Kathie Giorgio

FIFTEEN BOOKS IN FOURTEEN YEARS 

(and counting!)

I’m one of those writers, the ones who know from an early age what they want to do, and then they do it. I’m told I was telling stories before I could actually write, and then once I could write, that was all I wanted to do.

I sold my first short story at the age of 15. I’d written out the story of Christ in 1970’s slang (it was 1975). With my young and limited experience, the only place I could think of to send it to was the Catholic Herald Citizen, who promptly divided it into four pieces and published it as a serial. I was thrilled!

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Over the next years, I sold many short stories and poems, but the novel remained elusive, much to my frustration. I went through a total of four agents before I gave up and decided to market my latest book myself. Not as a self-published book, but to the small presses. I never ever believed that a writer should pay to have their own work published. We’ve already done the work by writing…we should be paid for it.

It took me just under a year, but I placed that first novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, in 2010 and it was released in 2011, when I was fifty years old. From my first story at fifteen to my first novel at fifty was quite the roller coaster ride. But what happened then was incredible – 14 more books, for a total of 15, in 14 years. 8 novels, 2 short story collections, 4 poetry collections, and [a] collection of essays. The years of publication: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2 in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2 in 2019, 2020, 2 in 2022, 2023…and 2024. Looking at those years, even though I experienced it, even my eyes boggle. 

So how did I do it? 

First, let’s look at the hard stuff. The internal stuff, the attitude. This is what you have to do – and feel – if you want to produce books in a timely manner.

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DETERMINATION

Never give up. Give every idea a chance. You often hear that writers have to have a thick skin, and that’s absolutely true. But I modify that. When the hard hits come – and they will – give yourself no more than 48 hours to sulk. But do give yourself the 48 hours. It’s human to feel like the world is against you, or worse, that the world might be right and you should never have taken up writing at all. But at the end of that 48 hours, get back to work. Send the poem, story, novel, memoir, essay out again. I never give up on a piece until it’s been rejected 10 times. Then I look at it again, make modifications if necessary, and send it back out.

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DISCIPLINE

Take a hard look at your schedule and figure out when you can write. Recognize that it doesn’t have to be a big block of time, but can be in pieces throughout the day. I have students who write on their lunch hours and coffee breaks. Others write while they take the bus or train back and forth to work. Some, who know they would never stick with an early morning or late night schedule, instead get up and write for a half-hour before their alarm would normally go off, and they stay up a half-hour later, thus getting in a full hour of writing every day, but not missing that much sleep. Dump the idea that you have to write for hours and hours at a time. There is time in everyone’s schedules. I’ve produced these books and stories and poems and essays all while running my studio, All Writers’ Workplace & Workshop LLC, teaching an average of 85 hours a week. I also did it while raising four kids and going to graduate school. It can be done.

WORK HARD!

As I work with students, I wait for the moment when they turn to me with wide eyes and say, “This is hard work!” YES! All of the representations of writers staring dreamily into space, receiving gifts from their muses, and smiling before, during, and after writing is a fallacy. Writing is hard work. Don’t expect it to come easy.

Now, let’s look at the actual timing of my books. There was a method to my madness.

By the time I sold The Home For Wayward Clocks, it had been making the rounds for three years, counting the time with two agents and then with just me. By the time I sold the book, I already had the next book, a short story collection called Enlarged Hearts, written. The Home For Wayward Clocks was in production for a year, and as soon as it came out, I turned over Enlarged Hearts to the publisher. For the year that Clocks was in production, and then the year that Hearts was in production, I was writing the next book, Learning To Tell (A Life)Time, the sequel to Clocks. So this means we have:

2011: The Home For Wayward Clocks (novel)

2012: Enlarged Hearts (short story collection)

2013: Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (novel)

But while it looks like I was writing a book a year, I wasn’t. I spent the two years leading up to the releases of Clocks and Hearts on Lifetime. Clocks actually took me 3 years to write, Hearts took 2 years, and Lifetime took 2 years. 

Then we have a passage of 2 years, from 2013 to 2015, before we have:

2015: Rise From The River (novel)

2 years to write River. When River came out, I’d just started on the next book, and I knew by then that I typically take at least 2 years to write a book. But I wanted something out sooner than that, and so I compiled many of my short stories that appeared in literary magazines, plus some “never before seen’s”. I also put together a poetry chapbook, with poems that were already written. Consequently, we then have:

2016: Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories of Kathie Giorgio and

2016: True Light Falls In Many Forms (poetry chapbook)

Two books out in 2016, that I already had written. Which then gave me from 2015 to 2017 for:

2017: In Grace’s Time (novel)

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And again, I was working on the next novel, but knew it would be 2 years before it was done. But something weird happened, that I did not plan. At the very end of 2016, I started  writing a blog. It was the result of my being assaulted which led to a pretty deep depression. I began to write a blog called Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News, in which I put down one moment a day that made me smile. 2017 was a challenging year, starting with the assault, then my husband losing his job twice, my daughter being so severely bullied, we had to move her to a new high school, and my being diagnosed with breast cancer. The blog became very popular, and at the end of the year (I’d vowed to write in it every day for a year), my followers said, “Kathie, it’s going to be a book, isn’t it?” And my publisher said, “Kathie, it’s going to be a book, isn’t it?” And so we have:

2018: Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Collection of Spontaneous  

          Essays

A book which was already written throughout the year before.

Now, while I’d been writing the blog, and in the year Today’s Moment was in production, I worked on yet another novel. I also put together another poetry chapbook, from poems that were already written. Which meant we then go to:

2019: If You Tame Me (novel) and

2019: When You Finally Said No (poetry chapbook)

Whew. Now again, by the time these two books came out, I was working on another novel. But I needed the usual 2 years to get it done. So while working on that novel, I compiled my poetry that had not been published in the two chapbooks and put them into a full-length collection of poems, many of which had been published in magazines. So we have:

2020: No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (poetry collection)

Which meant I had from 2020 to 2022 to put out my next novel:

2022: All Told (novel)

I also put together another poetry chapbook, made up of a collection of haiku that I wrote during the month of April a year or so before. April is National Poetry Month, and also Autism Awareness Month. My daughter is autistic. So I wrote a haiku a day during that April, celebrating my daughter. Months after All Told, but still in 2022, we have:

2022: Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku (poetry chapbook)

I had from 2021 (while All Told and then Olivia In Five, Seven, Five were in production) to 2023 to write my next novel, novel #7, book #14:

2023: Hope Always Rises (novel)

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This brings us to now, when I had the year that Hope Always Rises was in production (2022) and the year it was released (2023) to write my most recent novel, just released on 10/03/24:

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2024: Don’t Let Me Keep You (novel)

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And that’s how I published 15 books in 14 years, all with traditional presses, starting at the age of 50. I’d like to say I did it without breaking a sweat, but oh, I broke and broke and broke again.

It always pays to think outside of the box. While you’re working on your next book, what do you have already written that could be put into a collection? And also, always, always, always write the short stuff. Short stories, poems, essays, short memoir; appearing in magazines and anthologies builds up your writing resume, your reputation, and your readership. Throughout these 14 years, I was consistently publishing in magazines and anthologies. My name was always out there somewhere.

And yes, I am already working on my next novel. And another book of poetry. 16 books in 15 years? Maybe 17? We’ll see.

I hope this helps. Don’t ever give up.