by Kitty Felde

I’ve been working all summer on a new podcast. Honeymoon Road: Pete & Me & our Model T.

Exactly 100 years ago, my Felde grandparents drove across the country on their honeymoon, riding (and sleeping!) in their cranky old Model T Ford. My cousin Marie Felde and I recreated that journey, stopping at all the places along the way that “Gert” wrote about, to see what remained of the America they saw back in 1925. My actress cousin Terri Felde Shauer voiced the 25 year old Gert and the show includes interviews with folks at the Kansas State Fair, honeymooners from the Grand Canyon, and gal campers on their way to North Dakota.

I assumed the audience would be the 32 grandchildren of Pete and Gert. I was wrong.

At the going away party for my niece, heading off to college, I played the first episode. Three of my brothers got up in the middle of it and headed to the kitchen for dessert. I was crushed.

It was the same kind of rejection we all feel when our scripts are rejected by the theatre we were certain would jump for joy at our work. Ouch. It makes us doubt our talent, our work, our very sense of ourselves as writers.

But really, it should make us reassess who our audience really is.

I know that my plays are highly unlikely to ever be performed at the Taper. Or any other regional Equity house. I don’t write knockoffs of Jane Austen or small cast musicals or edgy political screeds. That doesn’t make my work bad. My war crimes play found its audience on college campuses around the world. A one-woman piece about Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice played twice in her adopted hometown of Washington and among retirees in Naples, Florida. A piece set among the water lily garden of a feisty entrepreneur got a reading in her lily garden.

The key is not to get discouraged. Think creatively about the people who NEED to see your play, hear your message, experience your creation. Don’t let somebody else’s rejection sink in and make you think your work is worthless. You just haven’t found your audience. Yet. Believe that. Find your people. They are out there. I promise.

Oh, and that podcast? Honeymoon road did find an audience. It’s people who have their own tales of family journies. Every time my cousin and I told folks on the road trip what we were doing, they had an equally interesting story to share about their own family history. In fact, we set up a place on the honeymoonroad.com website for them to post them.

I haven’t given up on my entire family. Some of our Felde cousins have become our biggest fans. One even wants to write an opera with a song called “Meet Pete.” Perhaps the rest of my brothers will come on board. But if they don’t, I know they are just not my audience.

Kitty Felde hosts three podcasts, including Honeymoon Road: Pete & Me & our Model T. She is the author of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of childrens books.

by Kitty Felde

There’s a relief pitcher in Washington D.C. with a trio of unlikely fans.

A trio of teens from Louisville decided to root for Washington National right-hander Derek Law as a result of a glitch in a video game. (Too complicated to explain the video game part of the story: read the article if you really want to know about “Real 99’s” and the peculiar fantasy baseball games.)

The story of their fandom and the face-to-face meeting with the object of their devotion touched my heart – and that pitcher reminded me of us as writers.

Law is what’s called a “middle reliever,” a major league pitcher who comes in from the bullpen in the middle of a game. His job is to keep too many runs from scoring until the late innings when the superstar closer comes in to finish off the game and secure the win.

Middle relievers mostly labor in obscurity. Nobody gives them a nickname like “The Vulture” or “The Mad Hungarian” or “The Monster.” Half the stadium has to check the roster to make sure they’re spelling his name right in their scorebook. But middle relievers put in the hard work every single day, throwing 100 mile per hour pitches to coaches, stretching and running around in the outfield before every game, getting ready mentally to come in with three men on base and now outs, whether or not they are called upon to show off their stuff.. Mostly, they sit and wait.

Just like writers.

So when three teenagers showed up at a game in Cincinnati between the Reds and the Washington Nationals wearing Derek Law jerseys, the reliever took notice. He sent them tickets, autographed every item they handed to him, and put his hat over his heart to show his appreciation. Mr. Anonymous had finally found his people.

I had a similar experience last weekend when a 4th grade reading group invited me over to talk to them about my Fina Mendoza Mysteries.

These kids somehow stumbled across my book series about the adventures of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman from California who solves puzzles inside the U.S. Capitol. Their mom contacted me to tell me how much they liked my books. Then, they showed up en masse at a bookstore where I did an event. Two of them dropped by my booth at the LA Times Festival of Books last month for autographs and pictures, tearfully telling me that I was

“their favorite writer in the whole, wide world.”

And finally, I was invited over one Sunday afternoon for donuts and cucumber slices to answer all of their questions about Fina. I felt like a star. But more importantly, I felt like the small pebble I’d dropped into the pond, trying to educate kids about American democracy through writing about Fina Mendoza and her adventures on Capitol Hill, had splashed on a distant shore. The books had made a difference in the lives of kids. Not a nation of children. Yet. But this handful of fans believed in me.

None of us may win the Pulitzer for Drama or see our latest play on Broadway. That doesn’t mean our work isn’t important to the world. It is.

Just because “The New York Times” doesn’t review our comedy, that doesn’t mean we don’t have fans. We do.

Think of the people who support us in our work: our critique partners, our favorite theatre company, our mom. These are our fans, the ones who “get” us and recognize the important work we do. We may not have that funky nickname or memorable walk-up music, or get a tub of Gatorade dumped on us. But we do have fans who support us and think we have value to bring to the world.

Find those people. They will sustain you during the tough times, the months of writers block, the way-too-many rejections. They might even tell you that you’re their favorite writer in the whole wide world

Kitty Felde has written dozens of plays. These days, she writes The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, a series designed to introduce civics to kids…so that they can teach their parents.

by Kitty Felde

I think the last musical I saw was my niece’s high school production of “Beauty and the Beast.” Back in the 80’s, my best friend Julie was going to Shakespeare school in NYC and we’d line up for hours at TKTS for anything affordable. Unfortunately, my husband’s not a fan of people singing in the middle of a story, so I’m always looking for a buddy to join me for a musical.

Last night, I took myself out for a date to see the Stephen Sondheim tribute show “Old Friends.”
It was packed with veteran Broadway singers and actors who often outshone the two legendary stars Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. The show is headed to Broadway after a run in London’s West End and it looks like it: polished, fantastic costumes, clever set, well directed, terrific orchestra. Cameron Mackintosh produced it. I was surprised that there was little dance since it was directed by the fabulous choreographer Matthew Bourne.

I loved it, even though the show couldn’t decide whether it was a concert of Sondheim’s greatest hits, or a series of favorite scenes from favorite shows.

Which brings me back to the power of story.

The most powerful bits were the snapshots of past plays. There was a long sequence from “Sweeney Todd” which introduces the Demon Barber of Fleet Street as he and his unfortunate customer sing “Pretty Women” all the way to Mrs. Lovett peddling meat pies made of lawyers and priests. “West Side Story” was summed up in a powerful balcony/mean streets scene performing “Tonight.” It wasn’t just Sondheim’s incredible music and lyrics carrying us away: it was the story the music was telling.

We all want a story, with or without music. We want to carry those characters around in our heads and hearts. We care what happens to them. We want to root for them. Or cheer when they’re killed off.

We are blessed to be writers, creating those characters and those stories – imaginary beings that will live in the hearts and minds of others, whether in a Broadway house or a storefront theatre on a night when the cast outnumbers the audience.

Don’t be discouraged. Go back to your laptop. Sharpen that number two pencil. Go make magic.

Kitty Felde, in addition to writing plays, is the author of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of novels for young readers that introduce civics to kids. Her latest title Snake in the Grass” about the bitter partisanship in Washington, DC these days will be published April 1, 2025 by Chesapeake Press.

by Kitty Felde

I’ve done a lot of different kinds of writing in my life. Playwriting, of course. Fan fiction back when I was in 8th grade, a stab at a romance novel in high school, essays, letters to the editor, grant writing, a historical romance, a middle grade mystery series, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol short stories, blogs, newsletters, and thirty years of journalism.

This month, I was asked to write an obituary for my father.

My father was a quiet man, sanguine, supportive of my theatre career even if he was the audience member snoring through the second act when I was onstage. He ditched my mother in the middle of his mid-life crisis, but I get along with his second wife. He could fix anything.

But how to sum all of that up in an obituary that would offend no one?

There were so many holes to fill. Did I have to write about him starting out his career selling insurance for ships? Did I have to mention that he flunked statistics in college? Were any of his contemporaries still alive to enjoy tales from his younger days?

I started to compile family stories from my six younger siblings. It turned into a therapeutic group text, with old pictures and hilarious stories I’d never heard. Could I include them all?

I didn’t want it to be dry and formulaic. I’d read some really wonderfully funny obituaries of late, but outright belly laughs was not what I had in mind. Yet I couldn’t help the humor that kept popping up on my computer screen.

I realize now that this is the reason we write plays: to tell our family stories in a form that won’t bore the audience. We suss out the drama in our personal history, with complete permission to rewrite it the way we want it.

Perhaps someday, my father will show up in one of my plays or books. For now, he’s memorialized in the form he requested: a simple obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

(If you’d like to read the obit, see below.)

Tom Felde
1929-2024

Tom Felde was born third in a family of seven children – six boys and a girl. His parents drove from Chicago to California on their honeymoon in a Model T Ford. (A journey his daughter and niece are recreating in a 2025 podcast.)

Tom was a gifted athlete – a gift none of his children inherited – and attended Loyola University on an athletic scholarship, playing football and baseball. College was interrupted by two years in the Army, where he was posted in Cold War Germany, writing letters home requesting extra funds and more Sees candy.

He married a girl from Immaculate Heart College named Patricia Jaeger in 1952 and they started their own family of seven, again 6 boys and 1 girl, with a little help from the LA County adoption services.

Tom was active in his church, singing in the choir while clipping his kids’ fingernails, cooking spagetti for the 50/50 raffle nights. He and Pat were social activists and refused to follow the white flight out of Compton.

He could fix anything. Especially bicycles. Not one of his seven children ever had a store bought bike. Instead, they rode refurbished models, fashioned from the bits and pieces from old cycles. He was forever remodeling the house. A table saw sat in the middle of the family room for thirteen years.

He acquired the nickname “Pops” along the way, named after the patriarch in the Speed Racer cartoon series. Pops was notoriously frugal. He refused to hand out quarters for hot showers at the Grand Canyon. When the family VW bus broke down on the way to an annual camping trip, instead of hiring a tow truck, he used coat hanger wire to attach the bumper to the back of a VW bug and towed it down the hill himself, the entire seatbelt-less family riding in the van behind him.

There’s a Billy Joel song that has the lyric: “Tom was a real estate novelist.” Except instead of fiction, Tom wrote the text book which for decades most Californians used to pass the state’s real estate exam. He was a self published author long before it was popular and continued to ship books from his garage until he was well into his 90’s.

After a divorce, Tom lived on a boat for a time, and in 1992, married Manhattan Beach native Cindy Hill. Despite public protestations that he didn’t like cats, they acquired a series of felines. Tom even named one after himself. They remained a happy couple the rest of his life.

Eventually, Tom ran out of gas and at age 95, two days before Election Day, he died. But not before casting his vote by mail.

He is survived by his wife Cindy, brothers John and Peter, children Kitty, Mitch, Matt, Danny, Jerry, Alex, and Dominic, grandchildren Lynnette, Shane, Trevor, Logun, Hunter, Drake, and Rena, and great-grandchildren Olivia, Noah, Amelia, and Lauren. A funeral mass will be held at St. Martha Catholic Church in Murrietta on December 3rd.

by Kitty Felde

I just got back from “over the pond” and wanted to tell you about two terrific productions I saw – one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the other in a small theatre in the West End of London.

RADIUM GIRLS

DW Gregory, a wonderful writer from my D.C. playwrights group posted on Facebook that her most popular play “Radium Girls” was getting its first outing at the Fringe, courtesy of a group of young actors from a high school in England. I just happened to be in Scotland during its play dates and told her I’d take the train from Glasgow to represent her.

This was my first Fringe experience. Unlike Glasgow, where few Americans could be found, Edinburgh was overrun with Yanks, there for the theatre festival, the book festival, and because Edinburgh was the only place on their list unless they were chasing down film spots for “Harry Potter” or “Outlander.”

(True confessions: I did take an “Outlander” tour with a guide who was a Jamie knockoff.)

Patrons lined the staircase, waiting to get into the show.

The theatre was on the fourth floor of an office building near the shopping district – a simple black box with perhaps 50 folding chairs for the audience.

The simple set was most effective – neon “Brat” green light glowed from boxes that became tables and stools, and a chain link fence that separated the company of actors from the audience, hung with props and costumes.

The play is based on a true story about the young women who died of radiation poisoning from licking their brushes as they painted the glow-in-the-dark dials of clocks and watches.

The actors were terrific, but my favorite part was hearing the wide spectrum of American accents. (Is this what American actors sound like when using an “English” accent?)

The “kids” were thrilled that their playwright had sent an emissary to see their production and DW was happy with the pictures from the production.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

I considered the plethora of West End musicals playing in London, but nothing tempted me.

And then I read a review of “Pride and Prejudice.”

As a Janeite and English County Dance aficionado (with three ball gowns in my closet) how could I not attend?

That’s me on the left.

Again, the venue resembled our own 99-seat theatres. My seat was front row – so close to the actors, I had to keep moving my feet so that Mr. Darcy wouldn’t trip.

Abigail Pickard Price both adapted and directed the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s sparkling production.

And here’s my favorite part: just three actors performed the entire play! April Hughes played Lizzie…and Mr. Bingley. (Her credits include playing Moaning Myrtle in the hit West End show
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”) Guildford co-founder Sarah Gobran played Mary, Charlotte, and Mrs. Bennet. And Oxford-trained Luke Barton played Mr. Bennet, the Reverend Collins, and of course, Mr. Darcy. Sigh.

And it really worked! I’ve seen every adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” ever produced, but the adaptation managed to condense and highlight parts of the book I’d forgotten. Authentic English Country Dance choreography punctuated the scene shifts. The 140 minute evening whizzed by, even with numerous costume changes. If this version isn’t snapped up by an American theatre desperate for a small cast that would pack the house with a female audience, I’d be shocked.

I wish I’d written it.

Kitty Felde’s most produced play “A Patch of Earth” (a Bosnian war crimes story) was also produced in Great Britain by a talented troupe of high school thespians.

by Kitty Felde

I know what I should be working on. The deadline is Thursday next. But the new dining room carpet was just delivered and I need to see if the shade of sea glass green matches the wallpaper or figure out how to ship it back. And I need to find a sub for me at church next week if I want to invite people over for the Memorial Day Concert. I’m cold and should put on a sweater.

Stop. Focus. Write.

I think about all the stories I want to write. Worry about how long it will take to write them. Worry that my brain or body will give out before I get to them all. And if I’m that worried, why am I avoiding sitting down right now to create them?

The dishwasher needs to be unloaded. I need to get a stamp for that renewal envelope for the husband’s subscription of Track and Field news. The cat wants breakfast. Now. There are leaves on the patio that should be picked up before somebody steps on them and drags pieces into the house. Is the mini vacuum plugged in? I should cook the salmon today. I’ll have to walk over to the community garden to steal some parsley. Does anyone still have lemons on their tree? I need a nap. Or more tea. I’m cold. I should get up and zap the tea in the microwave. I have another zoom at one. I should be writing.

Did Sara agree to a phone call this afternoon? Why were the cherries at the farmer’s market $12 a pound? Will those tiny green tomatoes really ripen on the windowsill? Why did I forget the artichokes on the stove and burn them?

I’m cold. In May. Why am I cold?

That little amaryllis flower looks so happy. I guess I should go spray the roses. Again. Oh, yeah. I need orchid food. And some new hand towels. Maybe I’ll walk up to Target. Wish I’d changed the sheets before the husband made the bed.

What was it I was supposed to be doing?

Oh, yeah. Writing.

Kitty Felde writes the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels. The Spanish version “Estado de la Unión” will be released August 1st.

by Kitty Felde

Some say the greatest joy of writing is that feeling of being in the flow, creating that first draft. Words fly across the page, almost by magic. Characters come to life, dialogue sparkles, telling details come instantly to mind.

And then you’re left with a mess.

I’ve been wrestling with the third book in my Fina Mendoza Mysteries series called “Snake in the Grass.” It’s about partisanship on Capitol Hill, as seen through the eyes of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman. I pounded out 207 pages, printed it out, and stared at a catastrophe. There was no structure, entire plot lines were missing, I had no ending. Catastrophe.

After a few weeks of hanging my head, I was brave enough to face the other half of writing: editing. It’s the chance to fix what once went wrong.

But how?

Writers have lots of techniques.

Some use color-coded index cards that they can shuffle around.

One memoir scribbler is a big believer in post-it notes. She covers an entire wall in her office with post-its in pink and white and blue and every other color under the sun. She creates a notebook with smaller post-its that’s a duplicate of her plot wall. And then she moves things around.

I’ve tried index cards. They’re just not my thing. Post-it notes? No, thank you. Number one, I don’t have a large enough blank wall. Number two, I’d live in fear that a gust of wind would turn my carefully crafted plot into an even more jumbled mess than it is now.

Some writers edit in Scrivner. But those little pretend index cards are too small for my bad eyes to read.

Some playwrights read the manuscript aloud, or invite a roomful of actors to informally read the play. It’s a great way to catch sentences that don’t sing or missing words or clunky dialogue. I find that it doesn’t work as well with prose – work with less dialogue and more description.

Some brave souls edit directly onto the manuscript, uploaded into the G drive. This panics me for a different reason: what if I accidentally delete a scene? Or change my mind about an edit I made yesterday. What if I fail to label it properly and end up re-editing an earlier version? Or, as was the case yesterday, can’t find it at all?

I’m a paper person. With apologies to the trees, I think better when there’s a printed copy of my manuscript in front of me. I love using a red pen. (Or, in the case of a second pass through, a blue pen.) Somehow, seeing those scribbled pages is tangible proof to myself that I have indeed been working on my book. And like hearing it aloud, you perceive your work differently than when it’s on a computer screen.

But that’s just my first step. A stack of scribbled up printed pages doesn’t solve my plot problems.

I’ve settled on using a legal pad, making a list of the scenes in the order I have now. I can move them around with just my pen, drawing a long, curved arrow to indicate that scene five now should reside after scene seven. I can draw a line through scene 21, which has always been a problem child.

Next, it’s back to the original document to make the changes, print it out, and start all over again.

That’s where I am today with this project, round two. I suppose I’m paying the price for all of that creative joy I felt at the beginning of the project.

I bribe myself to go on and finish the darned thing by dangling a very nice carrot out in front of my nose: as soon as I’m done, I can start a new project and return to that magic time when words fly across the page and characters have some very definite things to say.

How do you edit?

Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright and author of the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcasts, designed to introduce civics education to kids.

by Kitty Felde

If you’ve attended as many book marketing webinars as I have, you’ve heard the same advice: you need a newsletter.

The reason is simple: if the rest of social media goes the way of Twitter, er, X, you need a way to stay in touch with your theatre contacts, publishers, and fans in a format that you can control.
So as a veteran of writing hundreds of newsletters, here’s a few thoughts.

WHAT SHOULD I PUT IN A NEWSLETTER?

I’ve always thought of newsletters as a bit self-indulgent. Who would want to read anything about my life, my thoughts on climate change or politics, or pictures of my cat? And then I remembered that my husband and I have put out a Christmas newsletter for more than a decade that does just that. I apologize to my friends and family and tell them they can just toss it in the trash or ask me to take them off the mailing list. On the contrary, they say, they look forward to this annual missive. Go figure.

The truth is that we long for personal connections – even those that show up in a newsletter once and a while. Your contacts want to know more about YOU, the writer yourself. You don’t have to disclose utterly personal information. Instead, address the questions most people ask: Why do you write? How do you write? What are you working on? What does your desk look like? Who’s your favorite playwright? Why?

OTHER IDEAS

Readers and theatre goers and fans also like a peek behind the curtain. How do you cast a play? Do the actors hired for your work look like the ones you imagined when you were creating them? Who’s your favorite director? Why? What was the best (and worst) production of any of your work? (Leave out specific identification of the offending theatre…it’s a small town.) Write about an amazing production of someone else’s play or recount a memory of a play you saw years and years ago that still sticks with you. Ask your readers to tell you about their favorite production of any play and put that in a future newsletter. Ask them which play they wish someone would write. Put together a survey. In other words, get your fans to interact with you, otherwise known as that horrid word “engagement.”

Ask yourself what your newsletter subscribers NEED. A calendar of upcoming shows you think they’d enjoy? A monologue or scene that got cut from one of your plays? A really wonderful – or really awful – review of a previous production of one of your plays? Information about upcoming productions or publications or interviews?

MY NEWSLETTERS

Currently, I write two professional newsletters with a combined 4,000 subscribers. I began writing them in 2015.

For my Book Club for Kids podcast, I didn’t want the newsletter to be about ME. I wanted to give subscribers something that was useful. I knew that my audience of teachers, parents, and librarians needed help getting reluctant readers to pick up a book. So every month, I send a reading tip from a librarian or an education specialist. The newsletter also includes promotional material: information about the latest episode, an invitation to check out my other podcast The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, and an invitation to contact me if they want to bring the podcast to their school.

For my Fina Mendoza Mysteries civics series, I write a Facts Behind the Fiction newsletter where I expand on some Congressional fact mentioned in the books or podcast. The newsletter also includes links to research material, as well as links to the audio and to bookstores where the audience can buy the book.

Then I REPURPOSE the newsletter content in a blog on my website. And if I’m a good girl, I post links to it on social. That way, I get a three for one hit on my written material.

HOW OFTEN DO I SEND A NEWSLETTER?

It’s up to you. But once a month or every six months is plenty. Unless your audience asks for more.

HOW TO BUILD A MAILING LIST

Start with your friends, family, professional colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested in your work. Or in you. Include a signup link on your website. Include it in social posts from time to time. Do a “newsletter swap” – you write a post that a fellow playwright sends to her mailing list and she writes one for your newsletter. Include that signup link! Hopefully, her fans will sign up for your newsletter and become your fans as well. You’ll be surprised at how fast your audience grows.

MAILCHIMP, MAILERLITE, CONSTANT CONTACT, ETC.

Don’t send mass email blasts from your Gmail account. You will be punished. Instead, start with a free subscription from one of the usual suspects. I’ve used both Mailchimp and MailerLite and they’re easy, pretty much drag and drop. One warning: there’s a success tax. If your mailing list goes over a set threshold, you’ll have to pay for hosting.

STILL UNCERTAIN?

Subscribe to a few OTHER writer’s mailing lists. You can always unsubscribe. See what they are writing about, how they are providing value to the reader.

Newsletters are purely optional for writers, but as a control freak myself, they are an important part of my professional presence in the world.

Kitty

PS: You can subscribe to the Book Club for Kids podcast here. Or the Fina Mendoza Mysteries podcast here.

Kitty Felde is the author of numerous plays and the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcasts, designed to introduce civics to elementary school readers. Her novella Losing is Democratic: How to Talk to Kids About January 6th will be released by Chesapeake Press this month.

by Kitty Felde

It sounded so idylic: ten days on Nantucket, and then two and a half weeks in Maine. All that time devoted to one thing: revision.

I’m working on my first adult novel, a mystery set in Theodore Roosevelt’s White House. The first draft is too long – 368 pages and still lacking a last scene. It’s a mess.

This year has been full of chaos with running a tiny publishing company, producing a pair of podcasts, and then five family members developed health issues. It’s been difficult to concentrate.

But I had those two trips to look forward to, away from the many fires that demand immediate attention, and I would use them to whip my novel into shape.

I was afraid to look at the pages. I’d written the first draft a year ago. What if it was awful? What if I couldn’t figure out how to fix it? Should I just burn the darned thing and eat lobster and enjoy myself?

After talking myself off the ledge, I remembered how I edit. And that’s what I’ll share with you.

PRINT IT OUT

A play or novel looks completely different in other formats.

I write on my laptop, but edit on paper. (I know, I know. I’ve sacrificed trees for this book. All the more reason to make the editing count.)

You see things differently when a book is on the screen vs on a piece of paper. It’s tactile. There is something satisfying about crossing out duplicate words with a red pen or watching a stack of pages dwindle as you read and reread and edit. (The only downside: my carryon bag was particularly heavy since I insisted on dragging my printed copy with me on the plane.)

READ THE DAMN THING

I write in short spurts. A scene here, a chapter there. I don’t make a habit of going back over my work again and again and again.

But editing begins with looking at the project as a whole. Does it make sense? What’s missing? Are there duplicate scenes?

I don’t immediately fix these problems, just note them in a separate notebook. I just keep reading.

WHAT’S IT REALLY ABOUT?

I knew that underneath the mystery, the book is really about a daughter’s lifelong effort to get her father’s attention and approval. Upon re-reading my manuscript, I was satisfied with the emotional underpinnings of the story. What I was lacking was a plot that made sense.

I started making lists, outlining the various murder plots, the actual clues and the red herrings. I followed main characters through the story – their locations, their motivations. I found holes and noted them in my notebook. More things to fix.

FIX THE BIG STUFF FIRST…OR NOT

After looking at plot holes, I had a good idea of what needed fixing and decided to tackle that first. Rereading the entire work made it clear what was important and what was not. I eagerly picked up my red pen and got to work.

But there were other problems that had no immediate solution. I needed to sleep on it or take a long walk or a swim, distract myself long enough for my brain to figure out a solution.

In the meantime, I tackled the small stuff I’d listed in my notebook. How many children DID Mrs. Caldwell have? Was it eight or nine? What was the name of the bank owned by Mr. Johnston? What was the rank of that police officer? It was just as satisfying fixing little things as it was solving big problems. And fixing the small stuff gave me courage to attack the big stuff.

KILL YOUR FAVORITES

Writers are always telling us to be brutal in editing, to not be afraid to kill our darlings.
I’m not that brave. I marked up my paper copy. But when I have reliable internet and make those changes in the master script on my laptop, I will save all those edited scenes in my Leftover file. I’m braver about making changes if I know that I can always go back and put that scene back in the main manuscript. Or use it in another book.

BETA READERS

I’m a member of THREE writing groups. I also regularly swap drafts with yet another set of writers. It’s invaluable to have another set of eyes on our work. There are just some things we are blind to, things we skip over. They tell us when they don’t understand a plot point or the physical action in an action scene or the motivations of a character. They tell us when things are dragging, when a line is funny, whether the ending is satisfying.

KNOW WHEN TO STOP

At some point, we have to admit to ourselves that our work will never be perfect. We have to share it with the world and take the consequences. What’s the worst that can happen? An agent will reject us. Or three. Or a hundred. We decide to self-publish and get a one star review on Amazon. (At least someone took the time to read the darned book!) None of our siblings will buy the book and never ask about it at Thanksgiving. (Good. They’ll never know we named the villain after them.)

Be brave. Write your cover letter and your synopsis. Polish them. And send out your baby into the world. It’s time.

Kitty’s many plays have been produced around the world. Two are available in print. These days, she writes The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcast for kids.

by Kitty Felde

Is launch day for a book the same as opening night for a new play?

Yes and no.

On Monday, my middle grade mystery novel Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza comes out in English and Spanish. It’s the story of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman from Los Angeles who moves to D.C. and solves mysteries inside the U.S. Capitol. I’ve been nervous and excited and had to remind myself that I’ve had opening nights for years.

But it made me think about what book launches and opening nights have in common.

Some things are the same.

As a playwright, you’re sending out emails to all your friends and family, begging them to buy tickets for opening night. You’re posting on social. You might even go ‘old school’ and send out postcards to that agent you’re hoping to snag, or that friend of a show runner you met at a party. You’re hoping for good reviews in the handful of places that actually still review plays. You offer ticket discounts. You post some more on social… You get the idea.

As a book writer, you’re also emailing your friends and family, begging them to buy your book. You’re posting on social. Instead of postcards, you’re printing bookmarks, handing them out like candy at book festivals and library conventions. You’ve sent your book out to Kirkus and other review sites and posted the manuscript on NetGalley, (a free service free to readers, but a few hundred dollars for writers,) hoping for reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Instead of discounting tickets, you’re discounting book sales. You post some more on social…

Sound familiar?

For writers, book events are our opening nights. There is often champagne and cakes decorated with the cover of your book. The difference is that plays are what one pal described as ephemeral. A production disappears after its run. Books are tangible evidence of our writing. Sure, they may gather dust on library shelves and on the bedside table of your best friend who promises to read it one of these days.

There is one difference between writing for the page and writing for the stage: the community of theatre. As a book writer, you often do get to collaborate with a designer (for the cover instead of the set) and an editor (similar to a director.) What you don’t get writing books is the joy of the rehearsal room, the hours you get to spend with actors who bring your characters to life, the collaboration that leads to genius stage business and laughs you didn’t know where there.

But writing is writing, whether it’s plays or books. And after the stage lights are turned off or the bookstore locks the door, we all head back to the laptop or yellow pad or dictation app and start all over again.

LAFPI readers can get an autographed copy of Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza or Bienvenida a Washington Fina Mendoza by clicking here.

Kitty Felde is a playwright currently working on Snake in the Grass, the third book in her Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels.