Writing is time consuming.

This is probably news to no one. At least, I’m yet to meet anyone who assumes that writing is easy. But I do meet a lot of people who assume that getting the book written is the biggest hurtle—there’s this pervasive notion that getting those ~75,000 words (depending on genre) onto the page is like ascending a mountain, and everything from there is downhill.

In actuality, writing a novel is more like hiking a trail with countless switchbacks: you often can’t see how close you are to your destination, and every time you think you’ve made a little progress, you double back. It’s still progress, regardless, but sometimes it feels like it’s never going to end.

(My east coast friends might not relate. Here, they like to scramble straight up the mountain, for some reason. I don’t think I’ve seen a switchback since moving, but I digress.)

I’ve been caught in that cycle all year. I was drafting a book in January and had to set it aside in February to work on drafting FALL INTO PLACE, which was actually under contract and therefore took priority. I turned that draft over to my editor in May and spent June wrapping up the first draft on the other book, took a small break in early July to celebrate my son’s first birthday, then received edits back on FALL INTO PLACE and immediately jumped into revisions. I continued working on revisions until about two weeks ago.

Here’s what the full timeline for FALL INTO PLACE has looked like so far:

February: began drafting
May: finished first draft
July: received editorial feedback
September: completed first round of revisions
October: received additional feedback
October: completed second round of revisions
October: received additional feedback
October (again): completed third round of revisions

I still have line edits and first pass pages to review in the coming months, but for the most part, the intensive structural edits are over.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I personally find it hard to maintain a newsletter when I’m already writing so much behind the scenes. Truth be told, sometimes those behind-the-scenes details don’t feel interesting enough to justify regular updates. I felt a bit dull even typing out that editing schedule.

I don’t get to fully enjoy the more social aspects of being an author until after revisions are done. It’s at this point that I start having outward-facing updates to share. For example: this week, I was finally given a release date! FALL INTO PLACE is set to release on 8 September, 2026.

It might seem like this means I’ve finally reached the downhill part, but there isn’t really a downhill part. Aside from a long to-do list for the coming year, I’m currently wrapping up revisions on that unnamed fourth book so that I can present it to my publisher in the next few months.

I’m not under any contractual obligation to do so—but the thing about publishing is that you want that contractual obligation. Schedules vary from publisher to publisher, but for me, it’s taken around two years from signing a contract until the book is released. Revisions are usually completed smack dab in the middle, about a year out from publication, which means—if I want to release one book a year—I need to be in this constant rotation of prepping contracted books for publication and prepping other books in hopes of getting the next contract (you might notice that I failed to maintain this cadence for 2025; I have nothing releasing this year). Not having a book under contract feels a little like hiking without a compass… or something. My brain is too fried to keep the similes going.

I’ll look forward to having more to talk about in the coming months! I have so much that I’m excited about—as proud as I am of Given Our History, I also feel that I’ve really grown as a writer over the past few years (I finished developmental edits on Given Our History in February 2023, so I have almost three years’ experience between that final draft and the final draft of FALL INTO PLACE. If you’re now wondering why I italicize Given Our History and capitalize FALL INTO PLACE, that’s another boring behind-the-scenes explanation for another time).

All this to say, the mountain keeps on growing, but I wouldn’t want to look anywhere else but up.

x

Kristyn