How I got my first three books written

The first book I tried to write was actually the third book I published while the first book I published was the third book I tried to write. Why?

It all started in June 2015, after weeks, or maybe months, of deep, frantic soul-searching (I’ll tell you all about that some other time). I decided to write and self-publish lesbian fiction and had an idea for a series (I’ll explain why another time too) so I jumped right into getting the first book written. 11 months on, in early or mid-2016, when I had three vastly different rough drafts of that very first book down, I, out of nowhere, got the idea for the Lane Thompson character (the lead in The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange). I quickly realised she would be a more interesting character to start my series with so I paused all work on my first story to work on hers instead.

By late 2016, I was 80% of the way with the Lane Thompson story when, again, out of nowhere, Snow White and Her Queen materialised in my head (read how that happened here). That story was so clear to me, so straight-forward, so likely to be thought of and written by another person, I knew I had to write it—fast—before anybody else did. So once again, I dropped the Lane Thompson story to write Snow White and Her Queen.  

April 2017, after 7 months of writing, I was done. I read up self-publishing, applied what I learned, published it, made a ton of stupid noob mistakes while doing so (which I have since learned how not to do ever again) and jumped right back into getting the Lane Thomson story done.

I ended up rewriting that story almost ten times over because I kept rethinking what I was trying to do (which I have since learned I should never do, ever). By December 2017, however, after 8 months of rewriting, I decided The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange was done. I set it free and, at last, moved on.

January 2018, 2.5 years after I first started trying to write, I went right back to the story that started it all. As you might have guessed, now that I had two finished books and a ton of rough, WIP versions under my belt, I thought the three rough drafts I had done at the very beginning sucked as bad as gastroenteritis on your wedding day. I dumped them all and started from scratch. The lead character, whom I named Sherry Newman in my first drafts became the sub-lead character I named Milla Milone. The sub-lead character who had been a 23-year-old tomboy named Madison Fry in Rough Draft 1 and a Japanese-American named Anri I-lost-all-record-of-her-last-name-cos-of-impulsive-deleting in Rough Draft 3, I made into an older, professional, Chinese-Dutch Hong Kong-native lead character named Fleur de Roller.

Because I had the experience of getting distracted, not once but twice, I decided to give myself an insanely tight timeframe of 4 months to get it done since the risk of me getting more excited about something else or, worse, confused by my own mystery, increased exponentially with every month I took. With what I learned from my 3 years of writing (or trying to), I crafted a system tailored to my personal style to enable me to get the text done more efficiently, not knowing if I would actually be able to achieve what I hoped to do.

Turns out, I could. I took a week longer than I planned to but managed to get The Woman Who Pretended To Love Men out in the month I aimed for. All while building up a website and ramping up my marketing efforts (I didn’t do much marketing before that because, again, noob) too. Pretty significant leap in productivity, if you ask me.

Now, 2018 June, exactly 3 years from the time I first started trying to write, I’m starting on my fourth book—the first book I’m writing while knowing exactly what I’m doing every part of the way.

These days, when I pound on my keyboard, I can’t help but feel writing is not all that different from playing the piano. You know, you play Chopsticks badly for a while, then Sonata in G really badly too… but then, one day, years on, you realise you’re playing the ending theme for Carol (the movie) and you haven’t even looked at your fingers once.