The Book That Almost Killed Me

Hello, everyone!

Ally here! As those of you who follow me on twitter might have seen a week or two ago, I just realized that this December will be my ten year Publiversary! Yep. My very first novel (which is now out of print and very hard to find, sorry) came out almost ten years ago.

I’ve been thinking for a while now of what I might do to mark the occasion, and I’ve got some ideas for something I think you guys are really going to like. But that’s going to take a little while to bring into fruition.

In the meantime, I’m going to try really, really hard to write something every week between now and December–something about the lessons I have learned in the past ten years.

Today we’re going to start with some of the biggest lessons of all, and they’re all lessons that I learned because of CROSS MY HEART AND HOPE TO SPY.

AKA: the book that almost killed me.

Now Cross My Heart was an incredibly important book for me for a lot of reasons. It was the first book of mine to hit the New York Times bestseller list. It was the book that, when it was released, I was able to quit my day job (more on that in a bit). And, most of all, Cross My Heart is the favorite Gallagher Girls book of a whole lot of readers.

But I can never understand why because writing that book was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Why was it so hard? Well, a number of reasons, actually:

 

1. Sequels are hard.
They Just Are.

I mean it. Sequels are, in my opinion/experience, the hardest thing a writer can try to do.  (And I’m not alone on this–a lot of authors agree with me.)

I think this is because writing a sequel is the process of trying to write something that is exactly the same but totally different.

A reader will pick up a second book because they want to duplicate the experience he/she had while reading the first. But you can’t actually give them the same book! No. They would rake you over the coals for that.

So they want the exact same experience but from . . . a totally different experience.

See why this is hard?

2. Personal stuff
At the time I was working on Cross My Heart I still had my day job and was just burning the candle at both ends. I wasn’t able to take care of myself and the pressure was just too much. But then I was able to quit my day job, and things got a lot more manageable, I’m happy to say.

So I guess the take-away lesson from #2 is simple: take care of yourself!

3. Plot vs. Premise
From a craft standpoint, this was probably the biggest lesson that Cross My Heart taught me.

I remember well the conversation I had with my editor at the time, Donna Bray.

“What do you want to do for the sequel?” Donna asked.

“Well, you know that little throw-away line in book one about how Tina Walters thinks there’s a boys’ school in Maine? I want to do something with the boys’ school in Maine,” I said.

“That’s what I was going to ask you to do!” Donna cried.

And thus the Blackthorne Academy was born and Cross My Heart began.

It was a great idea for a book. The problem was it wasn’t a plot for a book.

“Spy boys start attending an all girls spy school” is a set-up, a premise. From that you get three or four scenes.

–girls wondering why adults are being cagey

–boys arriving

–girls freaking out

–boys and girls clashing

–girls getting used to boys being there

And…then what?

It took me MONTHS of writing and rewriting to figure this out.  I wrote three totally different versions of the book with totally different “plots”. I have a “scraps” file of deleted scenes that is twice as long as the finished novel.

They had to push the publication of the book back six months and my health went to pot because I didn’t know the difference between plot and premise.

Never again.

4. What goes on the back of the book is just as useful to the person writing the book as it is to the person buying the book.

You know the stuff on the back of the book or inside the flap cover of a hardback? You know those two or three paragraphs that tell you, the reader, what this book is about (generally) and might help you decide whether or not to pick it up?

Well, thanks to Cross My Heart I learned that I can’t really write a book until I know what’s going to go on its cover.

All authors are different! All books are different. But, for me, if I can’t come up with two or three very general paragraphs that summarize what the central conflict of a story is going to be then I’m not yet ready to write that story.

Again, your mileage will vary. Some authors sit down with maybe just a scene in their head–maybe a character or a line of dialogue or an image. Some will sit down with an eighty page outline that they’ve been working on for months.

Me? I’m somewhere in the middle. I need to know how I’m going to talk about the story before I have any business writing a word of it.

And that right there folks is what I learned from THE BOOK THAT ALMOST KILLED ME.

Ally