What if the worst thing you ever did to someone you loved could transform into a long journey toward repair and self-forgiveness? That’s one of the questions that Why Authors Write host Kristie Dickinson explores with Benny B. Peterson, author of The Maidenheads.  Their candid conversation in this episode covers the themes in Benny’s breakthrough first novel of queer coming of age, and the journey that writing it required for the both author and characters.

Set between the late-’90s and 2012 Washington, DC, The Maidenheads follows Jamie, a young musician whose intense high school romance and musical partnership with Mari explodes into a catastrophic breakup, leaving Jaimie haunted by guilt and longing. A decade later, drifting and newly pregnant, Jamie decides that seeing Mari play live again may be the answer to everything.  That decision sparks new emotional chaos, conflicting feelings, and Jaimie’s slow, painfully honest reckoning with the harm she’s caused and the person she wants to become.

In discussing the challenges of completing this novel Benny shares how the core of the book evolved from early short stories written during their MFA program and a dead-end draft of a futuristic dystopian version into a deeply character-driven, body-centered story. They unpack the meaning of Jamie’s disorienting “Franken feeling” the electric charge of DC’s DIY punk scene, and why writing from the body—pregnancy, sex, heartbreak, and dysphoria—is central to their fiction.

Benny shares the debut novelist’s reality behind today's success -- years of doubt, including two earlier, unsold novels, and the fear that they might simply be someone compelled to write whose novels are never published. What motivated them to keep writing through those doubts and early rejections?  

Benny’s advice to other writers includes:

• Let yourself write the “failed” books. Those drafts teach you what you care about and what doesn’t work.
• Stop writing in hopes of winning broad market approval. Not every book is for everyone; your job is to be honest on the page.
• Protect your body while writing about hard things. Work in time-limited “containers,” then step away, move, eat, rest.
• Accept the long game. Benny’s “overnight” success was based on a decade of drafts, an MFA, and deep personal change.