by Kate Laack
There are very few things I felt called to as early in my life as I did writing. As far back as I can remember, I kept journals and wrote stories. In fifth grade, I was blessed with a teacher who nurtured my seedling talent. I remember writing for her and receiving encouraging feedback, but it’s my mom who best recalls the day I came home and proudly exclaimed that: “Mrs K. thinks I might be a gifted writer.” It was probably then that I knew that I wanted to be a real published author someday.
It would, however, be twenty more years before I finally wrote my novel.
Ask 100 authors about their inspiration and writing process, and you’ll learn 100 ways to start, finish, and publish a manuscript. Therefore, all I can tell you with any authority is how the process has worked for me, and it starts with a maddeningly simple answer to the most basic question of where the idea for a novel even comes from?
I woke up last summer with my main character, Julia Brooks, alive in my mind, less a fictional character than a longtime friend whose story I’d always known. It was that easy. She was just there. Days later, I announced to my husband that I was going to start writing a book, and then I did.
As a high school English teacher aspiring to authorship, summer break offers a writer’s most essential resource: time. From June to August I made myself write daily, sometimes for five or six hours in a sitting. If the day was over and I had not written, my laptop came to bed with me. Writing my novel consumed my entire summer, but I loved every minute that I spent with it, which prompted me to think that other people could love every minute they spent with it too. For the first time, I believed I had something worthy of publication.
While publishing today is more accessible than ever through self-publishing avenues like Amazon KDP, Barnes and Noble Press, and Ingram Spark, traditional publishing remains as elusive as ever. It’s said that less than one percent of submitted manuscripts are ever published traditionally. Still, I wanted to try.
A simplified version of the query process goes like this: you distill your entire book down to a one page, 500 word, cover letter; you include a small sample of manuscript pages, and then you wait. You may wait a very long time. You will likely hear, “thank you, but no,” a lot.
If your query letter catches someone’s attention, your full manuscript will be requested. Then you’ll wait again. Even then, rejection is the norm.
But one unexpected day in February, I got my yes. I sat on a Zoom call and listened to an editor talk about my book with as much excitement and passion as I did. I learned the terms of a publishing contract, the expectations for editing and revision, and the deadline I would now be required to work under. It was everything I’d hoped for, yet for a brief moment, I panicked because there are real implications to signing your name to a contract that makes your passion project something you are professionally and legally obligated to complete to someone else’s standards.
My manuscript today is both the same story and a very different book than I wrote last summer. There have been nine total drafts, six potential covers, four possible dedications, and countless moments spent agonizing over the right word choice and placement of punctuation. Writing it has been a labor of love, an outpouring of creativity, and, at times, an obsession. I’ve found personal sanctuary in its pages, and yet they’ve tormented me as I write (and rewrite…and rewrite) them.
I’m often asked if this is a once in a lifetime opportunity or something I hope to pursue and continue in the future. I’m never quite sure how to answer. In truth, it is probably both. The traditional publishing industry is fickle. Trends are fleeting. I may never have the chance to sign my name to another professional book deal, but I will always continue to write. For as Isaac Asimov said: “writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers.” I could no more stop myself from thinking than I could from writing.
Yet, I cannot imagine being anywhere else but elbows deep in the process. The world makes more sense to me as words on a page. My perfectionistic and compulsive tendencies that should make editing and revision more difficult, tend to willingly set themselves aside when I’m at the keyboard. I hear criticism more constructively. I take feedback more willingly. I’ve met incredible professionals in the industry who have invested their time and talent in my work so that I can carve out my own small niche in the vast world of literature.
Kate Laack is wife to Josh, teacher, theater director, musician, runner, and soon-to-be published author. Her debut novel In the Shade of Olive Trees is currently available for preorder and will be released this November. At Calvary, she serves primarily at the piano with the worship team, but don’t be surprised to also find her ushering at the 9AM service or leading a book study.