Your Next Draft

Hi Reader, Have you ever felt profoundly seen by something someone else has written? It’s an incredible feeling. The sense that you’re not alone. Someone else thinks and feels and sees and understands the same things you do. Someone found words for an experience you’ve struggled to express. And because they shared those words with you, you can pass them on to other people so others can see a little glimpse of you, too. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess . . . yes. At some point, in...

Hi Reader, My best friend is moving away, and I’m sad. I’ve spent the last week at her house. Every morning, I get our favorite bagels from the bagel shop down the road. Every night, her four-year-old daughter and I spread my sheets on the couch and tuck our dolls into bed. (Right now, as I write this, said four-year-old is sitting next to me, munching on a bagel and spreading crumbs all over my couch-bed.) Around the third time I extended my visit rather than driving home, I finally...

Hi Reader, I am in swizzle purgatory. In the last three months, I’ve spent more than thirty hours on the ice learning to skate. I joined an adult Learn to Skate class, and alongside eight other students, I’ve been learning the basics of moving on the ice. One of the first moves we learned is the swizzle. You push your feet apart, glide forward, and then pull your legs back together again. Like this: It feels like I have been swizzling nonstop for thirty hours. And I am torn. I want to master...

Hi Reader, I continue to be obsessed with Olympic figure skating. I’ve been listening to the U.S. Figure Skating podcast to hear how the skaters were thinking about their experiences and expectations in the leadup to the Olympics. I’ve looked up interviews to hear how Ilia Malinin is talking about his medal and his falls, now that he has a week and a half of distance from both. I’m devouring articles about Alysa Liu, ravenous to understand how she could skate with such peace and...

Hi Reader, How will you know when you’re done? Will it be when you LOVE your book? When you stop cringing as you read it? When you can’t think of a single change left to make? When beta readers rave about it? When they tell you the romantic scenes made them swoon and the funny scenes made them laugh, the scary scenes gave them nightmares and the sad scenes made them cry? When a reader tells you your book impacted them profoundly? That it changed the way they think about something that...