Grant Ginder

They're making all kinds of bad decisions.

Then we move to a wedding.

Then we moved to like a 35th birthday party.

Then we moved to a party in the suburbs.

And so we're able to see these characters' lives and the shape of their lives evolve through the kind of parties that they're going to.

which I think is kind of how life works.

I wouldn't be caught dead at a crowded apartment party on the Lower East Side right now.

That sounds like my nightmare, right?

But when I was 25, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

And so the book, the novel, through these characters really explores, and through the structure of the parties, this evolution over the course of time.

that was actually probably the most challenging part of writing the novel.

Because again, you have the structure of five parties, which means that each section is really only covering like three hours of time in these lives.

But there are time jumps of, you know, I don't know,

three to five years between each section.

And so deciding what little bits of information to give the reader about what was happening in the interim was really tough because as a writer, your inclination is to just like catch everyone up through backstory.

But to do that kind of like ruins the vibe of being at these parties, right?

You want to be at these parties.

And so that was probably the hardest part about writing the book.

So I'm a I usually write just sort of like in chronological order, like start at the beginning and I kind of, you know, I write to the end.

But with this book in particular, there was something like 11 drafts.