Katherine Kingsley on How Being a Writer Can Be Two Full Time Jobs

I’m always wildly impressed by authors who manage to write their novels while also juggling a full time job, especially when they’re 9 to 8 (really, who only works 'till 5 anymore?) is tied to writing and editing. I used to work with Katherine Kingsley, author of the YA series Pretty On The Outside, at a men’s magazine about four years ago. In fact, she took over my old job as an editorial assistant, working for two of the masthead’s most prominent (read: busiest) editors. So of course, I had to ask her how in the world she found the time to pen a YA novel about British young things ruling their posh prep school in London then actually getting it published with two others on the way. Here’s what she had to say: 

You were working at GQ as an editorial assistant when you wrote the first novel, Pretty On The Outside. How did you find time to write? Actually, it wasn’t so much about finding time to write—even beleaguered assistants have evenings and weekends off. It was about resolving to write in my spare time instead of doing other stuff. Not that that was so easy. I was in my twenties in NYC. There were infinite temptations—partying, shopping, brunching, going to galleries with friends. But I made writing my priority. I made sure that the weekends weren’t just one long hangover recovery. I also moved out of Manhattan to a bigger apartment in Brooklyn, which made staying at home and writing a lot easier—there were less distractions, and I didn’t have to use my bed as a desk. 

Did you ever write at work? Ummm, maybe… I’m hoping my old boss isn’t reading this. But that didn’t work out so well—it was like I was trying to live two separate lives in the same space—one minute, writing for professional guys; the next minute, writing for teenage girls. Cynics might say that there’s not much difference between those two demographics! But the writing I did at home was invariably better.

What’s your advice for aspiring writers out there that have a full time job but want to start a novel or a short story? Forget the excuses and just do it. Switch off your phone. Disconnect your Internet. Actively schedule evenings in. Also, choose yourself an editor. Pick a friend—not a boyfriend—whose opinion and editing instincts you respect, and set a date for them to read your work. Then stick to that date. Motivation is key—and there’s nothing as motivating as a deadline.

Tatjana Soli on Relating to Madwomen

I was in college when my favorite writing teacher told me to read the Wide Sargasso Sea, a kind of prequel to Jane Eyre by Jean Rhys. As an English major, you are drowned in recommendations, but what she said next made me run out and buy it: "You’ll never be the same again." Those are glory words to an eighteen-year-old, and I devoured the book just as she guessed I would. How did she know? I was a tomboy in my literary tastes. Jane Austen novels bored me. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre was more to my taste, but there was still something a little irritating about Ms. Eyre. The Wide Sargasso Sea’s Antoinette Cosway—who would become the madwoman in the attic from Jane Eyre—shattered me. I lived that book. The prose is crystalline and sensual, but it’s the knowingness of how things really are, the lack of sugarcoating it, that devastates you: “They say when trouble comes, close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks.” It made me permanently on the side of the underdog, looking for the part of the story people are trying to hide—not a bad place for a fiction writer to be.

Tatjana Soli's debut novel The Lotus Eaters is available now.

 Photo: Jason Wallis