Amy Nichols is here today to talk about her brand new forthcoming novel, NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE. A parallel universe, multi dimensional YA novel that has me beyond intrigued and rightly so, based on the amazing reviews that have already come in. Amy’s novel comes out in December and you can preorder it from the links below!
Sometimes You Have to Break It So It Can Come Back Stronger
By Amy K. Nichols
A friend called a while back, wanting feedback on a story she’d written for a contest. I jotted down notes as she read the piece to me over the phone.
She liked hearing me tell her which lines I thought were good and which bits of dialogue made me smile. She didn’t like hearing me suggest she make some changes, though. Using less adjectives, getting rid of passive voice, cutting that one cliché.
It wasn’t a harsh critique, and I made it clear from the start that I enjoyed the story and thought it stood a chance of winning. But I could hear in her voice that my comments had crushed her motivation to enter the piece at all.
I asked her how many times she’d revised the story. Turns out she hadn’t. This was her first draft. When I asked if she would consider revising it and letting me read it again, she gave me a half-hearted, “Maybe.”
Ugh. I felt awful, but I knew just telling her the story was good wouldn’t help her. If she wanted to win that contest, she’d have to revise.
But, ugh. Revising is hard. We don’t like breaking the things we create.
We get a story idea. We pound it out. We step back and congratulate ourselves (as we should). But there’s a crucial next step that a lot of people don’t take: returning to the work and improving it. I’m not talking correcting typos here. I’m talking about bending it, shaping it, even breaking it.
A first draft is like a broken bone. Sometimes the doctor needs to break an arm or leg again and reset it so it will grow back stronger. It’s an ugly and painful process, but it has to be done.
Just like revisions.
Listen, I know. I’ve been there. Revisions can get ugly. Chapters cut and spliced. Sections orphaned off into a separate file, or deleted altogether. More track changes comments in the margins than there is actual text on the page. It’s grueling. Sometimes it feels hopeless. For me, there’s usually a tipping point where either everything is going to come together or I’m going to toss the whole thing in the trash. This is usually the time I walk away from the computer, throw myself on the couch and cry. Then my husband, in all his wisdom, reminds me about the swans.
One of my hobbies is making jewelry out of PMC clay. A couple of years ago, I decided to make silver pendants for Christmas gifts, but that plan wasn’t going as planned. My ideas weren’t coming together. My hands kept fumbling. The clay got dry and difficult to work with. My husband, sitting near by, heard my grumbling and asked how it was going.
“Awful,” I said. “These totally suck.”
He rolled his eyes. “You always say that. ‘These are ugly. These are horrible. I hate these.’ Then when it’s all done, you step back and say,”—he flourished his arms in dramatic circles—“Oh, look! I made a swan!”
I laughed. But I also though, No, these pendants really do suck. Still, I kept at it. I sculpted them. Fired them. Burnished them to a high sheen, then dunked them in a bath of liver of sulfur and waited.
When I fished them out of the tray, they were black and ugly. Really ugly.
I rinsed them again and set to task buffing the black to silver again, leaving the recessed areas of the designs dark. It was difficult, detailed work. In the end, the pendants turned out pretty good. But they had to go through a lot of ugly to get there.
Ugliness and brokenness are part of the creative journey. A difficult, necessary part.
If I’d left those pendants when they were still tarnished by the sulfur, I’d never have seen them shine.
If I hadn’t revised my novel, it would never have gotten published.
My friend didn’t revise her story, and she never entered the contest.
I could go into a spiel about caterpillars becoming butterflies. Iron forged into chandeliers. Winter blossoming into spring. But instead I’ll just say this: your writing is going to go through an ugly phase before it ever turns beautiful. Let it. Don’t be afraid to break it. It will come back stronger. Just stick with it and see it through to its conclusion. Then, when it’s all done, you’ll stand back and see: you made a swan.
About The Author
Amy K. Nichols has been crafting stories for as long as she can remember. She is the author of YA science fiction novel Now That You’re Here, to be published by Knopf December 9, 2014. The follow-up, While You Were Gone, will be published in 2015. She is mentored by award-winning crime novelist James Sallis and lives on the edge of the Sonoran desert with her husband and children. Amy is a member of SCBWI and SFWA, as well as the Class of 2K14 debut authors.
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About The Book
In a parallel universe, the classic bad boy falls for the class science geek.
One minute Danny was running from the cops, and the next, he jolted awake in an unfamiliar body–his own, but different. Somehow, he’s crossed into a parallel universe. Now his friends are his enemies, his parents are long dead, and studious Eevee is not the mysterious femme fatale he once kissed back home. Then again, this Eevee–a girl who’d rather land an internship at NASA than a date to the prom–may be his only hope of getting home.
Eevee tells herself she’s only helping him in the name of quantum physics, but there’s something undeniably fascinating about this boy from another dimension . . . a boy who makes her question who she is, and who she might be in another place and time.
And, coming soon, Duplexity, Part II: While You Were Gone flips this story on its head and tells the tale of the alternate Danny and the alternate Eevee, living in Danny’s parallel world.
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