It started with a class and an idea I’d been gestating for years.

May 2020. A couple of months into the pandemic. A Saturday morning.

I’d signed up for an online class with the LA Writers group. It was one of those one off classes where the facilitator gives you a prompt, you write for 15 minutes, and then everyone has the opportunity to share their work.

I was initially nervous. I hadn’t taken a writing class in a while and sharing my work always felt scary. What if the other writers don’t like my writing? What if I embarrass myself?

The facilitator gave the first prompt. I wrote. People shared their stories after the allotted writing time. We gave feedback. I stayed quiet.

But the second prompt hit the *ping* of an idea that I’d been gestating for years. However, every time I wrote on the idea, it never sang true.

The writing prompt was: write about someone who uncovers a secret.

Let’s take a moment to go back to 2014, and a phone call with my Nana.

We got to talking about her childhood and how her parents never taught her Italian. They said she was an American girl, and American girls didn’t need to know Italian. The real impetus for their decision was that they wanted her to fit in, but also, when her parents wanted to keep a secret from her and her sister, they spoke to each other in Italian.

At sixteen, my Nana started attending the 6am mass at church before school, the only mass in Italian in her neighborhood, so she could learn the language and uncover her parents’ secrets.

She never became fluent, but she knew enough to teach us, her grandchildren a few choice words.

Back at the workshop, the facilitator started the timer, and I started writing about a girl named, Beattie, who goes to church to learn Italian, so that she can find out what her parents are talking about when they are speaking in their mother tongue.

I read my story to the other writers, who gave me great feedback. And I had the ah-ha moment that would be the crux of my first novel.

What if the secret that Beattie reveals is that her parents have a daughter they left behind in Italy?

I knew there were other parts of my Nana’s story that I wanted to weave into the novel. These were stories I had tried to tell time and again, but they never hit that beat that makes a story sing.

Maybe this was the chance to finally get it right.

After that writing class, I had a good think on my idea.

And then, a few days later, I took out my notebook and started, what I call, a word pour, which is essentially a detailed summary of a story.

I just let my brain dump out all of my ideas onto the page with no regard for punctuation or word choice. It truly was the most primal version of a rough draft. I included snippets of dialogue. But mostly, it was a place to get all of my ideas out, so that when I was ready to write the first draft, I had a soup that I could turn into something.

Also helpful in the process was finishing the word pour and typing into a document on my computer that became my novel outline.

I started writing the official novel in June of 2020 and was finished with my first draft in September of 2020.

How did I spend those few months writing the first draft?

Join me next Saturday where I tell you all about it.