A few days before Yi Shun Lai’s debut novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, was released by Shade Mountain Press, she chatted with WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr about the book, her writing process, and
their shared fascination with Cheez-It crackers.
Enjoy our Q&A (teaser version below), and then go check out Yi Shun's wonderful book.
Your novel will soon be available in bookstores, and readers and critics will commence judgment. How are you feeling as the pub date approaches? Can you describe for us this weird waiting period between acceptance and publication?
This “waiting period” is hopelessly full of not-waiting. There is a ton of stuff to do. The pub date is a deadline: the day by which you hope the folks who have promised to review the book will have done so; the day on which you remind all the people who bought pre-sale copies to go to Amazon and Goodreads and review the living heebie-jeebies out
of the thing. ...
Who plays Marty in the movie? And ooh, who plays her mother?
You know, it really doesn’t matter to me, so long as they’re not Caucasian. I’d like whoever options it to at least be cognizant of that.
Here come the
obligatory questions about your writing process! Did you write every day, did you stick to a schedule, did you write at home or out in the world, longhand-to-computer or always computer, do you whip through a draft and then edit afterwards or do you carefully edit along the way?
I love the writing process
questions! I did write every day, after the workday, from a pretty carefully constructed outline that I could lean on if I got lost in the plot. I always wrote on the computer, although I did the outline by longhand (and that seems to be what’s happening for this second novel, too, so that seems to be what’s sticking), and yes, it was close-my-eyes-and-bolt-through-a-draft before I did any editing. ...
After you drafted, revised and edited, did you share the book with friends/family for feedback?
I shared
with friends who are colleagues, people who wouldn’t hesitate to give me the straight poop, poop like “THIS IS NOT READY FOR ANYONE TO SEE. IT HAS SO MANY WARTS.”
Have a question of your own for Yi Shun Lai? Fire away in the comments section below the post.
Justine Duhr
Owner, WriteByNight
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