Breaking In: May/June 2024
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Ishi Robinson
Sweetness in the Skin
(Literary fiction, April, HarperCollins)
“Sweetness in the Skin is about a Jamaican girl named Pumkin, struggling with her identity, and trying to find her place in the world, who is determined to bake her way into the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Writes from: Berlin, Germany (in the guest room, on the couch, or in a coffee shop).
Pre-Sweetness: I started off writing short stories as a child, a couple of which got published, then as a teenager, I wrote a weekly opinion column on teenage life in Kingston, Jamaica for the national newspaper. In Rome, I wrote a weekly opinion column on life as an expat for a now-defunct e-zine. I got back into fiction writing in Berlin: I wrote short stories, a number of which were published in online magazines and one in an anthology. Sweetness in the Skin is my first attempt at writing long-form (well, if you discount the novel I was writing when I was 12—it was a fantasy novel that I abandoned halfway through once I started talking to boys on the phone! My one regret …).
Photo credit: Zoe Spawton
Time frame: I started writing it in the month of my 40th birthday, which is significant for me because I just don’t think I could have written this book when I was younger. I started out with NaNoWriMo and finished it in about two years, although I took a few months off writing during the pandemic. You would have thought there would have been more time to write then, but the fear and chaos just erased my creativity. I have a day job, so I would wake up early to write every morning and spend a big chunk of every Sunday writing.
Enter the agent: I’ve been a member of a writing organization, The Reader Berlin, for about a decade. The founder, Victoria Gosling (a fantastic author!), read my draft and asked me if she could send it to my now agent, Jenny Hewson from Lutyens & Rubenstein, because she thought it was right up her alley. I researched Jenny before we met and knew, unequivocally, she was The One, but I had to play it cool when we met virtually. Luckily she loved the draft and offered me representation, and the rest is history!
Biggest surprise: Hilariously, when I got my book deals in September, I thought the book would be published by that same December, three months later. I was horrified to learn it would take almost 2 years! I have no patience whatsoever, but I certainly had to develop some. My parents refused to accept this at first and wanted to know “who they could speak to” to get this expedited.
What I did right: So much is about being in the right place at the right time, which isn’t in anyone’s control, so I don’t think it’s about doing anything “right” or “wrong.” What helped me, and what were the only things I could control, were: 1) always, always, always writing. There’s a reason it’s called a writing practice; and 2) finding community. The Reader Berlin introduced me to my group of writing friends, who are now like family to me. We helped each other write more and write better. I wouldn’t have written this book or felt it was good enough for publication without this community of writers.
What I would have done differently: Not one thing.
Did you have a platform in place?: Not at all! My Instagram was private until just a few weeks ago. Right now, I’m trying to engage with other authors on my socials, as well as with bookstagrammers, which honestly is just fun. I love engaging with people who love books as much as I do, although now my TBR list is out of control! I’m also sharing the books I love on those platforms as a way to connect with other readers. Honestly, I’m not the best at social media and don’t think I’ll ever have A Platform, as such, but it can be a good way to reach likeminded people
Advice for writers: Take it one line at a time: sometimes trying to see the whole picture can get so overwhelming, but just taking one step after another will get you where you need to go.
Take your writing seriously: don’t “try and squeeze it in” for when it’s convenient or when inspiration hits. Be consistent and carve out time to hone your craft, whether or not you think anybody will ever read it.
If you’re blocked and you just can’t think what else to write for your story, just write literally anything else! Write 750 words of stream of consciousness, write about how you can’t write today, find a random writing prompt, and write about that. Give it at least 10 minutes. And sometimes, at a certain point, just throw your character in there and see what happens. You’d be surprised how those ramblings can sometimes turn into your best chapters.
Next up: I’m working on a second novel, which is completely independent from this one. But no one told me at the start that writing the second one is harder than the first! Please, send help…
Website: IshiRobinson.com
John Cochran
Breaking Into Sunlight
(MG realistic fiction, June, Algonquin Young Readers)
“A boy whose family is torn apart by his father’s opioid addiction learns the power of friendship and community to help him step out of the shadow of his father’s disease and live joyfully despite his pain and loss.”
Writes from: Washington, D.C.
Pre-Sunlight: I was a journalist for years, covering everything from crime and local government to state and national politics. I came to D.C. to write about Congress for Congressional Quarterly. When my kids were small, I decided to leave journalism to be home with them and also try my hand at writing novels, which was a long-deferred ambition.
Photo credit: Djenno Bacvic
Time frame: It took me a bit less than a year to write a decent complete first draft of this book, but some pieces of it are older—repurposed scenes and characters from things I had written earlier that didn’t get off the ground. One writer who critiqued an early draft of Breaking into Sunlight told me it didn’t read to her like a novice work of fiction, and in a sense, it really wasn’t: I had been at fiction-writing for quite a while on my own, writing and revising and trying to make a manuscript work before finally showing this one around.
Enter the agent: My agent is the wonderful Isabelle Bleecker of Nordlyset Literary Agency. I found her through Writer’s Digest! I put together a lucky Google search, with some search terms relating to my book and genre, and it turned up a “new literary agency alert” in Writer’s Digest from a few years before, featuring Isabelle and her partner, Jennifer Thompson. I emailed Isabelle a query letter and sample of the manuscript, and she liked it enough to ask for a full manuscript. We connected by Zoom after she’d read it, and I felt instantly comfortable with her. In writing my query letter, by the way, I followed Jane Friedman’s advice closely: JaneFriedman.com/query-letters.
Biggest surprise: It wasn’t really a surprise, but I did find that my experience as a journalist prepared me well for the editing process on the book. Being edited day after day as a journalist, often under enormous time pressure, teaches you to not cling to anything you’ve written, to never take criticism of your writing personally, to be ruthless in quickly cutting or changing writing that you might love but is ultimately not right for the story. You also learn to value and respect editors. My experience with my editor at Algonquin Young Readers, Cheryl Klein, was among the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve worked with a lot of editors over the years. (Cheryl also has written a terrific book on writing: The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults.)
I was surprised by how emotional I got when I opened the envelope full of galley copies of my novel when it landed on my front porch at home. I had seen my writing for years in newspapers and magazines. But there was something extra special about seeing this story, which had existed as a Word file for such a long time, as a book.
What I did right: First, I persisted with the writing day after day, through dead ends and rejections and many, many revisions. I lost track along the way of how many times I revised what’s now Breaking into Sunlight, but it was a lot. Add to that the time I spent working on other ideas that haven’t seen the light of day but were an important part of learning how to plot a story, develop characters, and write dialogue. Second, even more important, I asked for help from fellow writers. Writing a novel is hard. No one does it alone. We all need help.
What I would have done differently: I would ask for advice and critiques from other writers much sooner than I did. Because I had been a professional writer for so many years, as a journalist, I felt that I ought to be able to do it on my own and that a manuscript needed to be complete and just about perfect before I showed it to anyone. But writing a novel is a whole other challenge, and I had a great deal more to learn than I understood going in. It was when I finally began sharing very rough drafts with fellow writers that I really began that learning process and the manuscript started coming together more quickly. This was also when I felt connected again to a supportive writing community, something I missed after leaving journalism. I can’t overstate the value of that community, both for my work and my mental health: No one else really understands what you’re going through except other writers.
Did you have a platform in place?: When my agent was preparing to send the manuscript out, I put a cheap, bare-bones website in place, so editors could find me and learn a bit about my background. Once the book sold, I put some money into a better website, hiring a talented designer, Jenny Medford of Websy Daisy, who was really great to work with: WebsyDaisy.com/about. I’m also on Instagram and now Threads and Bluesky.
Advice for writers: I’d like to reiterate what I said above, because it’s so crucial and I was too slow to act on it: Find a writing community, even if it’s just one or two other writers, and share your work with them. And don’t take criticism of your writing personally. The best thing in the world for a writer is finding those people who get and value what you are trying to do, have insightful things to say about your writing, and are blunt and unsparing in their criticism when it falls short of what it could be.
Next up: I’m working on another middle-grade novel, also with a boy at the center, set in the Pittsburgh area, where my family is from and where I lived for a time as a boy. Like Breaking into Sunlight, it has a tough issue at the center: homelessness.
Website: JohnCochranAuthor.com
Evan S. Porter
Dad Camp
(Contemporary fiction, June, Dutton)
“A loving dad drags his 11-year-old daughter to ‘father-daughter week’ at a remote summer camp—their last chance to bond before he loses her to teenage girlhood entirely.”
Writes from: Atlanta.
Pre-Camp: Previously, most of my experience writing feature-length fiction was in screenplays. I placed in a big screenwriting contest many years back and had the script sent around Hollywood, which was very exciting! But nothing ever came of it. The thing about writing scripts, though, was that they all eventually went to die in my Google Drive. I wanted to write something that, sold or not, would be a real finished product I could show to people and be proud of. That’s how I decided to try my hand at a novel.
Photo credit: Jacey Verhoef Photography
Time frame: I wrote the first draft in about six months. I had a rough outline but was really shooting from the hip for most of it. Then I put it aside for an entire month before re-reading it. At that point I figured, “OK, I got 80,000 words on the page. Now let’s make sure I’m actually doing Storytelling 101 here. Are there goals, stakes, urgency, conflict … How can I ramp those things up as the story goes along?” A lot of the themes and voice and heart was there from the beginning but it needed better scaffolding to hold it all up. That was the focus of my major self-revision before I even thought about showing anyone.
Enter the agent: I had no connections so I learned as much as I could about cold querying and dove right in. My agent is Andrea Blatt at WME and we nearly missed each other—I think she was out sick when my query landed in her inbox and she didn’t see it for a while! That would been tragic because she was the perfect agent for me and for this project.
Biggest surprise: It takes a very, very long time to go from debut book deal to novel on the shelf. I feel like a completely different person than I was when I started writing this book three years ago. So in some ways as an author, you’re disconnected from the thing you’re currently promoting, and you’re working on new projects and really absorbed in those, so it all feels kind of funny in that sense.
What I did right: It’s a cliché, but I wrote the book of my heart. No market trends analysis — I just wrote something that I cared about, something I would want to read, and realized later that it didn’t exactly fit into a neat category. In all honesty I wanted to write something that was similar to my favorite comedies growing up, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall or I Love You, Man. I think if I had tried to write to a trend or jump on the hot genre, it wouldn’t have come across very authentic.
What I would have done differently: I have a lot still to learn about the craft and I’m working hard to try to become a better writer. If I could go back in time I would love to read and write more fiction in my 20s to get a leg up.
Did you have a platform in place?: I have a blog for parents and dads called “Dad Fixes Everything.”
Advice for writers: I sometimes am afraid of my own writing, like if I read it back I’m going to cringe to death. Sadly, the only way around that feeling is through it. You have to open up that doc and put your eyes on the page and fingers on the keys or you’ll never get it done. Done badly is better than not done at all.
Next up: I’m working on my next book. Wish me luck!
Website: WordsByEvanPorter.com
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