Writing a Trilogy - in the Midst of Real Life

It was quite the week. On a Tuesday morning (May 2, to be exact), anxiety over a knot of deadlines got me up at four o’clock in the morning. Spread across the dining room table were the page proofs for the second novel in my mystery series, The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm, which will be out this September.

Then, with the book pages dispatched, I sat down at my desk to re-read the final scene of the third novel in my series, The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery, which will be published in 2024. Finally satisfied with what I had written, I hit the send button, and off the manuscript went to my editor.

A few days later, I did a podcast interview to continue promoting my first novel in the series, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor (published in September 2022).

Book 1, Book 2, Book 3—promoting, editing, and writing. And all at the same time.

Although I remain incredibly grateful to my publisher, Woodhall Press, for believing that my first novel could, indeed, launch a series, I have often found myself stretched to the limit. It’s not the writing, necessarily—it’s life that keeps getting in the way.

When my publisher offered me a three-book deal, the first book was already completed and required fairly minor edits. I launched into the sequel and submitted that manuscript months ahead of schedule.

Then my sister died in early 2022, and I became executor of her estate and trustee of the special needs trust for her daughter. I don’t mention this to elicit sympathy, but to reflect on what we all experience as writers. We don’t write in spite of life—we write in the midst of it.

Early mornings and weekends are my prime writing times. But as I worked on the third manuscript, that rhythm kept getting broken by a multitude of demands, including my day job as a corporate communications consultant. Not to mention my grief.

Finally, I had to accept—even embrace—the messiness of it all so I could regain clarity. Here are a few thoughts:

• Don’t stop. Yes, I could have given the positive message of “keep going.” But don’t stop is really what I mean. For months, I complained about not having the necessary mental bandwidth, until I gave my brain a rest. I wrote for shorter sessions and treated myself to long hikes and runs along the trails near our home. I didn’t stop; I merely changed my pace.
• Keep dreaming. And I’m not just talking about aspirations. I wasn’t sleeping well, so my writing didn’t flow. An herbalist I know assured me that, when my sleep improved, my writing would be back on track. I finally got a decent night’s sleep—and literally dreamed up a new character for book 3.
• Write about it—all of it. Across the mystery series, my protagonist—librarian-authenticator Gabriela Domenici—finally moves out of her head and into her heart. In the third book, Gabriela shows an array of emotions—love for her life partner, fear when he is accused of a serious crime, anger at and distrust of others around her, sadness that the life she longs for could be taken away from her, and more. I believe I was able to portray that emotional complexity for the simple fact that while I was writing I had to juggle so many feelings. I know what it’s like to leave a book signing feeling giddy—and then confront my grief and even guilt.

The adage “write what you know” applies as much to our internal world as our external one. If life is going to influence, inspire, thwart, and confound what we write, then we might as well use it to our advantage.

Patricia Crisafulli is the author of The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor (Woodhall Press, 2022), which is based on her creative thesis when she received her MFA from Northwestern in 2017. The sequel, The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm, will be published this fall, also by Woodhall Press, and the third book in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series, The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery, will appear in 2024.