{"id":147,"date":"2016-02-21T00:42:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-21T00:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/?p=147"},"modified":"2026-05-25T12:19:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:19:18","slug":"how-going-back-to-work-full-time-motivated-me-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/2016\/02\/how-going-back-to-work-full-time-motivated-me-to-write\/","title":{"rendered":"How Going Back to Work Full-time Gave Me Time to Write"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"painting<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Recently, I finished the latest revisions to my young adult manuscript after spending all fall putting it off even though I\u2019d reduced my time at work to 25% specifically to have more hours for writing. The energy and motivation came to me only after I was hired for a very demanding, new job, starting January 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess I\u2019d been discouraged. The hardest part about writing this story, and the reason I\u2019m doing it, is that it\u2019s true, not word-for-word true, but all of the events actually happened. It\u2019s the story of a fictional, 14-year-old Armenian boy, named Arakel, caught up in the genocide 100 years ago in the Ottoman Empire. It\u2019s not about any member of my family, but I feel I owe it to all of the people who suffered or died in the genocide to convey what they went through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arakel\u2019s nearly dying voice in the desert came to me clearly years ago. At public readings in San Francisco and Somerville, after receiving awards for the manuscript, I\u2019ve read from a chapter in the middle of the book where a camel caravan master picks Arakel up in the desert after he\u2019s spent the night in a cave filled with bones. I\u2019ve hardly revised that section since I first wrote it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how did Arakel feel before that, before he knew nearly all of his family, nearly all of the people in his town, nearly all of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were going to die? And where should I start the story so teenagers with no knowledge of the genocide or the Ottoman Empire could relate? I\u2019ve tried at least five different points in time, but none worked well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you write a book about the Holocaust, everyone knows what happened to Anne Frank. You don\u2019t have to explain who Hitler was. But the Armenian genocide is different. And it\u2019s not just teenagers who might not know. I received a query response from a literary agent on April 24, 2015 — the same day as the 100-year commemoration of the Armenian genocide, after the Pope had recognized the genocide, and the Armenian Church had canonized 1.5 million Armenian martyrs — and this agent suggested I rework the manuscript as a middle grade adventure. For the first and I hope the only time, I lost it with an agent and fired back an angry email. A lot of people died. This wasn\u2019t an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there I was, still revising Chapter One, still trying to create an instant connection with readers. My wonderful Critique Group stood by me with helpful suggestions, but by then they knew Arakel nearly as well as I did. I even hired Miss Snark\u2019s First Victim to comment on the first 30 pages. She was brutal: \u201cI\u2019m confused and not in a good way.\u201d And that was just her opening salvo. I won\u2019t repeat the rest, but she ended her critique by saying, \u201cI know you can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I had to try. When I reduced my time to 25% at the beginning of September, and my son went off to college, which I instantly wrote about and the Washington Post<\/em> picked it up for its \u201cOn Parenting\u201d Blog (\u201cMy college freshman and the very delayed first call home\u201d), I did not get right to work on my manuscript. Instead, I volunteered for added duties at a non-profit, worked out at my health club every day, even cleaned the house — anything other than write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then in December, when I got hired for a full-time job to start January 1, that\u2019s what did it. It was now or never. I had to finish. On an unusually warm December morning, I sat on a bench outside my favorite coffee shop in Cambridge, and the first line came to me. It was so obvious I couldn\u2019t believe I hadn\u2019t thought of it before. The rest fell into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day, I re-queried an agent, whom I\u2019d thought would be perfect, and right away, she requested the full manuscript. It\u2019s in her queue. Three months to wait. I can\u2019t get my hopes up. I\u2019ve been here before. I can\u2019t get too excited, but of course I am. I\u2019m hoping this time will really be it. I\u2019ll let you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I finished the latest revisions to my young adult manuscript after spending all fall putting it off even though I\u2019d reduced my time at work to 25% specifically to have more hours for writing. The energy and motivation came to me only after I was hired for a very demanding, new job, starting January […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","event_title":"","event_details":"","event_timezone":"","event_gmap":"","event_image":"","event_image_url":"","event_calendar_link":"","event_location":"","event_location_name":"","event_location_address":"","event_location_unit":"","event_location_city":"","event_location_state":"","event_location_country":"","event_location_zip":"","event_datetime_with_summary":"","event_datetime":"","event_date":"","event_time":"","event_date_type":"","event_rulesummary":"","event_ticket_rsvp":"","event_capacity":"","event_capacity_remaining":"","event_capacity_sold":"","event_sold_out":"","event_low_stock":"","event_ticket_count":"","event_ticket_summary":"","event_sales_start":"","event_sales_end":"","event_ticket_price_from":"","event_ticket_price_to":"","event_ticket_price_range":"","event_date_year":"","event_date_month":"","event_date_month_short":"","event_date_day":"","event_date_day_name":"","event_date_iso":"","event_rsvp_capacity":"","event_rsvp_remaining":"","event_rsvp_going":"","event_rsvp_full":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/woman-writing-1898.jpg?fit=1491%2C1461&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}