SPEAKER_00 0:00

I didn't realize how malleable my story was. I it has changed so much over the years, and yet it is the same story I wrote initially about these friends. But how things are happening, how things are revealed, it's so malleable. And it's really exciting too when something clicks finally and you realize, oh, that's the way that it needs to be told. And I think it's just being in the story and the revision long enough to get there.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Gared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Write It Scared podcast, where we talk about the brave and messy act of writing our novels, so that we can do it with more clarity and more confidence and not feel so alone. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, and today I have an amazing guest interview for you. I'm in conversation with author Kristen Offler about her debut psychological suspense novel called The Houseworming. It was such a delightful conversation. Kristen is completely candid about her very long experience of writing her debut novel and the process of sharing that with the world and what she chose to do to make that happen. So let's jump into her interview and then get to the bio. Kristen Offler holds an MFA from Leslie University. Her short fiction has appeared in the Raleigh Review, The Wackama Journal, The Bookends Review, and the Bookends Review Best of 2020 print anthology. 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, son, and dog. The Housewarming is her debut novel. Well, hi, Kristen. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so grateful to have you here. We're going to talk about your debut novel and all the things. And so how are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, where are you in the world? I'm in Rhode Island. I'm we're in New England. It's sunny today for once. It's been very rainy, but the sun's out. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, we I I have this knack for these bi-coastal conversations because that's the West Coast. But that's that's so cool. Right on. Well, I'm very excited to talk to you about your debut novel. It's a psychological suspense. But before we get into that, would you please share a bit about your journey to becoming a writer?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, absolutely. I think like most writers, I was always a reader and always liked writing when I was younger. But when I was in college during my undergrad, I took a creative writing workshop. And that was sort of where it like clicked for me. And I was like, oh, I could do this more often. I really like this. The workshopping atmosphere and just talking with writers about writing. So that was the tail end of undergrad. And I sort of on a whim decided to apply for MFA programs. I was an English major who didn't really know what they were doing. It was 2008 when I graduated. So we were hitting the recession and there were no jobs for anybody. And they kept telling us that you're graduating and there are no jobs. So I decided to go into an MFA program to continue learning about fiction writing and creative writing. I went to Leslie University in Cambridge. They have a low residency program. So we'd go for a week on campus and meet with mentors, take classes and workshops, and then you'd go home for the semester and correspond with your mentor. And so that was great. Having the structure of that was great for a couple of years. And then when it ended, I really did not know how to write without the deadline of like being in a program. So I floundered a bit and then found my way into a creative writing online school run by Sarah Sileki. She's a Canadian author. And met my writing group through that, which opened up some, you know, new doors. It was sort of like, you know, finding your people out in the world in the writing community as you're learning how to be a writer. And so through that course, I started, I was doing a lot of short fiction. I did a short fiction as my focus in my MFA program. And I knew I wanted to write novels, but I didn't really know how. And so I sort of stumbled into my first novel while I was doing Sarah's course in 2014. I was just doing an exercise, and it sort of the little scene in one of these exercises stuck with me. And I just kept writing on that scene. And it kept growing and growing. And I was like, I think this is bigger than a short story. And then a year later, I had a really big draft that was a mess because I didn't know how to plot or anything. So I spent a few more years revising it, learning about structure and plot and, you know, stuff I didn't really learn in my MFA program because it was more focused on the short fiction. And I think in the MFA program, it was more like the micro level, like beautiful writing. And, you know, this was like big picture. How do you write a book? That's a different beast altogether. Yeah. And so I taught a little bit with Sarah Selecki. I've published some short fiction. And I queried that first book very briefly and got scared off when I didn't get any bites. And then I decided to start working on something completely different. And that was the housewarming. That was 2018. And I did the same thing again, where I had one little idea for a story, and I just sort of ran with it for a year, just writing whatever, and then spent several years kind of piecing it back together into what it is now. Yeah, that's that's the gist of it, really.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that with our audience. I think it's kind of a common journey, you know, to we just start somewhere and keep going. But I love how you have these sparks of ideas that start something short, but they have evolved for you. I was gonna ask, what was the genre of the first book that you wrote?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

It was historical fiction, which I don't read a lot of historical fiction, but the the little scene that I was seeing was very clearly not modern. And so I just was writing what I was seeing really, and then learning along the way. I also had it set in Bermuda, which is a place I had visited like twice. And so I really loved it, but I also didn't know a lot about it. And I had so much learning and just it was it was a fun thing to do. And I think it taught me that I could write a book, I could do, I could do it, and I could figure out the steps to put it back together after the messy first draft. But it was a genre I wasn't even reading, really.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, and first books do give they give us so much and they teach us so much. And it is, you know, sometimes people I think we're new writers, we I know for myself, I didn't appreciate. Not only am I learning how to to write, I mean, for me personally, I didn't come from a literary background, but I was learning how to write in a way that you know someone else could read it and understand it and be entertained by it, not bored to death. Yeah. Because I could write you an analytical paper, but I couldn't entertain you. But anyway, I was learning how to write and learning how to structure a story. Those are two different beasts, and so that first book is teaching you all of that. So it's gonna take time and it's okay for it to be practiced.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, exactly. Okay for it to be practiced. Yeah, I tucked it away and I was like, I don't think that'll see the light of day. I queried it just a little bit, like 10 queries, and I was like, nobody wants this. And I was like, you know what? Maybe that was the practice run. Let's try again. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

I very similar story myself. Very similar story. Like, and you know, it's like I don't know if I want to write in that vein forever. So maybe I am so excited to hear you talk about your new book. So, because I love psychological suspense and thrillers. So, why don't you tell us more about your debut novel that's coming out?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah. So it's called The Housewarming. It's about a woman named Zoe Gilbert who goes missing off of Block Island, which is a small island off the coast of Rhode Island. She's gone missing after a week-long vacation with her four closest friends. And a true crime blogger kind of gets a hold of the story and suspects the friends of doing something to Zoe. And then her audience latches onto it. It becomes sort of a viral true crime story, and it goes cold. The case goes cold. There are no resolutions in real time. But the friend group is sort of fractured by the virality of their lives becoming this true crime story and their friend still being missing. Then it picks up five years later when one of the friends named Callie is buying a house out on Block Island and she's planning a housewarming party on the fifth anniversary of Zoe's disappearance. And she's kind of calling her friends back together. She wants to bury the hatchet, reunite, kind of, you know, lay their old resentments to rest. But at the same time, the blogger is back on the scene and she's shopping a book proposal for a story about Zoe's case. And she's promising that she can prove what happened and that she still believes the friends are guilty of something. So she's sort of rising from the ashes to, you know, go after them again, and they're pulling together to deal with their past. And it all comes to a head at the housewarming. The truth comes out, secrets are revealed. It's all and it's set in the summer on Block Island. So it's like a great beachy kind of suspense read. It's and it was fun to write too.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Oh, I bet. And you started working on this, you said in 2018. Yeah. Yep. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Medical time, there was no missing person in the book. It was very much just a story about female friendship. And I knew I just wanted to write something contemporary because my first attempt had been, you know, historic. And I was, I want to write something set today. I threw a bunch of POVs in it because I had one POV, and I was just trying to do something very different than what I had done before. And there was no missing person initially. So I did that first draft and I was, you know, huh, I think it's missing something. I think there's literally a person who should be missing who's not on the page yet. So that was like 2018 was the first, you know, draft of it. And then so many drafts on my own over the years, just kind of uncovering the story as I would revise and more things would, you know, it occur to me, like, oh, that should be in here. Oh, that's a person that I didn't think about before. And then I did more of that with my agent too, and then a little more with the editor, and it was just a lot of you know, calling through the story for years. I joked that my son was one and a half when I started it, and he just turned eight. So he's been like my way of kind of gauging how long I've been with this book. You were a toddler when I started this.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Oh, that's that's amazing, and congratulations and huge kudos. So, what was it like? I mean, rolling with a book for eight years, or well, probably six, right? Yeah. Um said and done, you know, because then it takes two years for the publishing world to put it out there.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, it was, you know, it was interesting. I did so many rewrites. The first draft was four POVs in the first person. So I shared it with my writing group, and their major feedback was that it was too hard to differentiate the voices in first person. So my next big pass was just changing it to third person for those POVs, which helped. And then every pass was, you know, something else. And it for a while that was very energizing. And it was okay, I have I know what I'm doing. I have a game plan. I, you know, I've got this missing person that gives it a different shape. I've got this reporter now. Oh, that's really interesting. Adds new conflict, you know. Every pass was kind of exciting. And then I hit a point at the end of 2020, I had done another big rewrite, and I was just like, should I scrap this? Am I done with this? I hadn't started querying it yet, and I was kind of tired and I had gotten an idea for a new book. And I was the shiny new thing was oh yeah. Thanks. So I was almost about to bail on it. And I had signed up for a class with Chelsea Beaker earlier that year that was set to happen in early 2021. And I was like, let me, I don't have time to work on something new for this class. So I'll just work on this and I'll see how I feel after. And that actually gave me some brand new energy for it. And so I powered through one more revision, and then the next year I queried it and found my agent. So I was really close to quitting, right at the most important point where I stuck with it a little longer. And that was that that was the magic right there.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Yeah, I had another writer on the podcast a while back, and she was talking about a similar situation. She's like, her right at that point where she wanted to quit. Her son sent her this caption, this picture of a dude tunneling through a cave, and he's almost to the diamonds, and he's like about to walk away. And one caption and he he does, and then in another caption he doesn't, and he gets the diamonds. It's like you're right there at that point, you just don't know. So yeah, shiny object syndrome can be really, really strong when our reserves are low. Yeah. And yeah, and getting a fresh perspective, either through some feedback or signing up for a class or a group or something, can be such an excellent way to get you back in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

It was what I as long as you're still working on the same project in that exactly. I was so close. I'm so glad I didn't. You know, I really do love this book, but I think I had just exhausted what I could do with it on my own, but I knew it wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Your own perspective.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah. And so just getting a fresh perspective with you know her feedback and the other classmates that I had. And it was we were working on the first 30 pages, which doesn't seem like much, but it really shifted the whole book, just focusing on what was happening in those early pages. And I was like, oh wow, that unlocked something that I couldn't have unlocked myself. So I was grateful that I stayed with it. And she just kept chiseling until I got to those diamonds.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah, I mean, because the first 30%, that's your setup. That's that's the mirror, right? Yep. That's the inverse of what the supposed to be. Cool. All right. So you said that you pitched this. Well, you had shared this in an email, I think, with me that you had pitched it as an upmarket book. Yeah. And they told you that it read a little different or it felt a little different. It was more like thriller or suspense. So tell me what that experience was like and how you went about changing the book and why you decided to change it to that tone.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

That was a surprising realization for me because I had been, I think because I came up in an MFA program, I was kind of like literary leaning, but I read all sorts of, you know, genres, but I wrote it, I think, like the literary mindset. So I'm thinking about the characters, and I'm thinking, yes, there's a missing person, but to me, what was like the central story initially was the effect of ambiguous loss on these women and their, you know, but what it means to them to carry on with their lives with this friend that they loved so much being gone. And then I, when I was querying, I got five offers of representation and I'm talking to these agents, and it was a whirlwind like experience just having these offers. But then they four of the five of them told me that it seemed like it was dipping its toes into suspense or maybe a thriller. You know, you've got the elements, the missing person, there's a mystery, there's a reveal. It was all sort of played down. And so the first agent that mentioned that to me, I kind of bristled and I was like, no, that's not you have a the wrong read on this book. And then they kept, I kept hearing that. And I was like, no, I have the wrong read. Like these are professionals, and they're just seeing something I'm not. And when I stepped back, I realized there are elements here that are suspenseful, and that's what I like to read. And I just didn't really know how to like properly execute it. So the agent I ended up going with, she's wonderful. On our call, she was saying how she envisioned it like holding the heart of the original story, but amping that up about 20%, like the suspense, just leaning into it a little bit more. And that sounded great to me. I was like, you know, I I assume that people who write thrillers or write in the suspense genre are starting out with that in mind, not like reverse engineering it after the fact. So I told her I wasn't sure how it would go, but we could try it. And she gave me her feedback. That first pass, I also gave myself a crash course and I said, This is my summer of suspense. I'm just reading everything I can get my hands on and really like focusing on what these authors are doing, how they're doing it. It's just so impressive how like twists are pulled off and reveals and maintaining the tension and the suspense throughout. So I really wanted to focus on looking at what they were doing. And I went too far with that first pass. I kind of threw everything that I had picked up into the first revision. And my agent was like, okay, good try. Let's try again and like pull back a little bit. I was overcomplicating too by throwing so many elements in. And what ended up happening over the next maybe like year or so is I would do passes to kind of like pair down. So I was overcomplicating what already was could be really a complicated plot because you have four POVs, and I wanted it to not be too complicated. You know, I want it to be have depth, but not be confusing. I was like going through and figuring out what is essential and what is the best way to get to the reveal. That was like a puzzle for us to figure out what's the best way for this to come to light and for it to be the big reveal of the book to be revealed. That was, you know, took a bit of finagling. We finally got there though. And then the interesting thing was working with my editor, we ended up putting suspense back in. So they wanted a little bit more suspense in certain areas, but it was more like looking at the pacing. So there were still sections where it had a lot of interiority, and that was slowing the pace down. And the interiority didn't necessarily have much or have a direct connection to the central mystery of the story. So that was one thing we did. We went through and really checked for like where can we condense? Do we need all of these? I've one of the characters is a new mom. She spends a lot of time with her newborn rocking and nursing, just you know, ruminating. And so a lot of those pages were sort of my own experience as a new mom back in, you know, 2017, 2018. And that's reality, but also it didn't really work with what we needed the pace of the book to be. So we did things like that. And I feel like it's the best version it could be right now, and it was the right move to switch genres, but I did not did not see that coming.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

That's so cool. And I think I think you're right. I know of and work with a lot of mystery thriller suspense authors, and I am writing a mystery thriller suspense right suspense right now as well. And you know, in the beginning I felt like I had to to know it all, you know, for this to make to work in this genre. And I think it does help to know a lot of stuff up front, but also like how to make reveals and twists happen. Sometimes you can't see that until you're almost done. Yeah. You go like, oh, yeah. I still like I've struggled to figure out the last, you know, 20%, f 15% of this novel simply for that same reason. Like, I know what happened, but I don't know how to reveal it in a way that is going to tie it up all nicely for the reader, you know. So, but I have faith that I'll get there eventually.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

I think the more that we work on like sections of the book like that with the intent of you know figuring out what the best way to tell the story is, the more it reveals itself. I and I one thing I keep saying to my friend, my writing friends is that I didn't realize how malleable my story was. I it has changed so much over the years, and yet it is the same story I wrote initially about these friends. Like the core of it is the same, but how things are happening, how things are revealed, it's so malleable. And it's really exciting too when you figure out like something clicks finally and you realize, oh, that's the way that it needs to be told. Okay, that's the that's the solution. And I think it's just being in the story and the and the revision long enough to get there until you're until you feel that little like spark when it happens. Like, that's it. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Rachel here, and she was on the podcast. She likes to say, our books never become what they think they will be. They become what they're supposed to be if we stick with it long enough. I love that. Yeah, I do too. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna quote you, I'm gonna put that on my wall. And yeah, no, you better be right. Okay. Very cool. All right. So a big part of this podcast is dedicated to telling the truth about why writing a novel can be so hard and exposing those unhelpful internal narratives that all of us face when we craft our stories. And the reason that we do this on the podcast, the aim here is to help other writers identify and normalize and work through their doubts so that they can keep writing and grow in confidence. And this is going to result in more stories in the world told from more voices that maybe we wouldn't have heard from. So in that vein, when you look back on your writing life, what was self-doubt like for you back when you were writing that first novel, when you were querying that first novel? And then what is it like on the other side as a person with a debut coming out in August?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah. Well, I don't think we can really ever escape the self-doubt. I do think it transforms, at least for me, it feels like it did. I think initially when I when I was first writing my first book, I think I was in the bubble, the like drafting bubble, and nobody knows I'm really doing this, and nobody's expecting anything from it. And it's fun. And you don't really, I didn't feel very much down. I felt like I was channeling something. It was so wonderful. But then when I stepped back from that and I was like, oh, I don't know anything about plot. Am I going to be able to figure this out? There's a lot of self-doubt when you realize how much you don't know. And how do I, how do I begin to learn? And querying that first book, just the self-doubt of, is anybody gonna like this? Is this even any good? Do I even know what good looks like? It's just so easy to get wrapped up in those stories of, you know, also comparison. Like, oh, someone I was drafting this book alongs, you know, they were drafting a book at the same time. Now they have a book deal, and I have this book that I'm just shoving away in a drawer that I'm never gonna, you know, touch again. Comparison has never. They've self-published four novels and I'm still working on my first one. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I experience self-doubt or like self-criticism around my slow pace all the time. I see, you know, other writers who have like a book a year come out and I just can't wrap my brain around how they do it. And I'm like, I'm so slow. And so comparison is just, you know, what are they, what is it, the thief of joy? It's just not worth, you know, doing dipping into that or worrying about that. But I mean, now the self-doubt, I feel like I have more confidence in my writing just because I've been, you know, sort of dedicated to to this and to learning for so long. You know, I started with novels in 2014. So I'm looking at like 11 years of thinking about novels, learning about novels, taking classes and reading craft books. And I feel pretty confident in my ability to at least figure it out. So if I'm working on something and it's not, you know, going my way, I don't feel a lot of self-doubt in the process. But right now, like ahead of a debut, there's some self-doubt about will people like this? I mean, I've heard good things so far from people who I know who have read it, but are they just being nice? You know, what are what's the wider world going to think? And it's kind of none of my business or like out of my control at this point. And I feel like I've created the best story I could create. I did my best. I worked on it really hard, and that's all I can do. I just have to send it out into the world now. But yeah, I don't think that the self-doubt really goes away. It just will come up in different forms. You know, I don't really doubt my ability with the craft as much now as I did in the beginning, where I was like, I don't what even is a novel? Like I wrote this thing, but I don't know. Can I call it a novel? What even is it?

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

I totally understand where you're coming from. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And I I think one of the keys that helps us is one, hearing other people's stories, uh, of their writing experiences, their author journeys, because we can identify with pieces of it. And then for us is being in community with other people, you know, so that we do we hear those stories too. Like, oh, not alone. Right. Not not not alone. And also each individual has their own journey and their own lane to swim in. Um, and this is mine. I feel the same. I mean, I'm like, oh my gosh, will I ever not be writing this book?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Like that ever. When I finally finished like the everything that I needed to do with this book with proofreading and the when I got to that point and I was like, really? I I'm done. I thought I would never be done with this book. I had to work on it for so long, so many drafts. I it was really, you get there eventually. But when you're in it, it really feels like I'll just me and this book forever. We're never gonna be done with I just want to celebrate you.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

I just want to celebrate you for your dedication and you're a beautiful role model for all of us, whether you realize it or not. But that's awesome. Okay, so when you look forward to writing the next thing, what kind of process? Like, how has what you've learned, how is that gonna evolve into the process you take moving forward to developing a new story? Or will it change anything?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, actually, it already has. So that first book that I wrote was, you know, the process was just dive in and write on vibes. We don't worry about plot here. And then the housewarming was the same for quite a while. It was the first draft was just vibes. And it took me a year for both of those books to do a first draft because I was just meandering. When I was querying the housewarming in 2022, one of the best pieces of advice I heard from other authors was to work on something else while you're querying and give yourself something else to focus on. So I decided to do the 90-day novel, Alan Watt. He has a book. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's called the 90-day novel. And I had done his 90-day revision book before, kind of dipped into it. And I had that idea from for the book that I almost ditched the housewarming for still floating around in my brain. And I said, this is my time. I'm gonna do this while I'm querying that book. It'll be a nice distraction. And it basically it helped me learn how to work with a kind of loose outline, you know, not to be married to it, but have it be something that was flexible, but also a roadmap. And I was able to draft a book in about three months using that versus a year. So it changed the process time-wise, and it also gave it more structure and shape, and it still needs a lot of work. That was the first pass. And I then put it aside because I got my agent a few months later, and then we started revising the housewarming for quite a while, and then it was really on the back burner. And then when I came back to it, actually this year, I looking at it with this new brain that I feel has been rewired as like a suspense writer brain now. And it wasn't at the time. I was like upmarket literary, and I'm looking at the story and I'm like, it has suspense elements. I can see what I was doing, but I didn't know what I was doing at the time. So now I have to rethink this book with this brain that feels like a different brain from 2022. But then I actually, right now I am doing Jamie Attenberg's A Thousand Words of Summer challenge that she does every year. It's so fun. I've done it for short stories before. It just, it's like a two-week long, I think it ends on Friday, but I think 50,000 people, something in that ballpark basically write a thousand words a day for two weeks. And there's a Slack channel, and she sends these motivational newsletters every day during the period of time. And I thought, let me just have this other, other idea, this other shiny one that just keeps talking to me. Let me play with it for two weeks and just see what it is. And so I'm in this project, and for the first time, I'm working on something that I don't have an outline really written for it, but it's not aimless. I can kind of see in my head like the story beats and what could happen. And I just think it's the culmination of working on books really aimlessly, figuring out a process, learning how to outline in a way that's not scary for someone who likes to pants, just like go with the flow. And yeah, I just feel like my brain's been rewired and my writing process is different than it was last time I drafted. It's been a few years too. I haven't drafted something new in a few years, so it's like exciting and fresh and new again. And but it feels like a new brain.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Interesting. I was just thinking, like, our processes can be as malleable as our ideas for storing. You know, being flexible and and willing to continue to learn and and try new things, that's a key. And I'm a person who likes structure to the point I'm a little rigid, and I think I need to have all the things figured out first. So this is just a good reminder for me to to it just is a reminder that the process is an evolution and it's never probably gonna become a static thing for sure, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

You learn what works really well for you, and then you learn what doesn't work, and you can leave that part of the process somewhere else like that. I don't want to spend a year doing a first draft anymore. I actually see a lot of value in doing a sh like a shorter period of time, a quick first draft, get all the ideas down, and then spend the time working it into what it needs to be. But I just I just I'm like, I'm not doing a for a one year long first draft anymore. Nope, I don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I think for me, there's a piece of me that holds on to I'm gonna get it right the first time around. And this is also partially why I kind of go slower. And yeah, I have to be constantly reminded that I have to let that go. Like you're not, you're not gonna do it right. So just get it, get something down.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah. And what even is right? I feel like I kept saying that during my work on the housewarming. Like, I just want to get it right. I just want to get it right. I didn't even know what that what that meant because there's so many millions of ways a story could go. You make a million decisions in the writing process, and that can branch you off in so many different directions. There's no one right way. It's, you know, not right or wrong, it's left or right. And you're just sort of deciding what would be the best decision for the story, what makes it the strongest version of itself. And sometimes it takes a lot of passes to get there. You have to just over and over and over until something finally clicks, and you're like, there it is. Excavate, you know, back to that medicine.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

I love that. Yeah, excavate. It's like unearthing a fossil.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

It really is.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Well, let's talk really quickly about how you actually get it done. So, how do you get the writing done despite, you know, this thing called life and these small people that we have that are yours is eight now, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

He's eight, and I homeschool him, so he's around all the time.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Yeah. Mine's nine, and she just today's her last day of school. Yeah. So she's out for summer. But yeah, so how do you get it?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

How do you get it done? So when he before he was born, I had a full-time job. It was a remote job, so I worked from home, but I really didn't have time to work, I mean, to write during my work days. So I would get it done on weekends. I was a big time like go to the coffee shop for three or four hours and just do huge chunks of writing on the weekends, or if I had like a day off. And that I loved. It was very fun, but you don't really get huge chunks of time as much on weekends when you have children. So when he was a baby, I would just take advantage of nap times. And that actually taught me that I did not need three or four hours to just like have a coffee and just think I could, you never know when a baby's gonna wake up from their nap. You are either gonna get 20 minutes or three hours, and you just better get to work because you don't know when it's gonna be over. And so that when I was writing the first draft of the housewarming, and that was how I did it. I was like, okay, he's down for a nap. I'm getting to work. We had child care for a while. He had one or two days a week. He would go to local daycare, and I was doing freelance writing, working on my fiction at that point. And then the pandemic hit and everything closed, and we're, you know, he's he was three at the time, so we're just home. And my husband was working remotely as well, but all day. And then my son decided to drop his naps at that point in time. And I was like, oh my God, no naps. So I don't know when to write. And my husband ended up just shifting his work hours so he would work earlier and be done earlier. And then I would just take these chunks in the afternoon when he would hang out with our son. And we've sort of had that flow for a while, but I like writing in the morning. I feel like when my brain is fresher, the writing is better. So now that he's eight, he's more independent and he's happy to be like hanging out. He's got his own stuff to do. He likes to draw. So I'll take time in the mornings and in the afternoons if I need it, weekends, but it's really just finding it where it exists. It's also I sometimes have to really examine like the other things I'm using that time for. Do I really need to be doing those things? Sometimes yes, but a lot of the time it's like, no, let's prioritize the writing. And one of the things I've been realizing doing the thousand words of summer the past couple of weeks is I can write a thousand words in 45 minutes to an hour if I'm focused. And so if I get in first thing in the morning and I just sit down and I open the document and I just start going, I can check that off the list and then go about my day and whatever else I have to do with the day. At least that's done. So that's been really nice to get some morning writing time in. But it really just as life changes and your kids', you know, schedules change and your schedule changes, it's like finding those moments and knowing that you can do a lot even in a little bit of time and not being like precious about it. Okay, I've got however long this you know block of time is, I'm just gonna write, see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you find that do you find that you focus on outcomes like the end of the book or getting the in to the end of this passage or the end of this draft? Or do you just do whatever? Whatever you can with the time you can. I guess basically I'm asking, are you more outcome focused or are you more just process focused, like in the doing of it focused?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

I think it depends on the stage of the project. So right now, drafting and just playing with something new, it's just a thousand words. I'm just gonna get in, get a thousand words. I don't even care if it's the end of a chapter or a scene. Like if I want to keep going a little bit, I will. But once that little ticker turns, you know, green on my word count thing, I'm done. And wherever we end, we end. But when I'm revising or, you know, in some other phase of a project where there's an intention behind what I'm doing, like, okay, I've got, I've got to, you know, work on this character. I've got to, you know, polish the ending. Then it's more like outcome focused. And I might even have like a list of like specific things that I want to try to hit or accomplish during those sessions. When I'm really in like the flow and close to the end of a like a draft, it's really hard for me to to step away. Like I feel almost like an obsession with it. And I'm like, I don't want to break the momentum. I just want to like, and then you know, it's dinner time, or you know, you've got to go do life. You've got to step away from it. But it depends, I think, on the phase. Right now it's really easy. I'm like, okay, I did my thousand words. I have no expectations at this point. But I think when I have expectations for the project for the phase that I'm in, then it's like, okay, sit down, we're doing an hour and we're figuring out X, Y, and Z.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Got it. Got it. All right. So I think that's a good place to wrap up. And I end with the same same few questions with every guest. So what would you say is a piece of writing advice that you've held on to, held near and dear to your heart?

SPEAKER_00 38:20

When I was doing the class with Sarah Selecki years ago, one of her big tenets of her program is to not judge what comes up when you're writing. So you hold your pen like it's sort of like a dowsing rod and you don't know what's what to expect. You just let whatever comes up come up and you don't judge it. And that practice of learning how to not just free write, but how to like let whatever your mind creates, let it come out. Don't say no to it before you even see what it is. And so, especially drafting, that's been a big piece of advice that I hold on to all the time. Like, whatever comes up, it's there for a reason. And if not, I'll figure that out later. But let's not judge it too harshly before we even know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

I love that. It reminds me of Julia Cameron's The Artist Way, kind of like those morning pages, and just you know, just let it come. Don't, don't judge. That's not that's not the purpose, that's not the point. Yeah. Well, well, what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers who are out there working on their debut novel, who may be, you know, maybe where you were in 2000 who 2020, being like, uh I that's such a good question.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

I would wish for them to enjoy the bubble, like I mentioned before, that just like before anybody's really expecting it, before you have, you know, the pressure of deadlines and expectations around it, really enjoy that it gets to be yours and you get to do whatever you want with it. Nobody has yet told you, you know, that it should look like this or that, or you don't have to, you know, change your vision at all. Like enjoy that. And also trust yourself and have faith in the idea that you have and don't. This is a big one, but don't be the first person to tell yourself no. Let that be someone else's job. You know, I think as writers, we're really quick and really harsh. We're harsh on ourselves and we're our own worst critics a lot of the time. But let someone else be the one to tell you no. You see it through, you get it as good as you can get it, and then don't stop yourself. Let someone else out there be the one to say, no, this is not the thing, but don't do that to yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Yes, to yourself. It's kind of like this saying, don't quit before the miracle happens, and you might not be able to see it for yourself. Someone else might see it happening to you before you do. Yeah. Cause we like you said, our perspective becomes so skewed when we're on this journey that you know, you can't tell if what you wrote was decent or just needs to find the dumpster. You know, especially, you know, you revised it 16 times, you're like, I don't know. I don't know. So yeah. So at some point, I think you said earlier, like there's just this moment where you have to let it go. You have to let it go and trust in yourself that you've done everything that you can and that's enough. It's yeah, it's enough regardless of what happens.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

So yeah. And also don't worry about, you know, getting it perfect before you send it out. Like if you spent time working on it and you're ready to query, but you're like, am I? I've done worked on this for years. You know, you're going to edit with an agent, you're going to edit with an editor. They're going to have, you know, more changes that they'd like you to make. So you just get it as good as you can get it. And then, yes, you're right. Like just you have to release it at a certain point. You could work on a book forever and never let anybody see it, but you want people to see it. So at some point, let it go.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

M most, most of us. Some of it's still undecided. But most of the things that we've got to do is that back. Yeah. If that's your intention. Well, awesome. Great. So could you please tell us where listeners can find you and find your book and when it comes out again?

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Yes. So I'm on really Instagram quite a bit. Kristinoffler Writes is my name on there. I have a website, Kristinoffler.com. I write on Substack. We're the meeting makers, my friend Lindsay Smith and I, we write about writing and motherhood and millennial nostalgia. And so the housewarming is out August 1st with Thomas and Mercer. You can pre-order it now anywhere you like to get your books. You can call your local indie and ask them to pre-order it for you. We love to support our indies. But yeah, it's available right now for pre-order, August 1st.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Fantastic. And I will make sure to drop a link to your website and all of those links into the show notes. Thank you for coming on the podcast. You are a fantastic guest and an inspiration to aspiring authors. So thank you for sharing your journey with us. Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.