Writing is a Game of Attrition

On not giving up with novelist Laura Leffler

As someone currently…negotiating her next book’s cover, Laura’s absolute BEAUT gives me hope!!!

Check out my first post here to read more about the namesake of this newsletter and make a copy of the input/output tracking sheet if you so desire. Sorry for typos.

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Last class before summer vacation!!! (recorded if you can’t attend live)

Mine Your Life for Funny Ideas, 6/18 7-9pm ET

In this two-hour interactive and generative workshop, I’ll lead you through a series of lists and brainstorming prompts to gather specifics and interesting ideas hidden in plain sight. After generating the raw material, we’ll experiment with comedic foundations and tools like exaggeration, templates, and twists to create premises and titles for future funny writing. Everyone will leave class with a clear, repeatable process on how to mine and refine comedic ideas into publishable writing.

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And on a personal note, my baby turned one this past weekend. The time, she does fly!!

the theme was “narwhals” due to their one horn. deep, man.

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In graduate school, one of my professors constantly called writing a game of attrition.

If you could keep going, keep improving, keep making work, more and more people in your cohort would stop and competition would thin out. The implication being if you could just keep writing, you would eventually “win” the game.

That man had a rosier/more privileged view of the world than I do, but I do agree that doggedness and the ability to accept feedback without allowing it to force you out of the game are key skills for a writing career. I didn’t write anything “good” at all until my early 30’s, despite writing for most of my life and getting an undergraduate AND graduate degree in it. I published my first book in 2018 at 34. My next book comes out in January, when I’ll be 41. I have four other projects in various stages that I hope to sell and publish throughout my 40’s, and I have no idea what I’ll work on in my 50’s (and beyond).

This refusal to quit is a hallmark of the writers in my novel feedback group, Francesca King and Laura Leffler. And today I have an interview with Laura because TELL THEM YOU LIED, her first novel, IS OUT NOW!!!!

If you want to give up, if you think, “well, it hasn’t happened for me yet, so it’s not going to happen,” read this interview with Laura, then sit your ass down and make your writing plan for the week. Because there are writers like her out there and she is never going to stop—so you can’t, either. I’ve been lucky enough to read many drafts of TTYL over the past four years we’ve been in our feedback group, and I cannot WAIT for new readers to gobble up this twisty, shocking, wild book.

Laura fused her intimate knowledge of the art world with the experience of being in NY during 9/11 to create the story and setting for TTYL. Here’s the description:

Anna had never met anyone like Willow. Entering art school with lofty ideas about Art and her role in it, Anna was wholly unprepared for someone as mysterious, moody—and cool—as Willow. Here was Anna’s muse and collaborator all in one, ready to bring her in on Art’s great secrets.

Now, five years later, Anna is weary. Where art school was boundless creativity and collaboration, the New York art scene is all about survival. Worse: Willow’s true nature as a muse only to herself has become nakedly apparent, as has her cruelty.

So the mugging Anna has staged for Willow this morning? It’s supposed to send Willow running back to her true friend. The knife is supposed to be a mirror in which this ‘artist’ can finally see the monster she’s become. It’s supposed to give Anna her power back.

But this morning isn’t just any Tuesday. It’s September 11, 2001. And as the city reels from the seismic events of that day, Willow never returns home. Anna keeps quiet about the prank and her growing panic that she’s to blame for Willow’s disappearance. But as the hours and days tick by, Anna begins to question whether she’s the mastermind she thought she was, or the pawn.

Alternating between the friends' art school tenure and their lives in 2001 New York, Tell Them You Lied reveals how difficult the search for answers is when you'd rather have anything but the truth.

CK: In bullet points, give us the timeline of Tell Them You Lied, from first word in the first draft to selling the book:

LAURA: I looked up all my dates for your followers, Caitlin. I hope they are sitting down!

• Wrote the first chapter (which has remained pretty much the same) while I was on sub with my first manuscript, so TEN YEARS AGO

• Put it aside as my first manuscript died on submission. (I was tending to three little kids, one of whom was chronically ill, and moved from NYC to LA then to Denver in the span of 2 years)

• Returned to the draft when kids were all (finally) in school c. 2019

• “Finished” first draft at the end of 2020 and started querying around then

• 4/15/21 Queried CeCe (CK note: Laura’s current agent, CeCe Lyra of P.S. Literary Agency. Beyond beyond a killer agent, CeCe teaches some of the best webinars I’ve ever taken on novel writing, highly recommend.)

• 4/23/21 Full request from CeCe

• 5/15/21 R&R from CeCe (CK note: “revise and resubmit” meaning the agent wants to see how you can integrate their notes, and they’ll reconsider representation)

• 9/6/21 Sent revised ms to CeCe

• 9/22/21 Offer from CeCe!

• …many revisions later…

• 3/21/22 Officially on sub

• 11/8/22 “Let’s talk” email from Hyperion

• 11/17/22 The call with Hyperion

• 12/16/22 Official offer from Hyperion

• 1/30/23 Accepted revised offer

• 7/21/23 Received first edit letter

• 9/4/23 Returned new draft

• 10/20/23 Received/signed contract (CK: it boggles my mind how slow the contract process is in publishing, my contact took ten months to get signed. Important because you get MONEY upon signing!!)

• 10/30/23 Received second edit letter

• 11/30/23 EDITOR QUIT HER JOB (CK note: the horrors!!!! My editor also quit her job before my first book came out)

• 12/28/23 Sent draft to editor #2

• 3/18/24 Pub date pushed from January to May 2025

• 5/29/24 Received edit letter from editor #2

• 7/11/24 Returned third draft

• 8/23/24 Received copy edits

• 9/16/24 Received pass pages/ digital galleys

• 10/?/24 Received physical ARCs

• 4/?/25 Received finished copies

• 5/27/25 PUB DAY!

For short humor and satire writers, it can be hard to think of a “big” idea for a novel. What were the elements that combined for you to create the premise for TTYL? How did you know it was a book idea?

I really didn’t know it was a “big enough” idea at first. All I knew was that I felt compelled to write the first chapter, which is about the morning of 9/11, when my twins were about a year old. We had just moved back to Brooklyn, close to where I’d been living on 9/11, from the Lower East Side, and I was emerging from a fog of trauma–my son had been diagnosed with a rare genetic disease the day after the twins’ birth. I think my mind connected these two events (9/11 and my twins’ birth) because there was a similar feeling of shock and sadness and fear. Of the world flipping upside-down. I felt like I was navigating a new land where I didn’t speak the language, which was exactly how I’d felt fifteen years earlier. I wasn’t ready to write about my son, so I wrote about 9/11.

I didn’t have an actual story until I returned to it many years later. By then, I knew I wanted to write a mystery/thriller because I was obsessed with those kinds of stories. The crime element gave me a usable structure. I added the art stuff because I needed my characters to have purpose in order to feel real, and art is what I know.

But to be honest, I think any idea can be “big enough” to sustain a novel, as long as you do the work and see it through. (CK note: I really like this, as someone who wanted to write a novel for years before she started, but kept getting hung up on the “right” idea. Laura is so right—any idea will expand as you write and rewrite and see the clues you left for yourself in each draft to make the story and characters deeper and more unique.)

What motivated you to keep returning to TTYL over years and years? Why couldn’t you let it go?

With every “failure,” I learned something about the story. Every “no” made me feel like I was getting closer. Like I was inching toward the finish line. It was taking for-fucking-ever, but I did feel progress with every draft. Giving up would have been like training for a marathon for a decade, finally starting the race, then quitting at mile 25 because I was tired. (CK note: THIS IS THE ATTRITION PART!!!!!)

"Taut, dark, and beautifully written.” —Andrea Bartz, WE WERE NEVER HERE

Did you work on other projects at the same time? How did you balance them?

Oh yes, I had to! I think I would’ve gone insane if I put all my hopes and dreams into one basket. I started two new manuscripts and completely rewrote my first novel (the one that didn’t sell on sub in 2015) during the timeline above.

There is a lot of waiting in publishing (waiting for contracts, waiting for edit letters, waiting on your agent, your publisher, your writing partners, etc), so I took advantage of that time to sweep my brain clean with something else. In a way, these months of waiting are really good for the work (if not for your mental wellbeing), because afterward, you come back to your manuscript from a different perspective. Fresh eyes. That’s always when I’ve done my best work. (CK note: I’m in this phase with my novel right now, as I finish up the manuacript for INSIDE JOKES with Elissa Bassist. I miss my novel, especially my protagonist, but I’ve taken pages and pages of notes that I can return to when I flip out of nonfiction mode. Just the other day I considered changing the whole thing from third to first person, a thought that would have been creatively paralyzing when I was in the thick of revising it, but feels exciting now. Waiting doesn’t always have to be a (total) negative.)

What is your writing routine like now with three kids? How has it evolved over the years?

When I wrote my first manuscript back in 2014, I’d wake up at dawn and write before I went to my day job at an art gallery. (I was pregnant with twins, and my due date felt like the scheduled execution for my ambition– I was determined to get the draft done before the babies were born, and I did it! The manuscript sucked, but I did it!)

When the kids were tiny, I would write during naptime or whenever I could find quiet moments. But, as your husband says, it is hard to do “deep brain work” when you keep getting distracted. When the kids started school full time, I went back to writing with a seriousness that I’d never had before.

This time it wasn’t about getting it done but getting it right. (CK note: I find I work in these stages as well—sometimes, making it exist is all that matters, and then you move into making it good.)

Now, I drop the kids off at school, go to yoga, then come home and work until I have to pick them up again. (Turns out having children did not murder my ambition.)

What would you say was your personal end of act two low moment “everything is lost” moment when it comes to TTYL?

Oh god, what a question! The truth is, I didn’t think TTYL would sell. I’d given up on it after it’d been on sub for 8 months with no bites. I endured my dark night of the soul, and right when I had accepted it and moved on to something else, I got an offer. (Hilarious.)

“I hope I never have a friendship like this, but Laura Leffler makes it gripping to read about.” —Lisa Jewell, NONE OF THIS IS TRUE

Beyond our feedback group, how much feedback did your agent give you before submission?

SO MUCH. Six months of editing before we went on sub. BTW: CeCe is amazing. She is very hands on in terms of editorial notes and that has helped me tremendously. This is something to think about if you are looking for an agent. Not all of them edit! (CK note: this is something for novelists to think about when looking for agents—do you want somone very editorially hands-on, who may have you revise repeatedly for draft after draft, month after month, before going out? Or are you confident in your own ability to self-edit to the level of the market, and want a more business-oriented agent? Obviously all literary agents must do art and business, but there’s a spectrum.)

Why do you think writers should be in feedback groups, and do you have advice for how to find one?

What I’ve learned from our group is that quality matters. Not all feedback is good. You should be surrounding yourself with people whom you respect and admire. People who know more than you do. People who give a shit. People who are as serious about their careers as you are. People who are insightful not cruel. There are people who will take your time and not give it back. You don’t have to stay in those workshops. You are free to leave at any time.

It takes trial and error, I think. (CK note: I LOVE this answer. I’ve absolutely left collaborations because someone wasn’t as serious as I was, or they would give me a cursory “seems good!” on a draft I knew needed tougher love. You can find your people. I recommend workshop classes as an audition to see how people give and receive feedback—my group met taking the great Jennifer Close’s Novel Generator class in 2021!)

Tell us about your newsletter “This Debut Life”—what’s your goal with it, and what have been your most popular posts?

There is a ton of stuff out there about how to write and how to get an agent, but frustratingly little about what happens after that. What does it feel like to be on sub? Is it possible that it actually takes this long? Should I give up hope? I’d been groping around for this kind of information for years before I signed my deal (ahem, and after, ahem). I never quite knew where I stood, or what was normal, or what was portentous. There are some resources –

Courtney Maum

’s Before and After the Book Deal, and Andrea Bartz’s newsletter, for example (CK note, Andrea’s new thriller, THE LAST FERRY OUT, came out last week!)– and I think my goal has been to add to that dialogue. To be open about how difficult this industry can be and help aspiring writers feel less at sea.

My most popular post was my first one–about my ambition feeling like a dirty little secret.

Welcome to This Debut Life

A huge thank you to Laura for making the time amindst all her pre-pub press to answers these questions for us. Buy TELL THEM YOU LIED today, on her pub day (it’s trade paperback so a great price!), to support another author who has been at it for decades.

Some day, we’ll buy your book :)

NY PEOPLE:

Come see Laura and her agent CeCe Lyra, co-host of the EXCELLENT podcast “The Shit No One Tells You About Writing,” in conversation about TELL THEM YOU LIED at the Atlantic Ave Barnes and Noble on Tuesday, June 17th 6:30-8pm. Free, sign up here. I’ll be there!

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In your writing life, what has encouraged you to keep going? Feedback groups, classes, internal motivation (wow, congrats), share your long-term-stick-with-it secrets.

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ABOUT ME: My name is Caitlin Kunkel and I’m a writer, teacher, and pizza scientist. My second book, INSIDE JOKES: A COMEDY AND CREATIVITY GUIDE FOR ALL WRITERS, co-written with Elissa Bassist, will be out in January 2026.