AUC2 is actually my 12th (ish) book, but writing it was hard
Book two of AN UNLIKELY COVEN has been turned into my editor, minus an epilogue I need to write after I determine the shape of book three. The great fun of writing a trilogy that’s sort of three standalones is that I don’t exactly need to know what happens in book three to write the other books, but there are overlaps on the edges.
AUC2 is actually my 12th (ish) book, but writing it was hard. Hard. And…easier than I expected. Everyone talks about how your sophomore novel is going to ruin your life and terrorize you. But I didn’t have writer’s block, really. The story was there, waiting for me, I just needed to figure out how to motivate myself to write it. Normally I write a book in about 30-40 days, not always consecutively, but usually within a 2 month span. I do this by writing ~3000 words a day when I’m writing, and my books are on the shorter side (AUC is only around 90k words in its final state) (I turned in AUC2 at 80k and expect it to end up at 90k)
I could not, even under great duress, convince myself to write 3000 words a day for AUC2.
I begged with myself, pleaded, contorted myself into all sorts of new shapes. I wrote 500 words a day. Then no words a day. Then 1000 words a day. Then no words. A project that was supposed to span from March to April instead went from March to ¾ of the way through June. What happened here?
Well, I love to reflect on my process. I love to do anything that isn’t actually writing. AUC2 was a little bit of a perfect storm. I’m used to writing books in the fall and suddenly had to write one in the spring. This is the first project I was on deadline and someone was actively waiting for me to turn in a draft to put it into production. I changed jobs this year. I bought a house. I traveled. I melted slowly under the blazing heat of my personal life obligations, my other jobs, everything. Writing, at any other time in my life, would have been the first thing to evaporate from my desk, the easiest thing to push aside.
But this time? Well my writing was actually kind of important. I have money tied to turning in this book and I want it. If I fall behind, book 2 won’t come out in 2026. I really want it to come out in 2026. Woah, well, if I can’t bump this, what can I bump? I can’t shirk either of my other jobs, I couldn’t detach from my new house, or the travel I did to see my family. Literally nothing could move. I just had to find a way to write.
So I did. I did it fast and I did it slow, I did it filled with despair and some glimmer of hope that I maybe didn’t totally suck as a writer. I did it early, and late, and in between. I did it not at all some weeks and a bunch other weeks. I told everyone to kick my ass if I stopped writing. I stopped writing, no one kicked my ass (oh, the betrayal). I dictated, wrote upside down, wrote rightside up, at my desk, in the living room, in a different state.
And I did it.
It wasn’t fun, it was the first time this whole authoring thing really felt like a job I had to clock in to, but it did prove to me I could do this. I could do it even while the rest of my life overflowed with chaos. Again and again and…again.
AUC2 ramps up the romance, the chaos, and the size of the world. It’s so fun to be talking about it when almost no one has read AUC yet, but I did it, guys!! I did it! And I looked up and realized we are 4 months away from the pub of AN UNLIKELY COVEN. Cue the terror again.
All the best,
Kvita
KVITA 