The idea for what would become To Have and To Hold started with my first sale, a short story titled The Price of Victory. I wrote a Substack post about that experience a while ago, so if you’re interested check that out to see how I got my start in writing.
With my first sale I realized I’d been well and truly bitten by the writing bug. And I started writing because I had ideas and scenes and really, really cool stuff floating around in my head and I had to get it out.
My problem was that I was stringing together a set of disconnected, almost incoherent scenes because I had no idea where I was going and how the story ended. This was shortly into the COVID lockdown and I had barely left the house, so I had lots of time to write, I just didn’t know what I was doing.
That summer I heard about a course on story structure given by Kevin Ikenberry, and author who I have a lot of respect for. If you ever get a chance to take this course either in person or virtually, do it. It is absolutely worth your time and money. Kevin has a superb grasp of structure and conveys that in a way that’s easy to understand and easy to translate into your own work.
The night after I took Kevin’s course, I sat down and wrote a 3,000 word outline for To Have and To Hold. I had all the pieces, they were buried in my brain somewhere, I just couldn’t get them out before. After taking the course and learning more about story structure, I vomited them onto the page (or my computer I guess? gross.)
That outline was the backbone for the story I wrote. And the final version of the novel is >90% faithful to what’s in the outline. I made some changes here and there. Moved some scenes around, deleted a couple more. But what’s in the outline is what went to the printers, and that never ceases to amaze me.
And from there I was off to the races. Sort of. If races had times when you take a month or two off. Or have to backtrack altogether. Or times when you bring a new baby home from the hospital and that baby believes sleep is for the weak. But after two years, two months, and a few days (who’s counting) I turned in a finished book.
I did it.
I wrote a novel.
What a feeling. I don’t think I’ll ever stop smiling when I see the cover of my book. The book which has a whopping 210 ratings on Amazon! I never expected that many people to read it, much less leave a review, so this has been a spectacular success in my book (see what I did there?)!
Since then I’ve published three more short stories and have three more accepted for publication. I’ve got a finished novella that will hopefully be out later this year, and I’m working on two more novels.
But I owe all that to the success of this book, and to all the people who helped me along the way. Without the great support of people like Chris Kennedy at CKP and the folks that gave me feedback along the way I might have given up.
But I didn’t. I was able to push through. So if you’re ever worn out and really questioning whether you want to stick with this crazy dream you have about writing a book, do it. It’s absolutely worth it.
What was writing your first story like? Short or long, good or bad, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Nerve wracking. I'm was approaching my 50s. I'd been a reader all my life. I'd written something close to a million words of blog posts. None of that was anything like me writing my first short story; trying to take something in my head and put it down on paper. Or on screen. You know what I mean.
I distinctly remember sitting in bed, reading through it out loud, correcting minor errors here and there; then doing it ONE... MORE... TIME... before I hit send and told my wife, "I did it."
I remember a LOT of points along my journey to becoming a writer. That right there was a pretty big one, though.