Saturday, I load up my well-worn luggage to take a short drive to a train to a plane to another plane to a car to a ferry to a car, then land at Author Camp (not its real name) and support eight authors as they learn how to edit their must-read nonfiction books to ensure they speak directly to their readers’ needs. (This is one of three editing retreats led by my boss and sister-from-another-mister, )
It’s emotionally and physically intense, and it’s one of my favorite things I get to do all year. I’m pretty dang good at anticipating people’s needs, have a lot of capacity for patience and support, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see their books born into the world. (And if I get a little thanks in the acknowledgements, that’s just gravy. 41 books as of this post, but who’s counting? 😏)
When you’re holding all of those Big Feelings for an author who has just been told they need to blow up their structure, stare down the rewrites, or start over with a fresh pack of index cards, you absolutely need to shut off at night and release the pressure valve.
Friends, I thought I was doing a good thing. A fun thing. A beneficial thing. I am, of course, speaking about teaching my team how to play American Mahjongg.
Picture the Netflix Documentary: a chair, then coming into frame, a woman who pins a mic to her shirt as she sits and asks where to look. Finally, she speaks, her eyes filled with bleak acceptance.
“I turned my team into hungry, cutthroat monsters.”
Not only did I unleash the beast that is one of the greatest games you can play (puzzles! Subterfuge! Sneaky trades! ASMR!!) onto my boss and coworker, but her post about it on Facebook led to multiple DMs asking me where did I get my set? (Chinese company on Amazon) Which card am I using? (The Big Card and the official 2025 card) Who taught me? (My book club leader!)
But… look at her!
It started off slow. A looooong time to get through the first round, then the next. Lots of questions about what the tiles are and “can I do… this?” as they got their bearings.
And then the first one of them got mahjong… and that’s when it happened. That’s when they realized the glory of seeing “oh no!” on the other game-player’s faces, the sheer satisfaction of exposing your hand and knowing deep in your gut that your 6 Craks were exactly what the person across from you was trying to build, but they couldn’t. You had them. You had them all.
And it kept happening. They kept winning. They developed SKILLS. They devised PLANS and perfected sneaking a blank to get the tile they needed when no one was looking.
I did my job a little too well.
I know that every night next week the siren song of the clickity-clack of those acrylic tiles will lure us all to the games table until finally we realize how late it is and we have to go to work the next morning. “We’ll just play a hand or two,” we’ll say. “We won’t stay up late, again.” And we’ll mean it.
I’m here to tell you that we will lie to our own faces.
I can’t wait. 😈
Thanks to everyone who is reading along with my serialized novel! I’m building a street team of ambassadors to help me spread the message (with some treats as a reward) so if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can sign up here!
Next week in this space, I’ll share all the stats so far and what I’ve done behind the scenes (and what’s to come…)
Do you play Mahjong? Chinese or American?
…how many fights have broken out? 👀 I wanna know.
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