Guest Post: Writing The Hours Before Dusk
Parea author Jenna Matecki reflects on her experience writing her first book for a new, different kind of publishing house
I’ve always been a writer. I’ve kept journals, phone notes. The number one gift I’ve ever received from the people I love has been a blank notebook and a pen.
Back in school I was the one rolling up small scraps of paper letters to my friends, stuffing those scraps into an open pen ink cartridge, screwing the pen back together, and passing it to wherever they were sitting.
Did you ever do that?
Yet the process of writing this book was different than those journals, notes, letters passed in class.
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Day in, day out I sat quietly in front of a blank document and asked myself “what makes life beautiful?”
And then I wrote down what came to mind.
I did this for three months in an intensive writing process. I also went back through all of those old journals that I kept throughout my life till today, and took the best pieces and added them in.
What resulted was a deep introspection. A self-examination. The book is what people in the publishing industry call a “hybrid narrative,” a written collage, a meditation of sorts - drawn upon my time traveling, letters to people I love, poems - stories from the best moments of my life.
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It feels like a small miracle that this even happened at all.
Honestly, my go to modus operandi is to hide. I hide. Yet, my skill set is that of someone who speaks.
It’s very frustrating.
Writing something like this would take a lot out of anyone, already. Writing a book is a mental, physical, spiritual process.
For me, every time I sat down to write, it was a constant struggle to give my own thoughts and story a space to be known. To speak, to share - from me - instead of on behalf of someone else, or being the one who asks questions, like what I do in my work.
I’m a really good listener, and I’m most comfortable in that role.
So every time I sat down to write this book it was a fight against myself. Every word.
You could say it was uncomfortable.
Then, once the words were put down, I obsessed over them. Should I say it like that? Would people see themselves in this story? WTF am I writing POETRY?! What if [insert highly irrational fear here]?
I wish I could tell you that it got easier, or that I had some kind of epiphany, but it didn’t and I haven’t.
This book happened because I wasn’t alone in this process. There was a whole team of people involved.
That team included a very, very small voice inside who made me promise to keep going.
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I’m lucky in that the kind of art I make is a medium that you can read and enjoy. Something that you can dive into, that conjures thoughts and memories of your own.
Yet, all writers need an editor. Someone who can swim with you in your subconscious and help you shape what comes out. Writing is inevitably personal, even when it’s not about you at all.
As such, all writers need a trusted first reader.
Amy Snook, who is the Founder and CEO of Parea Books, who you’ve been reading here in your inbox as of late, was also my editor.
“Writing is inevitably personal, even when it’s not about you at all.”
Amy was the one who read my earliest drafts and not only reacted to what I sent her, but also asked about what was under the surface.
She saw what I didn’t say, pointed at it, and said “tell me about that.” She tapped my shell and refused to let me hide.
Your first reader is important not just for edits but also for the person who they are.
You inevitably write knowing that they will read it, wanting to make it good enough for them.
This book, The Hours Before Dusk: Finding Light in Cities Around The World, is the book that it is because Amy Snook was the first person to read it.
She is a light beam of a human. A dear friend to anyone she meets. An architect of culture.
At a certain point, after weeks of video chats, we had an “almost final” draft. And at that point, Jimmy came in.
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Jimmy Thompson is an artist and illustrator from Los Angeles. He can be found haunting the coolest bars and restaurants across the city, sitting there with pastels and inks and drawing what he sees around him.
Jimmy illustrated this book. I honestly believe he is the next Matisse.
Like Amy, it was interesting to see what he picked up on. He truly saw what he read, and added a levity and brightness to each of the stories with his colors and lines.
This book is a conversation between our worlds -- the indicated and the visual.
With Jimmy with me in this process I didn’t feel alone.
Given our time difference with him in Los Angeles and me in Amsterdam, I’d often be on the phone with him at midnight my time, going through some of his earliest sketches. His small daughter would sometimes step into the room while we were chatting, sit with him, and point at his illustrations on the screen.
“I like that one, Daddy.”
We listened to her.
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Weeks in it got to the point where the book was off to design with Noah Venezia, a veteran book designer whose attention to detail and knowledge of typefaces is second to none.
Noah explained that when designing a book you look to create, in his words, “moments of splendor” - little details that surprise the reader and help transport them to a different world as soon as they open a book.
It was at this point, as soon as Noah had my draft that Amy and I poured over and read a billion times, and Jimmy’s images that we all looked at a billion times, that it started to hit me that we made this happen.
While Noah was designing the book, Amy and the Parea Books team convened focus groups in New York and Los Angeles to read the book, and gather feedback and quotes about the experience reading it. They said:
“Fiercely original”
“Reminds you of who you once were, the version of yourself you remember most fondly”
“A book that invites you to be more observant, more present in your own life, to find magic in the ordinary…”
“Reading this gave me peace when I was overwhelmed, brought me joy when I was upset, and channeled my positive energy into creation.”
“This is a book you should carry with you at all times…”
I blinked a few times when I read those, and was in shock for the rest of the day.
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This all evolved from countless blank documents, journals, video calls, edits, illustrations, first conversations with confidants, and design to
an actual book.
We made a book.
It’s a book filled with the most beautiful memories, stories, letters from my life, lived around the world.
It’s written by me. Edited by Amy. Illustrated by Jimmy. Designed by Noah. It’s published by Parea Books.
It’s time for you to read it. To see it.
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Every single word, page is from the softest place in my heart.
I wrote this book so that when you read it you’ll see the beauty of your own world, reflected back at you.
If there’s anything I could ever tell you, share with you, it’s here.
Buy it and fall in love with your life.
Love,
Jenna
Jenna Matecki
Author of The Hours Before Dusk: Finding Light in Cities around the World.
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About The Hours Before Dusk: Finding Light in Cities Around the World
Since 2005, Jenna Matecki has chronicled the moments of her life in the form of poems, short stories, and letters. Her work as a sustainability strategist and journalist has taken her to over 25 cities across four continents, where she puts words to the familiar feelings of nostalgia, curiosity, turning strangers into friends, and falling in love: for a moment, with a feeling, with a place, with the right person at the perfect time. The Hours Before Dusk is a hybrid narrative that challenges readers to find feelings of peace and joy in the everyday and to sharpen their curiosity for the world through evocative stories and poetry.
This genre-bending collection is a culmination of Matecki's life lived around the world, written to invoke feelings of sentimentality for the past, while simultaneously urging you to forge new meaningful experiences. The Hours Before Dusk is an antidote to our chaotic, technology-filled existence, a salve for the anxiety levied by our times. It guards and cherishes what you hold most sacred, and provokes a deep dive into the personal, warm, and unspoken world that you call your own.