Hidden Roots:

OF GIANTS & ICE

The Timeline (+ the Problem with that Timeline):

So, I did write roughly the last half of my first book—32,000 words—in ten days. Actually, from the first idea for that novel (end of July 2009) to getting an agent (mid-February 2010), I didn’t have very long to wait at all: six and a half months. From there, getting my first publishing contract (end of September 2010) didn’t take too long either: fourteen months, from idea to contract.

This is factual. I was 22, 23, and 24 at the time. Also factual. But I’ve haven’t really talked about this much since it actually happened.

 A lot of people would, because it sounds impressive.

This isn’t about bragging. I’m not a bragger—unless it’s to tell you about how funny I am. Then I might brag.—But that’s not what I mean.   

I didn’t talk about this relatively short timeline, because it felt wrong to talk about my publishing journey that way. “Fourteen months from idea to contract” is the kind of factoid that you see a lot in “Success Stories,” usually when someone is selling something. It didn’t feel right to talk about it, and Clarinda Braun of the Matriarchal Business, my business teacher, her work really speaks to that not-right feeling. If something doesn’t feel right when you are talking about what you do, there’s usually a good reason.

So, fourteen months from idea to contract: that’s factual.

But if I just tell it to you like that, with no context, it’s also manipulative. Because I know it’s a false representation.

That timeline only covers the creative process of that work. It doesn’t cover all the other preparation I’d done to be ready for that creative process to take root.

Above Ground + Below Ground.

I’ve been using a lot of tree metaphors recently, because this is how I think of it. A healthy tree has roughly as much biomass in its roots below the soil’s surface as you see aboveground in the trunk and branches and trees.  

The creative process—the spark of the idea, the gathering of the story threads, the drafting of the manuscript, the revisions—all that is just the above ground work. Finding an agent and the whole submission process—that’s above ground work too.

That’s often all you see, because that is all you’re taught to see.  

But like a tree, every creative work has hidden roots. There is action happening below ground, which you often don’t see because we don’t talk about it as much.

This is as true of my first novel, OF GIANTS AND ICE, as it was about everything else.

It’s my first novel, and I’ve talked about being a writer since I was five. So, that’s about twenty years of working towards a dream—twenty years of growing roots. That’s a long time. I doubt I could list them all even if I tried.

So, I won’t try. I’ll just give you a few.

1. I worked in publishing, directly before I started writing OF GIANTS AND ICE.

 

As in, right before. The same day I publicly announced that I was leaving my job, I went home and had the idea for the Ever Afters that night. Same day, within twelve hours of each other. Also factual—but yes, a bit spooky too.

Specifically, at the time, I worked on an editorial team in children’s publishing that specialized in middle grade fiction, including fairy tale retellings and fantasy adventure series, exactly like the books I ended up writing. It was the other side of the table from where I was headed. I learned a lot.

Plus, it was literally part of my job to read as many awesome books in that genre as possible—to understand how they worked so that we could publish more. I had in-depth, first-hand industry knowledge specific to the project I was trying to make. I knew all of the competitive titles, in a way I don’t anymore, and I knew a lot of the people in the industry in a way I don’t anymore.

But I did have that knowledge when I wrote my first novel and pursued publication. That is a place of extreme privilege. It is known that the workforce in traditional publishing is mostly white (like me) and from a certain economic background (also like me).People in publishing are actively working to change this. Still, not everyone can jump into a low paying publishing job right out of college to learn those skills.  

You really don’t need to honestly. Working in the publishing industry is absolutely not required for getting published. Most writers don’t. You can get the knowledge you need from other channels. I’m doing my best to share what I know, for example, but there are also a bunch of other sources on the internet.

My career track is unusual, but it would be irresponsible for me not to name this as something that accelerated my growth at a very early age. And it is still one of my hidden roots today—a hidden root of this video, for sure.

2. I had a lot of practice. I’d already written seven novels.

 

This one isn’t as much of a privilege. Writing isn’t like studio art. The materials aren’t costly. I wrote my first novel with a composition notebook and a pen. There are fancy kinds of these, but you can literally get both of those at the dollar store.

I also started writing when I was ten. Between then and my twentieth birthday, I wrote seven novels. They’re my practice novels. They won’t ever be published, but they were practice. They were also confidence building.

When I had the idea for the Ever Afters, that day when I announced I was leaving my job in July 2009,  I never thought: “Wow, can I even write a whole book?” Instead I thought: “Wow, I’ve never written a whole series.—Hmmmm. I can figure it out.” Then I thought: “How fast can I finish the first draft?”

The answer was: pretty fast, obviously. I had the experience to know how.

Before I got to that writing vortex, when I wrote the 32,000 words in ten days, I prepped a lot—enough to have a rough outline for the entire second half of the book. I invested a few months in gathering ideas, because I had the experience to value the dreaming time, where I read a lot and started jotting down all the ideas that came to me without forcing myself to force myself to draft scenes that weren’t read yet.

3. I took a bunch of writing and publishing-related classes.

 

This is another enormous privilege since most of these classes were expensive:  

  • Straight out of college, I took a prestigious post-grad certification program called Columbia Publishing Course that trained me for a job in publishing—and then helped me get one. Again, enormous privilege.

  • I majored in English at Vassar College. It’s a very good school, known now its rising tuition costs but historically for its writers too.—I actually almost took too many classes for my major. I had to drop one my senior year, because I couldn’t graduate if more than half my credits were in the same department.

  • I participated in five writing workshops between the ages of 14 and 21—the first two as a summer camp in high school and the rest in college.

Again, this is not required. You don’t have to take writing classes to write a book that’s good enough to get published. You don’t need an M.F.A. either. You can get that experience and knowledge in less expensive ways.

But personally, I was trained both classically to write and professionally to work in publishing before I turned 22. This accelerated my growth, and it’s a hidden root.

So, up until now, everything I’ve mentioned sounds like a lot of work…

…as in, practice and classes and a job inside the industry, which is literally being part of the workforce.

And some hidden roots area about hard work that no one will get to see.

But not all of it.

Writing the practice novels, for example—that was so joyful to me. I justified it to other people, usually the grown-ups in my life as “practice,” but I did it because I loved doing it. (Unlike practicing the violin.—When I took orchestra classes, I almost never practiced, because I didn’t enjoy it.)

So, some hidden roots are just led by joy. The roots, after all, bring nourishment to the tree.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in BIG MAGIC. Sometimes you follow your curiosity, not knowing where it’ll lead, and it becomes a beautiful creative work, much much much later on.  

So, the last hidden root I want to talk about is one of those.

4. I’d already read a LOT of fairy tales, because I have loved them my whole life.

 

The Ever Afters is full of fairy tales, right? It’s all about an after school program for fairy tale Characters-in-training, and during the dreaming stage, when I was gathering ideas, I do go buy some collected works of Grimm and Lang and Andersen. 

But I was just refreshing my memory. I have loved fairy tales for longer than I’ve wanted to be a writer, so like a ridiculously long time. My whole life.

I mean, there’s Disney—which many people love (or love to hate maybe).

But I was like, checking out the thick fairy tale collections at my elementary school library and reading them cover to cover. When I got a little older, it was fairy tale retellings like Robin McKinley and Gail Carson Levine and Shannon Hale. When I was older than that, it was Mercedes Lackey and Neil Gaiman.

I even took a fairy tale course in college, which taught me how to read and understand fairy tales and other old stories from a Jungian perspective. In this field, basically the fantasy element in the story represents some sort of psychological element hidden in the psyche. After that, I started reading Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s work for funsies.

All this did help me craft a great story, packed with fairy tales. But that’s not why I did it.

I just did it, because I loved fairy tales. I fed that love as much as I could, so by the time I actually wrote the Ever Afters, I had a deep well to draw on.

Love can be a building block for something amazing down the line.

You may not yet be able to imagine what that is right now. You don’t need to know. I didn’t, but it was really fun to find out later on.

So, when you’re growing your own hidden roots, leave room for deep passionate love for something. Feed that love, even if it seems completely random. Doesn’t matter exactly what it is.

It’s part of your hidden roots, simply because it nourishes you.