Amy Stuart's Blog

With Still Water now out for a few months (in Canada) and a few weeks (in the US), I’m beyond grateful for all the work my friends, family and readers have done to help get the word out. I’m often asked what readers can do to help support a writer when their book first comes out. Here are some excellent ways you can boost the signal:

1. ASK ABOUT IT: If you’re in a bookstore, ask the bookseller if they have copies of the novel. Same goes with libraries. There are SO many new releases in a week or month or year that brick and mortar booksellers and even libraries cannot possibly house them all. Often it takes readers asking for titles to put them on the right radar. 

2. INVITE, FOLLOW & SHARE: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have become KEY ways for writers - including me! - to share news about their work as well as my writing life and process. Building a following depends mostly on word of mouth. Facebook is particularly helpful because anyone can invite anyone else to like a page. You can invite any friends who might be interested by going to my page (CLICK HERE) and clicking on “Invite your friends to like this page” in the right hand column then selecting some (or all!) of your friends. Both my Facebook and Instagram accounts are @amystuartwriter and my Twitter is @amyfstuart. I try to be very responsive and will often like and retweet or share posts by readers. 

3. REVIEW: Reviews are a major way to help promote a book. Most online retailers use algorithms so that once a book hits a certain number of reviews it will appear way more frequently in searches for similar genre titles. After you’ve read the book, post a review/rating of the book on Amazon, Indigo, Barnes and Noble or any other online review forum. On Goodreads, please add Still Water (or Still Mine!) and review them if you’ve read them!

4. HOST A BOOK CLUB: I’m always grateful when I hear of a book club reading one of my novels. They are an excellent way to spread the word on a novel and to connect with readers. I've got a section on my website devoted to Book Clubs and will do my best to join yours if you pick one of my novels to read. 

In the few years since I became a published writer, I've learned just how important readers and word-of-mouth are to a book's success. Every little bit counts! :)

It's January, it's about -100 degrees outside in Toronto, and the kids are back in school. The house is quiet. As I type this, the printer to my right is spewing page upon page of editorial notes for my second novel, the still-untitled sequel to Still Mine. So it begins, part two of the epic journey that is writing a novel. The hands-dirty editing part. My editor has read it. She has her thoughts. We are both excited. But mixed in with my excitement is always that huge pile of reticence, of self-doubt. Writing is a tough and lonely gig. It often leaves me raw, disconcerted. Remind me... why do I do it?

Cue the serendipity: This morning, as I was browsing old files on my computer in search of a long-lost letter, I came across something I wrote fourteen years ago while in teacher's college at the University of Toronto. I was studying to be an English teacher, and as part of this study, our incredible professor had us reflect on our own lives as readers, writers, talkers. In 2003, I was at the very beginning of two career paths - teacher and writer - paths that would weave over and under each other for the decade to follow, as I imagine they will continue to do. Funny how what I wrote back then about my life as a writer rings incredibly true to me today; it acts as a reminder of why I do this, of how lucky I am to be doing it. Funny too that I'd come across it right when I needed to read something of the very sort. I'll share it with you in case it might offer you something too. 

My Life as a Writer (2003)

Words are everything to me. They can reduce me to tears in any form: a letter, a poem, a novel, a story, an essay, a song. I believe I could fall in love in the balance of a single sentence. I probably have already, and I likely will again.

When I was young, I kept a journal, but mostly I wrote letters. I had pen pals, and I wrote to faraway relatives and friends. At summer camp, I wrote at least one letter a day. I have a large box with every letter or note I’ve ever received tucked inside. Collectively, these letters build a remarkable monument to my past. The pile also includes letters I’ve written and never sent. I’ve meditated a lot about unsent letters, about how sending them might have shifted my course. On August 9, 1999, I wrote this in my diary:

“All the letters I will never send… how much could they change my life? A letter leads to a phone call, which leads to a meeting, which leads to said things that would have stayed unsaid without the letter. I have many letters, some unfinished and some addressed and stamped, that I never sent. Do I always make the right choice? That’s a stupid question, because there’s no way to know. I’m trying more and more not to live that way, not to focus on what might have been. But unsent letters are so grey, so unknown. I can remind myself that there was probably a good reason why I didn’t send it, that at some point a clearer mind stepped in and stopped me. But then again, if the words weren’t speaking a truth deserving to be read, then why did I write them in the first place?”

Only recently have I fancied myself a writer beyond journals and letters. Last summer, I wrote an essay about my grandmother that was published in a national newspaper. A few months later, my grandma fell ill, and I travelled to PEI to be with her when she died. Everyone I saw mentioned the essay, some even quoted entire sentences back to me as we mingled with juice and cake after the funeral. What a strange thing it is, to write about a person and a place so beloved, and then to have the words stretch out well beyond me to countless others. It was my first experience as a published writer, and my reaction was mixed. In one sense, I felt exposed, as though I’d handed over a delicate part of myself for the world to jostle. The limelight, however dim, was disconcerting to me. But in another sense, I felt happy that people had taken my point, that I’d carved a hole through which anyone could glimpse something so dear to me.

So, I plow forward, taking measures to assure that I’m writing on a regular basis. I am taking courses and cutting out small sections of each day to sit down and write. The process can be agonizing, but it can also be beautiful. And the further I go, the more I recognize that I need to be doing it.

I have told my students that writing is talking with the benefit of time. We write what we want to say, but with the chance to mull it over, to pick and choose our words at whatever pace suits us. I have spent hours on a single sentence, and written pages and pages in minutes. Writing is unconstrained by time. For that, I cherish it.

I can admit it: When e-books first emerged on the scene, I was on the Doomsday side of things. I read all the articles and waxed to anyone who would listen about the death of the physical book, of libraries, of bookstores. The prospect felt grim. What would my shelves look like if I couldn't line them year after year with touchable, holdable books?

Fast forward a decade (or more, who's counting?) and I'll say it: I've come around. The e-book has settled in beautifully to our reading landscape. It didn't kill the physical book at all. Instead, it just added a layer for readers: The ability to transport thousands of books tucked under an arm. When I'm at home, I really paper books, but when I'm travelling I pack an e-book filled with more books than I could put in a transport truck. Sometimes, I interchange the same book in paper and e-book versions. I love the hunt that comes from searching for exactly where I last left off on either one.

In related news, the e-book version of Still Mine will be available via BookBub this Friday October 21st. BookBub is a most excellent resource for e-book enthusiasts, offering many great deals a day on bestsellers in all genres. I'll certainly be loading up my e-reader as I get ready to fly west for the Vancouver Writers' Festival! 

My awesome ThrillerFest mug

Yesterday I arrived home after an incredible four days at ThrillerFest. If you are a writer and you write or like thrillers or mysteries, add ThrillerFest to your bucket list right away. Put on by the International Thriller Writers and held in downtown NYC, it's a amazing conference for aspiring, emerging and established writers full of panels, cocktail parties and other wonderful events. 

One of the great things about the International Thriller Writers organization is that they run a Debut Authors Program that provides support, mentorship and exposure to writers trying to launch their first novels. As part of ThrillerFest, the debut group was given access to established writers so that we might ask questions and pick their brains. The weekend culminated for us with the Debut Breakfast, an event where NYT bestselling author Steve Berry presented each of us to a ballroom full of writers, agents, publishers. We were writer Debutantes. It was fantastically fun.

Over the weekend, a topic often raised among debuts was that of the Second Book. The pain of writing it. In his remarks, Steve Berry called it an illness - second-book-itis. Your first book is out in the world and now you're tasked with writing the second one. But when you sit down to do it, it feels different. This time, you might have a tighter deadline. This time, you can't climb your way out of those writing blocks or fits by declaring that no one will ever read it anyway. You know the book will one day be an actual book. There are new pressures this time. And so the illness sets in, that plague of writerly self-doubt.

Today, I'm back from New York and back at my own second book. Still Mine has a sequel, as might be obvious to those who've read it. I nearly have a first draft of this second book, but it's messy. It's a strange thing to be here again, at the relative beginning. My sentences haven't been tidied up by rounds and rounds of editing. My characters need more to say and do. The plot is still wayward. I know I can fix these things, I know I have a wonderful editor to help me once I'm ready for her, but it still feels different. Like childbirth, maybe: Even though I've done it before and on some level I can anticipate it will be easier, there's this new anxiety that wasn't there last time. Because this time, I know how much it hurts. 

Hold on. Let's not get too dramatic. I was going to call this post The Second Book Blues, but I opted not to because, hey, I'm trying to be hopeful.

I have this internal game I play in all areas of my brain/life. Any time I feel anxious or stressed or or worried or (worst of all) resentful of a task ahead, another part of me steps in to remind myself of my profound good fortune that this task exists in my life at all. This works for things like motherhood or writing, but less so for things like laundry or cleaning out my car. This is the gist: Yes, it's stressful to write a book. It's hard. It takes time I don't always have. But I wrote a book and it got published and it's done well enough that they want me to write a second. And a third!!! A THIRD. I wouldn't have it any other way, so I'd better stop worrying or complaining and get to it. 

Steve Berry offered us debut authors the simple antidote: Put your head down and write. When the doubt creeps over, don't stop to gaze at it. Ignore it. Push it away by putting words on the page no matter what. Keep writing. I think he's exactly right. I'll add my mix of gratitude to that and I'll be fine. And maybe the odd glass of Pinot. Or two. 

Last night, before we turned out the lights, my husband pointed out to me that somewhere, someone was probably reading my book. In fact, more than one person. Maybe two. Maybe ten. Maybe even one hundred. That thought kept my eyes open for a good while. The image of readers, some of whom I know and others I don't, spending their time with my characters. I imagined them getting frustrated with Clare, maybe liking her but hating her too, wondering about Malcolm, finding him inscrutable. I wondered if readers's visions of Blackmore differed from my own, how the geography of the town and the gorge were shaping up in their minds.

It's been thirteen days since the book was officially released in Canada, though it made its first appearances on shelves about ten days earlier. The past month has been a whirlwind, with the book landing in Costco, the airport kiosks, indie bookstores and other retailers big and small. It has climbed the bestseller list. There was a US deal. There were reviews, including one in the Globe and Mail and one in the Toronto Star. There was a launch party that lingered into the wee hours of the next morning. It's been quite the ride, and the overwhelming sentiment has been one of gratitude... I just can't believe how many people have taken the time to buy the book or send their good wishes or promote it to their own networks. I feel tremendously lucky.

But in the whirlwind, there have been moments of quiet too. Strange quiet. Empty nest quiet, like I can feel the distance forming between Still Mine and me. I see pictures of it out in the world and my instincts are motherly; I am happy to see it doing well, and I just want it to be loved. I just want the readers to know that I tried my best.

And I continue to try my best. I am at work on the sequel and should have a first draft relatively soon. Current hopes/plans are that the sequel will arrive on shelves at some point in 2017. I carry Clare with me in a very different way this time. I feel like I know her. After reading reviews and hearing from friends, I feel like I know with even more certainty what I want for her. Readers will eventually know more of her, and most definitely more of Malcolm. If you have an opinion on Clare (or Malcolm!), feel free to send word. I may well take it into consideration.

On that note, I'll say it one more time: Thank you. Now off I go to write.

I recently inputed March 1, 2016 into a google feature to spare my brain the mathematics of the countdown. And here is the number: 57 Days from today, Still Mine will be in stores and online. After a long process with many stages, it feels remarkable to be so close to a day I've imagined in some form for years and years. The next few months will be about balancing my preparations with continuing to work hard on writing the second book in the series. 

I've recently had some exciting news that serves to make it all feel very real. Costco Canada announced that Still Mine will be the "Buyer's Pick" for BOTH March and April. The thought of a pile of my books 2 feet high at Costco is so overwhelmingly awesome that I might just have to book a few weekends in March to do a Costco-to-Costco-to-Costco road trip. Who's with me?

In other excellent news, some of my favourite writers on earth have written wonderful reviews/blurbs for the book that are now on the home page of my (new!) website. 

Lastly, I've joined Instagram! @amystuartwriter

Of course I'm excited about the next few months, but so many of my friends and family and colleagues, not to mention the incredible people at Simon and Schuster Canada, have rallied behind this little book and its upcoming adventures in incredible ways. All of the support and good wishes along the way have actually been pretty humbling. Above everything else, I'm grateful. 

57 days. Here we go!

#NaNoWriMo is over. Or as non-writers/sane people call it, November. You're sitting at your desk, unkempt and exhausted, a pile of papers in front of you that resembles a manuscript. You've done it! Congratulations are in order... You have a first draft!

You have a first draft. Now what? As my own book nears its publication date, I look back on the whole process from first draft to here and I wish I'd had a better sense of all the stages. And writers love lists, right? So I put together a list. I hope it helps.

1) Celebrate. Enjoy a beer or a Pinot Grigio or a chocolate milk or a big huge cake or a dance party or whatever else feels celebratory to you. Finishing a book manuscript is no small feat, especially if you wrote the bulk of it in one harried month. Pause for a while to bask in what you've accomplished, to ceremoniously cross write a book off your bucket list. Print out the manuscript and carry it around under your arm just to feel the bulk of it. Maybe throw a picture or two up on Twitter or Instagram. Caption it: Look! I wrote a book! But don't celebrate for too long, because the time will come to...

2) Take a deep breath and acknowledge that a first draft is only about 50% of the work, if that. I've written about my own lowly first drafts here and here. I once read that agents are so swamped with manuscripts pumped out during #NaNoWriMo that many have taken to closing off December submissions. Sending your NaNoWriMo draft to an agent/publisher on December 1st is sort of like signing your newborn baby up to write the SATs. Not ready! Slow down! Put your book in a drawer for a while, a few days or a week or longer. The editing process will be - should be! - arduous. Take a breather before you start. And when you feel ready, pull it out of the drawer and...

3) Read your manuscript really closely. Be cruel and be kind. Remember, this is just a first draft. Don't let sloppy writing get you down; this isn't a line edit. The first read should be about taking notes and asking bigger picture questions. Do you see your book as a thriller? What are the elements of a good thriller? Do you have them in your story? What about your characters? Are they thin? Contrived? Can you find major plot holes? Scenes that are too short/long? Scenes that could be cut without changing the story at all? Sections where the pacing is too fast or too slow? The She's Novel site has some excellent suggestions on how to proceed. Some writers may want to start their second draft on their own, others might need to...

4) Find an outside reader or two. Find someone who reads a lot, someone who can understand the limitations of the first (or second, if you've gotten that far) draft. Ask gently and humbly and be okay with people saying no, because reading an early draft is sort of like agreeing to babysit someone's child for a weekend; it's no small undertaking. Ideally, you'll find someone else with an early draft and you can exchange. #Nanowrimo local groups are a good place to look, and meetup.com also lists many writing groups by geography & genre (will I sound like a mom if I add here that you should always use your street smarts when meeting up with strangers?) If funds allow, consider hiring a professional editor to help you. In Canada? Find an editor here. Once you have a reader, you'll need to give them time to read and absorb. So...

5) Use the time between drafts well. Published writers will tell you that over the course of a book's lifetime, from first draft to book-on-shelf, there will be lots of waiting, and some of it will be agonizing. One way is to pass the time is to write other things. Use daily prompts like those Sarah Selecky tweets daily. Outline your next project. READ A TON. Read books that match your own genre, books with similar themes to yours, and take notes on what you feel works or doesn't as you read. Read books entirely unrelated to your own work. And while you're at it...

6) Engage in the marketplace. If you're not already there, join Twitter and follow writers, editors, booksellers, agents, publishers, literary magazines, book reviews, book bloggers, etc. The Write Life offers great Twitter suggestions for writers. Attend local readings or literary events. The publishing world is relatively small and supportive, and connecting with other writers can be very helpful at every stage. Also, when the time comes to put your work out there, it's a bonus for agents and publishers to see that you're already active in the publishing scene. Immerse yourself. And soon enough, the waiting will be over, your manuscript will be returned to you with feedback and you'll be forced to...

7) Accept the trials of the editing process.There are endless quotes from famous writers on the torturous editing process.  Writers must be open to it, must be humble and ready to get to work. Ignore constructive feedback at your peril. Edit with a "customer is always right" sensibility; of course, your readers may not always right, but if they are telling you that something isn't working, you'd best take a good look. Be prepared to cut passages or scenes or even characters you love simply because they don't fit. Be prepared to kill your darlings. Need some guidance? Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is one of my favourite books on the editing process, and Joanna Penn's website The Creative Penn also has lots of great tools. Push through that second draft until you've got something better than the first. Then...

8) Go back to #1 on this list and start again. Then again. My rule of thumb is that no publishing professional should see anything earlier than a third or fourth draft. Find new readers or give it to willing previous ones again. Hone it. Move from bigger picture to scene by scene to line edits. Keep editing until you find yourself reading pages and pages at a time without catching anything you want to change, until it reads like a novel you'd pull off your own bookshelf. The editing process could take up 8 steps on this list, it's that important. When you've finally got a polished draft in hand...

9) Now you're ready to begin the submission process. Like every other stage, submission should be a thoughtful one. DO NOT write a form query letter and send it to every agent or publisher in the world. Start by doing your research. Will you self publish? Jane Friedman offers an excellent guide to self-publishing if that's your preferred route. If you want to publish traditionally, would you rather work with an agent or submit to publishers directly? What are the pros and cons of each option? Either way, you'll need to find agents or publishers that best suit the genre and audience for your particular book. Writer's Digest The Writer's Market & Guide to Literary Agents are both super helpful. Curate the ideal list of recipients. Once you have that list in hand...

10) Write a strong query letter and synopsis of your book. No skimping here! Your query and your synopsis need to be perfect. Your query is the first thing (and if it doesn't grab them, the only thing) an agent or the intern in charge of the slush pile will read. Again, Writer's Digest's Chuck Sambuchino and The Writer's Market have excellent samples. Be sure to personalize all correspondence and follow agents' or publishers' submission guidelines to the letter. If they want you to start with an email query only, don't mail them a hardcopy of your entire book. Get it right. Agents and editors are profoundly busy people, so the adage applies: You only have one chance to make a good impression.Once you've nailed the query letter and the synopsis, it's time (finally!) to...

11) Press send. But only when everything is in perfect order, when you feel confident you've honoured the process and written the best book you can write. Then remember...

12) No matter what, try not to lose sight of #1.The celebration. The acknowledgement of your feat. Keep your writerly chin up, even if the rejections come in droves, even if the waiting seems unnecessarily long, even if news from the book world seems discouraging. As Edward Albee said, writing is an act of optimism. Writing is art and sacrifice. Just by doing it you're acknowledging an important part of yourself and you're putting something good into the world. Try to remember that and keep your pen to the page, your fingers to the keyboard no matter what.

@amyfstuart

It's November 1st. There are too many candy wrappers strewn at my feet, my children are splayed around the house in varying degrees of sugar coma, and the clocks have gone back to standard time, meaning up here in Toronto the sun will go down shortly after lunch.
It's also the day my Twitter feed fills up with 140-character musings on #NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's a movement that compels writers, in the dark and cold of each November, to attempt to write a novel in 30 days. It has a website and lots of joiners, and also lots of detractors who say there is something blasphemous about trying to hurry an inherently slow creative process, that trying to write 2000-3000K words a day is like throwing cups of paint at a canvas and hoping it bleeds together to look something like art. They have a point.

But today, I respectfully disagree with those detractors. Today, I've joined #NaNoWriMo.

My goal is a little different than the standard write a book in a month. I am writing the second novel in a series and I'm lucky to have a contract to do so. The first book (Still Mine! ORDER HERE!) comes out in April, and my goal all along has been to have the second book drafted and the revision process fully underway by the time Still Mine is in readers' hands. But transitioning back to the first draft writing has been harder than I thought it would be. I thought it would be same old, same old. But alas, it turns out you're not good at the second book just because you were eventually good at the first. I'm not sure there's ever such thing as mastery in writing. The muscles I built writing Still Mine will no doubt help me this time, but I'm not playing the same sport. The learning is new. I'm a beginner again. That's slowed me down more than I thought it would.

My goal for #NaNoWriMo is to force my brain out of the doubts and questions and into full-on writing mode, to run with the writing I already have. I'm not aiming for a full first draft, but I am aiming to write prolifically, to meet ambitious daily goals. I'm aiming to be part of a wider community of writers trying to do the same. I'm aiming to stop eating candy.

Keep warm, writers. I'll see you December 1st, pages in hand.

Writers tend to roam in packs and for years (decades, really, for we aren't so young anymore, are we?) I've run alongside my dearest friend Sarah Faber. She's always had a love for writing and a willingness to learn and grow and hone her craft; she's taught me so much about what true commitment to writing looks like. So I'm insanely thrilled that her beautiful, haunting novel LIGHTNING TO THE CHILDREN has been picked up by M&S in Canada and Little,Brown in the US. It's not surprising, but it's fabulous news nonetheless.
Just wait until you read this book. Sarah will leave you in awe with the simplest turns of phrase. The story is gorgeous and her writing stuns. She is a monumental talent. I've known that for years and now the world will know it too!

Read all about her deal(s) HERE.

(On top of her beautiful, haunting writing, Sarah also makes beautiful, haunting dolls like the one below. Read all about them HERE).

Here's a post I wrote 2.5 years ago titled The Truth About First Drafts. I'll sum it up for you: First drafts usually stink. As Hemingway said, The first draft of anything is s**t. First drafts are a quagmire of half-formed themes, of thin plot lines & dropped threads, of characters who started out named Mark somehow ended up named Mike. First drafts are the kitchen when you're halfway through preparing that massive and complex meal: A complete mess.
It's been a long time... years... since I've stared a first draft in the face. A month ago, I handed in a final draft of a novel. That sweet, spell-checked, edited, organized beast of a final draft that will never be perfect but it's pretty good to me. I birthed it and raised it and loved it and sent it out into the world.

Time to let it go. Time to start again.

I began my first novel by writing 50 pages at the Muskoka Novel Marathon. I was working from a one-page outline that dropped off at the end of the first act. I had a premise but not a plan. With the second novel, I'm trying a different approach by creating a thorough outline, the writer's equivalent of using an elaborate recipe. The best cooks may not need one; maybe they can add and remove and dabble and correct and invent as they go. But I'm pretty sure writing the first book without a strong outline made the process more complex and lengthy than it needed to be. Because I wrote a thriller with thriller elements like plot twists and red herrings and sneaky characters doing sneaky things, not having an intricate plan made for a lot of stops and starts later. In essence, if you're writing a whodunit, it's a good idea to know whodunit before you start.

I'm no fool: I know that an outline won't absolve me of extensive editing. I know that the first draft will still be a big mess. But this time I'm hoping for some method to the madness. I've often gone back to these two little essays by Andrew Pyper and Sheila Heti, each taking a side on whether to outline or not. Both make excellent points. Last time I was with Heti, and this time I'm with Pyper. I'll let you know whose side I'm officially on when I finish the second book.

On a practical note, there are some tools of the trade that writers can use for outlining. My most beloved writing software Scrivener has features that support the planning stage. I've also tried The SnowFlake Method, a program designed specifically to help writers build a plan before they begin writing. Here's the idea: Think of a snowflake. You start in the centre with a premise, and you slowly build the complexity from there. The software is well-designed and easy to use, leaving lots of room in my brain for pesky creative things like inventing characters and putting them in dicey situations.

This time I'm not as afraid of the first draft. I'm ready, outline in hand. I'm prepared to get messy. Here I go.