It was April 2019 and I was sitting at Manic Coffee on College Street and although I had come to write, what I was actually doing was texting. I was asking my siblings’ group chat: do you remember what you thought was special when you were a kid? Or something like that. I really wish I had those text exchanges still but I got a new phone number and we started a new chat etc etc.
Anyway. Most of my stories come from a single phrase that I hear in my head. It’s often a character talking, or it’s a phrase that begins or ends the story.
In the case of how I wrote Waiting for Tomorrow, the phrase was a little girl saying, “But when is tomorrow?” So I thought the story could be about a child anticipating something special for the next day.
My sister and I started talking about some of our more memorable childhood memories and after I put the phone down, I remembered one that was memorable to me. I write about this in author’s note of the book too, but basically one day when I went out in the snow in my sandals and then complained loudly about how cold my feet were (I didn’t even have socks on), my sister gave me the boots she was wearing for my sandals. (In my defence, she had socks on so it wasn’t as cold for her?) I’m kidding I was (possibly am) an idiot.
This episode became the core of Waiting for Tomorrow.
How old was I? Let’s just say I wasn’t four years old like the character in the book.
Here is a page from May 2019, slightly more developed. Redacted cause embarrassing.
I wrote my first draft in May 2019. And through the early stages of the pandemic, I rewrote it lots. But this story BY FAR came together the quickest of all my stories. The character’s name changed and the title slightly different, but the story is pretty much in tact from the original concept and draft to what it is now.
This is very very different from how I’ve written all my other stories, including my next book which I’m super stoked to tell you about when the time comes. That one probably took seven years from beginning to end, and went through some dramatic changes, with only one common element from the first draft.
Generally, I get bored of making edits on the manuscript during the rewriting stage so I sometimes try rewriting it by hand, or making little booklets to try out the page turns.
I used to get feedback from various critique circles, but now I have a few friends who give me feedback. I think it’s important to get feedback from people who share your story sensibility, too, so I’m a bit more picky about who I ask. It’s not that I think they’re gonna blindly praise my work, but you want people who get what you’re trying to do.
My agent Joan also gives the best notes. She understands what I’m going for. Her notes were the basis of my final revisions on Waiting for Tomorrow.
Joan officially became my agent in April 2021. And we got an offer on Waiting in May 2021 from Grace Kendall at FSG for Young Readers.
Next month’s newsletter: how I got the call from Joan while she was in Dubai, how I had a panic attack and thought I was dying, and what it’s like to work on a book under contract! Stay tuned!
Susan! This is so wonderful to read. I love seeing your process. It gives me hope for my own projects.