The 5 People You Meet on Deadline. Spoiler: All of them are you, a guest post by Ellen O’Clover

When I sold my debut novel, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux, to HarperCollins in 2021, it was packaged into a two-book deal. I’d been dreaming of being an author my entire life and seriously pursuing it for five brutal, rejection-packed years. I didn’t pause to wonder what a two-book deal for standalone fiction meant. All I thought was: Two books. I get to write two! of! them!

This was true. What was also true—what I didn’t realize that October morning, as I wept with joy in my sunny kitchen—was that my two-book contract would have me hustling to hit a Book 2 deadline the following summer, faster than I’d ever written anything else in my life.

My second book, The Someday Daughter, comes out on February 20, 2024. I’m intensely proud of it, thrilled to send it off into the world, and grateful I had the privilege to sell it as part of that two-book deal back in 2021. Writing it—my first project ever drafted on a deadline—was also one of the most self-illuminating experiences of my life.

I met a whole bunch of people while writing The Someday Daughter. And all of them came from my own, frantic brain.

The 5 people you meet on deadline:

1. The Valedictorian

When I gave the valedictorian address at my high school graduation, I mistakenly attributed a quote by Henry David Thoreau to Eleanor Roosevelt. How does that happen? You might ask. I truly do not know, but rest assured it has haunted me all the years since.

I forgive that version of me: eighteen, speaking to an auditorium full of people, foolishly confident and secretly terrified. I have so much love for her—considerably more than she had for herself. There’s a therapy modality called Internal Family Systems; I’m no expert, but the gist is that each of us has our true “self,” and many other “parts” that come in to obscure that self. Each part has a job. Valedictorian Ellen’s job is to protect me from disappointment by pushing me for perfection.

I’m thirty now. It’s been a long time since I was eighteen and believed that my only worth was my GPA. I wrote The Someday Daughter to address the pain I felt being that version of myself: the book’s eighteen-year-old protagonist, Audrey, struggles with anxiety and perfectionism that very closely mirrors my own. I wrote her that way intentionally, so that any young person feeling these feelings would know they aren’t alone. I did it very much on purpose. And still, I was shocked to be greeted at the drafting table by Valedictorian Ellen.

She said: What if we can’t write a book this fast? What if it’s not The Best Book Ever Written? What if everyone hates it, and that makes us completely worthless as a human being?

Writing Audrey’s anxieties brought out my own. As I wrote her through her journey—as I taught her that she is inherently loved, and valuable, and worthy—I was also re-teaching myself.

There’s a Hemingway quote that’s stuck with me for years: “It’s easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed.” I’d argue that it’s not easy to write, because it requires blood. When you write a book, you give of yourself.

2. The Crowdsourcer

The best thing about publishing a book is that other people will read it. The bad news about publishing a book is also that people will read it. And during the summer that I wrote The Someday Daughter, early reviews for my debut, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux, were already starting to trickle in.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is not to read your reviews. I’m better at this some times than others; anxiety-ridden and sleepless on my first-ever writing deadline was not one of my better times. I am grateful to every human who has ever taken time out of their one, precious life to leave a review of my books (yes, even the critical ones!). But I found these reviews filling my mind with so much noise that I could hardly see my story straight.

If someone loved the enemies-to-lovers trope in my first book, would they be disappointed not to find that trope in my second one? If someone appreciated the tech angle of Ro Devereux, would they hate The Someday Daughter for being about a book?

My woozy little deadline brain was trying to crowdsource its ideas from strangers. I had to stick it on ice and tune back into myself.

3. The Character

I wrote The Someday Daughter in the six-month span leading up to the release of my debut, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux. Debuting is thrilling and overwhelming; there is a steep learning curve. Part of this, for me, was learning how to present myself as an author.

I’ve spent my whole life as Ellen. When Ro Devereux came out, I became Ellen O’Clover, The Author. She’s the same as me—but also a little different. She knows how to design promotional graphics in Canva, for one thing. She also has public social media accounts, which is not something that plain old Ellen ever had. Ellen is introverted and shy. Ellen O’Clover, The Author, isn’t scared to promote her book to thousands of people on the internet.

Switching into this role—this character—has only gotten easier with time. I’ve settled into a place where I can be just as authentic in my professional role as I can be in my private one. But that first summer, on deadline for The Someday Daughter, I was still learning.

4. The Child

There’s a concept in Zen Buddhism called “beginner’s mind:” moving through the world with openness and a lack of preconceptions. Though I have written five complete novels in my life, I sit down to start every single one with the feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing. I think this is common among authors (don’t tell me if it’s not).

I went into my deadline for The Someday Daughter feeling like a child. Am I capable of this? Can I be trusted with this? Where is my adult??

I had to work very concertedly to warp this childlike sense of fear into a Zen sense of beginner’s mind. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. Does anyone ever?

5. Spiderman

Okay, not really. But there’s something superhuman that happens to you on deadline. Whether it’s radioactive spider venom or sheer force of love—like parents who lift impossibly heavy objects off their children in crisis—deadlines bring something out of us.

Being faced with a seemingly impossible task (like writing a book faster than you ever have before) and then actually doing it is one of the best human feelings. A very dear person in my life told me once that making something you’re proud of is the Everest of the human experience—everything else is just extra. She was right. This deadline was, for me, an Everest.

I am so proud of The Someday Daughter. Not because it came to me easily, but because I confronted so many parts of myself in its creation.

Meet the author

Ellen O’Clover writes stories about finding your people, falling in love, and figuring it all out (or trying to, anyway). She grew up in Ohio and studied creative writing at the Johns Hopkins University before moving west to Colorado. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her reading fiction about big feelings, trying new recipes with mixed results, or hiking in the Rockies. She lives near Boulder with her rocket scientist husband and two perfect bulldogs.

Links:

• Website: www.ellenoclover.com
• Instagram: @ellenoclover
• TikTok: @ellenoclover

About The Someday Daughter

Perfect for fans of Rachel Lynn Solomon, Mary H. K. Choi, and Alex Light! From the critically acclaimed author of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux comes another heartrending and nuanced novel about family, love, and the cost of ambition.

“A compelling, beautifully drawn exploration into complicated family and personal relationships and the frailty and fortitude of a girl simply trying to succeed, love, and thrive. I’m proud to live in a book world where Ellen O’Clover is writing contemporary young adult fiction. The Someday Daughter is a forever treasure.” —Laura Taylor Namey, New York Times bestselling author of A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow 

Audrey St. Vrain has grown up in the shadow of someone who doesn’t actually exist. Before she was born, her mother, Camilla St. Vrain, wrote the bestselling book Letters to My Someday Daughter, a guide to self-love that advises treating yourself like you would your own hypothetical future daughter. The book made Audrey’s mother a household name, and she built an empire around it.

While the world considers Audrey lucky to have Camilla for a mother, the truth is that Audrey knows a different side of being the someday daughter. Shipped off to boarding school when she was eleven, she feels more like a promotional tool than a member of Camilla’s family. Audrey is determined to create her own identity aside from being Camilla’s daughter, and she’s looking forward to a prestigious summer premed program with her boyfriend before heading to college and finally breaking free from her mother’s world.  

But when Camilla asks Audrey to go on tour with her to promote the book’s anniversary, Audrey can’t help but think that this is the last, best chance to figure out how they fit into each other’s lives—not as the someday daughter and someday mother but as themselves, just as they are. What Audrey doesn’t know is that spending the summer with Camilla and her tour staff—including the disarmingly honest, distressingly cute video intern, Silas—will upset everything she’s so carefully planned for her life.

ISBN-13: 9780063255081
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 02/20/2024
Age Range: 13 – 17 Years

Filed under: Guest Post