This post was originally sent through my author newsletter on May 12th, 2023. To subscribe to my newsletter and receive up-to-date news, musings, and more, click HERE.
It's been almost exactly ten years since I received an offer from HarperCollins to publish my debut novel. (A journey into my email archives revealed that the actual offer came in on May 22nd, 2013!)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the experience of writing the book that became The Distance Between Lost and Found.
I wrote the first draft of Distance over a feverish few months during which I simply couldn't bear to stop working on it. (As an example, I had a dance performance during this period of time...and I brought my printed-out manuscript backstage! Every moment that weekend that I wasn't performing, I was editing. That's how invested I was.) I felt like the book already knew what it was meant to be, and I was just trying to get it there.
The book was speaking to me. It was my job to listen.
It's been a while since I felt like that.
For one thing, writing pre-publication is different than writing post-publication (or even post-book-deal while still pre-publication). I wrote Distance with no deadline, aside from my self-imposed ones. I had friends read it to offer feedback, but until I landed my agent, I wasn't getting professional-level criticism. That's not to say my friends' opinions weren't valid, or that each person who read that manuscript wasn't an amazingly talented writer in their own right! But sending something to an editor or agent just feels different than sending it to a trusted friend.
How it Feels to Fly sold in 2014, as my option book for the first deal. (The option clause basically means the publisher wants the first look at what an author writes next.) I knew from the start I wanted to pitch a novel about ballet and body image and anxiety, but the process of getting from idea to finished product wasn't at all like it had been for Distance. This book didn't know what it wanted to be. I began by writing 50 pages about a girl in her dance studio. My agent weighed in and, in the end, we agreed that the pages weren't working. I went back to the drawing board. I came up with the summer camp angle; the stuff I'd written before was backstory. That worked better, but it still wasn't clicking. At one point, my agent suggested I try writing "Girl, Interrupted" meets "Center Stage"—aiming for dark comedy.
We discovered, together, that dark comedy isn't really my sweet spot.
All of this exploration was happening between revising drafts of Distance with my editor, and with a tentative deadline: my agent wanted to try to sell book two before book one came out. Getting book two right felt high-stakes in a way that writing the first book hadn't. I was in the big leagues now.
I love what Fly became, but it was hard work getting it there.
I could spin off here to talk about the years that followed Fly's publication, when I couldn't sell anything. The frantic, desperate time when I thought my career as an author was over. Desperation is not the best creative mindset.
But the point of this walk down memory lane is simply that writing, now that I'm a published author, feels different than it used to.
Back in 2012, when I was feverishly working on Distance, it felt like magic. An idea I'd been holding close and safe in my mind suddenly rushed out onto the page. These days, there are so many other voices in my head. I have a publishing team, and readers, and sales numbers, and reviews, and, and, and...it's hard to recapture that magic, where it's just me and the story.
But maybe I'm getting close.
This week, I created a brainstorm document for a new idea. It's the idea I mentioned last week—the merging of a topic I'd wanted to write about for ages with a magical element I came up with in MarcyKate's SCBWI workshop. I quickly typed up two single-spaced pages of notes—fragments of scenes, vivid images, personal memories, possibilities.
It felt almost—almost—like when the plot structure and characters and voice and imagery of Distance clicked together in my mind. A rush of inspiration. The right book at the right moment.
Magic.
Will I have time to write this book? When?!
Who knows?
But judging by the way I felt when I was brainstorming a few days ago, I will write it. It's a book that knows what it wants to be—already—at last.
Last week, I quoted from Christopher Denise's keynote speech at the NESCBWI conference:
"The book will tell you what to do, if you make space for it."
This new book has begun to tell me what to do. And I might have to tell it to be patient, to wait its turn...but when I have space, I intend to listen.
~Kathryn
What I'm:
Reading: Thanks to a viral tweet, I finally got around to reading (well, listening to) This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I've had this dual-POV sci-fi story on my list for a while now, and I'm really enjoying listening to it so far! (Also, a viral tweet sending a book that's several years old rushing to the top of the bestseller list...it's every author's dream!)
Watching: Season two of Netflix's "Sweet-Tooth." This sweet, sad, and occasionally harrowing sci-fi show is really something. I'm so glad it's already been renewed for season three.
Loving: Last weekend, I got to do a storytime at our local community garden. None of my Class Critters books had in-person bookstore launches (thanks, Covid...), and so my daughter hasn't been able to see me do many proper author events. It was so fun to read to her and her friends, and the moment when I introduced myself and she proudly announced, "That's my mom!" will be a forever-memory.
