WHAT THIS IS
(Remember how I said this would be monthly-ish? FOCUS ON THE ISH.)
Hi, new readers! This is an authorly newsletter about the exploits and adventures of one Lindsay M. Eagar, who, if don’t already know her, has the same energy as an aquarium shark with a quasar in its belly—all the energy of the universe, pacing back and forth in a tank just large enough to hold all my anxieties.
And I was all set to send out a February issue, but things stacked up, and now it’s the end of March, and everything I was going to say in February now feels MOOT, so you’re getting a whole new draft, huzzah!
2021 SO FAR
I mean… Will I ever really be able to compare one year with another after 2020? I actually used to think there was a pattern to my years—the even ones were the “good” years, the odd ones were the “bad” ones. 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2019… those were all historically tough years for me personally—and on the other hand, 2014 was the year I met my husband, ran a half-marathon, and sold my first book. 2016 was debut year and give-birth-to-Clementine year. 2020 has broken all sorts of molds.
And so, yes, considering how low the bar was set at the end of 2020… 2021 is much better so far.
The highlights?
My T1-diabetic husband and I got vaccinated! As did other family members of mine, which has me teary with relief.
I read and adored my first Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men)!
I finished line edits for my next book, a middle grade called (REDACTED) due out in spring 2022!
I finished a new first draft of the book after that, Circus Book, a young adult called (REDACTED) due out in… fall 2022? Spring 2023?
I ran a session of the Creative Revisionist, hosted two free classes on the writing and creative process, and have 80/20: the Fast Draft Method open for enrollment RIGHT NOW. Access to the course started Tuesday, March 23rd, and there’s still spots! (Go here for more info.)
I started a new draft of an old project, revised something I wrote last year, and drafted a new short story (which is rough as hell because this is still a writing form that I am learning).
Now, for some of the gutter moments (because to every wonder, there is a blunder):
I totally lost most of the running momentum I’d built for myself last year. I took a week off at the beginning of January while finishing a course of antibiotics and just could not get back into it. It’s the last week of March, and I’ve finally worked back up to three runs a week, all between twenty and thirty minutes, which feels so pathetic compared to where I was—running ten to fifteen miles a week—but this is a lesson I have to relearn all the time: if you hate starting over, STOP STOPPING.
My ADHD medication has… plateaued? Somewhat? I notice it when I accidentally forget to take it, but I don’t get that instant, detectable CLICK out of executive dysfunction like I used to. I’m told this happens, and is completely normal—but, man, I do NOT like the reminders about how cluttered my brain is and how exhausting it feels to have my own thoughts thrown around like eggs against a wall.
I’ve hit some writing walls this year, too. Walls that I do not usually encounter—like doubt. Like major boredom. Like frustration that my gratitude can’t extinguish.
My daughter watched all of Parks and Rec for the first time, and the whiplash between the STELLARNESS of the first five seasons and the UNBEARABLENESS of the last two seasons (especially season seven) is remarkable.
But all in all, the first quarter of 2021 has me feeling calm, hopeful, and hashtag blessed.
REALLY DEEP THOUGHTS
The journey of the reimagining of a book
I’m sure I’ll talk about this more when the title is officially announced, but in the meantime, you heard it here first!
I first drafted the YA Book Known As Circus Book in 2013, while I was preparing for submission with HOUR OF THE BEES. The book was about a circus family in Old West Texas (still is!), and I thought it was BRILLIANT. My editor at Candlewick bought it in 2015, with a slated release date of 2019.
I was ecstatic. Not only had I sold three MGs to my editor, I’d just sold my YA debut. And this story and these characters, who lived in my head and were some of my favorites that I’d ever dreamed up, would go out into the world for readers to meet. Thrillsville, yes?
Well. Circus Book and I got stuck in revisions in 2018. I’d taken on more projects than I could handle but stubbornly refused to admit it. By the time I did hunker down and focus on these revisions for Circus Book, I was in a hurry, and though I do love the adrenaline rush that comes from procrastinating and finishing something at the last moment, this just was not the right project for that. I turned in a revised draft on the last day of 2018. If my editor liked what I’d done, we could move towards line edits and wrap this book up, and it would come out in 2020, a year later than I’d planned—a bitter pill to swallow, but not the end of the world.
When my editor’s feedback arrived, it was instantly clear—this book was NOT ready for line edits. This book needed an entire overhaul—and the fixes she had in mind would require me to rewrite essentially every line. Not only that—she was asking me to reimagine my very characters, the way they moved in the world, their fictitious makeup, their stories.
This was in January of 2019.
Overwhelmed by this ask but also extremely certain that her notes were right, I bargained for the thing I needed but which is so hard for me to request: time. We swapped books around. My next book would be a middle grade, and my young adult debut would be revisited sometime in 2020.
And now, spring of 2021, a new reimagined draft of Circus Book is with my editor, and we’re moving into the revision process as if that speedbump didn’t happen—as if I’d just turned in a new book, and she was reading it with fresh eyes for the first time. And I’m genuinely THRILLED.
So what did I do from January 2019 to August of 2020, when I started working on this book again, knowing it had to be burned down and rebuilt? Obviously I was busy during that time, writing lots of other books (about 30 of them, to be exact), starting my writing courses, surviving a husband out of work and then a global pandemic… But there were specific things I did for Circus Book so that when it was time to open that manuscript again, I would feel creatively empowered and incredibly forgiving of past Lindsay for her shortcomings. Want to know what those were?
Brainstormed BEFORE looking at any old pages
This was IMPERATIVE. I let the old manuscript sit for a long time and completely neglected it while I turned to other projects. When I was ready to revisit it (when my schedule said I had to, if we’re being honest), I gave myself a good two weeks to bat around the idea in my head, take notes, listen to Tori Amos, go for long walks, make lists, all of my usual brainstorming techniques BEFORE I opened the old book. I didn’t want any influence on my new ideas.
Sometimes book ideas become wheelbarrow ruts in our mind—it’s hard to imagine making different narrative choices, because our brains want the path of least resistance—so I let that wheelbarrow pathway fill with as much dirt as possible, then tried to take a different path.
Changed WAY MORE than just what was required
I could have rewritten Circus Book using a checklist, going through the printed pages with a fine-toothed comb, making changes as I encountered them, and that’s a perfectly decent way to revise. It would have been an organizational headache, it would have been tedious at times, and yet it would have been satisfying, to creep my way through the book and make those incremental shifts that I associate with line edits—but I knew I needed more than that.
I needed an entire implosion.
I started thinking about Circus Book 2.0 as an entirely new book—I imagined it in a different setting, played with the idea of making it more contemporary (gasp!), wondered what would happen if I changed the structure dramatically. That’s where I started brainstorming when I finally did write things down last summer, and you know what’s funny? The rewrite I sent to my editor is actually a lot more similar to the old manuscript than I’d expected. I picked a brand new spot to begin, way out in the weeds, and worked my way back to the familiar elements of the book.
Allowed new weird limbs to grow
Look, there’s a thousand different ways this book could be written. That’s only been more obvious as I’ve rewritten it—I could take this basic framework and give it a thousand twists, a thousand different endings. That’s what’s difficult about writing sometimes. You do eventually have to just make a choice and commit.
Someone else would write Circus Book and take it in a totally different direction. But that someone else is not me. You know who else is not me? 2015 Lindsay. 2019 Lindsay. Even 2020 Lindsay is gone by now, and 2021 Lindsay will be handling the revisions for this project. Realizing this and embracing this let me try new plot points, add new details, merge other ideas into Circus Book that I never would have considered before. It can be daunting to realize that the book the readers eventually have will only be One Possible Version of the book—and some stories have many versions, and some stories only ever have one definite version—but to be a writer is to make those tough choices, to commit, to never look back.
I cannot wait for you to read Circus Book—mostly because I’ve been talking about it for so long, I’m sure many of you don’t think it’s REAL. But it IS. And it’s glorious.
COMING UP FOR ME
Deadlines—but the best kind of deadlines: SELF-IMPOSED deadlines! After turning in two big projects to my editor, I’m thrilled to be able to cocoon myself away and just write.
I’m also adding on a new part of my writing courses business. I expect to launch it by the end of March, and to be honest, I’m a little nervous—I never set out to be a writing teacher or coach, and if I was paying all my bills with just my writing, I probably wouldn’t! But I am lucky to have a natural gift for communicating information and inspiration, and I’m so grateful to have clients and students who can use this!
Any day I’ll get copyedits for my 2022 middle grade, and then it’s onto ARCs, which means the book will start going out into the world. I’m delighted. This book is brilliant and warm like a big hug, and it feels timely.
TIDBITS
WHAT I’M WORKING ON
An adult project! I drafted it in 2015, revised it in 2016, then put it away in a drawer until now! I can’t say too much about it, but I’ll give you this: it’s a high fantasy retelling of a classic, it’s very personal, highly emotional, and I get to build an entire plant taxonomy for my magic system.
WHAT I’M READING
All of Elana Arnold’s YA books, The Wee Free Men (my first Pratchett), We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry, The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee, Sylvia Plath’s diaries in preparation for reading the new biography of Sylvia Plath
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
The Maleficent soundtrack, America’s Next Top Model POD LEDOM podcast, Ophelia soundtrack, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and a fan-made playlist for the upcoming movie Cruella (comprised of 70s and early 80s British punk and post-punk)
WHAT I’M WATCHING
I watched Promising Young Woman and while I was expecting to love it, I was not expecting to LOVE it. I could write a whole essay about why I’m obsessed, but to keep it short: 1) the candy pastel colors and feminine soundtrack instead of gritty reds and black shadows, 2) a movie about rape culture that addresses SO MUCH MORE than the actual assault, 3) a marvelous display of storytelling that respects the craft and the characters enough to end it with courage. If you haven’t watched it, I implore you—it is a heavy subject, but it’s explored with such conviction and dark comedy.
WHAT I’M DOING
Ugh. Trying to rebuild my running base, enjoying the spring storms when they do come, sitting in the new chair I was gifted for my birthday (one of those wicker egg-shaped basket chairs), counting down the days until my husband and I are fully vaccinated (we got both our doses of Pfizer!), struggling with my ADHD, searching for summer camps or classes where my kids can go but still be safe until everyone is vaccinated.
Happy end of March! Hopefully I’ll be back before summer with more THRILLING thoughts, but don’t hold your breath!