My “Before”

Thursday 17 September 2026

About an hour after the email to Ms. Shafqat, I sent the other one. The one I have been drafting for two weekends.

Professor Kate McLean. Six drafts.

The first was four pages long and said, more or less, your book describes my life. Which is the exact mistake I worked out in August would lose her in a single sentence, written by me, in September, anyway. Apparently knowing a thing and not doing it are two different skills. The second draft overcorrected into something so careful it said nothing. The third was just bad. By the fifth I had something that looked like an email, and the sixth is the one that went.

The sentence I had worried about most — that her book is not about surrogacy — moved around more than any other. In one draft it was the opening line, which read like an accusation. In another it was a whole paragraph, which read like an apology. In the end it went at the bottom, in the thank-you: although it was not about surrogacy, I read it because I was looking for a frame that fit my life, and I found one. I think that is where it belongs. It is true, it is short, and it is not the first thing she reads.

One thing went in that was not in any of the earlier drafts. I finally read about what her lab actually works on, rather than just the book, and it turns out to be the social and cultural contexts of adolescent and emerging adult identity development. That is the exact age range I am trying to reach. Twelve to twenty-five. So I am not writing to her only because of the title on the cover, and I said so.

Then the three asks, smallest to largest. May I cite your work and use the name. Would you give me thirty minutes. And, if you ever see a working draft, would you consider being on a small advisory board. She can say yes to any one of those without saying yes to the others, which is the point.

Now the part I have to be honest about, because this blog is not much use otherwise.

My own list says I will not start properly until there is a teacher involved. I sent this email one hour after asking the teacher and before she had answered. I have turned that over and I think asking is not the same as starting — nothing is built, nothing is live, nobody under eighteen is involved, and if she says no then the McLean email becomes a conversation with an academic and nothing more. But I also notice that I wanted it to be fine, and wanting something to be fine is usually the moment to check whether it is. So I am writing it down here rather than letting it pass.

9:54 pm. I pressed send and went to bed, which was not the plan. The plan was to send it in the morning before school, so that I would be physically unable to look at my inbox until lunch. Instead I sent it at night, which meant lying awake doing arithmetic about what time it was in Washington State. Early afternoon. She was probably in a meeting. I do not recommend sending frightening emails at bedtime. Next time, morning.

One more thing, from the following day. I had taken her address from the contact page of her lab website. On Friday at lunch I found a second address for her and sent the same email again to that one, with the first copied in. Two emails is slightly embarrassing. Zero emails arriving would have been worse.

I decided in advance what I will do in each case, so that I stop refreshing. If she says yes, I send the write-up and prepare properly for the call. If she says no, I thank her, I cite the book anyway — that is what citing is — and I find another academic to ask. If she does not reply, I wait three weeks, send one short follow-up, and move on. Other people exist.

There is no version of an email that can be unsent. I had not had that feeling before: committing in writing to something I cannot take back. It is the same feeling as the top of the blocks when you know the whistle is coming, only smaller and with worse posture.

— D.