This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

My title is disingenuous, because I didn't do any novel-writing in the Arctic. However, I thought and plotted and observed and learned with intensity, such that in the two months since my return, I've written an entire third of the new novel that was my primary Arctic project. This writing pace is unheard of for me. It's partly because I've had some clearheadedness lately, unrelated to the Arctic. But it's also largely because I got so much hands-on experience on the ship!

Since most of my work in the Arctic was happening in my head and my heart, it's not going to be possible to show the entire process in pictures. But I can share some of the experiences that helped me make progress.

My novel takes place partly on a tall ship, where my main character is learning a lot about the work the sailors are doing.

Therefore, it helped me to learn to haul lines, and to watch others do so. (On a ship, ropes are called lines. It takes 60-ish lines to operate the rigging on…

It's birthday week on the blog :o). This week I turn 42 (!!), and in case you're wondering, yes, I'm still writing my books out by hand. Today I inaugurated Notebook 28!


There's a blog post I want to write, about what happens when your life choices — or maybe it would be more fair to say, things in life you didn't choose — get in the way of your writing. About five years ago, I made a decision: I decided to prioritize my own mental health, and my own personal healing from something that happened LONG ago, in a way I never had before. I'm not going to get into my long-ago story here. I write fiction and I write musings; I do not write memoir, and feel no calling to it. What matters for the sake of this blog post is that the moment I decided to prioritize my own mental health and healing… my capacity to focus on writing decreased by about 50%.

Maybe another way to put this is that writing became twice as hard. Writing is always horrendously hard, so twice as hard…

While digging through our storage room this morning in search of something else, I found some early manuscripts of Bitterblue. Then took a closer look, and had to laugh.

Here's my own copy of the first draft I ever sent to my marvelous editor, printed out, with "concerns flagged."


I guess I was pretty concerned.

In some other universe somewhere, some other version of me blogs all the time. She blogs about the writing she's doing every day, how hopeless it feels, where her motivation comes from, what's hardest today, how she keeps her spirits up when the end feels so far away, what it's like for those who support her emotionally and/or live with her :o). She blogs about the small adventures she's having all the time, and what they mean to her. She blogs pictures of the crocuses poking through the endless snow. She blogs more about what it was like to write Jane, Unlimited, and how it feels that next fall is the tenth anniversary of Graceling. (Next fall is the tenth anniversary of Graceling, everyone! ^_^) She probably doesn't blog much about current politics, because even Imaginary Kristin has her emotional limits.... But. She blogs a Whole Lot More.

I have some adventures coming up in 2018 that I will definitely be blogging about. 100%. But not today. Today, once again, I&…

Before I start, a couple of important things:

There's a documentary airing on Monday on PBS called Unrest, about MECFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I hope you'll watch it and pass the word on. Official blurb: "Jennifer Brea is working on her PhD at Harvard and about to marry the love of her life when she’s struck down by a mysterious fever that leaves her bedridden. When doctors tell her 'it’s all in her head,' she turns her camera on herself to document her devastating symptoms. Searching for answers, Jennifer discovers a hidden world of millions confined to their homes and bedrooms by ME, commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Together, Jen and her new husband, Omar, must find a way to build a life and fight for a cure."

MECFS is a devastating illness that has not received the attention it needs from the medical community, for all sorts of f***ed-up reasons. Many of the people with this disease can't be their own activists…

Now that I'm home from my tour, the mad rush is behind me, which means that now and then, I have little pockets of time for blogging. When I can, I'd like to fill some of those pockets with blog posts about what it was like to write Jane, Unlimited. This is a weird little book and writing it presented some unique challenges.

Before my first installation, though, I'd like to share some really nice news. I'll share it in the form of a humongous THANK YOU to Kathy Dawson and my team at Penguin; my agent Faye Bender; and all of the many readers who came together to put Jane on the New York Times Best Seller List and the Indie Bestseller List (for the second week!). Thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone, for this gift. I think that if Jane found out about this, she would be astonished and overwhelmed. Hm. Although probably the realization that she's a character in a book would trump the realization that the book is a best seller. HA! I wonder what umbrella she woul…

I know I have a book coming out on September 19 (which you can pre-order at Powell's,  Amazon, B&N, or your local independent bookstore, *cough*), and that's supposed to be the only thing I'm thinking about.

But the truth is that I'm mostly thinking about another book: the one I've written 330 pages of so far and am about to start rewriting (again) from the beginning (again) because I keep learning new, important plot things that change everything that went before.








Godspeed to all writers.

At my beautiful writing cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska, overlooking the mountains of Denali National Park, I took pictures....



While Kevin, preparing for his solo hiking trip, counted calories in chocolate, pasta, jerky, etc. to make sure he was bringing enough.


It was a big job, but eventually, everything he needed -- food, water, layers, tent, stove, fuel, sleeping bag, thermarest, GoPro, snowshoes, etc., etc. -- was in the pack.


Even after he fell asleep, I was still taking pictures.


In the morning, the mountain was out.

We drove to Denali State Park, home of Kesugi Ridge, where Kevin would be hiking. He hydrated....

Put on his gaiters....


And then he was off.

On the drive on my way back to my writing cabin, I took another picture of Denali...

For you see,  though I'm officially writing while Kevin's away, I also have a mountain-themed adventure of my own on my planner. More soon here on the blog :).

Here's how it looks outside the windows today…



I left the endless rain of Northern California and came home to the snow of Eastern Massachusetts :o). Weather is so good for writing. I wrote two and a half pages this morning while curled up in blankets and watching the snow fall. (I consider two pages to be a good day's work – though some days I only managed a few lines, and some days I manage 12 or 15 pages.)

As I prepare for the release of Jane, Unlimited next September, I continue to plod through my new novel, which is the eighth I've ever written. (Two unpublishable; Graceling; Fire; Bitterblue; Jane, Unlimited; a mystery/boarding school book currently in revisions; and this new one.) How does it feel to be writing my eighth novel? Pretty much exactly how it felt to write novels one through seven: pointless, hopeless, stupid, exhausting, a waste of time, torturously slow, and with an endpoint so far in the future that I'm sure I will basically feel like this for the…

It's ALA Midwinter weekend and I'm eagerly awaiting a call from the Unreliable Blogger Award committee. Maybe you guys lost my number?

So, it's well past the point of apologies here on the blog, but I am sorry I've been so absent, I've missed blogging, and in fact, one of my New Year's resolutions is to ease back into blogging more often. I've been great, all is well, the work is moving along, the next book is on the verge of being scheduled. I have so much to say about it, but can't, until I get the go-ahead. Right now I'm in a stage that the writerly among you might be able to sympathize with: I'm working many hours, but with SO little forward progress. The work I'm doing right now requires intense identification with each individual character, combined with intense objectivity about each character, which is a tricky balance. It takes a lot of time and energy. The reason I'm doing this is to get a sense of whether each character rings…