Liz Lawson On Silencing Debut Characters & Writing Your Second Book

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 is Liz Lawson, who has been writing for most of her life in one way or another. She has her Masters in Communications with a Concentration in Rhetoric from Villanova University, and has written for a variety of publications including PASTE MAGAZINE. Her debut novel, The Lucky Ones, releases on April 7.

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

Absolutely. One of the hardest things about the dreaded Second Book, for me, has been getting the voices from my debut out of my head and trying to figure out entirely new characters, who are still (obviously) coming from your own brain. 

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

I don’t know! Hahaha. Honestly though, I think this is one of the hardest things as a debut--you’re trying to promote this book that has been your life for so many years, while simultaneously trying to create something entirely new that’s not too different from your debut (because: branding) but also isn’t too similar (because: boring). It’s a serious tight-rope walk. That all said, I feel like after your debut comes out is probably a good time to shift focus? I think that’s one of the benefits of working on your second book with the same editor as your first—my debut releases April 7th, and my first draft of my second book is due to my editor March 1st, so it’ll give me at least a few weeks leading up to launch to concentrate on The Lucky Ones, before diving back into revisions on In Silent Seas We Drown.

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

Woof. Both? I think? I’m definitely writing another book that’s in a similar vein as my debut—dark, emotional, contemporary—because of branding, etc. But, I’m trying to push it more into thriller territory for my own enjoyment.

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

Ahh time management, aka the thing I am Not Very Good At (at all). Absolutely. Between my day job (I work as a music supervisor in TV so it’s pretty intense), my husband, my kid (who wasn’t around for a large part of when I was writing my debut), and just… life, I’m being forced to actually get good (or at least, better) at it for the first time in my life. I actually work well with deadlines, though, so it’s sort of nice to write with intent—knowing that at the end of the book there are people who are looking forward to reading it, who will help me mold it into something (hopefully) amazing.

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

The biggest thing I’m doing this time around is actually using a calendar to plan out my timeline . My debut was a literal MESS in terms of when things happened in real time, and I write contemporary, so it had to work in the real world. I had to go through and fix it all. It was an eye-opening experience for sure. So, this time, I have decided I refuse to let that happen to me again! I’m using a real world calendar and mapping events out on it, like I imagine a real Published Author™ would.

Lisa Gardner: Forensics Research Vs. Reality

Today's guest is Lisa Gardner, a number one New York times bestselling thriller novelist and self-described research junkie. She has transformed her interest in police procedure and criminal minds into a streak of internationally acclaimed novels, published across 30 countries. Lisa joined me today to talk about her newest release. When You See Me, which combines three of her most loved characters and how heavily research plays into her process.

Listen to the Episode Now

Aran Jane: Writing the Sprint, Not the Marathon

by Aran Jane

I read as widely as I can — books of all types: literature, genre fiction, biographies, history books, academic books, art books. I read Internet news feeds, magazines, the backs of cereal boxes, basically, anything I can get my hands on. 

When something catches my eye — and it could be anything — I begin turning it over in my mind to see if I can use it to tell a story. Then I cast about for a protagonist. With The Water Column, it was an article in the Chicago Tribune (and a follow-on article that appeared in the NY Times) about two fatal falls from Chicago high-rises that happened in the late Eighties. The Times headline read: Two Men, Two Women, and Two Deaths. I wanted to write a detective story and cast against type, so I decided my protagonist had to be a woman. 

Once I have a protagonist in mind, I start outlining the structural and dynamic skeleton of the story. With a grand argument story, I focus on four sequences of story points, each within a single perspective: the Main Character’s perspective, the Influence Character’s perspective, the Objective story perspective, and the Relationship story’s perspective. My approach is somewhat unique in that I do all my writing in the car. My lovely wife, Sheri, a PICC nurse, sees patients all over Southern California, traveling from Los Angeles to San Diego. We're a team: she places the PICC lines; I do the driving. 

In the breaks between conversations on the road, when the two of us are lost in thought, I work out the plot points in my head. When we reach our destination, Sheri goes in to see her patient, and I grab my computer and set to work. 

I typically get maybe an hour at each stop, if I'm lucky. We average three to four cases a day. Some days, we get slammed and see five or six patients over twelve hours or more. It all depends on Sheri's caseload. That works out to three-to-four hours of actual writing, five days a week. Occasionally, I get lucky and get to write five or six hours a day. But that's rare. 

Kris Kristofferson wrote a song that comes to mind, "The Pilgrim Chapter 33."  There's a lyric line that says: "I'm a walking contradiction, partly truth, and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on my lonely way back home." 

Since I have so little time, I cannot afford to waste it writing a story that ends up, in Kristofferson's words, "taking every wrong direction." The way I manage to avoid that problem is by using a software program for screenwriters and novelists called Dramatica Story Expert. Dramatica allows me to build a comprehensive outline. By the time I start writing the prose, I can do so with absolute confidence, knowing that my story will make a complete argument without any plot holes. It’s a hat trick, I know, but it helps me get from driving Miss Daisy to writing behind the wheel.

Aran Jane is an author whose novels are billed as imaginative, thought-provoking suspense thrillers, incorporating futurist technologies and the paranormal among more general interests in physics, metaphysics, philosophy, politics, and espionage. The Water Column releases February 25.