A Timeline of The Understory

From idea to research to stalling out to handing in to editing to now!

Apr 23, 2024

Today we are four weeks away from the release of The Understory, which feels wild. I held the petite little book in my hands this week, ran my fingers over her soft cover with the debossed title, paged through her creamy innards, and held her new book smell up to my nose.

I can’t believe she’s here and so I thought I’d share a little timeline of how she came to be in the world.

Summer, 2022: On a late summer day my friend Philip and I go for an early morning kayak nearby and then hike back to a grove of elderly Eastern White Pines. Months earlier, he and another friend had discovered the tallest tree in New York state had fallen in a wind storm, and now he’s taking me to see it.

I will tell more of the story of the fallen Tree 103 in The Understory, but I don’t know then that in just a few weeks I will begin writing what will become this book. Today, I am just here, in the forest, leaning up against this ancient tree, mourning for what has been lost. Here’s a video of first moment I see her. It’s hard to convey size in a video like this but that stump is much taller than I:

When I come home, I read a short eulogy in the New Yorker that someone has written about the tree and a statement made by nearby forestry professor roots itself deep within me. He is quoted as saying, “It’s dead, yes, but I prefer to think that it’s just not vertical anymore.”

Just not vertical anymore.

In 2022, we are still reeling from the pandemic, the election, politics, the disclosure of my brother’s abuse and his church’s negligence to report, the death of our stepfather, and so much more, these words can’t have come at a better time. I feel absolutely flattened, fallen, crushed, and dead. But what if, I wonder, I’m just not vertical anymore? What if what appears to be dead is actually just a different position for life to flourish?

September, 2022: I mull on this idea for weeks and then I send an email to my agent,

John Blase

, containing this pitch: “But the more I’ve thought about it, it’s not fallow ground I want to explore, it’s the death and decay of the woods that leads to stronger and more resilient forests.” My agent talks with my editor,

Katelyn Beaty

, we all agree I can start to work on this project as the second of my two-book contract.

I begin to write.

October, 2022: I stop writing. Who am I to write about the forest? The understory? The crushing of the times? It is a terrible time to start writing a book about the forest because the snow will start coming down soon and the temps are beginning to dip low. A perfect time to hunker down, not a perfect time to immerse oneself in the woods. I need to immerse myself in the forest in other ways until the snow-melt. I order fifty books to add to all the books I already have about the forest, weeds, fungi, scientists, great explorers, beautiful memoirs, and more. I spend all of the fall in the forest and all of winter reading and recording and learning and learning more.

January, 2023: I begin writing in earnest. I make the world’s most complicated outline and cling to it for dear life, sharing it with no one except my agent. He and I and my editor agree that I will write in quiet, without the pressure of a proposal. It is the second of a two-book contract, so I have that going for me.

February, 2023: I stall out. I am weary of the snow, the cold, of trying to remember the smell of spring and the feeling of moss. If I were hardier I would strap on my snowshoes and spend more time out on the trails but alas, I am not hardy. Instead of writing, I look for cover inspiration and mock up covers in Canva, the writer/artist’s version of twiddling one’s thumbs. Halfway through the month, a friend (who is also working on her book) and I spend part of a week at a nearby YMCA camp and I write chapter four in one go. It is still my favorite chapter. I hit my stride. I spend the next three months writing and getting ready to graduate from my master’s program.

May, 2023: Our planned National Park’s trip is canceled at the very last minute, therefore eliminating a ton of material I’d planned on incorporating into the book. I stall out again. I feel completely thwarted and like this book will be terrible and no one will like it and why should they anyway. I sit in this pit of misery for three or four weeks, ignoring the manuscript.

July, 2023: It turns out time away from the manuscript is what I needed. I finish the book and hand it in to my editor the first week of July. Then Stephen and I begin work on the cover—you can read about that process here.

September, 2023: While we finalize a cover, my editors and I volley the manuscript back and forth for a few months, tightening, editing, proofing, page-proofing, etc.. I labor over my work’s cited list, berating myself for (once again) not keeping better notes on page numbers etc., seeking permissions for the various poems I’ve included, and being persuaded to omit or cut some of the poetry because quoting poetry is stupid expensive and notoriously difficult to chase down permissions for.

October, 2023: I begin asking for endorsements, which will never not be the most terrifying part of book publishing for me. You mean you want me to work in private and silence on this for a year, then submit it to editors who will absolutely do their worst to it, and then, before the final edit is approved, send it to ten or twelve of my favorite writers and ask them to say something nice about it? Okay. No problem. By some grace, they all endorsed beautifully and I treasure all of their words in my heart. Still geeking out that

Bill McKibben

endorsed it.

December, 2023: This is what authors know to be The Long Wait. It’s when all of our work is done and we’re just waiting on release day. That is, unless we’re super hands-on about launching, which I am (cry emoji). There’s a lot about launching you can’t anticipate, but after three books, I’m learning what I can. Everything I can get ready before the spring, I’m working to do. I finish the landing page for my website. I design the graphics, write launch emails, articles, schedule podcast interviews, etc.. This is also the period of time when authors record their books and, sadly, for the first time, I’m not able to make the schedule work to record The Understory. I’m pretty sad about it, but I hope you like the narrator anyway =)

March, 2024: Two months out and we start opening up applications for launch community (which you can still join!), releasing preorder gifts (which you can still get!), sorting through more Google sheets and doing more mathing than a bunch of author-artists should ever have to deal with.

April, 2024: And here we are! Four weeks out from the day so many of you will hold her in your hands. I know many of you aren’t able to participate in the launch community, but still want to know how to help. Here’s what would be the most help to me! If you can only do one, that’s great, if you can do all three, that would be such a huge help.

First, preorder the book from Amazon. I know we don’t love Amazon, but right now, today, this close to release, it’s the best way to raise awareness for other booksellers that this book is coming.
Next, text a few friends and tell them why you’re looking forward to The Understory and ask if they’d preorder a copy themselves.
Finally, call (or stop by!) your local library and a local bookstore and ask if they’ve ordered their copies yet. If they haven’t, share why you think they should.

These three things (which should take less than ten minutes total) will go a LONG way in helping the book to move out into the world in the coming weeks and I would love knowing you had a hand in it. Thank you for all your support and love for me and this book. It means more than I can ever say.

Here’s from the moment I first held her in my hands this week:

lorewilbert