Where I'm At With My Next Book

Fun summer updates.

I’m leaving home for the summer tonight. There are all of the usual things to be excited about spending the next two months at the beach: less structured days, languid afternoon hours swimming, casual dinners and daily ice cream runs. But leaving home has also been a bit overwhelming this year since I have so much writing to do. It’s hard to find time to sit and work on a big project when the entire point of summer is to let your mind rest and wander. There’s also just less time with the kids around—It’s hard to focus on anything when they have so many summer goals of their own.

Here I am singing copies of On Gin Lane at my local Barnes and Noble.

I haven’t offered a writing update in several weeks because I’ve had my nose buried in my revision for ALL THE SUMMERS IN BETWEEN (May 2024). I received an incredible and insightful editorial letter from my editor last month with tons of suggestions, everything from strengthening the love interest of my character to line edits asking whether a certain scene could be pushed deeper. I LOVE developmental edits, even though they’re incredibly taxing, because it’s your chance to fine tune all of the different elements of your story. Your dialogue sharpens. You realize exactly what a scene is about. You chisel to the core of motivations.

It isn’t all fun. Some of it is a slog, especially when you get vague feedback like: I think these two characters could go deeper here, and you’re scratching your head wondering in what one million possibilities feels right for the book. One comment I received from my editor and the three other authors I sent it to was about how the friendship between the two women needed to feel more balanced. I needed to come up with one really solid scene where the selfish character did something incredibly selfless for another. I thought of a million ideas, but nothing I came up with felt true to the story. Finally, I called a friend who isn’t a writer, but she’s very good at talking about deep emotions and analyzing the heck out of just about anything. I told her the basics of my story, the relationship between the two friends, and as she asked questions and we probed motivations, a lightbulb went off. I had my scene.

While editors are as invested in your book as you are, asking author friends to read a manuscript can be daunting. These are your colleagues, women whose work you admire, and you know they’re going to see through any false scaffolding you’ve built on the page. Days after sending my draft to one of my fave authors, I received a comment from her: “I am only on page 30 -- but man this is good. Really crisp writing. I know these characters right away. I think Thea is your best heroine so far. So real, so relatable. And there's a knot in the reader's stomach that starts with the mysterious boat and doesn't let up.”

When I read that, I teared up. So alone are we writers in this process of churning out a story that when we hear that someone sees something of deep value in your writing, you feel a sense of elation and relief. Another author friend sent a similar note over text while vacationing with her family in Puerto Rico and I hunted for it to quote but I’ll summarize: It said something similar. She loved it and couldn’t stop reading it.

I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this because I want you to know that writers always assume whatever they’ve produced is junk until someone tells them otherwise. And you need those honest author friends and a fantastic editor to give you a positive boost sometimes. Also, everyone gave me such incredible feedback about what wasn’t working in the book, too, which is why I was able to improve my story so much. Something as simple as, you use “your friend” way too much, to more complicated feedback like, “I have no clear read on who the husband really is.”

Needless to say I spent the last several weeks buried in this revision, and I’m happy to report that I finished just in time to go to the beach today. On to the next story, I’m about halfway done with my fourth book, and by “done,” I mean I have half of a book in rough draft form. I’m going to try to find a couple of hours each day to write, even with the kids home on and off during the week, and I’m hoping to at least get to three-quarters complete by the end of the summer. I’m not even going to try to finish—that will stress me out. But I’ll check in and give you an update about how the writing is going later in July.

One thing I realized since taking a break from my fourth book is that I was trying to keep to two timelines in the novel. But after some separation from the project, I think I’m going to keep the present timeline steady, but when I go back in time, the story will be told from one characters point of view in different summers. I was trying to limit her story to just one summer, but there were so many other things I wanted to show from different periods of her life/marriage etc. That’s a very freeing thought. Another steady in the book to help anchor the story will be the beach house where this all takes place. With all of the movement in time, it will be nice for the reader to always know they’ll be on Martha’s Vineyard in this old Captain’s house with this one family.

Ok, I need to stop writing and go pack some more. But happy summer, everyone! Stay tuned for my summer book club posts, too. We can buddy read. I have a giant stack of novels I’m bringing to the beach with me.

xo

Brooke