Hey bookworms! Today I have a guest post from the author of Bachelor Girl, Kim van Alkemade, about her writing journey/experience. Check it out below and then have a look at the schedule to see what my fellow bloggers have in store for you today as well!

I’ve always loved writing, but until I was in my thirties, I spent most of my energies on academic writing. When I began to focus more on creative writing, I started publishing memoir essays in literary magazines. When I came across the material about orphans being subject to experimental X-ray treatments that inspired my first novel, Orphan #8, I was figuring out how to write a novel while I was doing it, so that took about five years altogether. I had already moved on to a second novel when I met the editor who published Orphan #8 at the New York Pitch Conference. I was really lucky to land such a great publisher, but of course that luck would never have happened without all the years of hard work. For my second novel, Bachelor Girl, the process was intensified because I had a publishing deadline before I even finished the first draft! I did learn that I can write faster and with more concentration than I ever knew, but I prefer to take a bit more time so I can enjoy the discoveries that come along with writing and revising a novel. I’m taking a semester away from my duties as a professor to focus on drafting my third novel.