Interview with Sloan Harlow

 

Picture credit : I would like to thank the author for sending me the picture

Biography

Sloan Harlow was interested in writing from a very young age. Everything We Never Said is her debut novel. She lives in Georgia with her black cat, Pabu, where she’s trying to eat as much ube ice cream as possible.

Credit : Sloan Harlow | Penguin Random House

Questions

Why did you decided to write romance?

I've always been a fan of romance! Romantic movies, books, and especially fanfiction. I actually started out my writing career by joining fanfiction contests and writing steamy romances. I'm so thankful and bewildered that now I get to write romance as a career.

What do you like the most about writing?

One of the things I've always liked the most about writing was being able to communicate about my experiences and feelings. But now that my work is out there, I'm finding my favorite part of writing is connecting with readers all around the world. It has been so lovely getting DMs from people from all walks of life that connect with the characters in my stories. I'm humbled and touched by the kindness of the readers out there. To anyone who has ever read something I've written, thank you. 

What advice will you give to a new author?

A writer writes. If you are writing, you are a writer. If you are able to make any kind of money writing, you are in rarefied air. If you can make a fulltime living writing, please tell me how. In all seriousness though, the advice I wish I'd heard is the importance of a draft zero. I don't even call it a first draft because it is so sloppy and disjointed, it feels too embarrassing to show to other people. But it is so incredibly important. Once you have something, anything written (a draft zero) then the real writing can finally begin. If you feel like your draft zero needs to be backspaced out of existence, then you are doing it right. Quality is born from revising, but it's so hard to put a primordial version of your story on a blank page when you know it's so blatantly not up to the quality standard you dreamed of. Know that hating your draft zero is an essential first step in writing your piece. It unlocks the next step of revising the draft zero into a barely passable first draft that you can show to safe people, then use their feedback to start revising further. Before you know it, your drafts will start reading suspiciously like a finished manuscript, just a few polishes away from the quality you were hoping would come out in your first attempts. A writer writes. But a professional writer gets feedback and rewrites and rewrites then rewrites again and again (until their deadline arrives).

What struggles did you met when you wrote Everything We never Said?

I never realized how collaborative writing a book is until I met my talented editor and the incredibly intelligent folks at the publisher. At first, it was tough learning to take feedback and suggestions. Writing is a very vulnerable artform and it can be hard not to take feedback personally, but once I internalized that these professionals have decades of real-world, hard-won experience, I realized their feedback is invaluable. Nowadays I'm focused on trying to make a book the best possible version of the book it can be. So if that means endless rewrites over months, trying and scrapping idea after idea, and shifting the plot in a way I never initially planned on, I know the book will be all the better for it. Admittedly, I'm still refining my emotional process for receiving feedback, but with the more and more writers I meet, I'm glad to hear I'm not alone!

Do you listen to music when you are writing? If yes, do you have a special song?

I love creating playlists to listen to while I'm writing, sometimes even for a single chapter or scene. There isn't a single special song I write along to, but lately my obsession is listening to the Succession soundtracks by Nicholas Britell on repeat. For EWNS, I primarily listened to music from video games. 

What are your next projects?

I am wrapping up the last drafts for my next book which is not a sequel, but an entirely new story. This new book is in the same genre as EWNS so there'll be more twisty thrills, but now there's even more focus on a steamy romance. I can't tell you much yet, but I can say it's set in Arizona and that I've really fallen in love with these characters. I can't wait for readers to meet them! We're hoping to release it next summer, so follow me on Instagram for any announcements @sloanharlowauthor. Thank you for reading and keep on rewriting and rewriting and rewriting!