What I’d Tell My Younger, Pre-Book Deal Self
And the one thing I would NOT tell her
[Caitlin note: This is Kristin’s last post in her series leading to the August 1 publication of her debut novel, The Housewarming. It is available now as a Kindle Unlimited First Read, and available for pre-order in audio and paperback!
Kristin’s latest guest post ends with one of my favorite sentiments about the passage of time and the pursuit of a creative dream. I hope you enjoy this piece, whether you go into it longing to be where Kristin is or as a wizened published author yourself, thinking about all the things you’d tell younger You.]
Sometimes my phone shows me old photos I haven’t thought about in years. The other day, it served up a picture from five years ago (you remember 2020, don’t you?). In the picture, I’m sitting at my writing desk. My laptop is just at the bottom of the frame, and on the wall behind me is a long piece of paper on which I’d drawn a plot planner. Post-It notes in four separate colors cover the plot planner, a rainbow of scenes within my work-in-progress, The Housewarming.
I’d forgotten about that particular moment in time until my phone reminded me. It was June 2020 and the pandemic was still very much a Big Deal. A little digging on my Instagram page tells me that I posted the photo because I had just completed my first revision and was thrilled to be done. I’d started the first draft on June 15, 2018, finished it on June 15, 2019, and completed the revision on June 15, 2020. Cute!
June-2020-me was just thrilled to have completed her first revision on that book. But little did she know that there would be close to a million more revisions to come!
Looking back reminds me how many phases we go through as writers, and how many versions of ourselves exist in our creative timelines. There are a few things I wish present-day me could tell the past versions of myself.
Everything will take longer than you think. Proceed accordingly.
I am notoriously terrible at estimating how long it’ll take me to complete creative tasks. I’ll give myself two weeks for something that actually ends up taking me eight weeks, or I’ll pile more on my plate than I can realistically accomplish.
I wish I knew in my early writing days that drafting, revising, querying, and publishing would all take me longer than I expected. And I wish that I not only knew this, but also found more patience with myself because of it. I’m a slower writer than I’d like to be, and as noted above, bad at setting realistic timelines. Knowing that everything takes a bit longer than you think and accepting that fact would’ve done wonders for giving past me some realistic expectations around my creative work.
The uncertainty never goes away. Write anyway.
I’m an Enneagram Six, a personality type that likes certainty and security. The problem with being a Six and a writer is that writing offers no guarantees. There’s no promise that our story ideas will work out on the page, just as there’s no promise our stories will be published. I found that hard to grapple with at times, especially when I’d spend years on a novel and wonder if anyone besides my writing friends and my mom would ever read it.
Five years ago, I wanted to know that I was definitely working on something that would one day be published. I’m so happy that, finally, this summer it IS being published. But even just a little over a year ago, that wasn’t yet a guarantee. And even if it hadn’t worked out, it doesn’t change the fact that every single writing session was valuable.
I worked on a novel from 2014-2018 that will never see the light of day, but writing it taught me how to stick with a longer project. It taught me about plot and structure. It even taught me how to let go of a book when it was time to move on to the next project.
Yes, we all have hopes and aspirations for our work, but we rarely have certainty about the outcome. Write anyway. Every word you type, every page you revise–it’s all vital to your growth as a writer. None of it is wasted time.
Be open to changing your process. Outlines may not be that scary after all.
I pantsed my way through my first two books. The results were slow, messy drafts. Still, I SWORE that the process worked for me because I like writing #vibes. And I resisted outlines because I thought they sucked all the surprises out of the writing process.
But after drafting a third novel with a loose outline by my side, I was able to complete the first draft in about three months versus one year, and the result was a fairly organized story. It still needed work, but it didn’t require the intense surgery that my pansted novels had required.
I wish I could jump back to 2018 and tell myself not to be afraid of outlines. I’d say that yes, writing based on vibes is exciting, but at a certain point, you’ll try an outline and realize there’s still room for surprises. Be flexible with your process as you grow as a writer. Give yourself permission to try new things instead of limiting yourself to what you’ve tried in the past.
And what I wouldn’t tell my past self:
You’ll start writing your first novel in 2014, but you won’t actually publish your debut until 2025.
Nobody needs to know how long the road to certain milestones is when they’re on a creative path. Knowing this wouldn’t have stopped me from writing, but it might’ve been a hard pill to swallow at the beginning of my journey when I was full of delusion and dreaming of my writing career. I figured that my first book would be published a year or two after I wrote it. LOL.
Back then, I didn’t yet understand how much time and effort I would pour into every stage of the process, from drafting to revising to querying. Instead, I took it one phase at a time, enjoying the process when I could and battling my impatience when I couldn’t.
The time will pass regardless of what you’re doing. You might as well spend it writing.
What’s one thing you would tell your writerly past self if you could?
Kristin Offiler holds an MFA from Lesley University. Her short fiction has appeared in the Waccamaw Journal, The Bookends Review, The Bookends Review Best of 2020 print anthology, and the Raleigh Review. When she’s not writing, she can be found reading on the porch of her 130-year-old house or exploring charming corners of New England. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and son. Her debut novel, THE HOUSEWARMING, comes out August 1st from Thomas & Mercer, and can be read now through Kindle Unlimited!
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What a great reflection on the writing process!
I love and relate to all of this, and I really hope more people add their "what I'd tell myself" thoughts.
Mine is "the ideas will come with age, especially if you keep reading and observing and writing and believing." When I was in my earliest 20s and just DYING to write a book, I had the time and energy but I could not think of an idea for the life of me. Then I finally had ONE idea--but I let a naysayer squash it. Fastforward another decade and I learned to stick with other ideas (one at a time) and protect my fragile ideas from the naysayers. Ha! But I still never had more than one idea at a time.
It took until my late 40s to suddenly have lots of ideas--the most fun part is when one strikes unexpectedly--and the trick has become choosing (and of course figuring out how to execute and sticking with it through endless drafts). I could have worried much less if I'd just trusted that experience would rewire my brain--but it would take a LONG LONG TIME.