Months ago, I was approached by the Vice President of the children’s division of one of the “big five” publishers. The ask? To write for them a middle grade trilogy of novels based loosely on the life of a celebrity athlete. They would deliver a detailed story outline about the characters of their conjuring, and I would make the narrative delicious with voice. I bring their characters to life.
As for my own characters…well, lets just say I have a few unfinished stories.
There is my sassy character Sapphire, an 11 year old who lives with her two blind grandparents in Harlem, a story that a VP at Scholastic was interested in, but my agent and I took off the table as it would have been uncouth of me at that time to engage in this deal due to another publishing entanglement that I was in with Penguin/ Putnam for Seventeen Seasons.
Seventeen Seasons is the yet to be finished YA novel that has caused me the most heartache, headache, and toothache because it is so bittersweet a journey, just like life. I’ll talk about her more next post.
Now, this beautiful, unfinished story of this girl Sapphire and her blind grandparents alongside this supernatural, coming of age YA novel set in Trinidad, are sitting in files on my computer, side-eyeing me something serious, especially Seventeen.
What I’m saying is, it’s difficult for me to finish long term projects without a publishing gun to my head, aka some company’s demanding deadline. I thrive under that pressure. And I get beautifully distracted by my full life of opportunities and fulfillments.
But when I am given a deadline, no matter how slack or how swift, I put my pedal to the metal. I’ve been able to turn things around well before deadline if I’m properly motivated by the pressures of my personal circumstances. Like in 2019, Lee & Low books asked to write an early reader book, “The Protest.” Once I signed the contract, I had a month to complete it and turned it around in three days flat. Few edits were needed.
The two subsequent books that I did for them in the Confetti Kids series did not write themselves as quickly or as cleanly. I took more time and needed more edits for books 13 and 14 in that series, which are forthcoming. I was writing under challenging circumstances in each case, single motherhood and the likes, but I was still able to turn these projects around relatively swiftly with a level of quality that I hope gets some recognition as “The Protest” did!
It’s amazing now to remember after hitting send on The Protest.” The editor and her team remarked that no writer ever turned around a project so swiftly, while capturing its essence. My first time writing a book for an audience of this age, where they are just learning to read new polysyllabic words while reinforcing words, these books require a level of clarity and repetition that is just not necessary for a poet.
Having my own 5 year old son that I read to a lot helped me immensely with writing this book; I would have struggled plenty had it not been for teaching him to read, myself.
So what was the fire up under my butt to turn around “The Protest” so soon? Well, I was at the ass end of my pregnancy and was about to give birth any day now! And after the birth, I was already slated to ghost write a 25,000 book for Simon Spotlight under an 8 week deadline, while I would be breastfeeding. I ended up needing two more weeks for that project, but I did it, and they loved it, and so did I.
I mothered a new born and a 5 year old and wrote those two books under the roof of a stem cell doctor who I call Dr. Rose. She initially hired me to be a writing tutor for her teenage sons, and let me stay with her and her family during my last week of pregnancy, and 6 weeks postpartum. I couldn’t have written those books with that “basement of my own” of hers in Crown Heights. Her grace and my perserverance co-created those conditions for these books to be. Amen.
So yes, I write successfully under all sorts of challenging conditions so long as they have their graces. Pregnancy, postpartum, international relocations, oh my! This time around has been no different, writing in the midst of seismic happenings in my life, things these editors would never guess if they did not know me personally. While I celebrate my creative perseverance, I would like it to not be so. I look forward to spinning out magic under more easeful conditions in the days ahead. I believe that these days have arrived. I’ll share why in a next post.