Lynn Buchanan: On Breaking Good Writing Advice

Lynn Buchanan is a fantasy writer based in the foothills of some impressive, chilly mountains in Utah. She’s a 2019 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and holds an MFA in fiction from Brigham Young University, where she taught creative writing. When she isn’t writing about monster-fighting dolls, moody painters, and mummified arms used as dancing props, she enjoys playing the oboe, buying houseplants, and watching Ghibli films. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Lynn Buchanan

In this interview, Lynn discusses how she rewrote one scene over 20 times in the process of writing her debut fantasy novel, The Dollmakers, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Lynn Buchanan
Literary agent: Matt Bialer
Book title: The Dollmakers
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Release date: August 13, 2024
Genre/category: Fantasy
Elevator pitch: A Studio Ghibli-esque dark fantasy about all-consuming monsters, the dolls who fight them, and the complex people who make them.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I have a soft spot for visual art mediums, illustration and animation in particular; it’s not a stretch to say one of my biggest hobbies is scouring social media, and the internet in general, looking for cool artists to follow. A few years back (long before I wrote The Dollmakers), during one such scouring I came across an artist who had these amazing pieces depicting women making really creepy looking, but beautiful, dolls. The moment I saw those illustrations I knew I wanted to write a story about women who made dolls that came to life. More specifically, I wanted to write a story about a woman who made beautiful dolls and another woman who made hideous dolls, both of which were trying to use their dolls to protect others from monsters.

That seed of an idea sat for several years before actually coming to fruition—I tend to need to stew on ideas for quite a while before getting to a point where I can effectively write them. That time came for The Dollmakers at the beginning of 2020, when I decided I wanted to try my hand at a story about art and art creation, focusing on a main character who thinks she knows exactly what her art’s purpose is, but is devastatingly incorrect; the main character of The Dollmakers, Shean, was born from that, and with her all the pieces I’d been waiting to click into place for the story did.

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

Not counting the years I spent stewing on the concept, The Dollmakers took me about six months to draft and revise. I did another (small) revision on it with my agent before we sent it out on submission, and we sold it about six months after that. The deal came through in 2022, with publication planned for 2024, so the longest wait was actually between selling and publication.

The core idea of The Dollmakers definitely changed from when I started the book to finishing it, but most of those changes happened during the initial drafting process itself. And rather than “change,” I’d say a better descriptor would be “refined”; the nebulas idea of “one dollmaker who makes pretty dolls, one who makes ugly dolls” definitely needed to be fleshed out and nuanced once I got into writing, and that took a lot of false starts, tweaks, and the occasional (painful) whole-sale ripping out of scenes and starting over.

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

I think the biggest learning experience has been the way selling The Dollmakers has changed my actual writing schedule. Before selling The Dollmakers, I had a pretty strict rhythm when it came to writing. I drafted a book for about six months, put it aside, started something new, and once I finished that new project I’d go back and revise the book written before it for a month or so. Then rinse and repeat.

Once I had a book deal, though, I found revision (on The Dollmakers, as well as other projects) eating up more and more of my time, to the point that for almost a year, now, I’ve been working on revisions for already-written books, with only a month or two here or there freeing up for me to draft a new project. I know all the revision I’ve been doing is good/necessary, but I definitely miss getting to write new books; I’m working on finagling my schedule to be more balanced between drafting and revision again, though, and I’m getting there. Slowly, but surely.

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

There’s a tried-and-true piece of writing advice, a piece of advice I was given when I was starting out, and one I repeat to beginning writers (and, honestly, experienced writers) to this day—when you’re drafting, just draft. Don’t revise. Don’t rework scenes in the pursuit of perfection; a first draft is meant to be messy. So let it be messy.

I don’t follow this advice. I used to—it’s good advice! But when I sat down to write The Dollmakers, I found myself breaking that “don’t revise as you draft” rule, fixating on and rewriting scenes over and over again until they felt “right.” I couldn’t bring myself to move on from a single scene until I was completely satisfied with it, which led to me rewriting every scene in the book multiple times as I drafted. Sometimes just two or three times, once (and deeply depressingly) upwards of 20 times over the course of an entire month (the Cursed Month, as I think of it now).

And you know what? That method worked for me. And continues to work; when I draft new projects, I rewrite every scene until it’s functioning as I want it to function before I move on. If I don’t do that, the book breaks and I end up having to scrap and go back, sometimes all the way to the beginning. Which is torture.

So, the biggest surprise I ran across in writing The Dollmakers was this strange, advice-and-good-sense-defying break-through with my own process. A break-through that I still can’t believe works, and one I deeply don’t recommend. Unless, of course, it works for you, too!

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

I’ve always thought it strange that coming-of-age stories are almost exclusively considered a paradigm of young adult literature. For my part, I didn’t have anything like a coming-of-age until I was in my 20s, at college and on my own and discovering along the way what I wanted to do with my life. That was something I thought about a lot with The Dollmakers; I wanted to write a story about an adult woman who’s very good at what she does but is so convinced she understands herself and the world perfectly, she can’t see that what she thought she was meant to do with her life isn’t what she’s actually meant to do with her life. A nuance and level of introspection I myself had to discover as an adult, and a process I hope is relatable to anyone reading The Dollmakers.

And I hope readers enjoy the adventure. The lovely dolls and creepy dolls and monsters that weep as they kill you; the broody forest called Deep, the shining cities along the Far Shore of the country called One. The bull-headedness of our heroine and the earnest anxiety of her rival dollmaker, Ikiisa. The sometimes-vague origins and weary endurance of the other characters encountered throughout the story—I wrote The Dollmakers to muse on growth and self-awareness, but I also wrote it to introduce a strange world that toes the line between cozy and horrifying, beautiful and dangerous.

I hope readers enjoy their time in the country called One. Monsters and all.

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

Love your books. Even if it feels like no one else does—trust that what you’ve written has meaning, and that meaning has inherent worth, because it does. As writers, there is no shame in wanting to share our work with others, nothing wrong with thinking about marketability and how best to reach readers, but, in the same breath, if one of your books isn’t picked up, if a story you care about doesn’t reach the audience you hoped it would reach, that doesn’t diminish its value.

Keep writing. For the love of writing, for the hope of sharing what you love with others. You know the result if you stop writing, but you don’t know what will happen if you keep going; it’s only when we give up that we fail.

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