How Emma Lord Sits Down & Writes
Emma Lord's debut novel Tweet Cute is the most deliciously readable book you'll get your hands on this year.
Emma Lord's debut novel Tweet Cute is the most deliciously readable book you'll get your hands on this year. Tweet Cute follows Pepper and Jack as they navigate the stress of college applications, co-captaining their Upper East Side high school’s swim and dive teams and a viral Twitter war between their families’ competing food joints.
While Pepper secretly runs her family’s thriving fast food chain Big League Burger’s Twitter account, Jack occasionally checks into the dwindling account for his family’s local New York City deli Girl Cheesing. When Jack accuses Big League Burger of stealing Girl Cheesing’s secret grilled cheese recipe, their IRL feud is suddenly the internet squabble du jour. As Pepper and Jack try to one-up each other with sassy comebacks and pitch-perfect memes, people following the feud start shipping them online. Much to their dismay.
Little do Pepper and Jack know, though, they’re also falling for each other on an anonymous chat app designed by Jack.
What could possibly go wrong?
Tweet Cute is perfect for fans of You’ve Got Mail, A Cinderella Story, and grilled cheese. (Honestly, who isn’t a fan of grilled cheese?)
We got a chance to chat with Emma about her writing process, advice for aspiring authors and, of course, all those mouth-watering treats featured in Tweet Cute.
Q: Where do you like to write the most?
A: I have two favorite spots: one on my bed, and one five feet away on my couch. I always sit with my back propped up and my legs splayed out like a lazy starfish and sink further and further until I am basically parallel to the floor. I write for my day job too, so that’s how I differentiate between the two: sit in a chair like a normal human at work, then go full blob when I’m writing fiction.
Q: When do you like to write the most?
A: It’s never really been a matter of when I like to write so much as when I can — so usually I end up writing before work, sometimes as early as five in the morning, or during the day on weekends. That said, I like to reserve Friday nights to myself and knock some words out while my hip peers party in the speakeasy below my apartment. Every now and then a Rihanna song will come on downstairs and I’ll sing along with them and it’s almost like I’m cool.
Q: When it comes to drafting, do you prefer writing on a computer or freehand?
A: I wish so hard I were a freehand lady. It’s so whimsical and has so much more intent to it and I worked so hard as a kid to make my handwriting look like the handwriting of a person who has their life together. But my brain moves too fast for a pencil, and I also lose notebooks like it’s my job, so I have to use a computer. I figured this out so long ago that my fifteen-year-old self purchased an AlphaSmart keyboard that I used to cart around like a merry little dweeb to all my extracurriculars to write fan fic.
Q: Are you more of a plotter or pantser?
A: With fan fiction, total pantser. People are like, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!” and I’m like “lol me neither, friend.” With original fiction, I’ve learned I’ve gotta plot, or I’m going to get stuck and I won’t hit word count and I’ll blame it on the story when really the blame is all on me.
Q: Stephen King has a great line in ‘On Writing’ that says “the scariest moment is always right before you start. After that, things can only get better.” That scary pre-start moment often inspires procrastination in writers. Suddenly, you have to clean your entire house, do the laundry and play Candy Crush for an hour before you can actually start writing. Is there anything you need to do before you can actually sit down and work?
A: It depends more on the anxiety of my life outside of writing than the actual writing, oddly! I can be anywhere and write. I’ve written on the Q train, in theater rehearsals, even stopped a few times on runs to plunk things into my phone. But if I’m feeling anxious about my human life in general that’s when I’m like, light the candle! Make some tea! Put on the floral jammies! Make sure your workout clothes and workday clothes are already laid out and your lunch for tomorrow is packed! And then I can get to work.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what music? Is your choice of music inspired by the project you’re working on?
A: I have three or four “Writing Playlists” that truly have no common theme to them except that they’re like, vaguely weepy and quiet and pretty. I have to listen to stuff that won’t distract me, and most quiet pretty songs are sad ones, so Spotify basically thinks I’m in the midst of an existential crisis at all times. I tend to listen to that no matter what I’m writing — although I do make character playlists that I’ll listen to when I’m commuting, and the genres of those depend on the character (except whoops, I think Taylor Swift is on them all).
Q: Some writers believe you have to write every single day. Is that true of your process? How often do you write/how long for each session?
A: I don’t think I write every day to honor any kind of process, but because I have to in the physical sense. It’s like my bones will start ungluing from my body if I don’t write something, which is why even when I don’t have a deadline or a manuscript due I’m out writing fan fiction or manuscripts nobody has asked for, so I don’t like, spring a leak or something. I’ll write anywhere from five minutes to five hours. In case it wasn’t already clear, my brand is chaos.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give an aspiring author?
A: Just not to forget why you’re doing it. It’s not to get published or make money (although those things are nice). It’s because you love it. It’s because you’ll continue to love it even when it doesn’t take you where you want to go. I think that was a huge advantage of growing up in the fan fiction community — I wrote because I loved it, and never “got” anything for it except that love, so getting my writing published in the world feels more like a bonus than an expectation. It made the rejections that came before it way easier to take, because I was already coming at it from a place of, “Well, I was going to write this anyway, so I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Q: Tweet Cute’s origin story is great: calling internet dibs on your own tweet about wanting somebody to write a book about two warring social media managers falling in love. What inspired that original tweet?
A: God, I wish I knew. I tweet like a drunk toddler. A thought will come into my brain and I’ll be like “SEND TWEET.” I know I was sitting on my parents’ couch when I posted it because it was Thanksgiving break, so I was home, and we were running late to see Mean Girls the musical at the National Theater in DC before it hit Broadway (which, incidentally, is a franchise heavily referenced in Tweet Cute), and I was like “HOLD ON I HAVE TO POST THIS DUMB TWEET.” Then we got out of the theater after the show and I turned my phone back on and was like “HOLD ON I HAVE TO CALL DIBS ON WRITING THE STORY ABOUT MY DUMB TWEET.”
Q: Where do you normally find story inspiration?
A: I’ve noticed that my brain truly likes to come up with its best ideas whenever it has recognized moments of deep inconvenience. I’ll be in the middle of a nine-mile run or in the shower or it will be 8:59am right before my work day starts and my brain will be like, “Hey. Heyy.” And I’ll be like, “No! I asked you for ideas over the weekend and all you wanted to do was watch Parks & Rec reruns! This is not how our relationship works!” But my brain doesn’t care. She never does.
Q: If Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing’s viral Twitter war was happening IRL, would you be Team BLL or Team Girl Cheesing?
A: Oh, man. I mean morally, on Girl Cheesing’s side. But food-wise, I couldn’t tell you. I’m obsessed both with New York delis and fast food. Like, there are several delis in my apartment and work neighborhoods that start bagging my orders before I fully walk in, and staff at both Taco Bells near my apartment know me by my first name, so my love for both genres of food is infinite. All of this is a long and circuitous way of saying I have no idea how to cook food and thank god stuff is open 24 hours a day in New York or I’d probably be dead.
Q: I won’t reveal the secret ingredient in Girl Cheesing’s famous Grandma’s Special, but are there any ingredients you need to have in order to make the perfect grilled cheese?
A: I feel very strongly about sourdough bread and sharp cheddar as a combo. But the real factor is the butter. My sister Lily was the one who really opened my eyes to the importance of buttering both sides of the bread before you grill it. Recently, though, I went to a restaurant where they served the grilled cheese on a bed of roasted garlic, and it changed me both as a grilled cheese consumer and a human being, so that is a path I want to explore more in my future.
Q: There are so many delicious (and cleverly named) foods in this book. It’s almost impossible to read it without wanting to try everything. From Monster Cake to Milkshake Mash, is there any particular treat in Tweet Cute you’re most fond of?
A: I think Monster Cake is my favorite creation, because I just got totally lawless. When it first came to me it was five-thirty in the morning, I was writing at a pace of about 2,000 words a day, I’m sure there were a bajillion other things going on in my human life and I was just like, PUT IT ALL IN THERE, MAKE IT UNHOLY, EVERYTHING YOU WANT AND MORE. I wasn’t sure if a human could actually make it without setting a house on fire, but I was like, eh, that’ll only be a problem if the book sells. (Woof.) Fortunately, my sister and I were able to make it and post a recipe for it online, which made it extra special — all the baking in there was inspired by the baking I do with my real life sisters, so getting to make it at home brought the whole thing around full circle.
Q: Tweet Cute features dual narration between the two leads: Jack and Pepper. Did you find one character easier to write than the other? How did you manage to balance both their voices during the writing process?
A: I weirdly found it pretty easy to write them both, because their personalities were both just exaggerated versions of people I already am that manifested themselves in different ways. It was kind of a relief to get to toggle back and forth, because it always kept the writing process fresh. The real struggle was just trying to keep track of the things each of them knew or didn’t know, especially since they were communicating on three different mediums (on Twitter, in person, and in an anonymous chat app). THAT really threw my brain for a loop.
Q: What are you reading right now?
A: The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee. I’m extremely late to the party, but enjoying myself on a metaphorical dance floor.
You can grab a copy of Tweet Cute by Emma Lord from Bookshop.org or Amazon.com. Happy reading!
Sit Down and Write is brought to you by Emily Lee and Cassie Stossel.