When You Know, You Know

So…I just sold my second novel. Hurrah! Since I’ve already published my first one, it must have been a breeze, right? Er, no. In fact, the book that I anticipated being my follow-up novel was not the one that sold – and I have a theory as to why. Play along and tell me if you agree.

As I said, I was knee-deep in another manuscript. About 150 pages deep, in fact. And I dutifully worked on it each day, slogging through because, well, I’m a writer and I had to write each day because that’s what I do, or at least that’s what I told myself when I forced myself to focus on my characters when I went running (a prime brain-storming time for me) and and on the prose when I got into my office every morning. But slogging it still was – though the words came out well-enough, the motivation behind them was lackluster. And when I shared the pages with my agent, we both thought, “Well, it’s certainly well-written, but do we love it?” Like a boyfriend whom we thought we should love, but had a sneaking suspicion that we didn’t, we weren’t sure. Or, more accurately, like that dang boyfriend, we convinced ourselves with each reading that it was indeed love, but anyone who peered in at us probably would have told us differently. (You know, like that friend who is making a cataclysmic romantic mistake.)

So then, one day, out of the blue, I was circling the loop on the Reservoir in Central Park, inhaling the NYC summer air and doing my best to ignore the burn on my thighs, and BAM. An idea. And a good one, I thought, at that. I ran (both literally and figuratively) home, breathlessly left my agent an voicemail that I had something bigger and better in mind, and that I’d be in touch by the end of the day. I pounded out 15 pages and knew that I had tapped into something good. And then something wonderful happened: the effort that I’d been expending on the previous manuscript completely dissipated. I couldn’t wait to start writing, I couldn’t stop thinking about my characters, and my head was spinning with their voices and their stories and what I would do with them. Two weeks later, I’d hit 100 pages, and a few weeks after that, we sold that baby.

I’m now nearly done the entire manuscript, and I haven’t lost that enthusiasm or that love. I’m telling you, I really think that when you stumble on a story worth telling, you know. Just like the guy (or gal) you’re meant to marry: when you know, you know. Have you ever “just known?”

Allison Winn Scotch

Allison Winn Scotch is the bestselling author of six novels, including IN TWENTY YEARS, THE THEORY OF OPPOSITES, and TIME OF MY LIFE. Her seventh novel, BETWEEN ME AND YOU, will be released on January 9th, 2018. In addition to fiction, she pens celebrity profiles for a variety of magazines, which justifies her pop culture obsession and occasionally lends to awesome Facebook status updates. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. For more about her and her books, go to allisonwinn.com or follow her on Twitter at @aswinn.

www.allisonwinn.com/