Welcome back to Haunted Books & Haunted Girls, a newsletter all about writing and ghosts. I’m so happy that you’re joining me. If you haven’t subscribed already, please consider signing up below (for free!), so you never miss an issue of this newsletter. It’s always spooky szn here.
You know how people make New Year’s Resolutions? Maybe it’s the fall-lover in me, but I’ve always made autumnal resolutions. Something something turning over a new leaf something something. At any rate, I’m making it a goal of mine to update this Substack more, especially since there might be some pretty cool things to share in the near future. Interpret that statement however you will!
I’ve been thinking lately about the advice of drafting the next book while you’re in the query or sub trenches. Everyone says it (I, myself, have said it), and it’s all-around a good idea. If you write something else, you have a backup. If your query book gets tucked back in a drawer, if your agented book goes onto a shelf after being on sub, if you end up with a 2-book deal in your contract—I could go on, but I’m sure you’ve all heard the reasons why this is a smart thing to do.
Can we be real with each other for a second, newsletter friends? Abyss of the internet? Whoever is reading? I also think this is a really hard thing to do. And I say this as someone who has fully done it—I wrote a book while querying, and another while on submission. I have pitch decks and outlines and (gasp) synopses sitting on my computer, waiting to be dusted off. But there is an emotional side effect to doing all of this while you’re actively getting rejected on another book, and I think we should talk about that more.
On the one hand, sometimes you can learn things from rejections and pour that lived-experience into what you write next. This is especially true if you’re lucky enough to receive personalized feedback that actually resonates with you and therefore allows you to strengthen your craft. But more often than not, rejections are rooted in subjectivity, which creates a lot more gray area inside one’s headspace. And if you have a mean lizard brain that loves to latch onto any sense of doubt, it can be easy to wonder: Am I just writing another book that will ultimately go nowhere?
It’s a lot harder to fall in love with what you’re writing next when what you wrote first isn’t yet succeeding the way you’d hoped.
I wish I had a magic answer to these feelings, but all I can really offer is what I’ve personally done to make it easier. Most of it has to do with finding community—people who will swap chapters and scream over snippets, people who will word-sprint with you, people who remind you that yes, you actually are good at this, and yes, your words do matter. There’s something to be said about remembering why you started writing, and if another project can help you do that, even in the tiniest bit, then it’s serving its purpose when you’re in the trenches. So maybe it’s less of thinking of that “next” thing as a backup plan, and more of a way to convince yourself that you simply just can. You can write another book. You do, in fact, have more words in you. You can keep going.
But also, it’s hard, and we should say that. It can be draining. Exhausting, even. Writing a book is not a heartless or emotionless task. You can’t do it without putting a lot of time and energy and feeling into the work. And when you have an undercurrent of doubt running through you, it makes it that much more challenging to dig back into yourself and find the words that are supposed to come next.
Truthfully? I think a lot of writers just do it anyway, because ultimately, the desire is stronger than the doubt. We write through the discomfort and the lizard brain thoughts and the fear, and then we get to the other side and there is another book. There is another book, and it was written despite (or perhaps out of spite) the worries we couldn’t do it again, without ever knowing if it will find its way out of our computers and into the world. Because that’s what we do. So much of writing is existing in stretches of uncertainty, of crossed fingers and waiting and hope. Along the way, there are new ideas and fresh pitches and words, and if we’re lucky, those words remind us of why we wanted to do this in the first place.
I know I’m biased, but I think writers are really brave for all of it.
Short Story News
ICYMI, I have a spooky dark academia horror short coming out in Voyage’s Fall 2023 anthology! It’s about a girl attending an elite art school with a talent for painting the dead, who learns some nightmarish things about her campus—and herself. I’ll be sharing more details here in the coming months, but I’m very excited for the world to meet Margot and her terrifying paintings.
Coming Soon…
In addition to some exciting announcements on the horizon, I’ll just drop a little note that there might be an extra spooky, collaborative, double the witchy, double the fun type of treat in this newsletter on the first day of fall. I’ll leave it that! ;)
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