CHAPTER ONE: How I Wrote the Book

Actually I have no idea, honestly, but most of my life is a blur to be fair

[In case you missed it, here’s the PROLOGUE of this story]

It took me an entire human gestational period to finish a first draft. I wrote exclusively after my kids went to sleep (RIP 7pm bedtime) for as long as I could before my brain shut down. My goal was 1,111 words per day, but it just depended on how long my attention span tank lasted when the arrow already hovered on empty.

This might seem pretty impressive, but I’ll let you in on a little secret, this was only possible because I made the huge sacrifice to slightly cut down on my TV watching and phone scrolling. That’s it. Sure, it took willpower and muscle-memory-build-up of a new routine, but really, it just took the effort for me to switch from one screen to another. Not all heroes wear capes!

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but my kids didn’t even know I owned a computer until half-way through drafting this book. And once we started talking about it, it made it feel more real. It warmed my heart that they were proud of me. That is until they asked to see it and realized it was just a bunch of boring words and no cool pictures.

But, hey, they were my boring words!

I kept thinking of it like making a sculpture — you can’t sculpt anything until you have your materials. The work can’t really start until you have the clay. Writing was like creating clay out of thin air. I started with a bunch of ideas, and little by little, I had amassed 85,000 granules, ready for me to shape into something beautiful.

Σiγά, Σiγά.

Sigá, Sigá.

see-GAH, see-GAH.

Σiγά, Σiγά is one of the best Greek phrases. It literally means “slowly slowly” but it can also mean both “step by step” and “slow down”.

And that was my whole mindset for this book. Σiγά, Σiγά. Every time I sat down to write, I was a step closer to my goal. One foot in front of the other, the words became sentences, then scenes, then chapters.

But also, the phrase was a nice reminder not to rush things. If I had other plans that took me away from writing, I didn’t beat myself up about it — and more importantly — I didn’t let it derail me.

This past summer, I made the choice to leave my laptop at home when we spent three weeks visiting my husband’s family in Athens and on the island of Andros. It was a really special time having all the grandkids together for my mother-in-law (the first time ever), and we spent mornings at a pristine pebbly beach on a turquoise cove surrounded by giant boulders perfect for exploring. I collected an entire jar’s worth of heart-shaped rocks. We shared delicious meals at tavernas overlooking the bluest blue seas. I snorkeled in the fresh, clear water, staring down at the tide-rippled-sand and up at the light refracting on the underbelly of the surface, turning it into a sky of gemstones.

a handful of zen moments amongst the chaos of traveling with three small children

the kind of photos my kids insist I take

It was soul-reviving. Exactly the break I needed to come home and push myself to write the last third of the book. I was unstoppable. And I don’t think I would have had that momentum if I hadn’t allowed myself to fully embrace the meaning of the phrase.

One perk of marrying a Greek is going on amazing Greek vacations. It’s part of the marriage vows. (Just kidding, I have no idea what was in our marriage vows, it was literally in Greek and involved a lot of walking in circles and kissing a Bible… which I got lipstick on…)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, literally

But thanks to Spiros, I have a dozen years of Greek adventures to sift through for places, experiences, meals, and views. Incorporating all of those memories into this story made me feel like I was still in paradise.

I set the location for my book on the island of Naxos. Naxos is the largest of the cycladic islands, home to its more popular cousins Santorini and Mykonos, but what Naxos lacks in name recognition it makes up for with its stunning beauty, calm sandy beaches, mouth-watering food, and the jaw-dropping ancient marble statue at the edge of the port, the Portára. (Fun fact it’s also the island I was on when I first had an inkling of an idea I might be pregnant with the future intern on Sirens, although initially I just blamed it on Spiros’ Greek driving.)

the Portára in all her ancient glory, and us in all our fun-and-carefree-traveling era glory

Spending each evening writing about a group of Americans in Naxos was transportive. And I realized, that’s my goal:

To write a vacation-in-a-book.

When I explained this to my wordsmith mother, she riffed:

Take the book to Greece, or let the book take you to Greece.

Yes. Precisely.

Let’s all go to Greece.