Did I Ever Mention My Mountain Sounds Epigraph?
This Jane Hirshfield excerpt has been the intended epigraph—beginning quote—for my book for years now.
Published January 28, 2025


There's a lot that you'd compile between submitting a manuscript and getting a finished book, not to mention the many edits and stages that your work would go through by the time it gets to shelves too. It sometimes makes me feel better to mentally do so while slouching through the actual book.
To start: acknowledgements, epigraph, author photo, author bio.
Even before a hypothetical book deal, I already worry about how massive my acknowledgements section will be. (Paper's expensive nowadays, y'all.) Being an author and being a person overlap in so many ways that those who have contributed to my well-being in one area inevitably contribute to the other.
I have so many thank yous, and I'm sure it's like wedding planning or speech-giving in that I have a sometimes late-night randomly worry that I'll accidentally leave someone meaningful off the list.
Writing a book is an incredibly isolating process, but it also makes me so grateful for those people who allow me to disappear by choice. There's a significant difference between being solitary and lonely, and it's only because of those I love that I'm not the latter when I finally emerge.
I'm very independent, so most of the time, I'm happy to pursue my calling alone and accept all the proximity sacrifice that comes with that. But I really do value connection too, so it means a lot that friends and family let me reconnect or reappear after significant periods of time, especially in moments when I've personally failed at directing enough intention their way. Definitely acknowledgment-worthy.
Plus, there are all those in the book industry, Words Like Silver background, etc,. who have contributed to the objective aspects of novel-writing: the sale, the packaging, the craft, the industry knowledge. But the sappiness of my (hopeful, future) acknowledgements section is deserving of another post.
I'll likely take an author photo within the next month, and that's something I'm shallow about—because not only do I hope it lands on the back of hundreds of thousands of copies (a gal can dream!), but I also hope it makes it to morning show segments, tours, the TV series adaptation announcement, a National Book Award ceremony, etc,. (Kidding, kidding. Unless...)
I haven't taken a good, real headshot for my creative work since 2019, and I'm usually the person behind the camera, not in front of it—with the exception of mirror selfies, which feel somehow immune.
And then there's the epigraph.
I'm not sure when I first encountered Jane Hirshfield's 'The Weighing.' All I know is that I read these lines and thought Oh. There it is.
For those of you unfamiliar, the epigraph is the quote you'll sometimes see alongside the dedication when you pick up a book. It might be a book reference, a faux history, a song lyric. Either way, it's the author's opportunity to add a little flavor outside the constraints of their work.
I've considered whether to introduce another quote or two, but I know that this poem specifically will be the epigraph for MOUNTAIN SOUNDS. (Provided I have no other rules—my agents will tell me if there are parameters, I'm sure?)
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
It's a quote I go back to often when I'm struggling with the resilience aspect of all this. There's always something left in the tank and all. The beginning of the poem also talks about the beauty that's always there within it too: So few grains of happiness / measured against all the dark / and still the scales balance.
So it's a quote that both embodies the main character and me—a moment of overlap there. I hope you'll get to see it. Fingers crossed.
Credit: "The Weighing" from The October Palace by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright(c) 1994 by Jane Hirshfield. HarperCollins Publishers.