✨When your book takes an unexpected turn

Recently I had an idea to shift the genre and tone of my new book. (I shared about this a-ha moment on Instagram.)

The current draft is set in a pre-industrialized fantasy world. The new idea I had would shift it to take place in our modern world, with magical realism incursions. 

I could immediately see a brand-new opening to the new version of the book in my mind - so I sat down and wrote that brand-new first chapter.

Then I met with my new writing partner. The first thing I gave her to read was the original opening chapter of the current draft, and the brand-new opening chapter of the new-idea version.

She liked both… and she loved the new opening. 

This was simultaneously a YAY and an OH SHIT moment.

YAY because the new version, which feels very visual and cinematic to me, also read that way to her. 

OH SHIT because the new version would require a complete and total rewrite from page one of a 258-page draft that I’ve been working on for three years. 

And yet… and yet…

I could feel the new vision calling to me. 

I felt excited and energized when I left our meeting. And for the entire 45-minute drive home from Manhattan, I listened to my writing music and just thought about the book.

I drove directly to Bango Bowls in Scarsdale, ordered a Hawaiian bowl with salmon, and proceeded to handwrite eleven pages of notes… which comprised an entire outline of the book and every main character’s arc from start to finish.

And I remembered: this is how I write. When I wrote Catchlight, I had an entire draft of the book and I knew it could be better and I had no idea how to make it better. So I enrolled in an MFA program and approximately six weeks later I was sitting around a table of writers on Enders Island in Connecticut, and those folks proceeded to tear my first chapter to shreds. And then I started the book over, from page one.

So when you feel that pull to take your book in a new direction… listen to it.

Even if it requires an immense amount of work. Trust that the book knows more than you do.

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