Mid-Book Tour, Developmental Edits, and Family Road Trips— Writer Diary
Laura Stanfill is the author of Imagine a Door: A Writer's Guide to Unlocking Your Story, Choosing a Publishing Path, and Honoring the Creative Journey, which came out April 1. She runs Forest Avenue Press, a traditional literary press distributed by Publishers Group West, and a book publicity cohort project. She’s twice won an Oregon Literary Fellowship for publishing and Imagine a Door was partly funded by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council. She attended the Yale Publishing Course in 2018.
This week, Laura is on deadline with a developmental edit for her third book (second novel), The Neighborhood Dames, recently acquired by Ooligan Press. This is the last week of a four-week turnaround, so the pressure’s on! She’s doing what she teaches writers: pulling the story apart to address suggestions from the developmental edit letter at the foundational level instead of an easy surface polish. Whole chapters are being thrown out and replaced. A series of lies gets collapsed into one big lie. New scenes are being threaded into the empty places. She is also on a mid-book tour with Imagine a Door, parenting teenagers, taking care of the backyard food forest, and fielding marketing requests, metadata input, and cover design work for Forest Avenue.
MONDAY, June 16
5:40 AM: Wake up in a rented room in Bend, Oregon. My thirteen-year-old daughter and her bestie are still sleeping, so I sneak out to find a coffee shop that opens early. My developmental edits are due to Ooligan Press next Monday and I’m determined to nail this revision. I am so focused, I don’t even need my earplugs to tune out neighboring conversations.
9 AM: Rouse the crew. Yesterday I appeared at the Central Oregon Writers Guild, teaching a three-hour workshop on how to describe your book, as part of my Imagine a Door book tour. While I presented, the teens went on a scavenger hunt, ate lunch, and foraged for an iced coffee to keep me fueled. We’re all slow moving this morning. I insist the teens have breakfast and they agree to chocolate beignets.
10 AM: Take off on an adventure with Gerald Marcyk, author of Encounter (Emerald Books) and a publicity client of mine. We start with a visit to Sparks Lake, then to a hidden spring where the kids scrambled down a last bit of snowpack to stick their hands in the water and catch baby frogs. We marvel at all the pumice and obsidian. Devils Lake, also in Deschutes National Forest, is the kind of turquoise I marvel at.
1 PM: We stop at a restaurant in Sunriver for lunch. I’ve never had a better cold tomato soup! It was delightfully sweet and tangy. On the way through the restaurant, I chat with a solo diner who has a stack of books to keep him company. He’s a poet. Always reading, never publishing. We talk about how the work itself counts—not just where it lands.
3 PM: Our room doesn’t have wifi, which is great because I’m in my fourth and final week of this developmental edit and need to stay focused. I open my laptop and get back to work as the teens chat and laugh like the besties they are. When I take a break with my hotspot, I discover Jordan Rosenfeld’s article in Writer’s Digest is now out. She interviewed me a few months ago, and now my social media accounts are flooded with new followers. Which is exciting, but I have to get back to work.
5 PM: I take the teens to the last standing Blockbuster, which is full of nostalgic “Be Kind, Rewind” merch. My kid buys a clearance VHS tape.
6 PM: We head to a picnic dinner with my friends from Green City Books, also distributed by Publishers Group West like my press, Forest Avenue. This is classic me: even my vacation time, and my social events, have something to do with publishing. People wonder how I get so much done and it’s because besides parenting, almost everything I do falls under the book-life umbrella.
9 PM: I do a little more revision work before settling into reading and bedtime. I’m partway through the third and final volume in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves series, as handsold to me a few months ago by Alex at Literary Arts Bookstore. Obsessed.
TUESDAY, June 17
6:30 AM: I try a different local café for coffee. Ooligan gave me four weeks—a reasonable amount of time for a revision—but that timeframe happens to include graduation parties for my high school senior, end of year school activities for my younger child, hours of presentations I agreed to months ago, and this four-day adventure to Bend. Now it’s crunch time.
9:30 AM: We check out of our room and head to Drake Park and downtown Bend. After some wandering and snacks, we start the long drive home, over Mount Hood. Thankfully, my afternoon tea date with an author and a former publisher is postponed; I wasn’t sure how I’d do kid drop-offs and get back across the river for my meeting.
Noon: I spy an alpaca farm sign and it’s a teenager emergency: we must stop and pet these silly floofy creatures. We buy food at the gift shop. The alpacas are sun-warmed and excited to grab food off our palms with their lips.
2:30 PM: We drop off our borrowed teen and head home. I am too tired to think about my characters. My older teen is excited to have us home, but not as excited as the dog. Once we unpack the car, and I check on my garden, our food forest, and all my front-yard plants, I settle on the couch for another work session.
8:30 PM: Time to read and sleep.
WEDNESDAY, June 18
5 AM: Today’s my first completely quiet day in weeks! I have no appointments. Let’s get this revision kicked into high gear. After I read the news, I dig into the manuscript. I wrote the first draft of THE NEIGHBORHOOD DAMES in 2018 and I’m so excited it was acquired by Ooligan, a teaching press based at Portland State University. I’m enjoying seeing these big-picture edits bring the story closer to what I had always intended it to be.
7 AM: I tell the family they need to feed me all day and ignore me when they are not feeding me. This sort of works and sort of doesn’t.
9 AM: I send seven cover samples to Liz Prato for her novel in stories, Purgatoire, due out in spring 2026. These are all similar, based on Liz’s feedback, and each offers an incremental change in color, font, or cloud pattern.
10 AM: I walk with the neighbor, then the dog settles on my lap with a particularly delicious chew stick. The teens in my house are mostly not asking me for things, but they are talking around me. I used to not be able to write except in absolute silence. Sheltering in place during the pandemic taught me I needed to be less precious about my process—or I had to quit my creative pursuits. And I didn’t want to quit. So now I can work with, and through, interruptions. Which is a necessary skill every week of summer!
11 AM: Liz writes back with some cover thoughts. Then I take a nap with the dog. A long nap. With a neurodivergent brain, sleeping is often a necessary reset, especially if I’m starting to get a headache.
1 PM: I fix myself a sandwich and tea and get back to work.
2 PM: I can’t concentrate right now because a new song has appeared in my inbox from talented composer and former middle school teacher McLean Cannon, who I hired to bring my protagonist’s songs to life. “Lemon Loo-Loo,” like the other three he’s written so far, is based on my starter lyrics, but McLean revised and added to them, crafting a full-fledged, snappy tune. Violet Radford, protagonist of The Neighborhood Dames, is a Tin Pan Alley composer. I created lyrics when writing, but I really wanted them to work as songs, not just poem-like text on the page. McLean’s help has really been bringing this novel to life! Violet is aromantic and this new anti-love song is full of phases like this:
Let them spoon and croon off-key,
I’ll be fine with only me.
I plan to submit the four songs with my developmental edit on Monday. This is the fourth. Woot!
3:30 PM: Publishers Weekly nudges me about the assets that are due to promote Who Killed One the Gun? a debut mystery novel by Gigi Little, out this fall. I am excited about this galley giveaway because it includes the American Library Association Conference in late June. We love librarians at Forest Avenue, and it’ll be exciting to have Gigi’s book represented in Philadelphia. I met with Julia Molino of PW the previous week, when she was in Portland for ALA’s Children’s Institute.
4 PM: I listen to “Lemon Loo-Loo” again and then go visit the baby bunnies in our back yard food forest with my teenager. The burrow, a shallow trench in the peach guild, has been uncovered, the grass strewn everywhere and tangled with bunny fur. Did they outgrow the burrow? Did a crow or a hawk steal them?
7 PM: I take a bath, have a salad for dinner, and go to bed early. I need a lot of sleep during heavy writing and revising days.
Thursday, June 19
6:40 AM: I log into a writing class hosted by Diane Zinna and chat with her and her students for twenty minutes. Topics include Forest Avenue Press, how I work with my authors, and how my goal is to be a safe corridor for a manuscript as it moves from the heart into the commercial world.
7:45 AM: I walk the dog with our neighbor and her dog.
8:30 AM: I visit the food forest and pluck the first ripe blueberry. It’s sweet. A patch of currants has turned bright red. They are sweet-sour, and even prettier than the ripening gooseberries. Mama rabbit stares at me from a cluster of grass. I stay away from her nesting area. It’s a good sign, I think, that she’s still around. Her babies are hopefully hiding somewhere nearby.
8:45 AM: I settle in at the rainbow picnic table in my front yard. The neighbor children’s voices rise and fall. “Because you can’t wear the same thing you wore yesterday!” the mother calls, and it’s a conversation I’ve had a thousand times with my children. I wrestle with condensing a few chapters and updating the POVs before I lose a word. I have aphasia, from a 2014 brain injury, and I know what belongs on the page but can’t quite reach it. Invoke isn’t right. I close my eyes. The neighbor voices surge; I remind myself I can write with noise. One of the children is practicing dribbling a basketball. Smack, smack on the asphalt. Incorporated? Referred? I’ll use the latter, but it’s not what I wanted. Smack, smack. Maybe I’ll have time to go through again. Maybe next time the word will be there for me.
10 AM: It’s time for my first official non-obligatory, non-deadline related social occasion of the summer: coffee with a new friend! N. M. Ruiz is an author who works in publishing and we have so much in common. We meet at a mutual favorite coffee shop and only part after a dynamic, two-hour chat, promising another get-together soon.
Noon. I wander back into the food forest, too caffeinated and happy to put my head down and work. I water everything on the inside of the fence—it takes forever, with more than a hundred fruit trees, shrubs, and a full garden—and plant a few more starts I hadn’t gotten to before my Bend trip. The forest parts that are outside the fence will have to wait for tomorrow.
2:15 PM: My sister-in-law calls to talk about books! When I hang up, my older teenager wants to hang out with me! The hours are disappearing, but it’s so worth taking a break on revisions to spend time with these loved ones.
4 PM: Finally. That was a way-longer break than I expected. Back to work, now in the shade in the back yard, between a miniature weeping mulberry that hasn’t fruited yet and a Blueray blueberry, decorated with unripe green baubles. Usually I work on an outdoor mat on the other side of the yard, but that’s too close to where we found the bunny nest. When I look up the history of radio, to make sure it’s still too early in my historical novel revisions, I spy a name I know: Arthur Goldschmidt. My dad’s friend and mentor, who he knew as “Doc.”
6 PM: Another dog walk, another salad, more revision. I don’t believe in cosmetic developmental edits. So far I’ve cut about 15,000 words and written new ones. I have so much more to do before Monday. Including, I hope, a full-manuscript polish because I’ve changed so much.
FRIDAY, June 20
5:50 AM: Read the news. Get to work. I’m 4,392 words over the original length. And it was already a long novel. I have 75 pages left to revise. Even on the longest day of the year, it feels like I’m cutting it too close, having this much left to do before my Monday deadline. I can have until the end of the day Monday, right? Right?!
8:30 AM: Brain break! Time to take stock of the food forest and water the way back of the yard. I arrange a hangout day for my youngest that involves my transportation support. The mom knows I’m working and the kids will be walking places. The local pool is opening! It’s going to be a high of 58 degrees, but they don’t care. The ever-looming pile of dishes looks more dire knowing we’re having company, but my plants and trees need me more right now.
9:45 AM: I’m closing in on the end of the third section of my unconventional four-part novel. This is where a lot of my changes need to pay off. This is where I should get up and do the dishes. Instead, I stay settled on the couch with a warm dog and keep working.
Noonish: The rain and hail begins. Around 1 we lose power but it pops right back on. I wish I hadn’t spent a chunk of the morning watering. I hope the wind and hail doesn’t damage my tender plants. One that is in danger is the weeping mulberry, its tender trunk twisted so the new growth brushes the ground. I want to weep every day, reading the news. There’s so much to cry about. When the mulberry tree is a little bigger, assuming a bunny doesn’t sharpen its teeth on the trunk and break it, I will rest my head under there. The tree and I can weep together.
2 PM: The friend arrives—she gets dropped off after all—and I take her little sibling and mom to tour the food forest. My young friend wants to taste all the fruit. When I say they’re not ripe, they say, “That’s okay. I like them sour.” The kids decide on the indoor pool; the thunderstorm and hail has dissuaded them from the outdoor one. I stay home and work.
6 PM: Food cart dinner! It’s an easy guest option.
7 PM: I drive across town to drop off our guest. About an hour and a half later, I eat a late dinner of sauteed greens on a tortilla, then read and sleep.
Saturday, June 21
6:30 AM: I’m two days away from my deadline. My husband has seen the baby bunnies zooming around this morning. Hurray! I realize my metadata deadline was end of business day yesterday, and data needs to feed out on Monday, so I have to catch up on that today or tomorrow. I don’t consider this missing the deadline, because end of day Friday is really before Monday start of business. I would have done it yesterday but we had company, and I still need to assign ISBNs to my spring titles, which makes the process a little more time intensive. I love metadata! But how did this deadline sneak away from me? Usually I’m on top of it.
10:45 AM: I meet Janet Clare, author of True Home (Vine Leaves Press), at her hotel and we walk to the Urban Farmer, a restaurant inside The Nines. Janet made up a Nines hotel when writing her book, which is mostly set in Oregon, and it feels as if she’s manifested this moment! We have a luxurious brunch and chat about our event this evening.
1 PM: I make it home in time to make sure my youngest is fed and has molded her mouthguard for roller derby at Rose City Rollers. Today is an hourlong practice followed by a scrimmage, and two of her best friends are playing with the older division for the first time. I sit in the bleachers to cheer for the age-up players and visit with their parents.
4 PM: I snack and jot down questions to ask Janet tonight at Bold Coffee & Books. She’s in town from LA to promote True Home, and we have an hour and a half to fill. I work on my revision some more, have a bit more dinner-ish food, and head out the door.
7:30 PM: We start our author conversation at Bold Coffee & Books a bit late because not only is it freezing and stormy weather, what we call Juneuary here in Portland, there’s a Thorns game nearby. Parking is tight. The weather counts against us, crowd-wise, but some of my favorite literary folks are here, and we have a delightful, organic conversation. Not too scripted. Genuine.
10 PM: Read and sleep. One more full day until I hit my deadline! I have been too cold and too busy all day to even think about celebrating the solstice.
SUNDAY, June 22
7 AM: I slept in! I read the news and work on The Neighborhood Dames until my dog walk at 8:30.
10 AM: Forty pages from the end. I can do this. And then I will take whatever time I have left on Monday to go through all the comments and highlighted parts and build a timeline. It’s not going to be perfect, but I can see I’m going to make it. I think.
11 AM: I have chronic pain and it’s high today, so my brain goes, stop! Drop! Nap!
NOON: Back awake to see Liz Prato has chosen her favorite cover for Purgatoire. The latest batch of samples are all very similar, with slight adjustments to font and color. It’s exciting to have a confirmed favorite! Now I’ll send the image to our sales team at Publishers Group West for feedback. I move to the rainbow picnic table for more editing.
1:50 PM: Another batch of covers arrives, this time for Vincent Chu, whose novel Nice Places is forthcoming next spring. I love cover days and seeing what my designer has put together! I send the samples to Vincent and get back to work.
3:45 PM: My laptop is almost out of battery, so I invite my neighbor for food forest tour. We sample currants bursting with flavor, marvel at the pineapple guava flowers, and tsk over the new mole mounds.
5 PM: Twenty pages left! And time for another dog walk.
6:40 PM: Two pages from the end! I’m so close. My youngest comes to the rainbow table with “triple cooked” French fries she’s been working on all afternoon. The taster is delicious. She brings me a bowl and I savor them as I get to the end of my manuscript and turn back to the first page.
7:30 PM: The family eats with me at the rainbow picnic table. I’m almost there, I tell them! One more day. I estimate I’ve cut around 10,000 words and added 15,000, but I am determined to cut another 3,000 to 5,000 words before the end of tomorrow: deadline! And once I hit that, it’s back to my clogged email inbox, deciding on the last few submissions from our 2025 open period, more publicity for Who Killed One the Gun?, and sending a desk copy of Imagine a Door to an MFA program that requested it, plus, when I can take a breath, I’ll get back to the middle-grade novel I’m writing.
