I usually write on my laptop in my Writing Chair - a comfy, gray, oversized armchair - except when I’m revising, which I do by hand in my Remarkable and then at my desk.

And except when my cats need my attention, or when I’m trying to sneaky draft at my day job, or when I’m writing at a coffee shop (see also: cats needing attention).

Basically, I write whenever and wherever I can, but I prefer to write in my Writing Chair.

Getting an agent is hard. I basically got my MFA to avoid querying agents (not really, but also kind of). When I graduated I had a complete YA manuscript and I set about querying it. I got a lot of positive feedback, but no offers of representation.

So. I wrote another book. A better book. And when I queried that book, everything happened more and faster. I had referrals for some of the people I queried, but I still had to send it in and wait for them to respond. It was still hard, this time around, but I was better prepared for the emotional toll it was going to take on me.

I signed with my agent Sara Crowe almost exactly three months after I’d started querying my second book.

I was lucky to have a lot of guidance and advice from friends I made in my MFA program, and I absolutely love working with Sara.

If you’re querying and you’re disheartened — I feel you. It is the worst roller coaster ever. There is a lot of rejection, always, at all stages in the publishing process. My advice is to find a few people you really trust to vent your frustrations to, people who will lift you up and be your cheerleader, and also discourage you from posting about it online (seriously, just… don’t). Keep writing the next thing. That’s the only part of the process you’ll ever be able to control.

I describe myself as a Building Block Writer. I plan. A lot. I outline and summarize and rethink and outline and summarize and rethink. And then I usually write around 20K words and then rethink everything I wrote and start over….

And I do this… many times.

It’s not efficient. But I’ve learned that I need the first third of the book to be a very solid foundation before I can move on.

I will often spend months and months on that first third or so of a novel. But when I finally get past it, the rest of the draft usually happens pretty quickly, because I’ve already set everything up.

After I finish a first draft (which is usually pretty clean because of all the starting over) I send it to a beta reader or two and get their feedback.

Then I revise and repeat, if I’ve made big changes, otherwise I send it to my agent. She gives me her thoughts and I revise again until we both feel it’s ready to go out on submission.

My biggest piece of writing advice is this: before you implement ANY piece of writing advice, really think about what assumptions it’s making about your brain and your life, and ask yourself if it would fix a problem you genuinely have?

Not every writing technique or method or process is right for everyone.

However. I have a few other thoughts…

Laurel Snyder, who I was fortunate to work with in my MFA program, gave me two of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. The first is to lie on your bed with no music and no podcasts and no tv and no phone and stare at the ceiling for ten minutes a day. Try that, and just see what your brain does. Let it wander. Let it be bored. We don’t let our brains wander enough anymore.

The second piece of advice Laurel gave me was to ‘question your defaults.’ Question the choices that seem automatic, but don’t have to be. A grandmother character with dementia is a sad plotline, right? But what if it wasn’t entirely? What if she said hilariously inappropriate things? What if she became a secret keeper? This doesn’t mean to always choose a different idea, but always keeping that door open leads to really interesting stories.

Yes! I have two cats, Luna and Stella. They are sisters and they’re all black - toe beans, whiskers, everything.

I have many favorite books! Some of them are:

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily danforth

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schefer

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Again, so many!

I love anything by Stephen Sondheim, but Merrily We Roll Along is my favorite. I’m obsessed with the backwards chronology and how it facilitates such a heartbreaking and bittersweet ending.

I also love Come From Away, Hadestown, and Ragtime.

Prelude from Bach Suite No. 1 in G Major.

It’s very famous. I 100% guarantee if you google it, you’ll be like ‘oh yeah, I’ve heard that.’

I have six tattoos. Some are big, some are small. One covers up a really cringe tattoo I got in college. All are meaningful in different ways.