The Writing I Did Before Chapter One //
Before I typed a single line of the first chapter of The Washashore, I wrote all twenty-three scenes featuring Wren and Silas.
Not an outline. Not notes. The actual scenes—drafted, revised, and polished—before I touched anything else in the book.
The Muscle Memory of Thirty-Five Years //
This was a deliberate strategy. I’ve spent thirty-five years writing business communications, legal documents, non-fiction books, magazine columns, and more PowerPoints than I could count. I knew how to use words as tools to achieve a specific result.
But I also knew that being an acceptable communicator in business and law didn’t automatically mean I could write a novel. Creating characters, crafting dialogue, and mastering the invisible timing of fiction are different muscles. I needed to see if I could develop them.
The Litmus Test //
The interplay between Wren and Silas was going to be the beating heart of the series. If those scenes didn’t crackle, the rest of the scenes wouldn't matter.
So I made myself a deal: Write the Wren and Silas scenes first. All of them. If they didn't work, I’d know early and could walk away before sinking years into a doomed project. If they did work, I’d have the proof—and the confidence—that the book was worth building.
The Learning Curve //
It worked—mostly.
Getting those scenes to a place that made me genuinely happy gave me the momentum to tackle the rest of the manuscript. But as it turns out, even years of experience doesn't protect you from the beginner’s mistakes of a new genre. I made them all—POV slips, dialog tagging mistakes and timeline inconsistencies that burrowed deeply into a 125,000-word manuscript and took months of "literary surgery" to hunt down and eradicate.
Was it worth it? //
Completely.
I was going to make those mistakes somewhere. It was better to make them while writing the scenes I cared about most—the ones that would keep me going when the project got hard. And it did get hard. There were stretches where I might have abandoned the whole thing, but I had already built Wren and Silas. I knew their story, and I wasn't willing to leave them unfinished.
That stubbornness carried me through to the end of the book—and gave me the blueprint for the series.
As it turns out, that "beating heart" blueprint didn't just get me through the first novel; it withstood the test of time. When it came time to write the second book, The Holdfast, the process was entirely different. Because I had already done the work of figuring out who these characters were and building their connection, I didn't have to labor over their choices. I simply dropped them into new situations and watched how they reacted. They showed me they knew exactly what to do.
If you are interested in ordering The Washashore you can find it at—or order it from— these local bookstores: Wellesley Books (Wellesley, MA), The Bookshop of Needham (Needham, MA), Provincetown Bookshop (Provincetown, MA) and Elm Street Books (New Canaan, CT)
Or if you want the convenience and speed of online, but still want to support local bookstores, grab The Washashore through Bookshop.org
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