versions of what we are all up against today: data-mining, mega-surveillance, manipulated polarization, discrimination, inequity, the breakdown of community, rising authoritarianism—and other creeping forces that threaten our children’s future.

The first draft clocked in at a bloated 111,000 words, written in third person. The manuscript did receive positive feedback from some readers, but did not fully resonate with me. It would eventually be published in first person, 66,000 words.

So what was missing?

After countless rewrites, the characters in the story—the kids—gave me the answer.

How?

They would literally wake me at night—triggering my anxieties—yelling about the trouble and danger they’re not equipped to deal with.

I could relate.

“You put us here. You set up the premise and the dangers. Figure out who we are so we can fight the cruelest empire in three galaxies. We need help.”

I still had to maximize chapter cliff-hangers and wild action. But I realized my real job was to imbue these kids with sufficient inner life—character, resilience, fortitude, instincts, vulnerability, humour and a moral compass—to make their resistance ring true.

From a literary point of view, I can’t say if I succeeded. I certainly hope some bright readers experience the passion and adventure I was trying to convey. But my biggest failure, my lack of resilience, would have been abandoning the storytelling journey itself by not re-imagining, re-thinking and re-writing until I discovered not only who the kids were, but who they could become.

After that, they were on their own.

I had done all I could to prepare them for the fight. I could finally release them to you, the reader.

In the process, I realized something else—something even deeper.

In my desperate rewrites, I was simultaneously and subconsciously trying to convince myself that my own kids, and yours, with guidance and love, could also—if necessary—find the courage, vision, decency, deep friendships and solidarity, to fight back against inequality, injustice, big lies and tyranny.

That rewrite—guiding our kids by example toward kindness, resilience, courage and freedom—must never end.