Kirsty Greenwood: Finish That First Draft As Soon as Possible

Kirsty Greenwood is an internationally bestselling author of funny, fearless romantic comedies about extraordinary love. When she’s not writing books she composes musicals and explores London where she lives with her husband. Follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Kirsty Greenwood

Photo by Antalya von Preussen

In this interview, Kirsty discusses how navigating adult friendship-making helped inspire her new romantic comedy, The Love of My Afterlife, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Kirsty Greenwood
Literary agent: Hannah Todd at Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency
Book title: The Love of My Afterlife
Publisher: Berkley
Release date: July 2, 2024
Genre/category: Romantic Comedy
Previous titles: Big Sexy Love, The Movie Star and Me, Jessica Beam is a Hot Mess, Yours Truly, It Happened on Christmas Eve, Love Will Save The Day
Elevator pitch: After choking on a hamburger and dying, a cynical virgin is sent back to Earth and given 10 days to get a kiss from her soulmate to stay alive or fail and work for a dating service for the dead.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I had just moved from a very small village in the north of England to bustling Central London and was wondering about how to make new friends as an adult. It seemed like such a difficult task for introverts (like me) who like to socialize (within reason) but are also addicted to burrowing down into the safe cocoon of sofa/novel/weighted blanket. That got me thinking about a character like Delphie, who became the protagonist of The Love of My Afterlife. What would it take to get a curmudgeonly recluse out into the world, connecting with others? I knew it would have to be literal life or death stakes to catalyze someone so cynical about other people!

That notion combined with the idea of Delphie’s opposite, a maniacal (but bored) romance novel fan who works in the afterlife and has the opportunity to play matchmaker with the most resistant heroine possible. I had already had a separate idea about a man and a woman who met in the afterlife and had to find each other back on earth. So, all of those ideas sort of smooshed together in my mind until it developed into a story that I simply had to write.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I told my agent about the idea before I even started writing it. She was as excited about the concept as I was, and so I spent the summer of 2022 doing nothing much else but writing a draft of this book. After struggling my whole career with procrastination and then being diagnosed with ADHD, I looked into the concept of Body Doubling—whereby you work closely alongside another person in order to increase your productivity. I zoomed each day with an author friend. We did 20-minute writing sprints, with a dance break at the end of every three sessions. That’s pretty much how the whole novel got written. It was a joyful process, which I think shows in the end result.

The idea pretty much stayed the same, although I’m not much of a planner so a lot of what happened in the narrative developed organically. During the winter of 2022/Spring of 2023, the book went through a number edits with my agent Hannah Todd. We focused on tightening the plot, solidifying character motivations, and really leaning in to as much comedy and romance as we could. The book went out on submission at the end of April 2023, sold at auction about a week later.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The fact that the book was received so well was certainly a surprise. I knew it was good, but I didn’t expect it to connect with editors as much as it did—a lovely surprise. I was previously self-published, so to work with such a large team this time around has been brilliant and rewarding, though it did take me a little while to get used to not being in charge (recovering control freak). It’s been the happiest publishing process I’ve ever had, full of support, innovation, and enthusiasm from the people I’m working with. I feel incredibly lucky about it all.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

As someone who doesn’t plan too much, the writing process is always full of surprises, which I hope reflects in the reading experience. Sometimes they’re great surprises (characters start to dictate their own narratives leading to unexpected but interesting scenes) and sometimes they’re very annoying (you realize that your cavalier attitude to planning, while fun, has left you with 100 niggly plot holes you will have to spend an age unravelling). But the surprises are what keep me addicted to the process. I think I’d be a bit bored otherwise.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

OK, so imagine you’re feeling a bit lost and blah one day. And your best friend unexpectedly knocks on your door. She’s brought delicious breakfast food and probably some booze. She picks out your clothes for the day, takes your hand, and says, “We’re about to have one of the most fun days of all time. I’ve got it all planned, you don’t have to worry about a thing.” And then she takes you out on an adventure you’ll never ever forget. I want readers to have that feeling when they read The Love of My Afterlife. The feeling of hanging out with a friend who makes your feel cherished and seen, who is going to take very good care of you, show you an excellent time, make you laugh until you cry, and hype you up to be the bravest, most confident version of yourself.

I would also like to have written the kind of romantic scenes that get bookmarked and reread over and again. *wink emoji*

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

If you’re someone who, like me, prefers rewriting to drafting I would say: Finish that first draft as soon as possible. Fight that resistance and that weaselly little voice telling you that you and everything you write is absolute trash. Just get it done, sketch it out, get that sand in the box so you can build a sandcastle later. Your draft is likely to be terrible—full of clunk and unhinged notes to self and plot holes because you did not plan. But once it’s down, once it exists, everything changes. You have a shape. You have an intention. You know exactly what NOT to do. Things get much clearer once you have a that first draft down. You’re in the game. Then you can rewrite. Glorious, magical rewriting! You can scrub it clean, bury all of your mistakes, remove all evidence of the non-planning. That first draft can remain your secret. No one need ever know the horrors that occurred.

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