Hello, writer,

Welcome back to Word to the Wise! Today, we're continuing the Meet the Author series, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to Kasia Manolas, author of Girl in the Dark Room and founder of the Feminist Thriller Club!

In 2022, Kasia founded Narrative, a content marketing agency that helps brands scale organically. In June 2023, she pitched her second novel—a thriller akin to Gone Girl—to thirteen agents and editors in NYC. All thirteen requested more material. Her Feminist Thriller Club launched in February 2024! You can learn more about her book and sign up for Kasia's newsletter on her website.

Tell me about your journey. What inspired you to write a book?

It all started with being an English Lit major. I knew that I loved reading books. But I feel like I was almost a closeted writer. I didn't even admit to myself that I was admiring these authors so much that I wished I could have that talent and acquire that skill set. I didn't admit that to myself for a very long time.

Then, it was my last semester of college, and I was bored in my apartment and I started writing for fun. I had such an experience of flow and focus. My roommate walked in the room and out of the room several times and I barely even recognized that somebody was there. I thought that was really fun, and that was probably the first time I admitted to myself that this was something special and maybe I wanted to write a book one day.

How long was it between that realization and writing Girl in the Dark Room?

It was a matter of months. I graduated college, and I started my first job, and I just hated it. I had graduated a year early, and I was living at home. I told my parents, “I want to take the year and write a book.” Thankfully, they were supportive! It became like a gap year.

It probably took me about six to nine months to finish the first draft of my first book, and it was exhilarating to realize I could finish something long form, that it came together, and it sort of had a plot and sort of had a message.

What strategies helped you sit down and get words on the page?

I quickly discovered that a word count goal was what worked really well for me, so if I finished that word count goal in an hour, amazing! The work is done for the day. It usually took me more like four to five hours. I also looked at the length for my genre. Usually, I shoot for 70,000 words and then say, “Okay, how many months do I want this to take me?” I divide it and figure out my five-day-a-week schedule. Hopefully, that’s something doable. It was like 1,400 words a day.

One tool that I've enjoyed using is Focusmate. If I'm having a hard time focusing, instead of procrastinating, cleaning the house, or going on Pinterest, I'll use Focusmate as a tool. Then I know, okay, somebody else is going to focus for these 25 minutes, 50 minutes, or 75 minutes with me. Those are some of my best writing sessions. I'm a paid user!

Was there anything you tried that didn't work?

Not with that book. But I've tried in subsequent years to like the idea of putting an appointment on your calendar. I tend to blow off appointments if they’re just with me.

What works better for me is having that word count goal. Then it becomes a challenge—if I want to get 1,400 words done today, I could do 200 with my morning coffee and 300 with lunch, or I could wake up early and finish it and be done for the day. Then my mind gets to start playing those exercises of how I want to get this done. If I put an appointment on my calendar, I'm like, “I'll do it later,” or I don't want to show up for it.

Were there any roadblocks you faced, and how did you deal with those?

The number one difficulty that I still encounter today is self-doubt. I'll question whether I should even be doing this, or writing a book, or wondering if I'm good enough. I will almost thwart my progress by ruminating about that.

In terms of craft, what has held me up is the plot. Something I've learned is that I am usually a pantser—I fly by the seat of my pants, and I'll write as I go. That's how I did my first book. With the second book, I did an outline, but the book needed to be completely restructured. I've rewritten my second book many, many times.

For the third book, when I get there, I'm learning that I'll go faster if I take way more time upfront doing character analysis, really building out their backstories and the things that trip me up when I'm writing. Even on a plot level, looking at how things should unfold, and putting much more thought into structure. It took me two books to fail and a lot of different ways to be like, “Oh, okay, the third time, I will do this a little bit differently.”

What has helped you with the self-doubt side of things?

One thing I've started doing is when I get positive feedback, I save it, and I try to look at that if I need a dose of inspiration.

If I'm rereading sections of my book, where I'm like, “Oof, I am not proud of this,” I'll go reread the parts that I think are strong, and I'll try my best to judge myself on the best sequences and not the worst. I know that there are good days and there are bad days, and I know what I'm capable of. And this is a draft—I can go back to any parts that I notice are sticky and fix them.

I try to remind myself that it's a skill set to recognize what's not working because somebody else might reread that and not realize what's not working. At the very least, I can identify it. That's the first step toward fixing it. I tried to reframe my sticky parts as things I can work on.

You've been sending your manuscript to agents and getting positive responses. What has that process been like?

One of the biggest things was going to writer’s conferences and paying attention to who was speaking. At Chicago’s Writers Conference, there's the opportunity to pay to pitch. I started off pitching in person. I would research who's there and who works in my genre. Who do I think I'd click with? I wouldn't want to purchase a ton of the sessions—they were expensive, so I would choose two or three people.

That was a good way, especially with my first book, to get feedback on the pitch and the idea of the book. I could ask, “Does this work?” and get to talk to agents in person. They're just humans, but it's more approachable than sending a cold email.

Are there conferences that you're still going to that you would recommend?

This is genre-specific, but I went to Thriller Fest in New York City last summer. It's an annual one, and it was a ton of fun, especially because it was genre-specific. We could all nerd out on certain topics. The agents were all looking for thrillers, and it was in New York City. There was a level of seriousness and professionalism about it. It was like, this is the hub of publishing. I enjoyed that one.

The writing community is the best community. Going to conferences and making reader and writer friends—it has my heart. This community is so, so good.

Where are you in the publishing process right now? What's the next step for you?

I've been in a season of pitching and then getting feedback and editing. Right now, I'm in that editing phase, and then I hope to go back out and pitch again. I try to pitch to two to three agents at a time and get highly targeted. I've been fortunate that when agents get back to me, even if it's a no, they'll give me feedback, which is so helpful. I take that feedback to heart, especially if several agents tell me the same thing.

I'm editing, and then I have a couple of people I'm hoping to get it back to. You never know how many seasons of pitch to edit you’ll have before somebody is interested in working together.

How do you take feedback from agents and editors and revise?

For bigger pieces of feedback that apply to the whole book, I'll sit with it and think about how this is showing up in the book. Sometimes it's structure, sometimes it's big, and that's hard to sit with. If beta readers leave me comments, I'll address them right in the manuscript.

Something that's helped me is using Trello. I'll take a piece of feedback and create a Trello task for it. Then, I can see my long list of edits. Sometimes, they're quick one-off things, and other times, they're more like, oh, my character needs more backstory. That's something for me to go back to, reread the chapter, and noodle on, but at least it gives me a sense of the tasks.

Edits can feel amorphous and intangible, and you're like, “I don't know how to approach this.” I'm often motivated to clear my to-do list, and it also gives me a tangible amount of things that need to be done.

Have you ever gotten conflicting feedback, and how do you navigate that?

I had an author read my book; I paid her to be a developmental editor. She had a great idea for how to approach kicking off the book and starting off the mystery on a different foot. I loved the idea, and I rewrote an entire draft with the idea. I pitched it and then had people tell me, “This isn't working.” I ended up going back to the original vision, but it was an interesting lesson in having a strong vision yourself.

Everyone's going to have ideas for how to improve upon it or change it. I don't necessarily regret changing it, but it was an interesting lesson in holding firm. I was excited about the idea, but maybe I would have been better off sticking to the original. It's hard to know until you experiment and try it out.

What is your next creative project? What's on the horizon?

I'm still focused on these edits, but I have some book three ideas. I haven't nailed down exactly what's next. I want to become more clear on my niche within the feminist thriller genre. What can readers expect from me?

A writer I'm interested in is Tana French, and something she does well is that all her books have mysteries, but ultimately, all the mysteries are so rooted in revealing the character. They're like character portraits. That's what I love. I'll read more Tana French books because I want that.

I'm still developing what readers will come to me for or what I want readers to love and come back for so that I can do that in all my books. Let's say Girl in the Dark Room is my first published book. How will those themes translate to a new book?

What is the number one piece of advice you would offer to another writer?

Oh, number one, for creative writing especially—I know when I got started, I felt kind of crazy. Like, I'm going to make up characters, and they're going to walk around this fake world and do fake shit. And I was like, “This is so crazy.” Give yourself permission to play. Writing fiction almost feels childish sometimes, but it's a really powerful artistic portal.

Have fun with it. Believe in yourself. These are things that I need to remind myself of from time to time. It's not that serious. Letting it be the art you want it to be can take some pressure off it.

You’re also the founder of the Feminist Thriller Club. What is that, how can people find it, and why should they join?

The origin story is more rooted in my business strategy and personal experience, one where I endlessly try to find what I should read next. What's the new hot book? I'm also equally trying to find what shows to watch next; I doom scroll on Netflix all the time. I think we all do.

That experience, coupled with going to these writer's conferences, meant I was hearing that one of the biggest problems for writers and publishers is marketing. My background is in marketing, so I started to think that if I wanted to be a strong writer when I pitched to agents, and if I wanted to sell thousands of copies, I should start marketing before I had a book to sell.

What better way than an email list? On social media, it’s sometimes hard to get in front of people because of the algorithm, but if I can get into people's inboxes and suggest what to read and watch next, then that's not only a smart marketing move for me, but it's also going to solve a problem for the subscribers.

The genre I'm in, which I'm calling feminist thrillers, isn't talked about widely among consumers. Media companies will call things feminist thrillers—we've had Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, Sharp Objects. I’m mostly listing Gillian Flynn's work here. It's different than other thrillers, right? It's different than Dan Brown's work, and it's because it has that feminist edge. That's not to say that only women read and watch these—men like Gone Girl, and that was a mass hit, but it certainly had feminist themes in it.

I thought it would be fun to give this genre more airtime and give consumers a word to identify themselves as feminist thriller fans, and then give them more of that. It’s at FeministThrillerClub.com, and the main thing is to subscribe to the newsletter. We launched in February, and we’re sending out one email a month. My goal is not to clutter people’s inboxes but to give people an opportunity to find some books, movies, and TV shows that we love.

On a similar note, what is the best book that you've read recently?

I'm a big fan of Jessica Knoll. Her latest book is called Bright Young Women.* It's a retelling of Ted Bundy's stories from the women's perspective. So often, people are glorifying Ted Bundy, but she really takes his victims’ lives seriously, paints them, and makes them full of color.

I loved chatting with Kasia about her writing process, Feminist Thriller Club, and her experiences with the publishing process! I can't wait to see her book in print, and I hope you follow along with her journey!

In the meantime, the 30-Day Writing Challenge is about to begin! Are you in?

I hope to see you there!

Until next time, happy writing! Bailey she/her/hers -- ​www.usethewritingdesk.com​ P.S. Are you enjoying Word to the Wise? Buy me a cup of tea to say thanks! ​ It's time to build better writing habits and get more words on the page. Here's how I can help: Sign up for the DIY 30-Day Writing Challenge and write every day for a month! Join me for the Back to School Writing Challenge! Schedule a Writing Strategy Audit, and we'll do a deep dive into your writing practices! Build and sustain a consistent writing practice with Get Unstuck Coaching!

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