This book RESERVED is full of feelings. It is a Contemporary Family Drama with lots of ups and downs. You can read the summary here, but I will warn you that I put my heart into this book. I started writing it as a challenge to myself after I didn’t like the ending of a particular book. I had always imagined myself in the role of my favorite childhood character, Anne Shirley (by L.M. Montgomery), and hoped from an early age to write a book. Of course, in that same childhood, I also wanted to be a vet, a flight attendant, and an artist! After I put together that first draft early in 2017, I left the story on my computer and wouldn’t come back to it for years.
In the fall of that same year, I decided that I wanted to write more consistently. I attended a writing workshop in California and realized that every other person in that room was working on a memoir! It was an amazing, in-person workshop, but it confirmed in me that I did not want to write a memoir. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading them, but I have way too many stories in my head! For that reason, I determined that I was going to write fiction (I didn’t realize what a broad term this is for a writer). I found a group in my town that was meeting up on a consistent basis; my first introduction to a NaNoWriMo group. If you’ve never heard me talk about this, try searching for my other “NaNoWriMo” posts (one of my favorites, here). We would meet up to write weekly, and even though these turned into more chatting sessions, I met many other writers and we cheered each other on through each step of our book-writing process.
The Re-Write(s)
Once I tackled the mess that was my first draft of Penny for Your Thoughts, which would morph into the Reserved manuscript, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. As a rule, I am a constant reader. I love to re-read several books each year because it brings the story to life in a new way. But when it came to re-reading my manuscript, I was at a loss. I would get stuck on one section and then skip entire parts. I typed up a working copy of my manuscript (after about two or three more re-reads) and sent it off to an editor to see if I could stitch everything together. I was very proud of this manuscript and imagined that I would finally have a novel out in the world! My childhood dream was coming true! It was not to be.
I received back a lot of criticism, particularly the time discrepancies, jumps in character’s voices, and huge gaps in the story. I’m pretty sure this editor got tired of telling me the same thing over and over because by the end, they had written, “No, no, no” several times and then at the end…there were no more notes. I fixed what I could from the feedback and then left my book once more on my computer.
Creating “Real” Characters
The three characters in this book are family members, which already makes things complicated. Penny, the youngest, is the daughter of Deirdra, an aspiring songwriter. Her life is not even close to what she imagined and she constantly feels judged by her sister, Alexia. The book touches on issues of addiction, relationships, and forgiveness. A lot of the inspiration for this book came from my early teaching experiences and conversations that I had with people when I hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail in 2022.
Throughout the intervening six months of not writing, I mulled over what could make it better, grabbing things that I liked from movies, characters that made me love them, and sayings that I heard around me. I would play back a scene in my head and wonder which book it came from, then realize that it was my own writing that I was recalling! I had to keep working on this book. I decided to fix a lot of the character development angle by flipping the timeline of one character, so her story would read from present day to back to her early years. For another character, I focused on telling her version of the story by skipping to each “Penny” section, hoping that the changes I made would represent her voice. I did decide to keep all three characters in my novel, but switched all of them to first person. Once I made these crucial changes, I began to see hope in my novel–and a LOT of work.
Coming Together
Some of my favorite points are the AHA! moments that developed from writing and rewriting scenes. I knew by 2023 that I wanted to send off my manuscript again, but wanted to fill in the gaps. It was hard to hear harsh criticisms, but it made me more determined to make something of my piece and not abandon the whole project. During these months of rewriting, there were scenes that would make me laugh out loud, and I knew that I was on the right track. When I received my second round of professional edits, I knew that I still had a chunk of work ahead of me. But in addition to grammar edits and character suggestions, my editor would write things like, “I want to hear more of this character! I was really engrossed in her story and it doesn’t touch any more on her part for ten chapters” or “What are you trying to get across with this paragraph?” I finally got to the point where I had a completed manuscript!
The process of querying and then deciding to self-publish is another story, but for now, if you are a writer out there, I want you to do two things: 1)Follow my bookish thoughts on facebook.com/hannahmarie.author and 2)Share your writing stories in the comments!
This year I hope to send out an historical fiction book (in the multi-draft stage) and a young adult graphic novel! I am eager to see my art business grow and use my artwork in future novels!
Always scribbling,
Hannah Marie.