Lydia Kang On The Value of Down Time While Marketing

Welcome to another acronym-ific writer-centric interview series, the SNOB (Second Novel Omnipresent Blues). Whether you’re under contract or trying to snag another deal, you’re a professional now, with the pressures of a published novelist compounded with the still-present nagging self-doubt of the noobie. How to deal?

Today's guest for the SNOB is Lydia Kang, author of CONTROL and CATALYST. Lydia is an author of young adult fiction, poetry, and narrative non-fiction. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction. She believes in science and knocking on wood, and currently lives in Omaha with her husband and three children.

Is it hard to leave behind the first novel and focus on the second?

For me, my second novel (Catalyst) was the sequel and end to the series. So in some ways, I didn’t leave the first novel (Control) behind at all, because it was a continuum. But one of the hardest things was trying to focus on creating the new novel under the constraints of the world building I’d established in the first book. There were times when I’d tied my own hands regarding plot issues, and that was a pain. The other hard thing was trying to amp up the oomph as far as character development and world building. There are a lot of things that are resolved at the end of Control; the challenge was how to reopen a character arc that was different and not redundant, and create a story that touched on some of the best elements in Control but make them fresh and different in Catalyst.

At what point do you start diverting your energies from promoting your debut and writing / polishing / editing your second?

I started writing Catalyst as soon as the book deal for Control happened. I had a one book deal, so there was zero guarantee that Catalyst would be acquired, and that was a huge amount of uncertain stress on me. I wrote the majority of the book when I realized I had made a huge plot mistake (one of the main characters never showed up and that was a big no-no). So then I had to rewrite it.

There was a two year gap between the acquisition of Control and its publication date. In that first year, I wrote Catalyst and it was acquired. During that year leading up to Control’s release date, I was promoting a lot. Then, three weeks before Control debuted, I had to revise Catalyst with a 7 week turnaround, because my editor and I simultaneously decided that Catalyst should be the end of the series, instead of book two of a trilogy. So I had to massively revise it again and smoosh book three into Catalyst to complete the duology. It was incredibly stressful to revise on that tight of a turnaround and promote at the same time! I don’t know how I survived.

Your first book landed an agent and an editor, and hopefully some fans. Who are you writing the second one for? Them, or yourself?

For my fans, my editor, and for me. I put an enormous amount of pressure to make Catalyst work in the story arc with Control, feel new and fresh, but still be familiar. It was a learning process and there was no surprise that I had to revise it so many times to make it happen. I made a lot of mistakes.

Is there a new balance of time management to address once you’re a professional author?

Definitely. But if anything, I’ve learned to slow down a bit and enjoy my life more. I’ve traveled a lot promoting both books. And though I was thrilled to go to events I’d only dreamed of, like Comic Con in San Diego, teen book festivals around the country, school visits, TLA, ALA, and RT, I also learned that I’m far more of an introvert than I realized. So my down time is really important to me now.

What did you do differently the second time around, with the perspective of a published author?

I focused on keeping a gauge on my energy levels and lean on my family and author friends when I’ve been stressed out. This can be a lonely, isolating profession at times and my family and friends have been tremendous in supporting me. Also, instead of my experiences blitzing by in the shininess of new experiences, I was able to take a larger look at things, slow down a bit, and enjoy them more. :)

Emma Pass On Using The Newspaper For Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Emma Pass, who grew up at an environmental studies centre near London, went to art school in Cornwall and now lives in the north-east Midlands, UK. Her YA dystopian thrillers ACID and THE FEARLESS, are available now.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

With THE FEARLESS, definitely. I attended a workshop run by UK YA author Julie Bertagna, and she was talking about how she got her ideas. She handed out some newspaper articles as examples, and the one I got was about a pill being developed to stop soldiers suffering from PTSD. I started wondering what would happen if there was a pill that didn't just stop you being affected psychologically by traumatic events, but stopped you feeling fear altogether – along with any capacity for empathy or love. What would it do to people? How would they behave?

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I started to think about how people might be forced to take this drug against their will, until vast numbers of them – now called 'The Fearless' - were invading every country in the world, forcing the drug on everyone else. It would be a bit like a zombie invasion, only far scarier as these people were still alive, with the capacity to think and plan. I imagined a small group of survivors, and what their lives might be like post-invasion. Living among them was a teenage girl, Cass. What would happen if her little brother, the only family she had left, was taken by the Fearless, and everyone else was too afraid to help her get him back? What choices would she have to make? What journey would she go on? Would she be able to survive? I've always loved post-apocalyptic, disaster stories that ask 'what would you do?', so this was my perfect opportunity to write my own.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Always! I'm not much of a planner so I don't generally have the plot firmly in place before I start a first draft. Too much planning bores me, so I like to write and discover the story as I go along – and it always surprises me! I do have to do a lot of editing with subsequent drafts, though, but I love editing (yeah, I'm weird!), so that's OK.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I don't have millions of story ideas at any one time, but there are always a few brewing. I find the one way not to get ideas is to try and consciously think them up. Instead, I try to be receptive to unusual things I might see or hear or read (OK, so that's a fancy way of saying I'm nosy, but you have to be if you're a writer, right?). Eventually, they might turn into an idea, which might turn into a story…

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I generally have one idea which is more 'ready' than the others – I might have a vague idea of the ending, or the characters might start speaking to me and insist that I write their story now. Sometimes, though, I just have to start writing and see – and if the story isn't ready, I soon find out! I don't consider it wasted, though, as I know I can come back to it another time.

I write best when it’s raining outside. Do you have a favorite weather to write with?

I like sunny days the best, because I can sit outside and look at the garden and daydream – an essential part of my writing process!

Sarah McGuire On Getting Past "I Suck"

I'm lucky (or cunning) enough to have lured yet another successful writer over to my blog for an SAT- Successful Author Talk. SAT authors have conquered the query, slain the synopsis and attained the pinnacle of published. How'd they do it? Let's ask 'em!

Today's guest for the SAT (Successful Author Talk) is Sarah McGuire, author of up the upcoming VALIANT. Sarah loves fairy tales and considers them the best way to step outside of everyday life. They’re the easiest way, at least: her attempt at seven to reach Narnia through her parents’ closet failed. She lives within sight of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where she teaches high school creative writing and math classes with very interesting word problems.

Are you a Planner or Pantster?

Both. Right now, I write fairy tale retellings. I need to have a sense of what’s going to happen, and what parts of the original tales I’ll keep vs. those I’ll change. So before I start writing, I’ll have a page’s worth of scrawl about major plot points and characters. And then, I launch myself towards those points, trusting I’ll find the story as I go. 

How long does it typically take you to write a novel, start to finish?

I suppose it depends on whether you’re talking about a first draft or something a bit more refined. 
I wrote the rough draft of Valiant over a summer. (I’m a teacher- it’s when I had the time to do it!). However, I took a few months to revise Valiant before I sent it out. So the time from when I started writing it to when I signed with my agent was a year. 

And we won’t even discuss how many years I spent on the novel before Valiant, the one that will probably never see the light of day. ☺

Do you work on one project at a time, or are you a multi tasker?

So far, one at a time. I don’t know how this will be in the future, but so far, I’ve discovered that just about the time I’m having to really dig into the hard revisions on the novel, my mind starts going to the next story. So I’ll be wrestling with a particularly knotty issue, and then I’ll be taunted with lovely, shimmering fragments from the new story. I’ve learned to jot down notes of the ideas, but to keep at my old story. So far, it seems like sometimes the new story does well if I actually let it sit for a while. 

Did you have to overcome any fears that first time you sat down to write?

Oh good grief, yes! I still do. They normally run along the lines of a really sad grammar exercise, like I’m conjugating the verb ‘to suck’. As in, I suck. You (other writer who I admire) never suck. We (as in every bit of writing I’ve ever attempted) suck. It sucks. You get the idea. 

Have you ever trunked anything? Have you ever quit on an ms, and how did you know it was time?

I’m going to combine these two questions, if I may. I trunked one manuscript: another fairy tale retelling. I’d spent four years working hard on it, and for most of that time, I was applying every new bit of writing craft I’d learned. Finally, though, I hit a point when I didn’t know how to make it better, even though I knew it needed to be better. And I just knew it was time to set it aside. (It’s actually a long-ish but cool story that involves opera, of all things. If you’d like to read about it, you can go here.

Who is your agent and how did you get that "Yes!" out of them? 

My agent is Tracey Adams. I’d met her at the Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program maybe three years before I queried Valiant (before I wrote Valiant, actually!). We were FB friends and over the years, I had a chance to see how cool a person she was. However, I didn’t really think seriously about querying her till a crit partner suggested it. So when Valiant was ready, I sent a query out to Tracey and another fabulous agent who’d seen pages of Valiant and wanted the manuscript when it was ready. (I should say here that I did NOT shoot Tracey a FB message about the query! I submitted it through her website. And despite the fact that she knew me, her lovely then-assistant read Valiant first. ) 

Anyway, the other agent asked to talk, and suggested a spot-on revision, which I began to work on. Though Tracey had originally shown interest, I didn’t hear from her for a while. But then, after spring break, Tracey emailed and said she was still liking Valiant. She emailed again a little later and asked if we could talk the next day. I pretty much blathered my way through the conversation. It couldn’t have been too bad, however, because Tracey offered representation. And then the other (fabulous!) agent offered representation. 

In the end, I chose Tracey, and it’s been a wonderful relationship. 

Any advice to aspiring writers out there on conquering query hell?

Keep at it! Don’t give up, but be willing to revise and revisit your work- especially if you’re getting consistent feedback about a certain aspect of it. But, if you’re like me, I’d say don’t let your fear of doing it wrong keep you from the attempt. You’ll make mistakes, but that’s okay. 

How did it feel the first time you saw your book for sale?

I have to say that getting the author copies was a pretty amazing experience. (This was after Egmont USA had closed, and I had no idea when (or if!) the author copies would arrive. I came home late one evening after a series of meetings, and was opening a box, thinking it might be a late batch of ARCs. Instead, it was … my book!

I was on my landlady’s front porch, keys in hand (I’d used them to slice open the box). I stood there and, in that mixture of dusk and porchlight, I saw Valiant for the first time. I couldn’t move for a moment. 

I had a whole series of Golum, my-preciousssss, moments when I sat on my sofa a few minutes later and actually held my book. And it had a smell! Did I mention that?? My story had a book-smell and I realized it was actually real. 

So imagine that same reaction when I see Valiant on a bookstore shelf. I still can’t quite believe this is happening. 

How much input do you have on cover art?

Very little. But Egmont, and the wonderful artist Shobhna Patel, did a fabulous job anyway. 

What's something you learned from the process that surprised you?

I thought I knew this, but it was driven home again and again: the people who create and publish children’s books are an incredible community. I’m ridiculously grateful to be part of it. 

How much of your own marketing do you?  Now that’s a story. I expected that I would do as much marketing as the next debut author. However, when Egmont USA closed, I did a lot of work with Egmont’s Last List, the Egmont authors who banded together to help with each other’s releases. 

When do you build your platform? After an agent? Or should you be working before?

I may change my mind about this when I’ve had more experience in the industry, but it seems to me that the best platform I can build as a novelist is made of . . . novels. (Platform is a different beast for nonfiction writers.) While I want to be savy– or at least not stupid– about marketing, I think the best way to keep people interested is to write really good books. Lots of them. 

Do you think social media helps build your readership?

To be honest, I don’t think that my tweets have had much to do with building my readership. However, I know that social media helped the reading and writing community rally around Egmont’s Last List. So much of our support came through social media.