Guest post written by I’ll Be Waiting For You author Mariko Turk
Mariko Turk received her PhD in English from the University of Florida, with a concentration in children’s literature. She lives in Colorado with her husband and daughter. She is the author of The Other Side of Perfect and I’ll Be Waiting for You.
I love stories about stories. I love reading about how books come to life, from the first flicker of inspiration to the sometimes grueling, sometimes gratifying writing process to the final, shiny copy of the book heading out into the world. If you like those kinds of stories, too, and you’d like to read about how my upcoming book featuring a haunted hotel, metaphorical(?) ghosts, grief, and romance came into being, read on.
Inspiration: The Exciting Part
My family takes yearly trips to Estes Park, Colorado, and I’ve always been fascinated by this small town surrounded by the vast, 14,000-foot peaks of the Rocky Mountains. You know that feeling you get when you’re in a place that inspires you, the feeling that you have to write A Story even though you don’t know what kind yet? I didn’t have an inkling about plot or character at this point. But visiting Estes Park made me want to write a story that captured what it felt like to be there—a story that felt simultaneously small and epic, quiet and explosive, ordinary and surreal.
Glimmers of a Plot: The Fun Part
Estes Park is also home to the Stanley Hotel, which is famous for inspiring Stephen King to write the horror classic, The Shining. As I poked around the hotel, I started thinking about all the ways something can be haunted. There’s the horror movie kind of haunted, full of jump scares and blood and terrifying twin girls who ask you to come play with them forever. But a place can also be haunted in a metaphorical sense, full of memories and history and fears of a quieter, more personal kind. I realized that a haunted hotel in Estes Park was the perfect place to set a story about my own quiet fear—the one that has rattled around inside me ever since I can remember: death and what comes after.
I’ve always wanted to believe in an afterlife, but I never could. I’d watch horror movies and as the characters ran in fright from angry ghosts, I’d think: “okay, but at least they know a spirit world exists.” I’d be alone in my grandmother’s old basement, and as the feeling of an unseen presence watching me prickled my skin, I’d feel creeped out but hopeful, too. Because it meant that maybe, after we die, we don’t truly go away.
I thought that a haunted hotel in Estes Park would be the perfect setting for a book about this complex relationship with death and ghosts and grief. But in true “me” fashion, I didn’t want my main character to suffer too much. Originally, I pitched the idea to my agent as a story about Natalie, a girl who doesn’t believe in ghosts but who has that belief shaken when her crush (who was kind of an awful person) dies, and a medium from the local haunted hotel claims he’s sending her messages from beyond the grave.
My agent pointed out that the emotional punch was missing from that set-up. My protagonist didn’t have any deep connection with her handsome jerk of a crush, so when his potential “ghost” comes back, she probably wouldn’t feel anything except generally freaked out. It was, like everything my agent says, very wise and very true. So I got rid of the crush altogether, and the person Natalie deals with losing became her best friend, Imogen. Imogen, who believed wholeheartedly in ghosts. Imogen, who always believed in Natalie’s intelligence and potential, even when Natalie didn’t believe in it herself.
That’s when the lightbulb went off. Because when Imogen’s ghost—maybe, possibly—comes back, Natalie would feel all kinds of complex things. She would deny and believe, rationalize and wonder, despair and hope. She would ask herself: Are ghosts just manifestations of grief and memory? Or are they real and waiting to tell us they’re not truly gone?
Writing: The Hard Part
After I have a general idea of plot and character, I try to write a few chapters to figure out voice and the protagonist’s personality. I’ve tried to just think through this stuff in my head, but I can never figure it out without actually sitting down to write. The process was challenging but mostly enjoyable.
And then the pandemic hit. And then I had a baby. And my world fractured into a million anxious, sleep-deprived, mushy-with-love but also terrified-of-doing-anything-wrong pieces. My thoughts rocketed away from the story I was writing and into the multifaceted emotions of new motherhood. Can I really do this? I asked myself. My parents were so good at this, why aren’t I? My brother and sister-in-law make it look so joyful and easy, why doesn’t it feel that way for me?
And then I realized, maybe these thoughts aren’t so far away from my book after all. Doesn’t Natalie struggle with belief—not just in ghosts, but in herself? Natalie’s self-doubt became a bigger part of the story than I’d originally intended as I explored how Natalie both admired and compared herself to Imogen, and how, with Imogen gone, Natalie struggles even more to believe in herself. This aspect of Natalie’s character was there from the beginning, but my specific experiences as I wrote her story helped me understand it on a deeper level.
I love how every book we write is shaped by the moment in time that we write it.
Revising: My Favorite Part
I’ve always loved revising because you no longer have the overwhelming pressure of a blank page staring at you. You have a full story with a beginning, middle, and end, and now you can make it better: tie all the threads and deepen the emotions and make the words sing or whisper or cackle or shriek.
I love getting input from my brilliant editor on how to do all that. One of the main things she pointed out was that the romance in the book fell by the wayside sometimes and that there were several key romantic moments that could be heightened to bring out Natalie’s emotional journey even more. It made total sense to me. I was focusing so much on the grief and ghost angle that I forgot about this other character (the love interest) and how he could enrich and complicate those themes even more.
I usually sit with my editor’s feedback for a couple of days, and then organize it into an actionable list. Then I read over the entire book and make note of places where I can make changes according to the list. Then I dive in!
Letting Go: The Scary, Hopeful Part
It’s scary to write about your fears, and it’s overwhelming to write about them while going through an intense new experience. I’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU was an absolute rollercoaster to write. But it feels so personal, and I’m so proud of it. I hope it makes readers think about grief in new ways. I hope it gives them a gentle hand to hold as they feel impossible, overwhelming things. I hope it speaks to them in a tender voice, telling them it’s okay to believe in ghosts or not believe in ghosts or something in between, as long as you believe in yourself.
