Hi, hello!

In which I introduce myself and this publication.

Welcome to Out of Practice!

I’m Kat, a fiction writer, paperback enthusiast, and parent living in Baltimore.

On names:

Some of you know me as Kate, some as Katya (the name I went by in college), and some as Kat (the name I started going by online about a decade ago, and the name I’ll publish under). However you know me, thanks for being here! I truly appreciate it.

Out of Practice is the space where I’ll document my writing practice, what I’m learning, and (hopefully) connect with other readers and writers!

About me and my writing practice:

Like most people who become writers, I spent a huge chunk of my early years reading and writing stories, plays, and poems. Then I took a hiatus from creative writing while I was in college¹ and for about a decade after. Eight years ago, I started writing again.

I developed a consistent writing routine during the summer of 2016 entirely by accident. I was depressed and pretty lonely and managing a cafe for an employer I knew I couldn’t continue working for. I needed the outlet and focus writing provided, and so I fell into a regular pattern. On my days off and free evenings, I sat at my grandmother’s old desk, which I’d placed in the dormer overlooking our Baltimore street, and wrote for hours. It was unbearably hot up there some days, but the space and the words and the time were my own.

That routine took shape from necessity, and my mental health is still a major reason I write. Writing helps me untangle the mess of thoughts in my head and it provides me with both creative direction and fulfillment. Most significantly, in the words of Brandon Taylor, it’s “the most fun I’m capable of having.” Even when I dread it (drafting! so painful!), I love it.

Post-kid (S is five now) I don’t write at the same times every week, but I do write in the same place (at the same desk!) and I’ve kept up a good track record for buckling down and hitting my word count. I know how many words I can write, give or take, between the obligations of my full-time day job and parenting. Despite what popular media depicts, most writers can’t sit at a desk for ten uninterrupted hours, smoking cigarettes and agonizing over blank word documents. We’re juggling multiple jobs, caretaking responsibilities, chronic illness and disabilities, and more. I am so grateful that I have family who live nearby to assist with childcare, but even with that help, making progress is a challenge.

Maintaining my writing practice has been less about creating the perfect circumstances to write and more about making the most of the gaps in my schedule—the moments before work, in the school parking lot, after everyone else has gone to bed, etc. When I acknowledged that a perfect routine wasn’t attainable, I took the first step toward creating a practice that actually worked for me. In future newsletters I’ll be sharing some of the things I did to build my writing practice and how I maintain it—some of them may work for you, too, and I’d love to hear what else does!

During the first year of the pandemic, I started to think about pursuing traditional publication. In 2021, I began writing the novel that will hopefully be my debut. I was considering whether I wanted to go for my MFA at that point, and while I decided it ultimately wasn’t the right call for me at that time, I began taking writing classes online (RIP Catapult classes) and working with the phenomenal Beth Weeks aka

betts

. If you’re looking for someone to give you notes on your work, help you apply for MFAs, provide guidance on the querying process, etc, you can find out more about her services here! I also wrote a testimonial for her

lkwrnl (lowkey writing-related newsletter)

.

Now that we have introductions out of the way…

Here’s what to expect from this substack:

I’m planning to post monthly, on first Fridays. Each installment will include what I’ve been reading and writing over the last month, updates on my writing practice and what I’m learning, and any other writerly news.

I’ve met some of my very favorite people in the world through online writing communities (shoutout to tumblr and reddit), so I hope this can be a forum to foster those relationships as well.

Issue #1!

Here we go! The rest of this newsletter should be a decent indication of the typical format and contents of Out of Practice going forward.

Here are the writerly things I’ve been up to in 2024 so far:

1. I turned in a final² draft of my novel WASP’S NEST to my agent!

2. I applied for two of the residencies I’ve budgeted to apply for this year (one rejection, one tbd—forging ahead!).

3. I read (a few craft books, some novels—more on that below).

4. I started drafting a new novel! It does have a title, but I’m keeping that to private channels for now. Henceforth I will refer to it publicly as Sibling Work-in-Progress, or Sibling WIP, to avoid confusing conversations such as “Hey, is this post about the new novel, or the new new novel?” “Actually, it’s about a newer new novel” (this is taken verbatim from a chat with my bestie).

5. I finished a rough draft of that novel!

6. I participated in the #mini1000! Check out the hashtag on twitter or Jami Attenberg’s substack to find out more. It was a great motivator as I worked through some sticky scenes in my draft. Writing is so often solitary, and while I love that much of the time, it’s wonderful to be able to connect with a wider community too. #1000wordsofsummer begins June 1!

April Writing Goals:

1. Revise the first section of Sibling WIP so I can share it with critique partners and my agent. This will be a big-picture revision, the first revision of many revisions to come.

2. Prep my third residency application of the year.

3. Read!

Practice Chats:

I tried a quick drafting technique for Sibling WIP.

Typically I draft by completing a section of the book, shoring up the plot points and character development, and then using that groundwork to draft the next section—this repeats with every new section of the book. This time, I wanted to get through the whole thing in a single draft, however messy and sketchy. Since writing a novel with a main character who’s a painter, I’ve been thinking a lot about drafts as “layers” (more on that in future newsletters). I’m still adjusting to drafting without circling back to revise, but I’m definitely learning to be less precious with my process.

Below are the goals I set to complete this draft. I was working from an 11-page/4000-word bullet outline, which guided me forward and helped me sustain momentum. I will note that I ended up taking a week off from drafting in mid-March, and that I ended up finishing my rough draft in just over 50,000 words, so the bottom third of the page is irrelevant. I ended up not drafting two scenes toward the end of the book (basically the final scene and the emotional climax between two of the POV characters—I may elaborate more on this choice later, I do have my reasons), but everything else is on the page in some form.

I like to set weekly or monthly goals instead of daily goals. This time around, I broke the week into weekdays and weekends. On weekdays, my only guaranteed writing time is my lunch break, and sometimes a brief period after 5 pm or after 9 pm, if I have the energy. On weekends I often have more dedicated time, so those goals are higher. And I built in zero word count days when I knew I would be too busy or otherwise not have the energy to write much or at all. I was not good at building in those zero days until recently, but it’s been key.

I should note: I’m an under-drafter on my first drafts. My first full draft of WASP’S NEST was a full 17k shorter than the version I queried (which was 89k), and that wasn’t even a rough draft—some of the scenes had been reworked and expanded six or seven times already.

Next time I post about Sibling WIP here, hopefully I will have done some revisions and shared opening pages with my agent and critique partners!

Reading list:

Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been reading/listening to this year so far:

• classics (The Price of Salt)

• contemporary fiction (Vacationland, Alice Sadie Celine, Sleeping with Friends, Beach Read, The Man of My Dreams, Big Little Lies)

• queer historical romance (A Lady for a Duke)

• craft books (The Art of Time in Fiction, The Art of Perspective, 1000 Words, Before and After the Book Deal). That last one was a re-read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to make a go at a writing career—the wonderful

  Kolina Cicero
  has a great review of it here!

What’s next:

I’ll be back in May with the next newsletter! I have some topics for future posts that I’d love to dive into (how I use scrivener, reverse outlining, my favorite querying resources, specific craft book reviews), and until then I’ll be posting updates on instagram and occasionally yelling into the void on twitter.

Are you working on any big writing projects? Are you an under-drafter or do you end up paring back your word count on subsequent drafts? Any goals, struggles, or wins you want to share? I’d love to hear about it, so drop a line in the comments!

Thank you for reading! You can subscribe to updates below if you’d like.

1. Apart from some very bad poetry—the chokehold cigarette smoke imagery had on eighteen-year-old me cannot be overstated.

2. Not final final, of course—we’re on submission to editors with the book now, and I’m looking forward to diving back into revisions if we’re lucky enough to get a book deal!