Reinventing the Car

Why creating a book is not like products in other industries

1. Latest News from the Desk of Sooz

I had a whole thing written here when I first prepped this newsletter a week ago. It was all about how I was about to head to France! Then the UK for tour! And how I just turned in the first big chunk of a book to my editor…but lol.

Instead, I’m at the hospital. Cue: laugh track. Except of course it isn’t funny. It’s only funny in that my husband and kept thinking 2023 couldn’t possibly throw us any more curve balls and crises…and then, lol, it did.

Cricket got really sick on Sunday morning. I don’t want to rehash the whole story again because I’ve now written it out a hundred times, and I’m tired. Read it here.

Long story short: we had to take an ambulance to the ER—which was probably the worst experience of my life, watching my toddler struggle to breathe as we raced to the hospital—and we’ve been in the hospital since (it is Wednesday now). She has something called reactive airwave disease, which we already knew about… and now something new! Something you might have heard of called pneumonia.

All those weekly illnesses from daycare culminated in her poor lungs just giving up.

She is stable now, thank god, but I’m exhausted. So is the Frenchman. And she’s still not back to normal, so…yeah.

No trip to France, no UK tour. Which is FINE. My god, I don’t want to travel right now. I just want to keep her alive and hold her close. (And thank you all for being so understanding about the tour cancellation.)

Anyway, the rest of this post was written before Mother’s Day imploded. So if it feels tonally off, now you know why! And I probably won’t be writing for a while after this…

Thank you for reading and understanding.

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2. Writing Prompts

STORY PROMPT ✍️

Take the setting and environmental storytelling from this post to create your own tale!

JOURNALING ✍️

Several of you pointed out to me how we are often use the “just be grateful” or (the comparably insidious) “at least it isn’t ___” phrasing on ourselves. Is there somewhere in your life where you do this? Can you instead try to look at the pain and accept it’s there—and accept that that’s okay?

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3. The Hunting Moon UK cover reveal!

Did you all see the cover reveal for Daphne Press edition of The Hunting Moon? I am just absolutely beyond thrilled with what Micaela Alcaino has created. The hummingbird! The locket! The moon that is bigger than the moon on book 1…

😍

I hope you all love it as much as I do. And how exciting is it that it comes out November 7, alongside the US edition?! Hooray for a global release!

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4. Reinventing the Car

Because I have been deep in throes of the Witchlands for so many months now—and because I struggle so much with sequels—I’ve been thinking a lot about an old newsletter I did back 2019. So I dug it out, and hilariously, reinvented it with my added years of perspective.

I say “hilariously” because this whole post is about the idea of “reinventing the car.”

See, my husband is an automotive engineer. When his company designs a new car component, they aren’t forced to reinvent a driving machine every time. For the most part, cars need the same basics every time: a chassis, wheels, lights, etc. And while sure, you might add in fancy displays that connect to your phone or you might switch from a gas engine to an electric…

In the end, a car is a car. When my husband’s team makes something new, they’re not suddenly making a boat or a spaceship. It’s a car. There are rules—some of which are even codified into law.

But us, as writers? We don’t have a blueprint like that to follow. Sure, we might have a broad story shape we’re aspiring toward, but there’s no Step-by-Step Assembly Handbook to walk us through exactly where to place each sentence.

I mean,if only.

Instead, we writers (and other artists!) have to start from scratch every time we begin a new project.

To put that back in the context of a car, imagine if Mercedes or GM came to their teams for every new car and said: “Hey, can you make a vehicle that will cross distances quickly and carry passengers? But it can’t look like the model we released last year or the year before or, well, ever. You need to start over. THANKS!”

Obviously, this is laughable to imagine. For one, it would be so inefficient and wouldn’t make sense in the context of a product like cars.

And yet! We writers all seem to treat “drafting new projects” as if we are building a car. We get angry at ourselves when the story doesn’t all just come together easily, and we get frustrated that each new book makes us feel as if we have no idea what we’re doing.

You know you’ve felt it! I sure feel that right now, as I scratch my head, write, cut, rewrite, rearrange, and generally muddle my way through what will (I hope) eventually turn out to be book-shaped.

Somehow, the books do always come together. I actually just read through everything I’ve written so far in this Witchlands book, and I somehow think it’s really good. I can’t precisely remember when or how during all that muddling the story came together…

But it did. And what I read isn’t a fully polished vehicle ready for the highway, it’s definitely got an engine that works and a shape made for speed.

Phew.

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Now of course, some story genres do have clearer blueprints to work with than others. Adult romance comes to mind, where the usual structure includes two POVs overcoming their differences, a Key Romantic moment at the midpoint, and a final coming together for a HEA (happily ever after) at the end.

And then some authors (although certainly not most) make meticulous outlines according to various story structures and then they write according to said outlines.

However, that’s still so broad. You can have genre conventions or a story structure (even one as detailed as Truby’s 22 plot steps!), but those still don’t give me 100,000+ words of a finished story! How we writers actually manage to hit different beats can vary so much, and it takes serious skill to come up with new, unique ways to do so every single time.

It’s like, if Mercedes then added to their team request: “HEY. BUILD THIS CAR-SHAPED THING—AND IT CAN HAVE FOUR WHEELS AND FOUR DOORS—BUT YOU CAN’T USE THE MATERIALS YOU USED LAST TIME! HAVE FUN!”

Somehow we do it, though. We build new cars without using the old materials.

¹

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But back to the general problem at hand: reinvention.

Have you ever noticed how a 2023 model for a specific car sure looks a lot like the 2022 model? Or how Hollywood keeps remaking old films? Or how the iPhone hasn’t changed much since its inception?

There’s less risk if you stick to a tried and true product. The money has been made! The audience clamors for more, so why mess with a good thing?

Well, in the art world, we have to mess with the good thing because the good thing only works one time.

Think of it like this: if I just rewrote the book I gave you last time with only a few sentences tweaked or chapters added or new design elements inserted, it wouldn’t be a NEW book. It would be a special edition, and I think all of you would be (rightfully) pissed if I tried to claim it was a new book.

Instead, when I—or any of you—move on to the next book, we have to start anew. New materials, new car-shape, new blueprint.

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So all of this is to say, my dear writing friends, that it’s OKAY IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW OR EVER. You are literally reinventing a car every time you start a new project.

As I push through this Witchlands book, all I can think is, Why is this so hard? And I dream fondly of when I can shift over to the third Luminaries book instead…even though logically I know I will absolutely be faced with the same problem.

And even though every time I read the end product, it’s never as bad as I fear it will be!

Publishing is a business, and our books are treated as products. This is good for publishing, but not necessarily great for us, the creators. It’s hard enough to keep updating car designs to meet annual deadlines (I watch my husband go through this crunch every year!), but imagine if he and his team had to reinvent that car annually instead?

Well, I don’t think we’d get new cars very often.

Writing stories is hard. Each new project will present its own unique challenges, and each new project will require a different approach to solve said challenges. So be patient with yourself. Trust that, even if you DON’T get the story to be car-shaped on the first try, unlike engineers or architects, you can rebuild and rearrange in round 2. It ain’t easy, but it’s definitely doable.

And yes, I know that because publishing is an industry, we aren’t always given the extended time or space to “discover” and “invent.” But believe it or not, I think it’s getting better! I meet more and more new authors who are pushing back their deadlines and requesting more time.

I know it’s not easy (and it can even be downright terrifying), but sometimes creating the best product really is worth it—and in my experience, the publishing team probably agrees!

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5. Upcoming Events

I had all my UK tour dates listed here before. Sigh. Deleting them is making me so sad. In case you missed the announcement, read about the cancellation here.

I’m sorry, friends. I know you’re disappointed I won’t be at the events with Olivie, and I’m frankly gutted I won’t get to see you—or her. We were going to have a blast, and I love my Daphne Press team so much.

But I’d feel far worse if I couldn’t be with Cricket right now. Priorities, and all that. Thank you for understanding.

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Alrighty. Signing off here for a bit while we get life sorted out…and I eventually finish that Witchlands book that’s mostly car-shaped, but still needs some wheels and doodads.

Love you guys. Thanks for subscribing and supporting me for all these years.

💚 - Sooz

1. I guess this means Mercedes should hire me?