Gail Shepherd on Balancing Writing Time As A Published Author

Welcome to the SNOB (Second Novel Ominipresent 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 Gail Shepherd who received her creative M.A. from the University of Florida in poetry. She has collaborated on radio plays, written comic serial magazine stories, and published her own biweekly indie newspaper. She currently works in the K-12 education industry, supporting teachers and schools with training and technology. She is a fourth generation Floridian on her mother’s side, and she lives in South Florida now with her little family, two dogs, and an awful lot of mosquitoes. The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins is her debut novel.

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

Actually, not so much. Most debut novels go through multiple developmental revisions (I did three full revisions with my agent and three with my editor), and once the developmental revisions are done, there are several rounds of copy edits and smaller line edits on the pass pages. By the time you’re through with that process, you are pretty much sick of reading the book (or writing it). I do find that I think about the first book a lot—but in a quite different way. I ponder on how I might talk about it to a bunch of 12-year-olds in a classroom, or to an audience of other writers, or how I might use elements from it as an example in a writing workshop. I think about my process, about notes for teachers who may be presenting the novel in class, and about sideline material that I’d like to offer readers to help them go deeper.

My middle-grad debut, The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins, is about a girl obsessed with history and also with discovering the truth. I find myself now reading books like Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, and thinking about how a history class might look at Lyndie’s quest to find out the truth about her family and her town’s history. In that way, Lyndie is still very much alive for me.

But also: How incredibly refreshing it was to turn to my next book! My new main character is very different from Lyndie. I really love the process of discovering her.

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

Boy, that’s a really tough question. As a member of two debut groups, I find that a lot of time is going into pre-promotion. You’ve got to get your website up, your business cards done, your swag, your video. You’ve got to organize any author appearances and plan your launch. And you try to do a lot to promote your fellow debut authors, as well as keep up with prior commitments to critique partners. At the same time, your publisher has ongoing requests for you. I’ve also signed up for some sideline gigs, for example, I joined the staff of From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors blog, so all those extras tend to pile up. I now have to keep a really, really detailed calendar or I’ll blow my commitments.

Ideally, you would have started the second book while drumming your fingers waiting for the first book to make the rounds, go through edits, etc. It didn’t work out that way for me. I had two other books partially or fully done, but my editor and I decided to go in another direction for book 2, so I was starting from scratch with less than a year until I was supposed to deliver the second manuscript. To ensure that I kept working on book 2, I signed up for an intensive six-month online class that will keep my nose to the grindstone, and, I hope, help me deliver that second manuscript on time.

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

That’s complicated. You can never write entirely “for yourself.” What you do, ideally, is filter your own unique sensibility through the lens of the marketplace. Right now, I’m interested in historical fiction with a southern voice. But I have to consider how my 11- or 12-year-old readers will relate to my historical character, how many similar books are being published, what makes my book different from those, and the many questions that will come from my editor, Kathy Dawson, who is brilliant at finding the kernel of your best story and helping you flesh it out.

I find that I also struggle a bit with the social and cultural considerations that are very much part of the current conversations in kidlit. I know want to write characters of color and diverse backgrounds, I’m deeply drawn to these characters, or to any characters who are underdogs of some sort, but I’m hyper-aware of the pitfalls of doing so as a privileged white middle class author. So there are a lot of forces that act on a novel, from within and without.

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

Absolutely, and I don’t think I have a handle on this yet. I’m a bit of a procrastinator, so any shiny thing that can grab my attention away from the hard work of writing exerts a tremendous draw. I have to fight this tendency to go chasing after something that feels easier than sitting my butt in the chair and plotting out my 300 page novel, or writing a thousand words, or struggling through a stuck point, every day.

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

Well, I’m not technically published yet, and won’t be until March 26, 2019, although The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins, is already up for pre-sale. And I’m still just baby steps into a “second time around.” I find the business of writing pretty fascinating, so I’m lucky that the promotion and planning doesn’t feel like a drain.

I think if I’m honest, as a published author, I’m going to have to commit to and prioritize my writing time, every single day, even if I’m doing no more than just thinking about the next book and making notes. I can tell you that at certain points during writing my first book I was breaking down in tears, because I found it so, so hard. And then at other times, I was vibrating with pleasure. I do love the process of learning to write, and I will never stop pursuing getting better at it. But there are times that writing a book just doesn’t feel good. And as a human being, I’m pain avoidant. So the sooner and more firmly I can get into a daily writing groove, on book after book, the better off I’ll be.

How To Promote One Book While Writing Another With Christina Hoag

Welcome to the SNOB (Second Novel Ominipresent 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 Christina Hoag, whose YA thriller Girl on the Brink was named one of Suspense Magazine’s Best of 2016 for young adults.

She's a former staff writer for the Miami Herald and Associated Press, and wrote from Latin America for Time, Business Week, New York Times, Financial Times, Times of London, Houston Chronicle and other news outlets.

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

I had the odd situation of having two novels published at the same time by two different publishers. What happened is that the first novel, Skin of Tattoos, was on submission for a long time with an agent. During that time, I finished Girl on the Brink and started sending it out. When I got Skin of Tattoos back from the agent, I revised it and then continued to send it out on my own to small publishers who didn’t require an agent. By that time I got an offer, I had also found a publisher for Girl on the Brink, and as it happens they were released in the same month. So basically, I promoted both books at once. That did save some time and money.

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

Promoting the first one(s) did take up a lot of time. There’s a natural cycle of about three months of interest after the release of a book then interest basically drops off. So you do have to take full advantage of that window. It is gratifying though, to see your hard work come to fruition after years of slogging away so it was worth it. But I did start a new project right away, the problem was I didn’t know what I really wanted to write so I putzed around with several different ideas and books.

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

I have to write for myself and just hope that readers will like what I write. Otherwise, I feel it’s not going to be as authentic. Luckily, now I have a list of concrete projects to go to so hopefully, I won’t waste as much time after the next novel floundering around as to what to write. I will say, though, that my writing has gotten a lot stronger with the constant practice.

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

Definitely. I’m a morning writer so that’s when I write. Marketing and promotional stuff I save for the afternoon, when I’m written out. And of course, I also write to make a living. I edit, write corporate public relations stuff and so on. So I also have to factor that in.

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

Start a newsletter to reach fans, network by joining writers’ groups and associations, attend writers conferences, generally follow any marketing opportunity. I’ve also learned to be more confident about myself and promoting myself.

Rachel Lynn Solomon On Loving Your Work

Welcome to the SNOB (Second Novel Ominipresent 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?

My guest for today's SNOB is Rachel Lynn Solomon, who writes, tap dances, and collects red lipstick in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of two young adult novels, You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (out now from Simon Pulse) and Our Year of Maybe (out January 15, 2019). Once she helped set a Guinness World Record for the most natural redheads in one place. You can find her online and on Twitter.

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

Definitely, and for me the hardest part was accepting that my first book was “done”—no more middle-of-the-night epiphanies, no more last-minute tweaks. I had all these other versions of You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone in my head, but readers would only know one of them.

My first book was also a bit of a journey. I started working on it in 2013 while on submission with another YA (and then another) that didn’t end up selling. My former agent put it on submission for a short time, and after we amicably parted ways, I queried it for six months before signing with a new agent. Then we went on submission with it again. By the time the book was published in early 2018, it had been in my life for nearly five years.

In comparison, I started working on my book 2 in early 2016, though after You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone sold in a two-book deal in mid-2016, I set aside that book 2 for about a year while working on YMMWIG edits. I estimate that I worked consistently on book 2, Our Year of Maybe, for about a year, maybe less. So the amount of time I spent on each book was was wildly different.

I also felt torn between wanting to write the same book and trying to distinguish it from my debut as much as possible. Every time I read a positive review of YMMWIG that praised something I didn’t do in OYOM, I wondered if I should add it in, even if it didn’t fit the story. Ultimately, though, I found a balance, and I think OYOM has a lot in common with YMMWIG while exploring some themes (codependent friendship, obsession, self-discovery) my debut didn’t.

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

In my case, these things overlapped quite a bit! YMMWIG came out early January 2018, and OYOM was sent to copy edits in late February. So the end of 2017 was spent promoting YMMWIG and revising OYOM, on top of working full-time.

I tried to focus on the aspects of promo that 1) I enjoyed and 2) increased visibility for the book. I wrote a blog post breaking down everything I did and how much money I spent.

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

Most of the time, I find that I’m writing for my teen self: the books I would have loved, but more importantly, the books I needed. Of course, plenty has changed since I was a teen—I remember thinking texting would never catch on and resisted it until I was a senior in high school—so I keep the modern teen audience in mind, too.

I’m also often writing to counteract negative portrayals of girls in YA (particularly the ones I read as a teen), mainly when it comes to sexuality, desire, and ambition. I don’t think it’s selfish to write for ourselves first. We should enjoy and take pride in the work we’re creating—how can I expect someone else to love something I’ve written if I don’t love it first?

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

After a lot of planning, I took a leap into FT writing in the fall of 2018. I’d been working FT from home prior to that, which unfortunately meant it felt like I was always working. When I had time to write, I’d stress myself out so much because I didn’t know when I’d have that writing time again. I sold two more books to Simon Pulse in mid-2018, and I was hungry for time not just to write them—but to truly enjoy writing them.

One thing I didn’t realize, though, was that a decent chunk of time spent author-ing isn’t actually spent writing. You’re also responding to emails, promoting your books, interacting with other authors, reading their work, standing in line at the post office, etc.

I try to plan out my weeks so I’m writing every morning for about four hours. Afternoons are for promo, freelance editing, errands, or whatever else needs to get done. It’s still a work in progress, but I think I’m getting better at the time management element.

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

I’m a lot calmer now than I was the first time around. All of this still feels new and exciting, but the first half of my debut year, I had a hard time not constantly comparing myself to others. You see something great happen for someone, and you’re thrilled for them, but you still wonder: “Why not me? Why not my book?” It’s impossible to avoid—even if you’re getting a couple of those great somethings. And I truly am happy with my debut experience.

Then, halfway through the year, I felt a shift and gained some much-needed perspective. Part of it was sparked by this excellent blog post from Susan Dennard. It hit me that the only way I’d have a chance at achieving any of my author bucket list goals was by writing the next book. And then writing the one after that, and so forth. That’s really the only thing we can control in this industry. So I’ve made a concerted effort to channel that into my writing, and to put out both positivity and honesty on my social media whenever I can. Because at the end of the day, I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to do this again.