how to embrace your "grand, spectacular failures"--and rewrite a whole novel on deadline
poet and novelist Rebecca Stafford, author of RABBIT & JULIET, on using the "but and therefore" rule to redraft a book in just eleven weeks
Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025, and you can pre-order it now!
Today’s post is in the tending section, which is a mix of essays and interviews about creative practice that do a deeper dive into a particular craft element or process question. If you could use some inspiration in the midst of a big project, I think you’ll really love today’s piece by Rebecca Stafford, about how she rewrote her whole novel—and learned to be kinder to herself in the writing process—after getting some tough feedback.
Today’s tending features Rebecca Stafford, whose debut young adult novel, Rabbit & Juliet, is out TODAY! I’ve known Rebecca since we were both young poets together, and she started quietly writing a young adult novel during the pandemic. (The first I heard of it was when she sold that book to an editor at Quill Tree, an imprint of Harper Collins! That editor was so excited about Rebecca’s book that she made a playlist to convey the book’s vibes.) Rabbit & Juliet is described as “Mixing the complicated queer love from People Like Us and the dark snark of Do Revenge”—how could you not love that?
Rebecca sold Rabbit & Juliet in a two-book deal, so right after wrapping up edits on that novel, she had to get down to work writing a whole new book. When Rebecca sent the draft of that second novel to her agent, though, she didn’t quite get the response she was hoping for. She’d known it would need some work, but her agent told her it needed major revisions, and got her an extension with her editor. So Rebecca was faced with the daunting task of having to rewrite the whole novel, and even with the extension, she had a pretty serious time crunch—one summer to come up with a totally new book.
Well—drumroll!—she did it, and I wanted her to talk to us for the newsletter about how she kept moving past that tough initial feedback, and how she managed to basically write an entire new novel in eleven weeks. Below, Rebecca describes how she processed that tough feedback and provides some really excellent tips (with pictures!) for overhauling a draft of your own.
one question for Rebecca
I’m curious about both the emotions and the process as you rewrote your second novel. How did you move forward with the novel after getting that tough feedback? And how did you manage to rewrite the whole thing so quickly?
Rebecca
Oddly enough, the tough feedback was a relief. I think I laughed when my agent called about the extension? I didn’t like my draft, and it wasn’t a shock to me that it was unworkable. I’d struggled writing it while teaching full time, and as the deadline neared my feet had swelled from the stress until I could barely walk. The phone call released me from pretending everything was ok.
After the call, I realized two things. One, the book needed major work, if not an entire overhaul. And two, I couldn’t keep ignoring my struggles with time management, focus, and stress. My body was literally trying to make me sit down and rest.
So, I let go of my prideful insistence that I just needed to somehow work harder, and was evaluated for ADHD. Unsurprisingly, I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD. This was a sea change moment for me. Once I accepted that my brain works differently, I stopped upbraiding myself and my self-esteem improved a lot. With medication, I can work, write, and still have energy for things I enjoy. My anxiety and depression have lifted because I was playing life on hard mode and didn’t know it.
At the same time, I got to work. My agent and her assistant gave me three main areas to consider from my draft. All of them were helpful, but one in particular made me excited to get started. She suggested a reason my main character wanted to attend a certain school – a particular teacher -– and this idea fused with an old idea I’d had about a certain kind of professor.
This failure taught me that I can fail and survive. There will be more failures in my future. Grand, spectacular failures! And that’s normal, and it doesn’t mean everything is over. It means I get to try again.
For the first draft, I’d made a plan out of index cards, labeling each scene as a beat in three acts. This made me feel safe, but ultimately, I created a structure without considering the why of events, I wrote scenes because they were obligatory, and my characters made choices based on my plan, not their desires. I suppose it was a successful method in that I wrote a draft, but it also encouraged rigidity on my part. It definitely works for some authors, but I needed something that would allow me to explore more.
This time, I didn’t start by trying to outline. Instead, I reread the draft, then listed plot, character, and setting problems, a technique from Susan Dennard’s fantastic revision worksheets. This exercise confirmed what I knew: the plot was unworkable, the world undeveloped, and the characters flat. Next, I drew a map of the town and its surroundings so I could clearly describe it, and then listed each individual character’s desires, motivations, and “misbeliefs” – a concept from Story Genius by Lisa Cron.
To reconsider the plot, I wrote down the inciting incident of the novel – the only thing I was certain of -– and added the teacher idea into the mix. Next, I described that incident as part of a causal chain: there were the effects of that incident, then the effects of those effects, and so on. This carried me through about ⅓ of the novel, and ensured that scenes were happening for reasons, and not just because I needed them to happen. Only then did I make a rough outline of events using Scrivener’s corkboard. Finally, I essentially wrote a pitch letter to my agent, an exercise that helped me further understand the main character’s motivations. After my agent’s enthusiastic response, I got to writing.
I wrote the new draft almost entirely from scratch, even for the scenes that were similar to the original draft. If I wanted to reuse a section from the old draft, I retyped it rather than cutting and pasting. This meant that (a) I really wanted it despite the labor and (b) I improved the language on the fly. My daily output ranged from 2000 words on great days to 250 on hard ones. I started on May 13 and I had the full draft for my agent on Aug 5, so that was about eleven weeks. I was on summer break during this, which made a huge difference to my energy and time.
I’m grateful for this failure for forcing me to address my needs, both personally and as a writer. Working myself to exhaustion for a pat on the head and a gold star wasn’t sustainable, and neither was ignoring my ADHD.
Finally, this failure taught me that I can fail and survive. There will be more failures in my future. Grand, spectacular failures! And that’s normal, and it doesn’t mean everything is over. It means I get to try again.
[ed. note: Rebecca’s celebration of “grand, spectacular failures” reminded me of one my favorite picture books, Rosie Revere, Engineer; I wrote here about how much I love the book’s embrace of the “brilliant first flop” as a step in the creative process]
if you’d like to try it out . . .
Writing out the ripple effects of each moment in my novel was a huge help in increasing tension and solidifying character motivations. This “chain of causal events” exercise is not a new idea. Matthew Salesses, in Craft in the Real World, recommends writing down every decision your character makes, so I basically took that idea and ran with it. It’s also very similar to Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s “but and therefore” rule, and I’m sure others.
I highly recommend giving it a whirl.
First, write down your inciting incident, and then what actions/events happen because of it.
Then look at those effects, and write down their effects in turn. With any luck, you’ll find yourself with a long list of scenes to explore in your novel!
And if you can’t connect an event’s effects to a follow up event, it’s a sign to consider why it’s there.
a question for you
How have you moved through tough feedback? What strategies have been helpful for you in tackling a really big revision? I’d love to hear!
Rebecca Stafford is a Pushcart Prize award-winning poet, writer, critic, and editor whose work has been published in the New Yorker and reviewed in the New York Times. Rabbit and Juliet is her debut young adult novel. To learn more about Rebecca's distinguished body of work, visit her online at rebeccastaffordauthor.com. You can find her on instagram and on threads.
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I have had this post open for days now, and I keep referring to it as I reconsider a "failed" novel. This is not only inspiring but has also helped me understand why the revisions I did all those years ago kept producing deeply flawed drafts. Thanks so much for this generous post!
This is really inspiring! Love to hear about Rebecca's process to revising and impressed/intimidated by the 11 weeks to a new draft.