My Writing Process

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Robin Hall, who writes YA and MG and fabulous blog posts here.  (We also both did a study abroad to Israel within a semester of each other!  Who knew?!)    

What am I working on?

*An R&R with a fabulous agent on a contemporary YA love story.  It's Mansfield Park meets Anna and the French Kiss, and I love it.  I hope she'll love the revisions!  

*Drafting another YA contemporary that I can't tell if I love or if I'm just writing to fill the time so I don't work on my second draft of the book I REALLY want to be revising while my mind is gearing up to query my Mansfield book in the event the agent with the R&R says no...  And now I'm wondering if that even makes sense.  Huh.  

*Doing random bits of research for yet another YA contemporary I want to write (and, oh my gosh, I want to write this so badly.  It involves cancer, but it's NOT a cancer book, and I think it has the power to be poignant and heart-wrenching and funny and fabulous.  But I'm scared of it due to my family history of cancer, so I need to let it just hang out for a while while I build up my courage.).

How does my work differ from others of its genre?  

Yeesh, uh, I guess I can't write without love being part of the story, but I don't feel like my books are romance novels.  YA contemporary has so much romance in it that I feel like my books are simply YA contemporary with liberal amounts of near-kisses and crushes (and real kisses).  


The hallmark of my work is, I feel, hope.  I haven't had the easiest of lives, yet I've always had carried an un-squelch-able optimism with me.  Maybe it hasn't been there in the absolutely darkest moments (and I certainly wouldn't want to read about someone who was so put together that she never had a truly dark moment), but I rebound pretty quickly.  I need that quality in my characters.  Because people who dwell on the darkness and choose to stay and wallow in it make me want to punch myself in the face.  

That said, I don't mind a little darkness in my books.  It just can't eclipse the light.

Why do I write what I do?  

I love young adult literature.  I think it's more honest than so much of the adult stuff that's published, because teens call bull-pucky on anything that isn't authentic.  I want to write books that my nieces and, one day, my daughter can read.  Books that entertain them but that can give them perspective without having to reach all the way down into the ugliest parts of life.  That may not even sound possible, but I feel like it is.  I don't mind grit and ugliness when it serves a purpose, but it needs to serve a purpose for me to justify including it.  I want my daughter to be proud of me when she's old enough to read my stuff.  And I want her to swoon over the cute boys without thinking her mom is gross for writing about kissing.  Which will totally happen, because I'm awesome and she'll always know that.  Always. 

How does my writing process work?

With the help of Mini Eggs and Diet Pepsi while my daughter naps.  

The second an idea takes hold, I have to write down whatever I "saw" of it.  The scene, the question that caused the "OH MY GOSH!" moment in my head, or whatever.  But then once it's written down, I like swimming in the idea for a while.  I like researching enough to understand what I can/can't do with it.  Then I think about the conflict and the plot.

I've recently started using beat sheets that I got from Jamie Gold's website.  They're incredibly helpful, and they're my favorite plotting tool (and my only plotting tool, honestly.  I don't love detailed plotting.).

Once that's done, I write at a decent pace, but not a breakneck one.  I don't like leaving ugly sentences and misspelled words on a page, so I correct those as I go.  If my first draft is too ugly, I won't want to do a second draft because it will feel overwhelming.  

Then it's off to my sissy-poo, who reads all my stuff before everything else, and I incorporate her feedback before revising and sending it off to my CP's.  I have two rounds of CP's and their accompanying revisions before I send the work to my brilliant teen beta readers for final approval.  Then...query time!  And hopefully soon, that means agent time, and editor time, and published book time.  :) 




I'd love to know your thoughts and, if you're a writer, your process!  In the meantime, I'm tagging the brilliant wordsmiths and grammarians, Heather Romito and Elizabeth Gilliland.  Check out their blogs next Monday for how they create awesomeness.

Addicted (AKA I'm a Writer)

Hi.  I'm Katy. 

You've probably never met a writer who's loved writing since she was a little kid, have you?  I mean, no one has had a lifelong passion for writing!  That's crazy!  

Right.  So, I'm a cliche in that regard, and when I inevitably have a book published (because I will, dang it.  I will!), that will likely go in my bio, just like it has gone in every author's bio since the dawn of storytelling.  (I'm willing to bet Sin-liqe-unninni's bio on the Epic of Gilgamesh says the same thing). And, like so many authors, I write because I can't not write.  (In other words, I don't write because I can, as the double-negative naysayers would correct, I write because I must.  Double-negatives serve a real purpose, people!)

The first stories I ever wrote were drawings of "The Heart People."  I would draw hearts and then give them eyes (and eyelashes, for the ladies) and smiles and stick arms and legs.  They were usually going down slides or swinging at the park.  I would write six or eight pages on lined notebook paper, tie the pages together through the three holes down the left side, and write "25¢" on the top right corner of the title page.  Then I'd sell them to my dad and buy penny candies from the Red Apple or Canadian Grocery (the two stores in my village.  Yes, village.).  

It was awesome.  I was making candy money for something I loved!  I was hooked.

As I grew up, I gravitated towards English and writing classes.  In college, I switched from English to Philosophy, which included an astounding number of papers and an adherence to grammar and language rules that had been a bit looser in my English classes.  Thus was born my obsessive love of grammar (and love of breaking the right rules at the right time.  If that broken rule involves a comma and you're not Cormac McCarthy, though, stop it.  Stop it right now.).

After college, I always had at least two or three story ideas bouncing around in my head (sometimes as many as eight or ten).  On my lunch break at work, I'd often stay at my computer and email ideas and scenes to myself.  I played around with a few of my ideas, but they were total turds.  Unreadable turds.  Then, one day, I had an idea that I thought was THE ONE.  I spent six years drafting and researching and world-building and writing this YA fantasy trilogy, then slashing and rewriting and re-revising it.  I even queried it to about 25 agents, had a couple of requests for partials, and won a "First 250 (words)" contest.  My beta readers loved the first book, and I loved the series more than I could handle.

Which is how I knew I had to let it go.  When people gave me suggestions, I'd roll my eyes, sure they just didn't get the story.  When someone mentioned a failing in my main character (who is totally, unequivocally, nerdfully me), I'd get mad.  

So I had to move on.

And I've been happy about my writing life ever since.  I blog with the clever, talented, fantastic Mormon Mommy Writers.  I completed two novels last year, including one for NaNoWriMo.  I have a completed novel that made it to the agent round of Pitch Madness and had six requests, and I've had a couple of other requests from other avenues.  I haven't formally started querying yet, but I feel incredible about this new book.  And I feel incredible about my (still unedited) NaNo novel, and...hopeful about my current WIP.  

I have no idea what will come of any of my works.  I'm optimistic that I'll find an agent and publish eventually (but that could very well be the famous family hubris talking).  Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if I publish or not.  I write because I love thinking about the world in a different way.  I love helping my characters find themselves, a love interest or two, and the best pizza in their city.  I love exploring my deepest emotions and processing them on paper (or a laptop) for the world to see...or not to see.  It doesn't really matter.  

I'm addicted.

So, hello.  My name is Katy, and I'm a writer.