{"id":79,"date":"2016-05-03T16:44:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T20:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/?page_id=79"},"modified":"2017-11-03T15:44:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T19:44:11","slug":"faq","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/about-kristin-bio\/faq\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column width=”5\/12″ offset=”vc_hidden-xs”][vc_single_image image=”4165″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” qode_css_animation=”” link=”\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Kristin_Hannah_04_64b_RET_FLT_credit-Kevin-Lynch.tif”][vc_empty_space height=”60px”][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”7\/12″][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

FAQ<\/h1>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]How long have you been writing?<\/b>
\nIt feels as if I just got started on this career. I\u2019m always a little bit surprised by my answer to this question: it\u2019s almost 30 years. Honestly, I don\u2019t know how that\u2019s possible being as young as I am! That\u2019s certainly the upside of a career you love. Time flies.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your ideal writing day like?<\/b>
\nHmmm\u2026let\u2019s see. The perfect writing day. Well, first of all, I\u2019ll be in a place where I can hear the waves washing along the sand and warm breezes rustling through coconut palms or evergreen trees. Then I\u2019ll wake up early, go for a nice morning run along the beach, and come home ready to get to work. My very favorite thing is to sit in a lawn chair on my deck, notepad in hand, and lose myself in the story. It doesn\u2019t happen every day — or even often — but when it does, it\u2019s pure magic. And the perfect writing day.<\/p>\n

How long does it take you to write a book?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>
\nFor the most part, each of my books has taken a year. Some — notably\u00a0The Nightingale<\/i>, Firefly Lane<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0On Mystic Lake — <\/i>have taken up to two years. Generally, I spend about three months coming up with idea, researching it, and formulating a loose plan for the spine of the story and the character arcs. After a few months of research, the writing of the first draft — if I\u2019m lucky — is about five months. This usually entails several \u201cwrong\u201d starts and do-overs. The final process of taking that draft and turning it into the novel I\u2019d envisioned takes between four and six months. Normally, I do about ten drafts of the book.<\/p>\n

Do you miss practicing law?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>
\nWait. I have to stop laughing. I can\u2019t see the computer keys. No. I don\u2019t miss it. I loved the law, but writing is the best career on the planet for me. I\u2019m truly blessed. I can\u2019t imagine having to wear heels to work again. I\u2019d probably fall flat on my face.<\/p>\n

Why do you write?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>
\nQuite simply, I write because it frees something in me. It\u2019s the greatest job in the world. It allows me to be the wife\/mother\/friend I want to be, with plenty of time for the people I care about, while still giving me something that\u2019s mine, something that defines me as an individual.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a typical day like for you?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>
\nThe great thing about being a writer is that there really is no typical day. When my son was home, my writing schedule was pretty much subject to the local school schedule. For years, I wrote school hours, school days, school months. It gave me a lovely, if inflexible, routine. Nowadays, though, I\u2019m much more of a gypsy with a pen and paper. My ordinary day begins with a three or four mile run — preferably along a stretch of sunny beach — then it\u2019s back home to get started. I\u2019ll write fairly solidly until about five o\u2019clock<\/span><\/span>. There are certainly breaks taken along the way — lunch, phone calls with girlfriends, and checking my email. At the end of the day, I try to spend at least an hour outside, sitting on my deck and relaxing. Now, of course, I\u2019m supposed to fit blogging into all of that. Wish me luck!<\/p>\n

How do you know when a book is over?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>
\nI\u2019m exhausted.\u00a0 Or my deadline is looming. Or I have a migraine that lasts for two days. The truth is, a book never really feels \u201cdone.\u201d I wish it did. What\u2019s more likely is that my deadline is approaching and I\u2019ve simply run out of time. Thankfully, I\u2019m a disciplined writer. I actually start my books on time; no more than two weeks after the previous effort is finished. The stress of being \u201cbehind\u201d is really not something I\u2019d good with, so I stay on schedule.<\/p>\n

Do you always know the whole story, including the ending, when you begin?<\/b>
\nI think I do. On occasion, I even turn out to be correct. Because my books are more character than plot driven, the end of my novels is wholly dependent on the characters\u2019 arcs and growth patterns. When I was a beginning writer, I followed a strict, twenty-page outline and lengthy character biographies. I spent a lot of my research time creating characters; then I moved them through the plot as I\u2019d conceived it. In the end, I found that this hampered my creativity somewhat and began, as I moved into the bigger, more complex books, to require more editing. So, I let go. Now I spend more of my time discovering my characters. Although it creates a lot of missteps and wrong starts and endless drafts, I find that I enjoy the process more.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite character in your own novels?<\/b>
\nHonestly, I have a couple of characters that stay in my mind after the writing is over. They are, in no particular order — Izzy from\u00a0On Mystic Lake<\/i>, Alice from\u00a0Magic Hour<\/i>, Tully from\u00a0Firefly Lane,<\/i> and <\/i>Anya Whitson from\u00a0Winter Garden<\/i>. But at the moment my very favorite character is the protagonist from the novel I\u2019m currently writing. She may be my favorite character of all time. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

How do you recommend new writers get started?<\/b>
\nThis is a question that I get asked a lot, of course. The easiest and most obvious answer is also the most difficult to accomplish: it\u2019s to sit down and keep writing. Over the years, I\u2019ve seen a lot of writers come and go — published and unpublished — and what I\u2019ve learned is that the ones who make it keep writing no matter what. When life is tough, they write; when the kids are sick, they write; when rejections pile up, they write. Are you seeing a pattern? That\u2019s really what this career is ultimately about. Showing up at your computer day after day to hone your craft. Of course you should take classes and read other peoples\u2019 books and study as much as you can, but none of it can ever take the place of daily work.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column width=”5\/12″ offset=”vc_hidden-xs”][vc_single_image image=”4165″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” qode_css_animation=”” link=”\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Kristin_Hannah_04_64b_RET_FLT_credit-Kevin-Lynch.tif”][vc_empty_space height=”60px”][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”7\/12″][vc_column_text] FAQ [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]How long have you been writing? It feels as if I just got started on this career. … Read more <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":43,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-79","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4172,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions\/4172"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristinhannah.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}