Make It Make Sense: Endings and Beginnings (a photo essay)

The end of a behind-the-scenes era, setting something out into the world and a whole new chapter emerging

Hello crushes!

This is my last Make It Make Sense Newsy Chime before I jump on a 30-hour crusade across the planet to get to those of you in NZ, launch our book, listen to Slice of Heaven on repeat and hoon a shandy with people I miss most!! What do we always say here… life’s a movie!

THANK YOU to anyone who’s preordered our book, helped in making it, and will buy it in the future. J’adore you - perhaps you’ll never truly know how much <3 xox

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Endings and Beginnings

Our book took nearly two years to make, from our initial idea, to finding an agent, pitching it, accepting a publishing deal, writing it and now it being a tangible physical thing.

As is with most of life, so much happened along the way and at times Luce and I both felt like we were writing this through the hardest periods of our lives (literally, at one point, our editor’s feedback was ‘this is way too emo - what happened?!’ lol. Luce and I joke about that often).

It’s perfectly imperfect, a project we’ve tipped our whole selves into and are kinda looking forward to this major part of it ending. So, to conclude this MIMS newsy series, here’s a photo essay timeline continuum of our book journey (which we documented more extensively here on TikTok if you’re of the persuasion).

I kinda hate making something in the newsy all about me because I prefer it to be more about YOU and what’s turning in the world in general. BUT, I hear launching a book is kind of like a wedding - you only get a few of them so…. c’est la vie?!

Thank you to everyone who’s helped us along the way, which is basically almost all 90,000+ of you, and anyone who let us garble wined-up ideas to them while we were figuring out what this could be. It may not be for everyone, but it was written for you in mind, and the girls we used to be. I hope it makes you want to be more brave.

Love you! xox

Girl, 29, has a heartbreak and thinks that filling the void with coming up with a book idea is an absolutely feasible use of time and energy

Covid rat girling and starting to scheme

An award-winning band is formed (not all members pictured). These late night sessions in tiny rehearsal rooms make us feel like perhaps we can take a creative chance and also force everyone to listen to our phone recordings of our covers band.

Agent = secured. Book = pitched. Deal = signed. Cosmos at the treehouse and a rush of ‘oh my god what have we done and how can we pull this off’ ensues.

Working outside hours begins - writing the first chapters after work and on weekends, often not seeing friends or (for an annoying insomniac) not sleeping ensues. Zomg turns out this thing is way harder than we thought.

Meeting at the office sometimes at 6am to record podcasts, do interviews or scheme book things to fit it all in. This period of time is difficult to remember because of how much caffeine we were running on. + Aihe being one of the sweetest men alive making the studio pink for us <3

Constant watermeloning colour palette essential. Luce would cater any meltdowns (of which there were a fair few) with this GF slice <3

On a rush trip to Wellington and beginning our ‘white wine spritzer’ ritual at airports and trying to decide on inspiration for book cover art before take off.

Day 1 in Lisbon and walked past this window installation which became the inspo for the front cover of the book!

Luce’s editing nook on the fire escape of our apartment in Penha de França

Zooming you! Our bookies, subscribers and anyone else who joined our live events, j’adore you. You gave us a lot of feedback and inspo for the book

I say it’s over but it’s also lol very much not over yet. We’re also going to record a podcast about the book which we’ll tell you all about when it’s live and I guess this thing lives forever now? Life’s a movie.

J’adore you!
xox

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