{"id":60793,"date":"2025-04-11T08:55:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=60793"},"modified":"2025-04-11T08:55:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:55:15","slug":"jon-mcgoran-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-price-of-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2025\/04\/11\/jon-mcgoran-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-price-of-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon McGoran: Five Things I Learned Writing The Price Of Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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John Wick\u00a0meets\u00a0Johnny Mnemonic\u00a0in a nail-biting cyberpunk technothriller about a courier on the run from his own Guild<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corporations fall, gangsters are killed, but\u00a0no-one\u00a0messes with the Couriers Guild.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Armand Pierce first became a courier ten years ago, he had an attach\u00e9 case connected to a titanium cuff grafted into the bones of his wrist, and took an oath: the delivery is everything. He can run, fight\u2014kill, if he needs to\u2014but the package gets where it\u2019s going. It\u2019s the Guild\u2019s guarantee, and since the internet went down in the Cyber Wars, all business, legitimate or otherwise, depends on it. Otherwise, he dies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Pierce knows he\u2019s in deep trouble when he arrives at his latest destination to find his payload missing, his case mysteriously empty. Something strange is going on: something that\u2019s already cost three couriers their lives, and threatens to upend the global order. And Pierce had better get to the bottom of it, before the Guild, catches up to him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Ideas Aren\u2019t Ready Until They\u2019re Ready<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing The Price of Everything <\/em>was a more educational experience than any other book I\u2019ve written. Partly, that\u2019s because it simply took me so long<\/em> to write it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the ideas for the book had been rattling around in my brain for well over a decade. I thought then and I still think today that they are fascinating and compelling. But the stories I first tried to write them into were not. They didn\u2019t do the ideas justice. They were lame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t give up on them, or at least not permanently. And I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t. Whether it was because I was becoming a better writer, or the world was changing in ways that made the ideas more relevant or compelling, or simply because the ideas themselves needed to mature, not in a decrepit, falling apart, death is inexorably approaching and my knees are killing me kind of way, but, you know, to become wiser and more distinguished. What I\u2019m trying to say is, I learned that sometimes an idea simply isn\u2019t ready until it\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Book Isn\u2019t Ready Until It\u2019s Ready, Either<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some of the ideas in the book have been in my head for decades, some of the words have been on the page for almost as long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing the first draft back in 2015 (and as an outliner, that means I\u2019d already been working on it for some time). Now, to be fair, in that time I also wrote four other novels (and another almost completed, plus a couple more ghostwritten), as well as several screenplays and a bunch of short stories. But this book required a lot of revisions, even reconceptualizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife and I jokingly call The Price of Everything<\/em> \u201cmy most celebrated work\u201d because of how many times I declared it finished (drafts, edits, revisions) and insisted we toast its completion. Only to find out it wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then I\u2019d get back to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was hard. I mean, I know how important it is to kill your darlings sometimes, but we\u2019re talking several generations of darlings, entire extended families of darlings. And these weren\u2019t just personal favorites: they were objectively legitimate darlings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they didn\u2019t fit. They didn\u2019t work. Not in this book, or what this book was supposed to be. And so they had to go. (Truth be told, I saved them all; you don\u2019t really<\/em> have to kill your darlings, you just have to lock them in the basement.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes Slow Can Be Better<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have always strived to be a fast writer, to be productive. Maybe even prolific (I mean, not like my pals Chuck Wendig or Jonathan Maberry\u2014give me a break, I\u2019m only human). But working for so long on this book, on so many iterations of it, has shown me the benefits of taking such time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always been an outliner, always depended on knowing where I was going when writing a story. (And yes: however many revisions there were, that\u2019s how many outlines there were.) But over the years I\u2019ve come to appreciate almost as much the way outlining helps me get to know my characters intimately before I start writing that first draft, instead of getting to know them along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar benefit accrues from working on a book for so long. As I said, I worked on many other projects while I was writing this one, but The Price of Everything<\/em> was always in my head\u2014maybe not front of mind, but in there. And the whole time it was, I was gaining a deeper and more nuanced understanding of those characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the premise of The Price of Everything <\/em>is that, with the internet cratered by cyberwar, the economy once again runs on cash. A guild of elite couriers moves the new super-high-denomination currency around in attach\u00e9 cases chained to titanium cuffs grafted onto the bones of their wrists. The couriers swear an oath: The delivery gets where it is going or they forfeit that hand, and effectively their life. I think it\u2019s a fascinating premise, but I had to live with the idea for some time before I grasped how deeply disturbing and metaphorically relevant it was: an economy so inequitable that young people agree to be disfigured\u2014and potentially even forfeit their lives\u2014in order to protect some billionaire\u2019s money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing all those different iterations helped, as well, giving me the opportunity to see these characters in different situations, different worlds or timelines or dimensions. It gave me a much deeper understanding of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same is true of the themes of the book: wealth disparity, the rise of American oligarchs and the billionaire class\u2014and how that has exacerbated our failures to confront climate change. The longer I and the book were allowed to steep in these themes, the more they became intrinsically interwoven into the story and the characters. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case when one is writing dystopic fiction these days, the world has leaned into the story. Good for the book; bad for the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Am Stubborn AF<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something else I learned in writing this book is about me. For better or for worse (and there are definite downsides to it, believe me), I am tenacious. Or maybe stubborn. Very likely both. At many times during this book\u2019s long road to publication there were very good reasons to put it aside forever and say, \u201cWell, I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many costs to writing a book, including opportunity costs\u2014millions of other things you could be doing, including writing other books. I\u2019ll never know what else I could have written in the time I spent writing this one, because I was too stubborn to give up on it. But I do know this: I love this book. I love how it ended up and how it got there. And I hope readers will love it, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One More Thing\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, I learned a lot <\/em>while researching this book. Here\u2019s one little factoid that raises all sorts of questions:  Of all the pieces of paper US currency in circulation, the most common isn\u2019t the single (14.9 billion) or the twenty (11.1 billion), but the hundred dollar bill. There are 19.2 billion C-notes in circulation, more than any other denomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jon McGoran is the author of ten previous novels for adults and young adults, including the YA science fiction thrillers Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked, the science thrillers Drift, Deadout, and Dust Up, numerous short stories and novellas, and licensed work for The Blacklist, The X-Files, and Zombies vs Robots. A freelance writer, writing teacher, and developmental editor and coach, he lives outside Philadelphia with his wife Elizabeth, a librarian. For more, visit www.jonmcgoran.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Price of Everything<\/strong>: Bookshop.org<\/a> | Kobo<\/a> | Libro.fm<\/a> | B&N<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Wick\u00a0meets\u00a0Johnny Mnemonic\u00a0in a nail-biting cyberpunk technothriller about a courier on the run from his own Guild Corporations fall, gangsters are killed, but\u00a0no-one\u00a0messes with the Couriers Guild. When Armand Pierce first became a courier ten years ago, he had an attach\u00e9 case connected to a titanium cuff grafted into the bones of his wrist, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-60793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-fOx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60795,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60793\/revisions\/60795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}