“I’m not writing essays or how-to posts about writing,” I said adamantly during the kick-off call with my PR team for my debut novel, Buck’s Pantry. “I’m not qualified.” My wonderful BookSparks colleagues responded with a phrase I adore: If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

I love my PR team.

I breathed a sigh of relief and moved onto other things. The opportunity—to contribute to the Behind the Book series at SparkPress—came five months later and about six weeks before my pub date. The first thing I felt was a thrill to be asked. The second was pure panic. So, I paused. And in that pause began to wonder if perhaps my lack of background in writing might give me a unique perspective.

I’ve never attended a creative writing class. I had a career in the corporate world for years and only discovered writing when I quit and barreled straight into a crisis of self: What in the world am I going to do now?

Writing ensued—which is another story altogether.

The topic posed to me for this post is: Creating Strong Multiple Main Female Characters.

I think there are a million ways to do just about anything, including writing successfully. Some people do it in coffee shops, some barricade themselves in remote cabins. Some authors swear by outlines, writing schedules, and daily word count. Others find their rhythm and make progress without fixed structures. I firmly believe that there are as many ways to write successfully as there are writers creating stories. All I can share is my experience—if it resonates for you, wonderful. If it does not, forget it (and me) and move on. Find what works for you and trust that.

In both Buck’s Pantry and my upcoming novel, This Time Could Be Different (Fall 2023), I write from the point of view of multiple leading ladies.

I think I ended up—and that’s how it feels as I didn’t have a set plan—with multiple female characters because I find that switching point of views breaks up places that could otherwise become stagnant. There are plenty of wonderful books told from a single point of view, so again, this is only one way to go about telling a story.

It also became quickly apparent to me that I could use the differing viewpoints to present both sides of an issue. And to show the commonalities that can be found underneath even the most conflicting of surfaces.

For me, creating characters only works if I start with what I have directly experienced. Then it’s a matter of imagining the trajectory of roads that I chose to, perhaps, not take. Or ways that circumstances could have been different. Below is a bit about how the primary characters in Buck’s Pantry—Gillian, Lianna, and Aimee—came to be.

I grew up in Texas, so Gillian’s childhood was easy for me to conjure. If I had not chosen a corporate career and moved to the East Coast, I could have easily found myself in her life. Gillian’s coming to terms with the black-and-white view of the world that was always presented to her as “fact” versus perspective was something I experienced myself.

My first job out of college was with a company from the East Coast that had opened a satellite office in Dallas, staffed almost entirely by people from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland on temporary assignment. Every day I walked through those doors and felt as if I’d been transported to some world that was decidedly-not Texas. I thought they were all so rude!

Over time, those people became friends. And I had the entertainment of experiencing Texas through their eyes—like when a local catering company served chicken fried steak at a company-wide lunch. “Is it chicken? Or steak? Or both?” my colleagues asked, holding empty plates protectively against their chests.

I was transferred to that company’s headquarters on the East Coast and lived there for five years, feeling more separated from Texas each time I visited. So in this way, I understood Lianna.

Finally, Aimee’s family difficulties—while resurfaced in that beautiful way writing fiction allows us to do—stem from my own experiences with a mother suffering from mental illness.

So anyone whose head I’m going to inhabit in my writing has to begin in a place I’ve experienced, at least to some degree.

Then the story for each character, along with the overarching plot, begins to intertwine and grow as a whole. That’s how I usually end up with my first draft. Sometimes there may be little plot gaps I need to sort out, but I generally get the final shape in this way.

One of my favorite parts of early-revising is in creating all the little details that make each character so uniquely herself—ways of speaking, gestures, habits, etc. Often their back story gets deeper in this phase as well. Sometimes I may find that two different characters are using the same phrase or gesture. Then it’s simply a matter of identifying these places and making adjustments, so that each retains her individuality.

One piece of great advice I got from my first editor—a phenomenal teacher for me—was that differentiating the characters early is critical. In the beginning chapters, your reader doesn’t know these people the way that you do.  What can help is using elements the reader can easily identify—clothing, place (office, home), or situation (children or no children). Consider your own experiences as a reader, when you’ve found yourself flipping back through pages in frustration trying to figure out who’s who. Then look at ways the authors you enjoy make their characters clear. Editors and beta readers are helpful for this too.

Given that I am an author without a writing background, I’ll end with a few things I wish I could go back and tell my pre-published self:

You won’t know until you try. If you are reading this post, then at some point you’ve felt the pull—that gentle, sparkly tug to tell a story, to put words together. And the desire has become at least as strong as the certainty that such an idea is impossible. Foolish. A ridiculous waste of time or—more horrifying—a likely path into failure and humiliation. Or some combination of all the above.

I had those thoughts. I think every published author has had those thoughts. And the truth is, many people don’t succeed in the way they hope. But many do. You won’t know if you never write a line.

I started with a single scene. I had no outline, no title, no plot, just an idea. About one character. I sat down, and I wrote one scene. The next day, I rewrote that scene and a new one, too. The day after that, I wrote a few more.

Find strong editors (or writing coaches). I cannot stress this point enough. We all need help. And you’re never going to be published if you don’t show your writing to anyone. You’ll know whether edits feel like they make your writing stronger or take it in a direction that is no longer your voice or the story you want to tell. Good editors accept pushback and will work with you to find solutions that feel good to you.  I also think it’s important to make sure your edits are coming from credible sources—people who know and have had demonstrable success in the publishing world. My writing at the beginning of this journey was vastly different than the way I write today and that’s because I’ve found a team of strong editors. And a publishing home that fits me at SparkPress.

You don’t need everyone to love your book. It feels like you do, but you don’t. The sooner you find a way to come to terms with the fact that some people will not like what you write, the more at peace you’ll be. Criticism—or lack of connection to your writing—is never going to feel good. It’s important to find editors, beta readers, agents, publishers, etc. who enjoy the type of book that you’ve written. I think of it like being a chef. I could make an award-winning, nirvana-inducing chocolate cake. But eventually someone is going to come along who is allergic to chocolate. Or doesn’t like the texture of cake. Or has been on a juice cleanse for three days and is craving a savory meal. Or is finally succeeding in a weight-loss plan that doesn’t allow chocolate. The list goes on and on. None of those people are going to enjoy a chocolate cake in this moment (or maybe ever), no matter how amazing mine is. And it really has nothing to do with my cake. You will be astounded at how good it feels—at how over the moon you will be—when one single person reads and enjoys your story.