The Process and Why I Wrote This Book
About 15 years ago I had a conversation with a newly-published debut author who described his path from the first inkling of an idea to publication of his novel which he described as a seven-year process.
When I asked for specifics, he filled me in on the many components of writing a book: laying out the structure and plot, preliminary research, working with a developmental editor/coach, submitting a first draft, then editing, rearranging, cutting, submitting a second draft, and so forth. There was more research along the way and, for several months, he completely stopped working on the manuscript, feeling the need to separate himself from the story and clear his head. He was also being pulled into more commitments with his fulltime job. When he felt ready to reconnect with the manuscript, he dove back in with fresh ideas and an entirely new direction for the plot.
At the time, I wondered if seven years is a representative timeframe for writing fiction. In these last two years, I’ve met an author whose manuscript was completed in as little as a year and a half and another one who worked on hers for seventeen years. However, most debut authors I’ve met spent between four and seven years working on a manuscript. Yes, it’s time-consuming, not only because of editing and reconceptualizing, but also because of life: we have families, interests and pursuits beyond writing, so giving consistent and adequate time to working on a manuscript can be challenging. And, often, the project itself becomes stale.
In my case, it took me thirteen years from the time I began research for the story until my completed manuscript was ready to go out to prospective publishers, and I took breaks within that timeframe. Initially, I envisioned the book to be a biography, so I spent a lot of time doing historical research on sites like Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com. I made telephone calls to archivists, court clerks, a detective, and an owner of a horse auction business. I visited local school libraries to see what I could glean about the woman whose unsent letter I found in a wall of my house. I was drawn to her not only because her aunt and uncle were the first owners of the house, but also because the letter was so cryptic. What came through, though, despite the puzzling tone of the letter, was this teenaged girl’s lack of self-confidence (at least as it pertained to her feelings about the boy to whom she was writing). I couldn’t help wondering why she never mailed the letter, or if perhaps she sent a revised version to him. How did this letter end up in the wall? And, most importantly, why, throughout her life, did she seemingly make questionable decisions and pull away from her family of origin?
I kept a file exclusively for research: notes from phone calls, print-outs from sites I’d Googled, notes to myself as I tried to decipher the timeline of her life. I would work on the project for a few weeks, take a break, then come back to it months later. There were a couple years when the project was completely off my radar, when I was heavily involved in my two sons’ sports and school activities and, later, when I entered a Sign Language Interpreter program. My family life and my new career path dominated my time.
I cannot remember what pulled me back to the research, but some time in 2016, I revisited my file and decided to kick it up a notch. There were so many unknowns with regard to who this woman was that it started to feel as if her letter was a metaphor for her life: mysterious and inexplicable. For example, the archivist at the high school she attended helped me sift through class photos and yearbooks in search of a picture of my subject and, ironically, the one yearbook he could not locate was for the year she likely would have graduated. He even found an old file of index cards for students dating back to the 1930s, yet the file for my gal showed only the years she attended, followed by the words “exited in 1935”. Not “graduated”. Not “dropped out”. Exited. The archivist was not sure what that meant, and he and I speculated: Poor academics or something unexpected, such as a traumatic event or possibly a pregnancy.
It then occurred to me that I could create a more compelling story if I were to forgo the idea of a biography and just allow my imagination to take over. Incorporating tidbits of what I’d already learned about her, and viewing her with empathy and an open mind, I was able to craft my own story of who she may have been and why her life took the direction it did.
And, once I began writing, I could not stop. I had such fun with the story, especially scenes involving dialogue between family members, and I truly was adrift in my character’s world. Midway through the manuscript, I hired a professional editor to help me work through the plot and prepare the manuscript to be sent out to publishers. I asked a handful of friends to beta-read the completed manuscript for honest feedback. That’s when I began to doubt myself and the story. Maybe readers wouldn’t find the protagonist interesting or the plot compelling. I became acutely aware of my shift from loving the process to agonizing over the end-product.
Ultimately, I forced myself to set aside that negativity which cast a shadow on the experience I’d just relished so much. As the work of getting the book “out there” becomes my focus, I have vowed to keep reminding myself of the joy I felt being lost in the composition, because that’s why I wrote it in the first place. If readers buy and, ultimately, enjoy the book, well, that’ll be the icing on the proverbial cake!
