Which Book Was Hardest to Write?

+ EACH AND EVERY SPARK is on sale!

I’m sort of thinking of this summer in three phases. The first, where my daughter was in a musical and our days revolved around getting her to and from rehearsal, have come to an end. The next involves a lot of travel: my husband is taking my big kids to Colorado, I’m going to a writing retreat with a friend, and I’m typing this from a trip to our cabin up north, the same cabin we’re bringing friends back to in a few weeks. The third will be August, which we’ll be spending a chunk of abroad to see my husband’s family.

None of these phases are gifting me a ton of time to get work done, but I’m fairly used to that by now. I’m nothing if not nimble in terms of being able to rearrange my schedule, shove work into the corners of my days, and type with children at my feet. I think what’s helping me this summer in particular is the knowledge that come September, all three of my littles will be in school. What am I even going to do with all of that time?! Maybe I’ll get bangs!¹

Recently Susan Dennard made a list of books she’d written from easiest to hardest to write. It was really interesting to consider and I found it super interesting insight into the writing process—so I thought maybe you would, too. Or it was an exercise in creative narcissism. Who’s to say? ;)

For a few guideposts: I’m only ranking my published or about-to-be-published fiction projects (so, not the middle grade I’m currently drafting, and not the book projects that died on submission, and not the horrendous early books I scribbled out that live on my laptop!)

1. The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County, my first novel for adults that I’ve ever written. It’s about a celebrity chef and his family spending a summer in the Wisconsin Northwoods.

   1. The words, for lack of a less cliche-d term, just flew out of my fingertips for this one.

   2. It was also really refreshing just to write in a new genre. At this point in time, I was feeling a bit stifled by the middle grade genre and just needed something different to tackle in order to get the gears in my brain going again.

   3. The characters of Ivan, Cooper, and Cricket have been in my brain for literal years, so it was such a treat to be able to finally get them on paper.

      1. I once wrote a middle grade novel about the daughter of a famous chef moving in with her brother. That book didn’t work for various reasons, and was majorly reworked into Funeral Ladies. Just another examples of wrong books still being the right stories.

2. The Kate in Between, a middle grade novel about a girl who goes viral for doing a good deed—that wasn’t quite as it seemed.

   1. This story hinges on middle school mean-girl drama, and there are few things I’d consider myself more of an expert on. Again, I just *knew* the characters and knew what would happen next.

   2. There are a few characters who’ve been bouncing around in my head for literal decades—Taylor is one of them.

      1. Also, Sam (Kate’s dad) was reworked from a character in my first failed middle grade. The scene of her being dropped off at school in a police car was almost verbatim the opening scene from the novel I queried to get my agent, which never got published.

      2. And the opening scene of Kate is also an homage to one of my all-time favorite movies that defines part of my girlhood—Aquamarine.

   3. Also, writing about an MLM-obsessed mom was just a delight. It was so fun to name the makeup brand, write her Instagram, captions, etc.

      1. I’d like to dedicate the character of Casey to the girl from high school who DM’d me three days after giving birth asking if I wanted to buy her protein shakes to get my pre-baby body back. 😇

3. What Happened to Rachel Riley?, a middle grade novel about the new girl in school trying to discover why the former queen bee is now a social pariah.

   1. I’ve long wanted to write an epistolatory book, and it was really fun to be able to use things like emails and social media captions. It also helped move the story along when I would get stuck—I didn’t have to explain every little thing, I could let my characters do it through their correspondence.

   2. Mysteries were my favorite genre growing up, so it also brought up all of the nostalgic feels.

      1. If we were ranking covers, this book would be at the top—I love, love, love this cover and the interior design of the book. All of the mystery feels!

      2. I listened to so many ASMRs of Nancy Drew video games while drafting.

   3. Rachel Riley is definitely my heaviest middle grade novel but that’s actually fairly easy for me to write—I’m better at emotional-tearjerker-convos than silly-giggly-laughs.

   4. The hardest part of this book was definitely the timeline. I couldn’t keep straight who knew what when.

4. Each And Every Spark, a historical fiction story about a young girl in the French resistance in 1943.

   1. I ended up writing Spark the same way I wrote Take It From the Top (see below) — one perspective at a time. Penny’s perspective was quite easy. I understood her family dynamics, I totally understood her overly-cheerful dad and over-worked Mom, I know what it feels like to wander around a foreign country feeling lost.

   2. Marie, on the other hand, was so hard. I knew what would happen and I understood her character. The plot line had no issues. But THE RESEARCH. I knew it would be a ton of work, and I enjoyed it, but it was definitely harder than I thought.

      1. For instance: the train station. I knew what the station looked like, but not in 1943. I had to do a ton of squinting at old images. I have a whole letter on my research for the book planned for soon! I’m so glad that I wrote this book before I knew what ChatGPT was: my research was good old-fashioned travel, reading, and help from librarians. (Not that I would have used the robots anyway, to be clear, but it’s nice that I wasn’t tempted!)

      2. Or how they made ersatz coffee in 1943 Paris.

      3. Or how they would have mended stockings.

      4. Or when the bigger fear would have been the Milice vs. the Getsapo vs. starving.

      5. You get the idea.

5. Upcoming Adult Novel (title pending), the story of a Wisconsin family in the midst of selling their supper club when their middle daughter suddenly reappears after two years.

   1. Formerly known as Like a Mother and releasing in May of next year, my next adult novel whooped my butt. I had a few things to go on: I knew I wanted to discuss momfluencers and have a cult aspect. I also knew there was a supper club and tons of Wisconsin-y goodness involved. But there are a lot of characters and it was tricky to get them all fully-fleshed out.

      1. For instance: okay, the main character returns from a momfluencer cult. But why was she there in the first place? How can I get all of that depth and reasoning across when I also need to do it for the other narrators (her mom, sister, and sister-in-law)?

   2. Making the book stand out among the sea of commentary-on-modern-motherhood books also felt daunting. At one point in my career, someone trying to give me advice said that “nobody really needs to read any more about middle class white mom problems” but those are what I have. So I do! 🤷🏼‍♀️ Yet I knew what they were saying—there are a ton of books discussing that limited niche. How could I make this one feel different?

      1. And, like, what was I trying to say? Motherhood is hard? Okay, that’s been said nine million times. What else? What unique point could the main character have to learn? I’m proud of where it ended up but I deleted a lot of really corny sections in the editing process.

   3. I watched a ton of Ruby Franke body cam footage for research, as well as documentaries about wilderness camps for teens, and regularly wanted to throw up.

   4. Funeral Ladies had a Brideshead Revisited nod (blink and you’ll miss it) and this one has a slight Les Miserables homage. I love winking at my favorite classics when writing my very-contemporary books.

6. What Happens Next, a middle grade novel about a girl whose sister was recently sent to in-patient eating disorder treatment.

   1. On the one hand, Abby is another character who’s been in my mind for years and years.

   2. On the other hand, I had just had two middle grade books die on submission and was dying a bit on the inside. I felt like this book had! to! work!, which is not great for producing your best creative work.

   3. I had recently loved a mystery I’d read that was told backwards, where it turned out the narrator was actually the bad guy. I loved that idea and wanted to play with it in middle grade. But writing things backwards, while making them clear enough for an audience of children? That’s a yikes.

   4. This one also took quite a bit of research: I really loved the science-writing vibes of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish, and wanted to incorporate the same thing but with astronomy. Furthermore, I had to learn about eating disorders (I remember feeling so proud when the sensitivity reader hired by HarperCollins said the ED rep was excellent!) and ballet.

7. Take It From the Top

   1. I’ve written multiple times about how this book was very hard to write. I think it comes down to this: I really sold the idea of this book on vibes (summer camps! Musical theater! Famous brothers dating popstars!) without a lot of…for lack of a better word, depth. I was skimming the surface of a story without knowing what lies beneath. This is very, very bad for my process: dialogue feels flat, you’re not sure where things go next, and emotions are difficult to access because you don’t know what the heck anybody wants.

      1. I mean, okay: Eowyn wants to know why Jules is mad. But WHY? Why does she care why this girl is a jerk? Things can’t stop there. You have to get to the heart of a character. It took writing some really, really bad drafts to get to the meat of the story (that she was trying to earn her deceased mother’s approval, that she constantly felt on the outs because of a lack of family support, that she never really developed a firm sense of self because of her father’s all-consuming grief.)

   2. I also didn’t plan on having Jules’ POV in the book, but quickly realized I had to. Otherwise, she was just too unlikable. Once I decided to include her, I made the out-of-the-box choice to give her a present-tense-third-person POV while Eowyn had a past-tense-first-person POV. Sound bananas? It was.

   3. Timelines will be the death of me. Not only did I wrap in Jules’ perspective, but I did it completely out of order. I was trying to line up the emotional resonance of the story, which isn’t always linear (in other words, the girls’ friendship doesn’t track on a straight line you can graph). But it was so, so hard to keep everything lined up.

   4. Lastly—try writing a book about musical theater without ever having more than two consecutive lines featuring lyrics so you don’t have to involve legal. It ain’t for the faint of heart.

   5. What I learned: I can do hard things.

Moral of the story: is there one?

I think each book is incredibly different. You all know I hate book-baby metaphors, and it pains me to use one here, but: I’ve had to learn as a mom that each of my children is very different. They need different discipline, different amounts of alone time, different words of guidance. In a similar way, each story has required something different from me. It’s taught me new things and stretched my writing in new ways. You’ll notice that these books aren’t, at all, in writing order: it’s not like things have gotten easier or harder. Instead, each little tyrant I’ve tried to tackle has been its own machine, taking me on journeys I never could have expected.

Have you preordered Each and Every Spark yet? If not, what are you waiting for?! This historical fiction tale takes place in 1943 Paris and would be a great fit for your classroom library or your middle grader’s shelf.

I know, I know: it’s not actually out until February 2026. But preorders help authors so much (when publishers see there’s a lot of pre-pub date buzz for a book, it really helps with visibility) so if you’re going to buy the book, I so appreciate you doing it sooner rather than later.

Barnes and Noble members (it’s free to become a member!) are currently getting 25% off with code PREORDER25. Friday is the last day of the sale, so pull out your wishlist!

In other news, I’m already fairly booked for school visits next year, but I do have a few spots left for September, January, February, and March. Each and Every Spark in particular is a great book to craft a visit around—I’m really excited to share with students my research process, the difficulty of revisions, and how kids like them were instrumental in the victory in France! So I thought I’d take a minute to talk about why school visits from authors are such a great thing for students.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was old enough to knew what writing was. Truly: if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, at three years old, I would say I wanted to make books. It was my only dream. And I can still remember the author that came in elementary school, reading her books and doing illustration demos, that made me feel like it was actually possible. Like being a writer wasn’t just something people dreamed about, but something a normal, creative kid could actually one day do.

When I go on school visits, I meet kids every single time who excitedly tell me about their books. They ask me about plot lines and story structure. They even slip me a page or two, smiling shyly. They aren’t playing around. This is really, truly what they want to do: and they very well might. There is a huge difference between a well-meaning teacher telling kids they could really become a writer one day, and an actual author walking them through her create-a-character process in a workshop.

“I highly recommend Claire Swinarski as a visiting author for schools! Swinarski’s literary work is so relatable and neatly dovetails with middle school curriculum, stirring vibrant student discussions that engage pre-teens and teens with literature. We are always looking for ways to enhance our school library programming with our classroom teachers’ needs and bringing in an author like Claire truly enhances all we bring to our teachers and students alike!”

— Marie Perry, school librarian

For more details on my pricing and availability, please feel free to reach out on my website. (If you are in the lake country or Milwaukee areas of Wisconsin, I have special deals going on for February surrounding the release of my next middle grade novel—reach out ASAP to book.)

And lastly, a book (or two) I’ve loved lately for…

Picture book fans: Giovanni and the Fava Beans by Joseph P. Rulli is our current favorite bedtime read. The illustrations are so sweet, and it tells the legend around why beans are sometimes placed on St. Joseph altars.²

Middle graders: 10/10 for When the World Was Ours by Liz Kessler, a 3-perspective historical fiction taking place in WW2-era Austria. I will add the caveat that I don’t personally consider this middle grade; YMMV and you know your kids, but I would place it as a YA. It gets really violent and scary at the end (hi, World War 2). But a fantastic read I tackled in two days.

My kids recommend: Bridget (4) couldn’t get enough of The Beast Feast by Emma Yarlett when we went up north with my family. Shout out to my mom, who had to read it aloud approximately 1,000 times. Tess (7) began reading Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, a childhood favorite of mine that I almost get teary thinking about. It’s a Cinderella retelling where a young maiden is cursed to have to do whatever anyone tells her to. Benjamin (9) has been tearing through the Jedi Academy series, which is very on brand for him.

Adults: I really loved the grief memoir Grief is For People by Sloane Crosby, about a home robbery and her best friend’s suicide occurring one month apart. If you’re in publishing, you might be especially interested as the author works as a book publicist and talks about that work quite a bit. I also reread Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, which is a great summer read.

Thanks for reading along!

1. If you see me with bangs, please stage an intervention

2. I was sent this as a gift from Word on Fire Votive, but my opinion is 100% honest.