1. I didn’t make this.
2. No lie, one of the high points of my entire career.
3. I have the bestest BFF ever.
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To celebrate the release of GETTING OVER GARRETT DELANEY next week, I’m running a competition. But not just any competition, a GETTING OVER prize giveaway! To win a signed copy of the book—plus some extra surprise goodies!—you just have to leave a comment telling me the best way you get over someone.
Maybe it’s blasting angry girl music, maybe it’s going out with your friends; hey, maybe you like to set up targets in the backyard with their face on and hurl rocks while screaming ‘I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!’. I don’t judge! Either way, just leave a comment and next week, I’ll pick one at random to win.
(I’ll also be offering a second prize pack on twitter, awarded at random to anyone who tweets @ me with their answer and the hashtag #GettingOver, so you can double your chances by commenting here and on twitter!)
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And now for the confession part of the post. Where the idea for the book began. You know that disclaimer at the front? All characters and events are fictional, and not based on any real life people and or/things? No sir, not even a little, not at all?
Yeah, that’s not exactly true. Usually, when you ask an author, they’ll confess it’s actually all based on something – if not the whole thing, then moments. Fragments. A girl from school, way back when. A terrible blind date. That weekend in Connecticut with a guy and his truck and a lake full of water-lilies… But that’s another story. And, in the case of GETTING OVER GARRETT DELANEY, the book is based on a boy, and a crush.
Not just any boy. THE boy. You know the one. Your best friend, your confidente, your big first crush, your—
As much as I dislike the girl-hating in the video, 'You Belong With Me' kind of nails the crushing!
OK, I may as well stop with the ‘yours’, because as you’ve guessed by now, it’s mine. My big unrequited teen crush that inspired the book, and more than a little of Garrett himself. I’m not going to name names (because God, that boy doesn’t need to think he’s any more special than he already did, and I’d say having an entire book based on you might make you feel a little bit special), but the facts were simple. Like Sadie in the book, I was young, he was older: off being all effortlessly cool and interesting and way more insightful than any of the spitball-throwing idiots I had to spend my days with (lest you think I was like, 12, I’m afraid to say the boys in my school threw spitballs long past then. I was 16 and still picking them out of my hair during science class. Sigh).
And, of course, like Sadie, my wistful crush was unrequited. Or maybe it wasn’t – there was a point where I thought maybe something could have happened, or would have… Except he went and got a girlfriend, and that was that: I was doomed to be the ‘best friend’ forevermore, listening to his plans (with her), his hopes and dreams (about her), and the intimate – and boy, do I mean intimate—details of their young love. I suffered silently for ooh, well over a year, until the whole thing fell apart and I finally woke up to the fact he may not have been worth my adoration in the first place.
Why? you may ask. Why did I put myself through that kind of torment, without establishing any kind of healthy emotional boundaries? Well, you know, I was 16. And, again, I adored the boy. Besides, it’s what we do when we’re deep in a crush, isn’t it? We agonize over every detail, play out scenarios, and torment ourselves when they remain utterly oblivious to our plight… Crushes become obsessions, fed by wishful thinking and sheer longing rather than actual, real-world relationship cues. We cling to them, hoping desperately than the strength of our own fantasies will somehow make our crush realize that the perfect girl was in front of them all along.
For me, I always imagined his epiphany looking something like this. Because I also had time-travelling powers of clare-voyant.
But they don’t. Because that’s the bitch about unrequited crushes: they rarely turn into anything real at all. And most of the time, the object of our affection is just a muddled teenager who secretly kinda likes being adored, and isn’t about to do anything to mess that up. So, like Sadie, we have to figure out what happens next. How the hell do we get over someone who we’ve adored so completely? Where can you even start, when they’re still technically your closest friend? And what do you do, when every time you glance at your phone/check email/leave the house/go to a party, all you want to see/hear/read is HIM?
You’ll have to read the book to find out how Sadie does it, but leave a comment and let us know how you get over your crushes! I tell you, I wish I had Sadie’s 12-step program, and her awesome friends at Totally Wired back then when I was getting over my guy. But I guess using him in a novel ten years later is pretty cathartic too….
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