January 2025 - The Revision Crisis

debut updates, the truth about revising on deadline, and oh yeah, the planet is dying

So… happy 2025?

It feels weird to be sitting down to write this month’s newsletter. I feel some strange internal pressure to fill this post with toxic positivity… wax poetic about how we’re stronger united. About how together we’ll stand against those that wish to see us relegated to the shadows—or those who would rather we didn’t exist at all.

But I can’t lie, it’s bleak as hell out here.

It’s high key terrifying to write books these days. However, I fervently maintain that writing is the most powerful form of resistance. It immortalizes us. They cannot legislate us out of existence. We’re here (we’re queer), and we cannot be silenced, no matter how hard they try.

Like all of the stories that have come before us, that have emboldened us to tell stories of our own, so too, will our stories serve to inspire the coming generations.

And in the meantime, everything sucks. So you might as well write your gay ass, Black ass, fuck-the-system ass books while we wait for the end times.

You’ve got nothing better to do anyway.

Holy shit balancing parenting, business owning, and writing is a battle. But this year I feel more determined than ever to fight for what I need. Starting with asking for two back to back deadline extensions (we’ll get to that later).

One thing they don’t tell you about having kids is that there’s always an appointment. And maybe that’s especially true for my family because I’ve got one super medically complex kiddo, one minorly medically complex kid, and one neurodivergent kid. So any given week has school drop off and pick up, ballet/tap/tumbling, and with all five of us, at least four doctor’s appointments or therapies per week (more if you count the cats).

If you’re an author parent I’m sure this resonates with you! You’re probably nodding and adding on dinner and errands and bedtime struggles and parent teacher conferences and on and on and on. Solidarity, friends. Regardless of where you are in your publishing journey, I’m proud of you for sticking with it!

But! This is a huge factor in why my word for 2025 is INTENTION.

‘Cause turns out, life has a kink for kicking us all in the balls repeatedly, and 2024 ended up feeling like it was happening to me. When I got my deal for FURY, I wasn’t able to stop and take it in. I had to just keep pushing through until my son was discharged from the hospital. From there we jumped right into the second half of the business season, schlepping the kids to and from camp, trying and failing to write SMASHwip, and then boom, back to school, edits, deadline, holidays… and before I knew it, the year was over.

And to be honest, when the world is falling down around me, I tend to lean into my work for comfort. It is something that I can control. It is something that I genuinely enjoy. And it’s a good excuse. Sorry, I can’t relax tonight and be alone with my thoughts, I’m behind on this thing and I owe someone that thing.

It’s unhealthy.

So this year, being intentional means curating how I spend my time. Being intentional about how I set my deadlines and being brave enough to ask for extensions when I need them (as early as possible, to set clear expectations and to maintain positive working relationships).

It’s being intentional about how I schedule my days, utilizing my medications to help me combat some of the symptoms of my disabilities, it’s going back to therapy and weekly chats with friends, and making space for non-publishing related hobbies.

It’s releasing myself from the burden of thinking that anything I do will move the needle on the release of FURY and instead only doing the promo I enjoy.

It’s prioritizing myself, my mental health, and my day to day happiness.

It’s being intentional about giving myself grace because everyone else in my life gives it to me in abundance, but I tend to let it bounce off the wall of my own self-criticism, and I deserve better than that (and so do you).

So, when all else fails, it’s really about knowing when to take a break.

JANUARY HIGHLIGHTS

JANUARY HIGHLIGHTS

1-2: Noah turned 2! After a long year of many health scares, this was an especially emotional birthday celebration!

3: A little unofficial snippet from the current round of edits on FURY (there’s a genuine possibility this won’t make the final cut so don’t get too attached)

4-6: Our coastal NC town got almost NINE inches of snow… that’s… so normal hahaHAHAHAHAH (the earth is dying). The kids loved it!

no seriously…

One thing I’m really excited about with the 2025 newsletter is giving y’all all the low down dirty deets on the entire process leading up to the release of BOUND BY FURY in 2026!

I guess this debut update (or debupdate if you’re like me and also have a sort of careless approach to the english language), will include a (not so) brief summary of all the things that have happened since signing my contract!

Like I say in my last newsletter (my official HOW I GOT MY SIX-FIGURE BOOK DEAL edition of Notes), I had my auction in early June 2024. I got (and signed!) my contract in late July.

Getting the contract was surreal! Seeing my name, and my books, and ISBNs??!!! in such an official capacity was bizarre. I read through it very carefully and made note of everything I didn’t understand before sending my agent an absurdly long email full of clarifying questions.

I really wanted to make sure I was confident that I understood exactly what I was signing.

I was pleasantly surprised that there was nothing out of the ordinary or unfair about the contract. But I was also disappointed that, at the time of my signing, my publisher, Simon & Schuster, still didn’t have an AI clause in place to protect authors. I’m not sure if that has changed since July, but if not, I sincerely hope they join other publishers in including language in the contract to narrow down the instances in which AI might be used.

I genuinely don’t believe we can keep AI out of publishing altogether, as it will automate certain tasks and increase productivity while also allowing publishers to continue widening their margins by understaffing their imprints…

But at the very least, they could promise to not feed our work to genAI and to do the best they can to ensure they’re protecting us from third party companies that might steal our work for AI training.

In September, my editor reached out and asked me to send my thoughts on cover stuff. She specifically asked for MC descriptions, major setting descriptions, imagery I think would work well on a cover, and any art styles or artists I feel particularly drawn to.

A normal person would probably answer those requests in an email and maybe send along a few reference photos. But because I am ME, I made an entire canva presentation.

example pages from the cover presentation

From there, my editor came up with two broader ideas to pitch to the design team, and a month later, I got an update. We had a cover artist and a creative direction!

Meanwhile, I also got my first developmental edit letter in September! It was twelve pages single spaced alongside a few in-line comments.

I love how my editor organizes her letters. They’re broken down into broader categories like Characters & Relationships, World Building, Plot & Pacing, etc, and then those are broken down into more specific editorial notes.

She had a lot of ideas and asked a TON of questions that, frankly, exposed every plot hole, inconsistency, vaguery, and shallow world building element she could find. And she found A LOT.

It was extremely overwhelming.

We ended up talking over zoom for a total of four hours, brainstorming and discussing how I should approach the edits.

But if I’m being honest, this edit letter kind of really fucked me up for a minute there. First of all, I felt stoooopid, bro. Like, so so SO dumb. Because she gave me this letter and it was like DUH! Like OH MY GOD HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT, like 1000 times.

Needless to say, there was about a week where my imposter syndrome was so intense I constantly felt like I was going to puke. And ultimately, this really affected how I approached my edits. Because I would sit down at my desk and immediately freeze. It felt like I was trying to do the impossible.

And that’s ‘cause I sort of was trying to do the impossible.

Alongside all of the massive revelations this edit letter gave me, was the knowledge that I would essentially need to rewrite the book. And again, because I’m me, I decided to just actually do that. Just… rewrite the book from scratch.

This wasn’t too much of a surprise to me, though. I’d already decided while I was on sub that I wanted to change or add certain things. I knew already, that the world was not as complex or deep or expansive as I wanted it to be.

I had grown so much as a writer between Nano in 2021 and fall of 2024, and I was hoping that I would wind up with an editor that would let me completely tear the book apart and rebuild it.

Because once the book was out there with editors, I realized that I’d written it scared. I was scared of being too much, of writing something that was too hyper-specific to my own interests, that I was writing a main character that was too sure of herself, too sassy, too unapologetically that girl.

And that’s exactly what I got—an editor that let me just… start over.

But there was another element to this as well. I understood that this is MY book. And this may be the only book I ever publish.

Anything could happen between the release of BOUND BY FURY and its sequel, and on the off off off off chance I don’t get to publish again, I want to make sure that my one great big beautiful book is exactly what I always dreamed of. I want to know that if this is it, it won’t ever matter what anyone says about the book because I’ll know that regardless of what anyone says about it, I love it, I know I did my best with it, and I’ll know that there’s at least one teen that has been positively impacted by my stories—my inner child.

With all of this in mind, I asked for an extension and pushed the deadline to Dec 1st.

I then proceeded to write 130k words in two months.

Some of you might be wondering, how Noelle. Or more likely, WHY?!

And you know, that’s fair.

The how of it all would simply bring us right back to all the reasons why intention is my word of the year.

I missed Thanksgiving with my family, shipping my kids off to my in-laws so that I could have (what felt like) the squid games version of an at home writing retreat.

I worked pretty much nonstop for that last bit there, trying desperately to meet my deadline so that I could take a break for the winter holidays.

Even with all of that, I still ended up turning in my draft at 3 am the morning after it was due.

And then my editor turned the draft around in exactly one week and I was on deadline over the holidays, anyway. (HAHAHAHahahahahaHAAHahaha it was fine. TOTALLY FINE.)

I had another brainstorming call with my editor, and I enlisted some of my good friends to help me come up with a revision plan so that I was ready to go once I got back from my joint Hanukkah/Christmas celebration vacation.

And then I got a cold.

And then I got the flu.

And then I realized my deadline was getting uncomfortably close so I asked for a one-week extension.

And then we got nine inches of snow and the schools shut down and I was solo parenting through it all because my partner took the littlest one out of town for a medical procedure, and so now I’m on my second extension, with my deadline coming in at 02/02.

I’ve also seen a third draft of the cover 👀.

*deep breath*

So that’s it. That’s where we’re at.

I’m extremely excited about where these revisions are bringing the story, and I’m honestly really proud of how much I’ve grown as a writer.

This was truly a career path I thought would be impossible for me, so every day I still wake up shocked that I’ve gotten this far.

When I’ve managed to find time to consume content and indulge my hobbies, here’s what I’ve been up to:

Watching (I’ve watched a shocking amount of things this month, these are just the highlights)

LAID: A Peacock original about what happens when all the people a girl has slept with start dying—and it’s all her fault. This one was fun! Something I could turn on in the background and still understand and enjoy.

THE PITT: A MAX original from the creators of ER but with a time-dependant framework like in 24. Need I say more?

• I will say, that as a nurse, I can’t watch most fictional hospital shows without screaming at the TV. This is the most accurate depiction of working in the ER I’ve ever seen. Not perfect, but really, really good. Almost too good. Kinda feel like I should be getting paid for clocking in. (the biggest failure is once again not showing the critical role nurses, RTs, and ancillary staff play in managing these cases)

The Ayo Edebiri, making of an episode, episode of the SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night series (also on Peacock).

The CAN I SOLVE PRETTY LITTLE LIARS BEFORE THE REVEAL videos by Chase Bridges on youtube. This guy watches PLL and then tries to use logic and reason to deduce who A is. His first mistake is trying to use logic and reason on a show that had none /affectionate.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER and BABY GIRL… is this a sign of impeccable taste or a cry for help? That’s one secret I’ll never tell.

Listening:

I’ve been mostly listening to the Indie Chill Mix on spotify while working on revisions but some honorable mentions this month are tv off (ft. lefty gunplay) by Kendrick Lamar, Luther (with SZA) also by Kendrick Lamar, DENIAL IS A RIVER by Doechii, and Older by Lizzy McAlpine.

I’ve also been listening to the BLOODSTAINED podcast. By one of my favorite content creators and activists, Madison Williams aka Madiswan on tiktok, youtube, and IG, explores the intersection of history and true crime, by framing history as true crime. Madison’s family home recently burned down during the LA fires. You can donate to their gofundme here.

READING:

Haven’t done too much of this in the past month but here are some recent reads I’ve enjoyed:

IMMORTAL DARK by Tigest Girma

DON’T LET THE FOREST IN by C.G. Drews

THE HUSBANDS by Holly Gramazio

RUTHLESS VOWS by Rebecca Ross

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Please share this post, like, comment, subscribe, and make sure to add my debut novel BOUND BY FURY on Goodreads!

BOUND BY FURY is a YA Contemporary Fantasy with Dark Academia and Romantic elements.

LEGENDBORN meets ACE OF SPADES in MYSTIC FALLS.

When a rage-inducing encounter awakens abilities in 16-year-old Harper, she’ll attend an elite boarding school in the North Carolina Mountains and unravel a tale that spans generations, but the truth about her family's connection to the town's insidious past comes at a cost—becoming a prophecy incarnate.

Well, that’s all I have for you this month! I think this is the first newsletter I’ve written that is less than 3k words lmfaoooo! Expect them to be around this length or a bit shorter going forward, unless it’s a special edition letter that requires more yapping.

Until next time! Be well, stay safe, and feel free to reply to this newsletter with any questions, concerns, or undying praise and devotion.

With love and solidarity.

xoxo,

Noelle