Prior to last weekend, I spent the past month (or two) quietly—or not so quietly, depending on whom you ask—freaking out over Necessary Evil, the third and final Milkweed novel. I knew, for years before I started writing it, everything that had to transpire in this book. And, for the most part, how all those events had to unfold.
And yet, it has also been the hardest of the three Milkweed books to write. And that took me by surprise. I knew for a long time that this book would be a little different. But it wasn’t until I started writing Necessary Evil that I truly understood something that other novelists have told me time and again: writing a novel teaches you how to write (or not write) that novel. It doesn’t necessarily teach you how to write the next one. It gives you the benefit of experience and hones your skills along the way, but it’s quiet on the details.
Bitter Seeds was difficult because it required so much setup (exacerbated by the fact that the story relies on two weird things and is set in a well-known historical period). Coldest War was a little easier, and probably for me the most fun of the three. Necessary Evil has been a thicket from beginning to end.
So I felt a tremendous weight leave my shoulders this weekend, when on Sunday evening I finally found myself writing the second to last scene of the trilogy.