jm laine

I’ve always known that I wanted to write stories, but it never occurred to me that I should try for real. Mine was not a childhood where creativity or risk were encouraged, so I took a very (very, very, very) safe path. A path that could be documented on paper as “successful.”

A decade later, and I found myself still forming descriptive sentences while driving, or jotting down gripping opening lines, or imagining character backstories and what-ifs for them. 

It hit me one day that my kids needed to see me, no matter how ugly the path, trying to pursue something creative despite the big risk factor because my own childhood did not inspire joy or a zest for life, and what’s that they say? If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it. No thanks.

I embarked on a journey to write a single novel with creativity in my heart and a question to answer: could I, in fact, write a whole novel? I could. I did. I tucked it away, knowing that it was not a true manuscript. It was, what I later learned, a practice novel.

But writing “THE END” was the equivalent of exploding a dam, and the ideas kept coming, fast and furious as white water rapids.

I’ve written a few more practice novels since then, and I’ve written three manuscripts that I think are pretty fantastic, and I’m fairly deep into a fourth. As I write this, I’m querying one; drafting another; have a big idea simmering, and have another manuscript waiting for its turn in the query trenches.

In the meantime, the risk factors are omnipresent: will I land an agent? will I get a book deal? will readers love my work? will my books sell? will I have a chance to do it all again?

I hope so. I have so many stories to tell.

I speak often and candidly about this process--including balancing a full-time career and parenting three children--on my Instagram account. Please follow along. Let’s connect, commiserate, and celebrate together.

~ jm

September 2, 2023