Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Guest Post: Ali Novak


Today on WinterHaven Books we have the amazing Ali Novak with us as part of the Sourebooks blog tour!  Tina just recently read her novel My Life with the Walter Boys and loved it and we are all so excited to read it too!  
Ali is stopping by to discuss her journey from writing online to being published.  Her insight is amazing and I am so glad she agreed to do this!  Check it out!

                                              From Writing Online to Published Print

The publishing journey for my book My Life with the Walter Boys can be described  in one word—long. Seven years long! I wrote the first version of the story when I was only fifteen. Piles of crammed notebooks and God only knows how many drafts  later, the book is finally being published.

It’s been a long time, but I can still remember the opening line of the original draft. It went like this: “Hey! My name is Jackie Howard and I’m a New York City girl.” Wow, just reading that makes me cringe. Of course, my fifteen-year-old self thought the story was better than sliced bread.

Since uploading the story to Wattpad in 2010, My Life with the Walter Boys has been read more than 29,000,000 times! Sometimes I just look at that number and I can’t even believe it, but I didn’t get my break until 2013 when Wattpad formed a partnership with the publishing company Sourcebooks.

I will never forget the moment I was officially offered my book deal. It happened when I was at work, and after reading the email I started bawling. Like snot dripping down my face and everything. All my coworkers thought something terrible had happened, when really I was on cloud nine.

Besides being a dream come true, publishing was a huge change for me. The transition from writing online to writing under a contract was challenging, mainly because of the deadlines. In the past, I always updated my stories whenever I had free time, which wasn’t often. Having a consistent writing schedule was a foreign concept to me, and suddenly I had to rewrite an entire novel in less than three months! Let’s just say I spent many long nights at my desk chugging coffee and cranking out new chapters.

There were plenty of perks too! The best part of my transition was the wonderful staff at Sourcebooks, mainly my editor Aubrey. I’ll be the first to admit I’m horrible at editing, so to have a pair of professional eyes look over the book really helped whip it into shape.

Now that My Life with the Walter Boys is being published, it’s weird to think that I’ll never edit the story again—especially considering I’ve been fiddling with it for seven years. But I can look back on my journey and know that writing this book made me the writer I am today. If there are any amateur writers reading this and wondering what they can do to accomplish their dreams, I suggest taking a chance and posting online. You never know what might happen!
                                                 Find Ali at: Wattpad / Facebook / Twitter

Ali thank you so so much for stopping by.  I am sure this will help tons of writers out there who are trying to get their own story published.


About Ali Novak:
Ali Novak is twenty-two-year-old debut author and a recent graduate from University of Madison Wisconsin's creative writing program. She wrote her first full-length novel My Life with the Walter Boys at the age of fifteen. Since posting the story online, it has received more than 24 million reads and will be published by Sourcebooks Fire in March 2014.

When she isn't writing, Ali enjoys watching Food Network shows even though she can't cook, and reading any type of fantasy novel she can get her hands on. She is a Wisconsin native and hopes to make a career out of writing.
My Life With The Walter Boys
Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble



1 comment:

  1. I remember reading this on Quizlet years ago. It was beautiful then and I'm sure it's even more so now. I never knew she got a book deal :). To amazon!

    ReplyDelete