On Letting Go & Plunging In
Or, how I finally stopped revising the book I've been working on for 3 years and started something new.
Hey y’all, it’s August! I totally meant to write this post on Friday and get back to a regular end of the month posting schedule, but then my Friday blew up in my face in the best way (sold a fantastic project by a client in a mind-blowing deal that I can’t wait to scream about!), so… it’s August. Maybe I’ll give you two posts this month…no promises. So, that’s the “agent life” update. I’ve signed two new clients, which was one of my goals this year (I’m all about taking things slow, so I have 13 clients and that feels perfect for me), which isn’t to say I won’t sign more people this year, but it is to say I try to be selective in order to make sure I have time for everyone (including myself… because we often forget that that’s really important…doing your things & finding fulfillment outside of your job!). I’ve been having such a great streak that it’s so easy to think well, the shoe is gonna drop soon. But as my therapist reminded me, I work really hard, I need to focus on celebrating things and not pre-panicking about the future I can’t control (& yes, that’s a word for us call…celebrate everything, even/especially the small wins and let tomorrow’s problems be for tomorrow). I’m just really thankful that I’m no longer depressed, the past few months were not easy, but I feel fantastic and I’m just really happy to have the mental energy to dedicate to myself and the things/people I love.
FINISH THE BOOK!
I sound really wise, right. Haha. Well, If you’ve been reading my newsletter, in particular June’s post, you know that I’ve been through too many ups and downs and so I guess that does give you a bit of wisdom / like I have zero fucks at this point. I only care about making time to do the things I love (sometimes with the people I love) and then getting rid of the rest. #Growth.
Which leads me to the “topic” OR “theme” of this post…letting go of shit you don’t need anymore. *clears throat* I mean, finishing your novel that you’re convinced needs “one more” read through that totally won’t lead to “one more” revision round. (I’m not calling anyone out but myself, I promise…) And then part two being: moving on. Or, taking a deep breath and craft tips on something new.
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I just finished revising my book. You then would also know that I just started a writing a new book. I also started a baking instagram with one of my best friends, but more on that later. (a super chill July, amirite?) (The real reason you show follow me there is for IG story posts of my kittens!) That first novel is a fantasy novel I started in 2017. In early June of 2017. So, almost exactly 3 years from start to finish. It’s the first fantasy novel I’ve written, it’s the novel that got me my (first) agent (& my second agents…and my 3rd).
Previously, I’d written 4 (unpublished) novels, but all of them were much more grounded contemporary fantasy or near future sci-fi. After all, I grew up reading a steady diet of urban fantasy and paranormal romance and cyberpunk novels, with the occasional epic fantasy like LOTR thrown in, so makes sense. Long story short, though, I got an idea for an epic fantasy novel—it wasn’t the first fantasy novel I’d tried to write but it was the first that grabbed me and refused to let go.
I’m not going into detail about all the agent stuff as “my journey” is well documented online (& within my last blog post). I love my current agent. She supports both my love for editing anthologies AND writing novels. Most of all, she is great at not putting pressure on me, not having all these expectations for this novel, which is something I felt a lot of with my previous agents and that led to me ending up in this endless cycle of revising and never thinking I or my book was good enough. She’s a great fit for my career vs. one book.
So, I finally was like fuck it and I finished the book and I sent it to my agent and she said she fucking loved it and I did not allow myself to reread it again (jk, I did, but just to skim it for formatting). And now its future is in her hands and I trust her to do her job, so that hopefully y’all get to read it as a published book one day. It’s basically a book about a vampire princess who goes on a journey to get her best friend back from their version of the underworld. But that’s an extreme simplification as there are two other POVs intertwined throughout. I think of it as part fairy tale gone wrong, part fantasy, a whole lot of gothic and a dash of horror that pulls from my life-long vampire obsession as well as Black southern folklore and Greek myths and Paradise Lost. If you wanna browse through the Pinterest board, feel free!
As one of my best friends said to me, my book was amazing a year ago, I just needed to get to the point where I could overcome my mental blocks and reach the finish line. And stay on the other side of the finish line instead of revising the ending over and over again, reworking the beginning and middle until I can literally quote most of it. On the flip side though my agent was like it’s okay if your muse is in a state of revising things right now. I think it all boils down to trusting yourself. Like, my best friend was right, I needed tot let go. And, my agent was right, there were actual things “my muse” felt I needed to fix, but I was so worried about things that were fine/unable to let those go that I wasn’t letting myself tackle other things.
How did I finally finish & let go? I made a list of all the things I actually thought needed to be fixed. After I made that list, I figured out that it would take me about a month to revise it all. So I revised those things AND ONLY those things and when I was done, I called that friend and I sent it to my agent while I was on the phone with her. Sometimes you need accountability and that’s totally okay. As I was revising, I also sent snippets to another friend. He writes and mainly reads contemporary and I was revising some of world-building sections and wanted to make sure it didn’t feel like a lot of infodumping/was confusing. His gushy texts as he read what I’d finished revising really helped push me over the finish line.
I’ve talked before about not letting too many cooks in the kitchen, or shutting them out entirely, which means that sometimes what’s best for you/your work is to decline all those requests from friends and family and internet acquaintances to read and give feedback and to say, nope I’ve got this, I need to first write this book for me.
That said, when you feel blocked or like you’re in an endless cycle, sometimes you need other cooks…you need your sous chef and your pastry chef (definitely the pastry chef). Writing may be a solitary trade, but as authors we need community. Community is what gets you over the finish line and reminds you that you’ve got this, your book is great, that I believe in you even if you can’t believe in yourself right now, just finish it please. Asking a friend for that sort of encouragement, isn’t weakness, it’s strength. As someone who is very self-motivated, it took me a really long time (27 years) to learn that it’s okay to lean on others, to learn, as my characters say, that strength and bravery come in many forms.
Sometimes the bravest thing, is letting go and writing the end!
STARTING SOMETHING NEW!!!
Okay, YAY, you finished! Take a break, celebrate, do what you need to do. For me, the moment I finished, I felt this massive weight disappear. I had friends who had been telling me, it’s not that you don’t love writing, it’s that you’ve been through a lot with this book and you need to let it go. They were right. Letting it go, reminded me how much I do love that book. The previous books I wrote and queried (that are unpublished) took me like…3 months to write. So, three years was a commitment I wasn’t ready for. I learned A LOT while writing that book. My craft is leagues beyond where it was. I have an extreme amount of confidence in my writing now. So, I guess, it was worth it…even if I never want to go through that again. After sleeping and drinking an entire bottle of rosé champagne, the first thing I wanted to do was write something else. Something that felt like a homecoming, so naturally I decided to write a paranormal romance…ish. As I say here, it’s based on my short story in A PHOENIX FIRST MUST BURN, it is 100% my vampire-Twilight homage, but centering Black, queer girls. The romance is the constant in this book, but it’s really about a young girl figuring out what’s next while getting involved in a whole bunch of supernatural and human drama. Like I said on Instagram (I also share a snippet from the book!), since the anthology’s publication in March, I’ve gotten a lot messages from readers asking if I thought the main characters in my story would still be together / got together (the ending is a bit ambiguous)…the more people kept asking, the more I started to ask myself if there was more to their story. I decided, there was!
If you want to read something that talks about how to mentally get into a new book, after working on a project for a long time, highly recommend this post by said best friend who got me through finishing my book, Akshaya Raman (her YA fantasy debut is out next fall and it’s incredibly unique and amazing).
For me, I was mentally ready. I was CRAVING something new. Because I’d previously written a short story, I knew the core traits/backstory of the main characters and some of the conflict in their life. In general, I always recommend a “test drive” with your characters, in which you put them in a scenario and let them lead what happens…it’s a great way of learning more about them, their desires, and what’s standing in their way. My short story is that.
Next thing I had to do was figure out the key moments and also, since there is a published short story, how it the novel will connect to that short story. The short story takes place in the summer, she’s just moved to a new town, and at the end of it it’s clear the main character’s parents are getting a divorce. So, I decided the novel would take place that fall at the beginning of her senior year in high school and after the divorce, to give lots of emotional conflict…she’s adjusting to living with just her mom/her dad took a job miles away, she has no idea what she wants to do with her life but is getting a lot of pressure from her mom to figure it out, she’s the new girl in this small town, but on the plus side she has a vampire girlfriend…but also…how is that going to work long term. SO MUCH CONFLICT.
The following are my go-to resources:
Save the Cat for Novels. Save the Cat is a popular screenwriting technique, there are many, many plot techniques, this is just the one I prefer. And these people have taken that and applied it to novel writing! This resource or this one or this one (all variations of the same thing, pick what works best for you!)
Susan Dennard’s Magical Cookies (the whole five-part post series on how she plans a book is fantastic!)
The Zero-Fuckery Quick-Create Guide To Kick-Ass Characters (And All The Crazy Plot Stuff That Surrounds ‘Em) by Chuck Wendig
And then if there’s any sort of fantasy world-building, the Five Foundations of World-Building by Malinda Lo (a la Shadowhunters, my new project has a lot of world within our own world type of world-building, so I definitely used this guide + the questions from Holly Black she mentions within). She also wrote a post on world-building in the real world…pick your poison!!
MY PROCESS
First, I go to the Zero-Fuckery Guide. It’s straightforward, quick, and easy. Plus, my stories always start with character. They tend to really start with an image—a scene that won’t leave my head. But the main character(s) are usually present in some way in that scene. I feel like I’m always writing towards the scenes in my head and I’m done revising when the book plays out as close to those scenes as I can get it on my own. One of my first steps in “decoding” that scene is asking myself, who the hell is she???
I am all about character.
I want to KNOW these characters; I want my characters to feel real. Ultimately, I never know my characters until the book is done, but this guide helps to front load a lot of that discovery process. For my new book project, I focused mainly on the protagonist and POV character, Ayanna; and her vampire girlfriend, Corrie, upfront. Like I said, when I start a new story, I always want to know who are they…who do they perceive themselves to be, who do they want others to think they are, etc., key physical characteristics, and the things they want but can’t have in their life and the things they NEED. Why? Because as a writer it’s my job to exploit their weaknesses and use their desires against them for maximum conflict and tension. The Zero-Fuckery guide helps a lot with that!
What I use next depends on the book. Corrie is a vampire, and I know from the short story her parents died when she was younger (both parents? at the same time? do I sense a mystery??), and she now lives with her aunt (a vampire) so it stands to reason that there are other vampires. In this world, humans don’t know they exist… but do all humans not know?? I needed to figure out these questions as, turns out, the answer to many of them helped create some fantastic plot moments. I also needed to define vampire characteristics in this world, but remember how I mentioned my fantasy novel has vampires in it…well, I had to create an entire mythology for that, so I just used the same one but asked myself what would these vampires be like/do in modern times. (totally different books, very loosely connected just for fun). For a lot of this, I used Malinda Lo’s world-building guides, especially Holly Black’s questions she mentions within the fantasy world-building guide re: establishing your world’s rules about magic and/or advanced science:
Who has it?
What does it do?
How do you make it happen?
How is user affected?
How is world affected?
How are magic users grouped & perceived?
The example Lo gives is this: In Holly Black's White Cat, she sets up a world in which magic users are known as "curse workers," and curse work (aka magic) is officially illegal. It is a master class in using rules to limit magic and build a thoroughly believable world (& yes, this series is fantastic… one of my favorites…like, magic crime families…sign me up! highly recommend!)
With some tweaks, those questions were super helpful for me in figuring out “the vampires.” For instance, I used “who has it” to figure out how widespread vampirism is and how is it/can it be passed to others. A related aside, if your book features creatures that are really well known in fantasy/paranormal, etc. space you need to think about which traits you’re gonna use for your versions of these creatures, which you’re gonna totally make up, and how you’re going to establish your version of these characters (preferably early on in your story). That’s something I worked really hard on for my fantasy novel hence also why I’m using the same mythology I created. There’s a lot of “vampire snobbery” at Stephenie Meyer’s sparkling vampires (& I’m not trying to defend Meyer lol she’s fine) but also…people remember them / she made them stand out in a really crowded genre, so think about that.
By this point—after using those guides—I usually have a clear sense of the character(s) and the world. Which means that I usually have thoughts on how the book starts and ends, on central conflicts that might arise throughout, etc. Which means, it’s the perfect time for Susan Dennard’s Magical Cookies guide, which is basically stringing together all those scenes, etc., you imagine when you think of this book you’re beginning to write and using those “magical cookie” scenes to flesh out the whole story.
Once I get “magical cookie” scenes down, I usually expand that into a longer plot/outline using Save the Cat as applied to novel writing. I do that just to make sure the plot sparkles…I don’t always have the entire plot done when I start drafting. I go back to the Save the Cat structure all the time as I’m writing and revising because I don’t see my outlines as rules I have to follow—outlines are guides that I can and will diverge from.
I didn’t use to plot this much, but I do now to help with efficiency (I now have actual contractual writing deadlines I have to prioritize, plus agent work and in general living my life, so while I like some spontaneity/exploration I don’t have unlimited time to meander). If you’re not into heavy plotting, you can just use the Zero-Fuckery Guide, the Five Foundations of World-building, and the Magical Cookies as needed to brainstorm.
I also really recommend the Magical Cookies guide when you’re stuck. It’s based on the idea that you should love/be looking forward to every scene you’re writing. That doesn’t mean you have to love the writing (or revising) of the scene itself, it means you should be excited about what it contains, which I think is true. What I’ve found is that when I’m stuck I need a break OR I don’t like what I’m writing therefore I need to scrap the scene and write something else (sometimes/often it’s both). As Dennard says, often times we have these moment where we tell ourselves, okay just get through these several scenes and then you can write that really fun scene you can’t wait for. What if you didn’t wait? If that’s the scene you’re the most excited for, bring it forward. I’ve found that it helps to refresh my entire concept of my plot and totally unstick me.
I hope that this (long) post is helpful. Please know that this is what works for me. Yes, I was an editor and now I’m an agent, so I definitely have used these guides when working with other authors. I’ve collected a lot of wisdom from all those experiences. That said, none of that means you must listen to me. As I tell my authors when giving notes, take what works for you and discard the rest because ultimately it’s your book. You know what it needs. I just hope that these guides are, well, a guide for you…something to add to your writer toolbox! Yay!
You can always ask me questions online @whimsicallyours on Twitter (or comment/reply to this post) and, as I continue with drafting and eventually revising this new project, I’ll share more tips!
If you’ve been baking more (or your usual amount) during this pandemic life of ours, you should follow me and Akshaya’s baking instagram! We love to bake, we talk all the time about what we’re baking, so we finally were like, let’s share this with friends/the internet haha. Each month, we give ourselves a theme. Last month’s theme was pastries (She made eclairs and a tart, I made pastry donuts). This month is our first full month of posts, so we’ll have a lot more content, and the theme is fruit. There will be a have a mix of recipes that use fruit and general posts. We’re talking tomorrow to build out the schedule of yummy treats; I can’t wait to share them with y’all!!
BOOKS TO READ!
CINDERELLA IS DEAD by Kalynn Bayron came out in early July and is like Black queer girls destroying the patriarchy with fantastic dresses, set 200 years after Cinderella found her prince and the fairy tale is over! THE YEAR OF THE WITCHING by Alexis Henderson is the best mix of fantasy and horror with perfect subtle queerness and it also came out in July. I read it early and then I loved it so much I reread it, it’s my newest book obsession. Need more convincing, check out these texts as friend of mine read it.
Also, check out Talia Hibbert’s “Brown sisters” romcoms…the series (which can be read in any order/they standalone) is comprised of three books—each follows one sister, and the first two books are out now! I read TAKE A HINT, DANI BROWN last month (I bought the paperback) and now I’m reading GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN via audiobook. They’re both super different books and also hilarious and refreshing and sexy and fantastic and centering disabled characters, characters struggling with self-esteem and mental health…love them.
Last but not least, Jordan Ifueko’s RAYBEARER is out this month! I love it, and I’m part of her virtual book tour!!
Also! I gushed about RAYBEARER and THE YEAR OF THE WITCHING and CINDERELLA IS DEAD and three other #BlackGirlMagic debut novels within this booklist!)
Have a fantastic weekend! Enjoy your Saturday!! I’m off to finish reading GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN!!
Patrice