First Draft Episode #231: Marie Lu and Sarah Enni open the mailbag!
JANUARY 30, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Marie Lu is is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Legend trilogy, The Young Elites trilogy, the Warcross duology, and more. Her newest book, a historical YA fantasy, The Kingdom of Back, comes out March 3, and Skyhunter will be out in fall 2020!
This episode of First Draft is brought to you by our presenting sponsor, The Slow Novel Lab, an online six-week writing and creativity course taught by Nina LaCour (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here). Nina is the bestselling and Prince winning author of We Are Okay, Hold Still, and more. As well as the creator and host of writing podcast, Keeping a Notebook.
Over The Slow Novel Lab's six-week course, Nina will guide you through writing explorations, craft lessons, video lectures, and a weekly live Q & A with Nina herself. A private moderated forum connects you with your fellow writers, and the weekly call focuses on what you want to know. The lessons and video lectures remain yours to keep. The next six-week session of The Slow Novel Lab begins on February 16th and you can enroll @ninalacourt.com
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week is a new mailbag episode where I, along with a very special guest, will answer listener questions. Joining me today is Marie Lu, number one New York Times bestselling author of the Legend trilogy, The Young Elites trilogy, the Warcross duology, and more. Her newest book, a historical YA fantasy called The Kingdom of Back comes out March 3rd.
In this episode, Marie and I break down her drafting process, which is so interesting. We talk about Marie's ‘shiny object’ folder, and she gets into how she learned to refocus on writing after having a baby about eleven months ago. Maria also shares more about Kingdom of Back and stay tuned for details at the end about her new sci-fi novel Skyhunter, which comes out in the fall. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: Hi Maria, how are you?
Marie Lu: Hi Sarah. I'm good.
Sarah Enni: Good. It's so good to see you.
Marie Lu: You too. Thanks for having me on.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me over.
Marie Lu: Of course, any time.
Sarah Enni: I'm so excited to jump into these questions with you. Let's jump actually into talking about The Kingdom of Back. I got a really great listener question from Instagram about it. Keeshatan asks, "What has inspired The Kingdom of Back, and how is it different from your other books?"
You can hear Marie talk about the inspiration for Kingdom of Back in our very first interview back in 2014! (And don’t miss her 2017 First Draft interview ahead of the release of Warcross)
Marie Lu: Of all the books that I've written, this one has... And this question is the most interesting for The Kingdom of Back, and we've been talking about it forever. Because The Kingdom of Back was a story that I came up with when I was twenty-two, or twenty-one or something. So it was more than 10 or 12 years ago.
And I came up with it because I had always been interested in reading about Mozart and just child prodigies in general. I've just found him fascinating. I played piano when I was a kid and I found his music to be really interesting because it's beautifully written, and very easy to learn, but very difficult to master and to memorize because of the way that it was written.
And I always thought that was really intriguing. So I always liked reading about him. But I had no idea that he had a sister, an older sister, who was five years older than him. And every bit as talented as he was, so everyone says in accounts, and I didn't find that out until I was online. I was like, "He's always in these paintings with this girl sitting next to him. Who is that person?"
And then finally I read this biography about Mozart and they had a couple of chapters about Nannerl Mozart. And they were like, she composed music just him. She toured with Wolfgang when they were children. They played as child prodigies together. She was considered one of the greatest players of her generation. And in letters that she wrote to her brother, they were very close, he would say like, "Send me your latest composition. This is so amazing. I wish I could write like you. I wish I was as clever and wise as you." All of this. And none of her music survived, which I just thought was the saddest thing in the world.
Sarah Enni: That's so tragic.
Marie Lu: It really is. The reason was, obviously, because she was a woman growing up in 18th century Europe. And at that time, not only were you not allowed to compose as a woman, so she had to stop playing for the public when she was eighteen. The reason was because back then, if you were a woman and you were entertaining in any way for money, that was considered prostitution.
Sarah Enni: What!?!
Marie Lu: So even if you were composing music for the public and you got paid for it, or you performed and you got paid for it, that was considered prostitution.
Sarah Enni: Wow.
Marie Lu: Which is just, I mean, outrageous. So she had such a different trajectory than her brother. When she turned eighteen she had to stop. She had to settle in to do the wife and mother thing. And I just can't help feeling like, "What if...?" She was probably just as good as Wolfgang, but we'll never know.
Sarah Enni: That is wild. Why do I have a hint of a memory of you talking about her letter? His letters have been preserved but not hers or something like that.
Marie Lu: She wrote to him, I think it was mostly her compositions that [pauses] they were probably talking about her compositions in depth, that she had clearly written some. And actually in 2015 there was an article that came out from this professor who had been researching this, and he said that he had discovered a third handwriting in one of the music notebooks that they used as children to practice. And so there might be some compositions in there written by Nannerl but not inscribed to her. So I thought that was very interesting. She's like anonymous one on that.
Sarah Enni: Wow. Oh my gosh that's so crazy.
Marie Lu: Yeah, it's fascinating.
Sarah Enni: So that's how you got inspired to write it.
Marie Lu: That's how I got inspired.
Sarah Enni: Back when you were twenty-two. I really, really want to hear you talk about this because I don't think we talk enough about ideas that linger, and projects that do take awhile to come to fruition. So do you mind talking about the long life of this book before it has even come out?
Marie Lu: Yeah, of course. That's why this is weird for me. I wrote the whole book back then and pitched it. At the time I didn't have an agent yet. I had a first agent when I was younger, but we weren't able to sell my earlier project. And I separated from him and then was on my own for a bit. And so this was my new project that I was submitting. And I got an agent, my current agent with it, but she's shopped it out. And to be fair, I don't think the book was quite ready yet for publication. I went back and read it and I was like, "Oh god."
It's a little awkward here and there. And I hadn't gotten my pacing quite down yet. And there were some issues with it. The main issue I think at the time, was that historical just did not sell at all. And we submitted half to YA publishers and half to adults. And I think most of the children's publishers thought it was adult. And the adult publishers thought it was children's cause it just fell into this weird spot.
And the book starts when Nannerl was eight-years-old and then goes until she was thirty-three. So it covers her life, and it's kind of an awkward fit for most categories. And so it didn't sell and we put it aside. And over the years, every now and then, I would go back to it and I'm like, "I really love this story but I just can't make it work."
And Kristin, my agent, would say, "Let's try tweaking this or that. And she would ask around, and every now and then I would get an editor who would be interested, but then they want a certain revision. So it was just up and down constantly. It was just there, but on the shelf, and constantly in the background. And while I was getting rejected for The Kingdom of Back the first time around, I wrote Legend to distract myself from the rejection letters. So that was the one that got me in the door. But yeah, it took ten or twelve years before I finally went back and I was like, "You know what? I really want to try to make this book work because I keep thinking about it."
It's just one of those stories, like we were talking about, projects that just linger. And sometimes there are manuscripts that you put away, and you shelf forever, and you know that. You feel it, you can feel in your heart. You know that you're ready to move on from that project. And this one I was just like, "I just cannot let it go." And once ten or twelve years had passed, I was like, "I feel I'm never gonna stop thinking about this story unless we do something with it."
So I talked to Kris and I was like, "Kristen, we gotta make this. work" So it helped that at this point, I had an editor that I had a really good relationship with, Jenn Besser, who I absolutely adore. And so we talked with Jenn and I just kind of rolled up my sleeves and went back and I was like, "I'm just going to do an overhaul on this book." And so we sold it to Jenn. And so twelve years later, it finally got a chance to see the light of day. But it took a long time. And I think the market is different now. Historical is in. Hamilton blew up. So it's a little bit different.
Sarah Enni: And telling the stories I think of women who have been somewhat lost to time is very of interest. There's a lot of other similar conversations going on, which means that there is a little bit of space for this person that we should all know. Also I'm interested in that this is the book that Kristin signed you with. So it must've always had a place in her heart too.
Marie Lu: Yeah. This was our passion project together. And we always think of this as how we met, cause we've been working together forever now, and we have a really good working relationship. And she's always like, "The Kingdom of Back." She's like, "That one. I'm gonna sell that one."
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, I think agents get tenacious about stuff. When they love it, they fight for it just as hard as you do. Which is really cool. When in the timeline of your drafting did this fit in? Was this post Warcross? Or when did you actually do Kingdom of Back?
Marie Lu: When I pitched it again the second time around?
Sarah Enni: Well when you actually got the chance to write it, how did that fit in.
Marie Lu: The first time when I wrote it all the way through, so it was a finished draft back when I first started, I was still working at Disney at that time. So that was the first version of it. And then as the years went on, whenever I had a break in between books, I would go back and try to do a rewrite and it wouldn't work.
And then so I wrote The Young Elites and I went back after that and did a little rewrite and that didn't really work out. And then after Warcross, like in between all of my series I'm like, "Okay, today I have a free day. I'm gonna go work on The Kingdom of Back." Kristin jokes that she has...she's like, "I have forty-one versions of this book on my computer."
Sarah Enni: That's so funny. But it finally took. I feel this is also an interesting one. People should go back and listen to your first episode from 2014 and then we spoke again when Young Elites came out. And I do think it's really fun and interesting that you can track how you've been exploring different genres and stuff like that.
Marie Lu: I think it's fun that we've talked about this on multiple series of First Draft, which is really fun.
Sarah Enni: It's cool. The podcast is starting to become something of a time capsule for me and my friends, which is really neat. Okay, well I'm so excited to read Kingdom of Back. March 3rd, everyone go check it out. It's different from the rest of your books, because though you've written both sci fi and fantasy, this is a historical fantasy. What was it like wrapping historical in to the genre element?
Marie Lu: I forgot to mention this part of the research when I first started. But the reason why it was The Kingdom of Back is that historically Nannerl and Wolfgang, when they traveled Europe and they were in a carriage for weeks and weeks and weeks, and they didn't have iPads or iPhone. So they're like, "We're really bored!" So they invented this magical kingdom together called The Kingdom of Back to entertain themselves. And I just thought that was the most magical historical detail. And I was like, "I gotta write about this."
So that's how it started. And as I was writing it, I wanted to incorporate the kingdom into their reality. So I think that was the part that threw me off a lot early on when I was drafting, because I didn't know how to write magical realism. And how to make it feel like you could step back and forth between these two worlds. So I wrote it initially as a historical with magical elements. And then as the draft went on, there were more and more pieces of the magical kingdom that came together. Which is funny cause that's how the story happens too. Nannerl was living her life and then as time goes on, this magical kingdom starts to seep into her reality as well.
Sarah Enni: Oooh, I love that. It's also so gratifying as an artist to be like, "I couldn't have written it this way ten years ago. I waited for it to be..." I mean, for the skill to, you know what I mean? It's a good thing to keep in mind that we're always getting better. And just because something doesn't work right now doesn't mean it won't later on. So that's so exciting. Awesome! Well I'm glad that we could talk about it. I'm so excited for it to come out.
Marie Lu: Thank you.
Sarah Enni: Okay. We have some other fun questions for you. Let's start with an easy one. Are you a BTS fan? [Laughs]. Wait, this is asked by, Natalia Torres wants to know if you're a BTS fan.
Marie Lu: I feel anyone with taste is a BTS fan. They're just awesome. And wholesome and fun.
Sarah Enni: Oh they're so fun.
Marie Lu: And their music is great.
Sarah Enni: The music is great. What really got me into it was watching them dance. I was like, "Whoa!"
Marie Lu: Right? That's how I did. Cause I'd kind of been hearing the buzz about them in the background, and I feel everyone who follows me on Instagram is like, "Do you like BTS?" And I'm like, "Who?" And I went online and I saw a dance video and I was like, "I get it, I get it."
Sarah Enni: And then when they were on SNL you were just like, "Wow." Yeah, they're just amazing. Love that. So good. Easy.
Marie Lu: Yes. Yes.
Sarah Enni: Marie is a BTS fan.
Marie Lu: Of course.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I thought this was an interesting one because you do write genre mostly. How long are your first drafts usually?
Marie Lu: My first drafts, in general, are short compared to most people. I write pretty slow. I write maybe a thousand to 1500 words a day. So it's not...
Sarah Enni: Is that slow? [Laughs].
Marie Lu: I mean, it's not the fastest. Some my friends are like, "I wrote 5,000 words today." And I'm like, "That's my entire week's worth of productivity."
Sarah Enni: I'm going to pull us back from saying that that's... I think a thousand words a day is pretty good.
Marie Lu: Thanks. Thanks. I've come to realize that everyone has their pace. And it doesn't really matter if you're a slow or a fast writer, it's just who you are as a writer and whatever works for you. So that's what works for me. Early on I tried to push myself to write faster, but I would just write garbage, and have to cut it back anyway. So eventually I realized like, "You know what? This is the pace for me."
So whatever works for anyone who's being an aspiring writer, that's fine. So in general, I'd say my first draft's are between 50 to 60,000 word. So they're fairly short.
Sarah Enni: That is pretty short, for a genre too.
Marie Lu: My first draft of Legend was 60 something thousand words I think. And for Kingdom of Back, it was 57,000. It was short. And in revisions, that's pretty much where I do all of my work. And then they'll go up to maybe, for fantasy, between 100 to 110K.
Sarah Enni: You're doubling your word count with revisions. That's so interesting. What is present in the first draft and what are you adding in revisions, what elements?
Marie Lu: I feel my first drafts are basically just the bones and the plot, getting from point A to point B with these characters. The dialogue is really sparse. Sometimes they're just saying things like, "I am going to go over there today and I need to get to this spot." And the character's like, "Okay." And that's it. Or sometimes I'll just put in brackets and I'm like, "Insert science here." That's basically what I leave. And then in revisions I'm like, "Okay, I need to actually figure it out the science behind this." Or, "I need to add personality into this character." And so that's where it expands.
Sarah Enni: I like that, but also that's such a benefit to, so then in your process when you have the bare bones, plot focused first draft, who looks at that? Because I can imagine it's easy to get notes when it's a skeleton. If you have to make big structural changes, it's better to do that at 60K than 120K right?
Marie Lu: Yeah, I usually do one big pass revision on my own before I give it to my editor. Just in case my draft doesn't make any sense. I feel nobody would understand what they're reading if they're reading my drafts. Because there's just brackets everywhere, and characters that disappear for no reason. I'm like, "I remember this character disappears halfway through the book." But my editor would be like, "Where did John go? John was eaten alive by something."
So I will go back and I have an idea of what big structural things need to happen, and I will do a huge pass. And so by the time I give it to my editors, usually at 70 to 80 K. And then after that I do usually at least two big re-write passes on it before it gets to the point of smaller things.
Sarah Enni: That's really cool. So you found that to be a pretty consistent process?
Marie Lu: Yeah, yeah. Early on it would make me panic because I'm like, "Oh my god, this is so short, what is wrong? There's nothing in here." And I would ask friends, "How are your first drafts?" But then I realized it's the word count thing. It just doesn't matter. Everyone's process is completely different.
Sarah Enni: And they all end up being book shaped.
Marie Lu: And we all have a book eventually.
Sarah Enni: It's so funny. I love that. I love you found that. Okay, this is a really interesting question, Emily Brontosaurus, which by the way is the most hilarious name [laughs].
Marie Lu: Best username.
Sarah Enni: Emily wants to know, "Do you ever go back and read your own work for fun or enjoyment?"
Marie Lu: I, mmm... [chuckles]
Sarah Enni: It's a hard question actually.
Marie Lu: I don't know if I've ever had fun going back and reading my, but I've definitely done it before. Just for the kick of it. It usually makes me cringe a little bit cause I'm like, "What kind of turn of phrase was that?" And I can date myself too. And I'm like, "Ah, 2017 was when I learned how to say that." And then it'll show up twelve times in my draft. And I'm like, "I remember that. And so, it's kind of embarrassing. It's like going back to read any old thing that you've done, or look at old photos of yourself from high school or whatever. And I'm just like, "Eww that haircut!"
Sarah Enni: I feel that's looking at old pictures of yourself and reflecting on your hair style, or cut, or color. And you're always like, "Why? Why was this what I choose?"
Marie Lu: Yeah, "My eyebrows were so thin. Why did I do that to myself?"
Sarah Enni: "I really left the house like that." Yeah, there is a lot of that.
Marie Lu: Yeah. And you had mentioned time capsules earlier. Every episode of First Draft is a time capsule of your friends. And I feel like that with books too. I can look back on books and I'm like, "This is a snapshot in time of who I was at that time and what I was interested in." And sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's embarrassing, and sometimes you're like, "Ooh, I'm glad that's changed."
Sarah Enni: So a group of friends of mine recently did the kindest thing ever. They took an advanced copy of Tell Me Everything and each of them took a turn reading it and making notes in it.
Marie Lu: That's so kind and sweet. Ah, I love it.
Sarah Enni: I know. It's so special. So going through the book and reading it to read their notes was the most fun that I'd had reading my own work in maybe ever. Because it was so special. And I'll cherish that copy forever. But just seeing where they were underlining it and laughing, or their feedback. That I think was what it took for me to be like, "Oh, I can wholeheartedly enjoy this experience." It's like when your editor gives you notes and actually says like, "This is great!" You're like, "Ah, I did something that made someone feel something." Very rewarding.
Marie Lu: Oh, I love that. It's just something about bringing other people in to see your work must be just funny and sweet.
Sarah Enni: it was kind of like, "Oh yeah!"
Marie Lu: This is why I do this.
Sarah Enni: You know abstractly that people read your books. But to have a moment where someone is pointing out something specific and telling you exactly how they felt about it was like, "This is fantastic. Thank you." But I will say the podcast, going back and listening to old episodes of this is torture. That I have had to do and I've been like, "Oh god."
Marie Lu: Do you feel weird hearing yourself from back then?
Sarah Enni: I have gotten so inured to the sound of my own voice, both from doing this for the last five years, but also as journalist before that. So I've always had to transcribe my own voice. So I don't mind hearing myself talk, but it's the questions and the way that I ask them. I'm like, "You dummo." Like, "Stop talking." I have such opinions about how I conducted the interview, or lost track of it, or whatever. And then the audio has changed.
As OG listeners know, I way stepped up my audio game about two years ago, so episodes before that are bad. I'm like, "Ooh." [Cringe-y sounding] Our's was great.
Marie Lu: Oh, I'm sure the were.
Sarah Enni: Ours was great cause we were inside in your quiet house, not in a bar or something, which I made the mistake of doing a couple of times.
Marie Lu: I love it, but you can just look back. It's like writing too. You get to look back and because you can see those things, you know that you are better at doing this now than he used to be. So you're like, "I've grown as an interviewer and as a podcast creator."
Sarah Enni: It is good. Yeah. Those growth edges when you look back and you're like, "Okay, I learned that lesson." But no, I don't usually go back and read stuff. It's not always productive.
Marie Lu: Right. It's not something I can change. So sometimes I'm curious and I'll go back and read a passage. And I guess sometimes when I'm going back to write, if I'm writing the same series, I need to go back and actually do research and stuff. But other than that, it's like Rafiki said, "It's in the past. You can't change the past."
Sarah Enni: Yes! Oh god Rafiki. We don't quote him enough. I love that question though, that was a really good question. We have a really great question from Instagram sent to us by Meg Kleimo or Kleemo. Meg wants to know, "How do you overcome 'shiny new object syndrome' when picking a project." This is a great question, cause I think everyone's familiar with the feeling of being in the gross middle of a book, and it's so hard, and you're like, "But I have this other idea!"
Marie Lu: "And it's perfect and it's so much better. And I would never feel this way about that project." Every time. Yeah. I have a 'shiny object' folder on my laptop and that's how I get over it. I will let myself stop what I'm doing and write out a page, or just get that itch out of my head. Sometimes it's a a synopsis. Sometimes it's just a scene that I envision, or sometimes it's just dialogue or maybe a character or something. And I'll just write it. And I'm like, "Shiny objects folder." And I'll put it there so I know it's there. And that helps me get that out of my system.
And then you never know, I've pulled things out of my 'shiny objects' folder all the time for future things. I think Warcross was one of those. I knew vaguely about this character that I wanted to write about. It was just so happy and colorful and a little shiny thing off in the distance. I was writing Young Elites at the time, which was just like, "Death. Evil." And I was like, "Mm, I could use some rainbows right now." And so I would write that on the side just to get over my Adelina evil moments and then eventually that became a book too.
Sarah Enni: That's really smart too. I like hearing you say that because you want to honor new ideas when they show up also. I live in fear of the day that [pauses] if you dismiss ideas, that makes me feel superstitious. Like, [evil tone] "One day they'll stop coming cause I will have rejected them." So I feel taking a moment to be like, "Okay, this is a new idea that's knocking. Let's show it 15 to 30 minutes of respect. And then go back to life." And then back it up on a hard drive.
Marie Lu: Yes. Yes. Good advice. Yes. Put it in the cloud.
Sarah Enni: Put it in the cloud. Get it somewhere off just your computer. I've had a couple scary black screen of death moments recently.
Marie Lu: Oh, no!
Sarah Enni: I know, luckily it came back, but I was like [makes a gasping sound].
Marie Lu: Sometimes you don't know.
Sarah Enni: That's so great. I do the same thing, I would say. The other day I went for a run and I just had a full screenplay idea.
Marie Lu: Oh, I love it!
Sarah Enni: It was nuts. So the rest of the run I was like, "Okay, let's map this out." And then I got home and in my sweaty clothes, I was like, "You can't shower until you write this down."
Marie Lu: When the magic happens, you just stop everything. "I'm sweaty. I just went for a run but my creative side is telling me to write this down."
Sarah Enni: And it was great. So who knows if that'll ever come to anything. But I was like, "Okay, here we go."
Sponsorship
I am so thrilled that First Draft is being brought to you by The Slow Novel Lab. The Slow Novel Lab is an online six-week writing and creativity course taught by Nina LaCour. Nina might be familiar to those of you who have been listening to First Draft for a while. She's the bestselling and Prince winning author of, We Are Okay, Hold Still, and more. She's appeared on the podcast a couple times.
And if you've listened to Nina's interviews on First Draft, or if you've listened to her writing podcast called, Keeping a Notebook which is truly excellent, then you have a good sense of how she is as a writer, and a thinker, to be honest. She's very thoughtful, she's very meditative, she's very empathetic, and that's reflected in The Slow Novel Lab. Nina is an acclaimed writer, obviously the Prince, no slouch. And she's been teaching writing for many years.
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Over the six-week course, Nina will guide you through writing explorations, craft lessons, video lectures and a weekly live Q & A with Nina herself. A private moderated forum connects you with your fellow writers, and the weekly call focuses exclusively on what you want to know. The lessons and video lectures remain yours to keep, which means you can use them for all of your future writing endeavors, which truly, that is priceless.
The next six-week session of The Slow Novel Lab starts on February 16th and you can get more information and enroll @ninalacour.com.
Sarah Enni: Okay. We have a couple other... guys, you sent us really awesome questions. Thank you so much.
Marie Lu: They're so great.
Sarah Enni: I love how specific they are. Let's talk about writing with a new child. Catarina, oh gosh Catarina, I'm hoping I'm going to get your name right. Catarina Benova asked on Instagram.
Caller: Catarina: "I'd like to ask Marie how her life has changed ever since she became a mom. And I'm interested in how she manages to find time. How she's doing as far as her motivation and inspiration goes. And, yes, I'm asking this question as I'm walking around my neighborhood with a stroller, so thanks very much. Bye."
Marie Lu: Oh, I love it. Well, congratulations to Catarina. That's so amazing. And Primo and I say it's one of those life events where you remember it as your life before and your life after. Because my son is eleven months old now, so it's been almost a year, and I think back to this time last year and I'm like, "I can barely recognize myself." Because it's the most cliche but truest thing in the world, it just changes you as a person in the best ways I think.
And one of those things is how your creative mind works. Because now I find that I've had to relearn how to focus. Because in my head there is always now a small, a tiny person in there of myself, who is just like, "What is he doing right now? How is he feeling? Does he need a diaper change? Is he happy? Is he sad? Is he sleepy? What's happening?" So it's just this constant voice there.
And when I first went back to work after having him, I didn't know how to turn that off. And it was scary for a second because I'm used to just shutting down everything and focusing, and I need that. I need at least a good few hours of just deep work time where I can immerse myself. And over time I've gotten used to it. I think for me, it was a matter of time figuring out how to live with this new voice in my head. And the other part is the more practical side of, how do you actually schedule time for yourself now that you have someone who's every need depends on you?
And a lot of it is trial and error, and every baby is different. So for me it was a lot of figuring out like, "First let's teach him how to nap on his own, so then I can have this segment of time while he's napping." Or, "Maybe my husband can take over from here." Basically, whatever help you can get as a new parent, take it. Just ask for help, ask for help, any help you can get. I've always been impressed with how parents get anything done, and now I am ten times more impressed. I have friends who have three or four kids and they can still be creative and productive and I'm just so impressed every time. And I think it's just, you prioritize things differently and you try your best to fit things in.
And sometimes you don't have the time. And that's okay. I've had days where I just don't get anything done. Or my husband's not home. Or we're lucky enough to have a nanny sometimes during the week, and sometimes she can't come or whatever. And you just roll with it. And there's really nothing you can do about it. And I've learned to be okay with that. Because I get so much joy from our new baby that I've realized that I love my writing life, it's, sacred to me to have that, but now I have this other thing that's amazing and wonderful and it's okay when some days it's just him. It's OK when some days is just your writing. Do what you need to do to nurture both sides of yourself and be flexible.
I know that's not really solid advice. It's just everyone has a different setup. That's the thing, everyone has a different home life. Everyone has a different level of help that they can get. And so everyone has a different amount of time that they can devote to things. So it's whatever works for you.
Sarah Enni: And I think actually, just having you encourage people to ask for help is a really a huge thing. I think there's a lot of insidious subtexts in our world that makes us feel we should instantly know how to do everything, or be totally self-sufficient. And if we're not getting everything done at the same time that we're failures.
Marie Lu: And it's always for women.
Sarah Enni: Of course.
Marie Lu: It's almost like it's turned around from being, "You can have it all." To like, "You should." Like, "You should be able to handle this." And if you don't think you're doing something wrong. I've had days where I'm just covered in baby, spit-up and poop and don't get anything done and it's fine. You know what? It's fine. This is normal. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just life.
Sarah Enni: I love that. Well, and it's great to hear from you because it is really new for you still. Under one year, you're still really in the trenches.
Marie Lu: Yeah. We're just like, "Every day is different." We're just figuring it out as we go.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Which is fantastic and I'm glad to hear, cause last time we chatted, I think you were very much hearing the voice and you were like, "I don't know."
Marie Lu: Yeah. That's so weird.
Sarah Enni: So I'm glad that you identified it and can work with it. Someone on Twitter had a great tweet recently that was like, I'm gonna paraphrase badly, but she was like, "When people talk about their books as their baby," she was like, "No, I would literally jump in front of a moving car for my child, and I would maybe go down the street to a bookstore for my book."
Marie Lu: Yeah, that's a great tweet.
Sarah Enni: It was just put so well and I was like, "Yeah, that's what it is."
Marie Lu: Priorities change.
Sarah Enni: Context. You can give yourself some nuance when it comes to prioritizing your day-to-day life. So I hope that's helpful Catarina, and good luck to you and to all writing mamas. Okay. The next question is from Betsy Is Awesome on Instagram.
Caller: Betsy: Hi Sarah. Betsy here from Minnesota. I feel I'm great at tracking my progress when I'm first drafting, when I have a daily word count, but I'm awful at it when I'm doing something like revising or brainstorming. How do you track progress when working on tasks that don't have such easily to find markers? Thanks and have a good one.
Sarah Enni: Such a great question because more than half of the work of a book really is not just daily getting the words down. So how do you approach that?
Marie Lu: Yeah, and for someone like me who the vast majority of the stuff that I get done is in revisions. It's an interesting question because I had asked myself earlier this as well, because my husband also works at home, and during lunch time we usually check in on each other like, "How's it going?" And he writes picture books. So for him it's more like, "I did a page today."
And for me, sometimes if I'm in revisions I'm like, "Well, I guess technically I wrote 150 words today, which is not really, it doesn't look progress. But I can say like, "But I cut out three chapters and now I have an idea of who this character is as a person."
So it's a lot more things like figuring out how close is your story getting to where you want it to be. And sometimes it's a vague idea, but you have this instinctive feeling. And it's not something that's quantifiable. It's, "I understand my main character's motivation today." Like, "Today, I understood this part of her personality and that is going to help so much in the next three days of what I'm going to do to track this thing." And later on in revisions, then I'm like, "Oh, I revised thirty pages today." Or whatever, when you get down to the nitty gritty.
But early on, it's a lot of just, "This piece of the story that didn't make sense to me before, makes sense to me today." And sometimes it's, "I wrote zero words today, but I figured out this thing." Or, "I completely eliminated this character from the book." Which, I recently had to do that.
I had written a book Skyhunter, which is coming out later this fall. I had written it in two points of view and I needed to bring down to one. So I had a day where I was just like, "Today I completely erased a character." [Laughs] Things like that.
Sarah Enni: That's huge! And that's a lot of work.
Marie Lu: So yeah like, "I wrote negative 50,000 words today." Or whatever... I think it was 20,000.
Sarah Enni: Also, you're touching on something that makes it difficult is sometimes progress is elimination. And that sort of goes against how we're built, or how we think about things. But sometimes taking things away is moving forward. I mentioned before we started recording that I'm reading all these optimization things and [takes a breath and sighs] which makes me feel very Silicon Valley. So please, I'm trying to avoid slipping into Tim Ferris world.
But what has been enormously helpful to me is, I'm totally relating to what you're saying as far as a lot of this stuff is not quantifiable. But what I've discovered is keeping track of myself better has helped enormously in just understanding how I'm using my time.
Marie Lu: I love that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's really clarifying. It helps me prioritize better. It helps me reflect more positively on stuff that I do get done. So I would say everything you mentioned; getting to know your character better, maybe even punching up dialogue and giving them a more distinct voice. I think when you're done writing the draft and you're going back to revision, you can make yourself a little page, or a couple pages, that lists out all of those things.
It always helps me to empty my head. And then, as you go, you can just write. I mean, I would print that page down and then as you go through, just add to the page and be like, "Today I contributed to this part that needed to get done, or this and this." And you can slowly see it build up and be like, "Yeah, I am working every day."
Marie Lu: I hadn't thought about making a list like that. That's really, it's nice to see that on paper.
Sarah Enni: So nice. And I now make a to-do list that's everything from buying cat litter, to the words, to recording this, to getting coffee. I'm just like, "Let's just be really clear about actually what has to get done today. That way I can feel like a success." Because I am doing so much. But when you don't quantify it at the end of the day that you spent on your feet the whole day, you can be like, "I didn't do anything." Of course that's not true.
Marie Lu: I do make to-do lists now for everyday things, and it doesn't matter how big or small the thing is like, "Today I need to get coffee." Or, "Today I need to print out this thing." And I just write them down because it just feels so good to check it off, you know?
Sarah Enni: And that was important to do. It makes me feel overwhelmed when I don't quantify that. So then I'm just like, "I'm holding so much in my head." And when you write it all down, you just are like, "Oh."
Marie Lu: That makes a lot of sense.
Sarah Enni: So I guess that, Betsy, is how I'm gonna approach the revision for the book that I'm writing right now.
Marie Lu: Nice! I love it. I'm gonna try this thing too, where I'm actually writing down a list of these unquantifiable things.
Sarah Enni: I think Maurene Goo does that a little bit, so I think I saw her do it. And she wrote it by hand and I was like, "That looks enormously satisfying." So we can steal from Maurene (hear her First Draft interviews here, here, and here).
Okay. Then let's go to JJ Howard had a question.
Caller: JJ Howard: My question is, what are the best points of view to use when you have a protagonist, but there are several important characters who have backstory and information your protagonist does not?
Sarah Enni: It's a really good question.
Marie Lu: It's a fantastic question and one that I've struggled with many times.
Sarah Enni: How do you [laughing] how do you deal with it?
Marie Lu: A lot of times it was trial and error, and I honestly don't know if I personally can do it without trial and error. Because I need to see it on paper first before I realize that something's up with the way that I've organized a story. For example, when I wrote The Young Elites, it was originally from a different point of view. It was from a character who is no longer existing in the book. And it was third person, it was several different points of view. Because I knew that I needed to have other people giving information, as JJ said in this question.
But then I very quickly realized, well maybe not very quickly, I was about a hundred pages into this draft and I was like, "This is not working. It's just boring." Every time I was doing this I was cutting off the pacing of the story. I had put in too many other points of view, to the point where each character sounded like they needed to have their own story. And now that I just squished them all together into this one plot, they just were stretching it to the point where no one knew what was happening anymore.
So I had to go back and completely rearrange the story. I changed to a first person point of view character, from the villain's point of view, and then realized that that was a story that stood out the most compared to all of the other characters. So for that specific story, I knew that Adelina's voice needed to take prominence. At the same time I was like, "There's still information that needs to happen."
So I ended up writing in a couple of minor third person points of views around her, but all of their points of view were structured to inform her story. So it was always people reacting to her. And I think I had to do that in my first draft to realize what exactly I was trying to say with this story. So I'd say it helps to know what your theme is. It helps to know what matters to you in the story.
I think I had to, at some point, literally write down, "What exactly am I trying to say with this story?" And figure out, "Oh, I want to understand why this person is doing this thing." And once I realized that, I was like, "Okay, I have to structure the story in a way to support that."
Sarah Enni: I love that. I think that's so smart.
Marie Lu: It was something that took me a hundred pages of, I mean I hope this never happens to you, that you have to throw away your hundred pages. I was like "Ahhh!"
Sarah Enni: But it might!
Marie Lu: But it takes what it takes.
Sarah Enni: Just to totally buttress your point, do you ever listen to Scriptnotes, the podcast with John August? (Listen to his First Draft interview here).
Marie Lu: Yeah, a couple of times.
Sarah Enni: So great. So informative. And there was this one, I'll link to it in the show notes, but there was this one episode where Craig Mazin gave basically an hour long lecture about how do you structure a screenplay. (“How to Write a Movie,”). It's so worth listening to. It was really useful. And he talks about “get the thesis.” And how he talks about working with the thesis. I was at the beginning of a rewrite of this book that I've been writing since 2012. So much like throwing away 100 pages.
Marie Lu: Totally get it.
Sarah Enni: I'm like, "Okay, I'm five" - Ooh, how many years? I can't do math - "into this thing. What am I really trying to say?" And luckily I was at the beginning of another rewrite. So I could say, "I do feel like I know what I'm trying to say, now that we've gotten here." And now that I'm re outlining, I wrote it at the top of the outline, "This is the thesis for the book."
Now when I'm making plot points or I'm a little bit lost in the middle, it's always like, "Let's go for back to that thesis and remember what we're always trying to..." And now I'm drafting. So sometimes the dialogue is like, "Reference back to thesis statement." I'm like, "The mentor teacher says; the thesis statement." And I'll make it less obvious.
Marie Lu: "As you know, Bob."
Sarah Enni: "Like I always say." Yeah, exactly.
Marie Lu: It's so true.
Sarah Enni: But having a touchstone can really, ah, cause it's so messy.
Marie Lu: It's so messy. And that touchstone shifts as you write that draft. It's like early on I had a completely different vision for what I thought the touchstone was. With Skyhunter, I had just mentioned, I had to cut down an entire point of view from the next book that I'm writing. And I thought that this theme that I was writing was about these two people. And eventually I was like, "Nope, it's about this one person, and this other person is informing this person."
Sarah Enni: I like how you're saying that too. I think if you look at what you're writing and think, "Does it feel like everything's rotating around one theme or person or event?" Then you can kind of realize that you're telling yourself the story, which is useful. I love that.
Marie Lu: Exactly. It's a great question.
Sarah Enni: It is a great question. And just really quick, cause he did specifically say point of view. You did shift to first person. I think Harry Potter does a great, I mean Harry Potter you can read for advice on all writing things, but the way that she uses close third and then sometimes breaks entirely at the beginning of the books to give you information that you need. But you go right back to Harry close third, is very skillful. Not everybody could pull that off, not every story can pull that off. But it is a great example of how to use point of view to get information.
And honestly, in my book, sometimes I'll do newspaper articles. In the Chosen Ones, Veronica Roth's book that's coming out, she has documents, government documents. (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here and here).
Marie Lu: I love it. I love when books do that.
Sarah Enni: Me too. Me too. It's not cheating. Or you can write them out so that even you know what's... you know what I mean? I made fake Wikipedia articles for the book I'm writing right now, which is so goofy but has been enormously helpful. So a lot of ways that you can pull tricks.
Marie Lu: Yes. You don't have to stick to any format that exists today. You can invent some completely creative way of transferring the information that you need. If you find out that you only need to like, "Oh, I want to put in this point of view just because of information that I need to give." You can make a fake Wikipedia page instead of creating a character to say these things.
Sarah Enni: You can think about all the different ways throughout the day that you get information that you can still see from the character's perspective. That's a useful way to skip over some, ahhh, it's hard not to be a god in your own world when you're the narrator [laughs].
Marie Lu: You're like, "All powerful!" But also, lots of responsibility to make it work.
Sarah Enni: Marie, this has been so fun. Thank you for chatting. I actually don't want to let you leave without talking about Skyhunter a little bit.
Marie Lu: Oh, sure.
Sarah Enni: Do you want to just give us a little info about that?
Marie Lu: Yeah, sure. I just turned in a huge revision on it, so it's changed quite a bit and I'm not even sure what I can say yet. But Skyhunter is my next sci fi series, it's coming out this fall. And it's the longest book I've ever written. So when we were talking about word counts earlier, the first draft of this one was 85K, which is longer than my usual first drafts.
And after cutting and revising and everything, it's grown now to 120 K and it's still going. So I'm just like, "Oh God." I'm losing a little bit of control over it. But it's science fiction set in a world that seems like it will be fantasy, but there's no magic in it. It is just about how a society rebuilds after falling apart, how young people cope with war, what war means. It's a lot of these big things in it. And I'm trying to boil down these themes into a person's story. But it's been one of the most challenging things that I've had to write, just because it took me a long time to figure out what the thesis was for it. I didn't know why I was writing it. I think I was just angry.
I think a lot of us are right now. We're living our lives, we have joy, but there's just this low undercurrent of anger all the time. And I didn't understand that that was what I was getting out in this story. So there's a lot of thoughts in there that I was trying to figure out. And it took three huge rewrites to understand that.
Sarah Enni: That's so interesting. I'm so excited for it. And it is the first in a series you said.
Marie Lu: It's the first in a series.
Sarah Enni: How has it been [pauses] I've never written a series before, so I'm just curious about word count, but it still feels like one of several - do you know what I'm saying? I'm not wording this question very well, but even though the book's word count was growing so much, it still felt the first book of many?
Marie Lu: Of something. Yeah. I always knew that it needed to end at this spot. There was a natural breaking point that felt like, "This is the beginning of the next phase of this character's journey." I just needed to figure out exactly how to tell that first phase of her journey. I feel every book is so messy. I always try to sound more eloquent about how the creation process happens of each book. And I've realized that, at least for me, every single one is completely different. Aside from a few common points of like, I tend to write first drafts shorter, or whatever. Everything else is completely different.
The process that I go through for creating character, or recreating a world, changes with every book. And I guess it makes sense cause every book's different.
Sarah Enni: Right. But it is messy as hell. I wish there were easier ways to let people know that as messy as their process is, it's very normal. Nothing makes sense. Revision is so crazy. Revision is not sentence structure. It's so much messier than that.
Marie Lu: Yeah. It's so true.
Sarah Enni: Just go wild with it.
Marie Lu: Yeah, do your thing.
Sarah Enni: This has been so fun. Thank you so much Marie.
Marie Lu: Thank you Sarah. It's always fun with you.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Marie. Follow her on Twitter @Marie_Lu and Instagram @Marieluthewriter, and follow me on both Twitter and Instagram @SarahEnni and the show @Firstdraftpod (Twitter and Instagram). If you enjoyed this Q & A, you can actually watch video of Marie and I having this conversation on First Draft's Instagram. So you go to First Draft on Instagram, it's @FirstDraftPod and click on the IGTV icon. It's a little TV with a squiggly line on it. And you'll see me and Marie sitting in her gorgeous house listening to your questions and answering them.
Also, if you have a question you'd like me and a future guest to answer on a mailbag episode, I would love to hear from you. You can call 818-533-1998 and leave your question there. For links to everything that Marie and I talked about in this episode, check out the show notes which are @firstdraftpod.com.
They're also a really easy way to support the show. If you're interested in checking out Marie's books or any of the TV shows or movies that we mentioned in this conversation, you can click on the link through the show notes. And if you buy anything, part of your purchase goes back to First Draft and it helps keep this podcast free.
There's another really quick and easy way to support the show, and that is to subscribe it to First Draft. You can just hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening now, and if you have a couple extra minutes you can go to iTunes and leave a rating or review. Those matter a lot and it's really pretty easy.
I'm gonna read a recent five- star review. This was left by Jessica BS. Jessica BS says, "One of my favorites. I think First Draft is a must listen for any aspiring YA author or fan of the genre. Sarah asks great and thoughtful questions that get right to the heart of why we write. Plus writers are straight up funny. It's like sitting down for a chat with an old friend you somehow just met."
That's so sweet and I, I appreciate that so much. That's definitely the tone we're going for with the show. And Jessica, I agree, writers are funny! I love them. That's why I talk to them so much. Thank you for taking the time to leave that review. It really helps to get the show in front of new people, and it makes me feel good too.
Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large, Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you recently deleted characters in Skyhunter for listening.
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