Kate Watson On Handling An Austen Retelling

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

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Today's guest for the WHAT is Kate Watson  is a young adult writer, wife, mother of two, and the tenth of thirteen children. Originally from Canada, she attended college in the States and holds a BA in Philosophy. Seeking Mansfield (Flux) is her first novel, with a companion to follow. She is also a contributor to Eric Smith’s WELCOME HOME adoption anthology (along with Mindy!) coming fall of 2017 from Flux.

You can find Kate on her site, Facebook & Twitter.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I’m a Jane Austen fanatic, and a few years ago, I was rereading Mansfield Park and thinking about how it doesn’t translate to the modern era like Austen’s other works do. The main character, Fanny Price, doesn’t make a lot of sense to modern readers (not to mention the whole cousins in love thing, which is pretty tough to get over in any era, because ew). So as I was rereading the book, I kept wondering how it could be updated to resonate with a 21st Century audience. SEEKING MANSFIELD is my attempt to modernize this much-overlooked classic.

Also, full disclosure: Henry Crawford is one of my favorite Austen men. There’s a distinct possibility that I simply wanted to write (modern) Henry Crawford fan fiction.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

Retelling anything is tricky, because you get one camp of readers wanting the story to follow the original, and you get another camp wanting something fresh. So before I wrote the plot, I knew I needed to understand my characters, independent of their Austen correlatives. I spent a lot of time researching them and getting to know them. After that, I figured out how my story needed to end, and I outlined some major plot points that I thought would get me there. I wrote the first draft of SEEKING MANFIELD with Mansfield Park right beside me for direction. But after that first draft was done, I closed the original and edited and made copious changes based on my characters and their individual arcs.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I can’t say I ever have a plot firmly in place. I’m a destination writer—I always know how the story will end (and I’ve yet to be surprised by an ending). But I rarely know how it will happen, even though I create decent outlines in advance of any project. I love doing research, and it’s often in the course of researching something that I realize the story needs to take a different direction than expected, because that research helps me uncover more about my characters. I’m incapable of forcing a plot on my characters. They really run the show. 

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Ideas come to me pretty often, sometimes when I’m doing something productive, like reading, but frequently when I’m occupied with mundane tasks, like showering or doing dishes (it should be noted that I never get ideas while folding laundry, because folding laundry is evil and inherently uninspiring). Recently, I even had a dream that ended up being a surprisingly fleshed out, John Green-esque novel. My dreams are typically absolute nonsense, like Freddy Kruger living in my closet, but he’s like a nice Freddy Kruger and he cries when I tell him to leave me alone so I can sleep, and stuff (not kidding on that one, btw). But this idea was solid enough that I actually wrote it down. We’ll see if it makes it into the rotation someday.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Anytime I get an idea, I jot everything down that comes to me about it, and then I return to whatever else I’m working on at the time. My mind ruminates on those ideas in the background until there’s sort of a survival-of-the-fittest/fight club moment and one wins out. It’s all very violent, and sometimes I feel bad for those poor ideas that got bludgeoned and left for ruin in my brain. But that’s evolution, you know?

Writing can be completely exhausting. Like riding in a car, there’s no reason why but it totally drains me physically. I usually take a nap if I’ve been writing for more than an hour. Do you have to recharge after a writing session? 

Writing is all about momentum for me. If I haven’t written for a while, it’s really hard to get back in the habit. But if I’m in author-mode, writing acts like a jolt of caffeine. When I’m on a roll, I’ll find that I start writing at 9 PM and can easily go till 1 AM without batting an eye. In those instances, I have a hard time shutting my brain off because I’m so eager to live in the story.

Rosalyn Eves On Writing Smarter For Book Two

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Published authors face a new set of pressures, 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? With this in mind I created the SNOB (Second Novel Omnipresent Blues). Today's guest for the SNOB is Rosalyn Eves, author of the well-received fantasy BLOOD ROSE REBELLION.

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

In my case, the second book is a continuation of the first, since Blood Rose Rebellion sold as a trilogy. But that brings with it its own set of challenges! It took me a while to figure out why book two was so hard to write—essentially, book 2 in a trilogy is the mucky middle. The WHOLE book is the middle. The challenge for me was to figure out a way to give the book its own arc, with some kind of resolution, while still leaving things open-ended enough for book three.

It was nice to come back to a familiar world, at least—most of the character development and world-building work happened with the first book. 

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

I’m still trying to figure this out! Mostly my priorities are driven by deadlines. When I have edits due on book two, it takes priority. As soon as my edits are in, I shift my focus to catching up on the promotional stuff I need to do (like writing this post!). The harder thing right now is to find time to draft book three—editing book two and promoting are absorbing a lot of 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?

The first book I definitely wrote for myself, but the second book was in many ways harder to write because of all the different possible audiences. I’d been warned that writing a book under contract was hard, but I still wasn’t prepared for how difficult it was. For the first little while, every time I sat down to draft, a voice in my head asked: is this worth the money your publisher wants to pay you for it? And of course, being a first draft, it never was. 

I’m also writing with readers in mind: what kinds of things have readers responded positively to in the first book? How can I include more of the same while also telling a different story? But I have to be careful how much I do this—I tend to want to make everyone happy, and it’s impossible for any one story to do that. Sometimes even good reviews can mess with my head, as when a reader says they hope to see more of something in the next book, and then I start asking myself: do I have enough of that element? Should there be more? I have to balance the needs of my audience against the needs of the story—what choices serve the story best?

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

As I said above, I’m still trying to figure the balance out. Interacting with readers and doing book promotion are still pretty new to me, and it’s tempting sometimes to sink all my time into those, especially when the writing is hard and I’m looking to procrastinate. (And interacting with readers is much more fun than slogging through a draft.) I think for me it’s important to set boundaries on myself and my time—to say I have x amount of time for promoting today and stick to that, or none of the writing gets done. 

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

I think I’ve been writing smarter. I hit a snag about 75K into book two that I could not resolve. Instead of just plowing through and thinking, “I’ll fix this in revisions,” I took some time away from the story and replotted it. I think having a more structure as I wrote meant that I didn’t waste as much time following plot bunnies—and it gave me more time for revising before submitting to my editor, who was impressed with how polished it was for a first draft—until I told her it wasn’t actually a first draft.

One thing that I’m finding a lot of authors struggle with in the second book is having to turn in a fairly rough draft. When the editor buys the first book, it’s been polished and revised multiple times. But with books under contract, particularly second books in a series, there often isn’t the time for that kind of revision and polish. It’s hard to get over the gap between what the first book looked like when the editor saw it and what the second book looks like. I know editors are used to it, but a big part of me cringed when I hit send on my draft (but I also didn’t want to waste time polishing it if my editor hated it and wanted me to rewrite it—which has happened to several authors I know).

Kurt Dinan: Writing Humor

there's a new podcast episode up with fellow Ohio author, YALSA Top Ten Teen nominee, and all around funny guy Kurt Dinan. We talk about querying, short stories, writing humor, as well as unlikely poisonous substances and our porn names.