 Where do you get your ideas? I’m asked this question a lot at events, and I never quite know what to say because the very truthful, very unhelpful answer is: everywhere.
From movies, TV shows, books, video games, walks in the woods, travels across the ocean, adventures in foreign cities, the quality of rain on the streets, conversations that last into the night, art, music, feelings. In my experience, inspiration can and does come from anywhere, from anything that strikes me, moves me, sways me from wherever I was before to who I could be. But ideas are a dime a dozen. They wink and sparkle and distract. They pile up in drawers and hard drives: ten pages, fifty, unfinished outlines, half-plotted quests, characters without stories to inhabit. Getting an idea is easy. Settling on the idea that I need to pursue, the one that haunts me, the one that I’ll keep chipping away at, even when the work is hard, even when it feels like I’m going nowhere, even when I know it would be easier to give up, that’s the real trick. Personally, I can’t figure that out without time and a little magic. You know, that magic that happens when all your inspirations and ideas get inside of you, when all the disparate sounds, textures, and flavors of your experience get shaken up in the great tumbler of your chest, fusing and combining in all sorts of unexpected ways. That’s one of the beautiful things about art, I think. That wholly individual synthesis. For me, that synthesis takes time. I’ve learned that my ideas have to percolate for years before I can even begin work on them. They’re there--I can feel them bubbling quietly in the back of my mind--but I don’t look directly at them. Maybe I’ll daydream about them as I drift off to sleep or scribble down a character name or a piece of the world-building here and there. I’ll add these things to the simmer. Continue not to look. Wait. See what sticks. The Reader Trilogy, for example, came out of a long and unlikely confluence of Things That Wouldn’t Let Me Go:
It was years of experiences. Years of ideas. An outlaw with an honor code. A magic book. A fantasy heroine that looked like me. An ending that would rip your heart out. I jotted down the first sentences of what would become The Reader in 2008. I didn’t finish the first draft until 2014, ten years after the story’s first character came to me (it was Captain Reed, if you're wondering!). I had a lot of fears while I was working on The Reader. Would I get an agent? Would it sell? Would anyone understand it? Would it find a place out there, in readers’ hearts? But the one thing I never feared was that someone would write it before I could. Because putting together these inspirations in this way? That could only be done by me, and it just took time before I figured out how to combine them, how to synthesize them with my wholly individual magic. See, I think ideas get shaken up inside you, and when they emerge again, at your fingertips, they’re something totally new, something only you could have made. Is this process slow? Oh yeah. At any given time, I only have two or three books inside me: the one I’m actively working on; the one that’s slowly taking shape, like some creature out of the primordial ooze; and a flicker of an idea that’s little more than a premise (or sometimes not even that). But for me, these slow-cooker ideas are the only ones worth pursuing. Actually, I think they’re the only ideas I can pursue, the only ones that I can sustain over the year or three or ten that it will take to bring them into the world. It’s the ideas haunt me, before I’ve even started working on them, that are the ones I know I can make into books. My current project, for example, has been floating inside me, like wisps of cloud, for years. I remember capturing the first piece of it when I was twelve years old, even though I didn’t start serious research on it until 2015, and the story didn’t coalesce until 2018, when I finally figured out how to write it in the way only I could. Of course, it probably doesn’t work this way for everyone. Other people have six novel ideas cooking at once. Other people can write two or three or five books in a year. In the past, I’ve wondered what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I produce like that? What if I only had one story in me to tell? Why am I so slow? But the more I come to understand my process, the gentler I am with myself. Because this is my process--this is how the work gets done, how the art gets made--at least for now, and I’m learning to embrace it. If you’re like me, and you’re reading this, I hope it gives you a little more patience with yourself and your muse. I hope you believe in the magic inside of you, the experience and perspective that only you can fuse into something wholly and beautifully new. I hope you write the stories that won’t let you go, and make the things that only you can make. Next week: REFILLING THE WELL. I just turned in a project, and I’m in desperate need of a brain break! What do you do to recover your creative energy? Do you have any restorative practices that keep you from burnout? Where do you go to feed your muse? What rejuvenates you as an artist? How do you refuel yourself between projects? Come sit with me next Sunday at tracichee.com and/or post your own responses with the hashtag #workandprocess. As my friend Steve Stormoen, author of The Pros comics says, love and solidarity. <3 Work and Process is a year-long journey of exploring and reflecting on the artistic process, craft, and working in a creative field. Each Sunday, I’ll post some thoughts, wonderings, explanations, and explorations on writing and creativity, and by the end of it, I hope to have 52 musings/examinations/meanderings/discoveries/bits of joy or inquisitiveness or knowledge to share. In each post, I’ll also include a topic for the following week, so if you happen to be inspired to question/wonder at/consider your own work and process, you’re welcome to join me. We’ll be using the #workandprocess hashtag across all social media platforms, and I hope we find each other to learn and connect and transform on our creative wanderings.  I’ve been thinking seriously about writing and the craft of writing since I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz in 2007 (longer if you count the hours I put in during middle and high school), and I am still in love with it. The process, I mean. The challenge. The work of art. Every year, I’ve gained new skills, refined old ones, attempted and aspired to things I didn’t know could be done with the written word. They say every book teaches you how to write it, and I’ve found that to be true. Each story I write (even the ones that will never see the light of day) teaches me something new about writing. And I dearly hope I never stop learning.
I’ve actually been wanting to write about writing and art and work and the creative life for years now. I’ve been tempted to make Twitter threads on voice or teach a class on foreshadowing or share techniques and tricks I think could be helpful to other writers out there. But I never could seem to carve out the time, the energy, the space to do it properly, to give my craft the thought and care I think it deserves. Then I saw my friend and fellow creator, Wes Sam-Bruce, posting at Where the Questions Live weekly meditations on art, nature, wonder, and the myriad, complex, exquisite relationships between people and each other and people and the world, and I was inspired. What ambition! What time and thought and care it must take to create something like this every week to such beautiful results! (Click the link above to read through some of the meditations and visit Live the Curious Life to see more of Wes’s art.) There’s a practice, at the beginning of a new year, of choosing a word, an idea, an intention that will focus and guide you toward who you want to be and what you want your life to look like over the next 365 days. This year, mine is breathe. Those of you who know me know I get so caught up in doing things: writing, revising, trying new recipes, learning to garden, redecorating my living space. And I never give myself enough time/energy/space to breathe. To be present. To celebrate. Or savor. To live in the world, right here, right now. Enter: Work and Process, a year-long journey of exploring and reflecting on the artistic process, craft, and working in a creative field. Each Sunday, I’ll post some thoughts, wonderings, explanations, and explorations on writing and creativity, and by the end of it, I hope to have 52 musings/examinations/meanderings/discoveries/bits of joy or inquisitiveness or knowledge to share. In each post, I’ll also include a topic for the following week, so if you happen to be inspired to question/wonder at/consider your own work and process, you’re welcome to join me. We’ll be using the #workandprocess hashtag across all social media platforms, and I hope we find each other to learn and connect and transform on our creative wanderings. On the one hand, this project is yet another thing to do, another chore, perhaps, but I hope it’s more than that. I hope it becomes not another item on my To Do list but a more rejuvenating practice that ultimately connects me more deeply to my art, my muse, my work, and my reading and writing community. I hope it’s something that teaches me to pause. To dream. To exhale. To nurture my creative soul. To share what I’ve learned. To investigate what I haven’t. To think about where I’ve been, how I got here, where I’m going, who I am, and who I want to be. To work and to process and to savor them both. Next week: GENESIS. What sparks your creativity? What sowed the first seed of your current work in progress? Where do you get your ideas? What makes a project so captivating that you’re willing to pour years of your life into it? How do you open yourself up to new creative endeavors? How do you choose an artistic path to walk? What really makes you want to sink your teeth into an idea? Join me next Sunday at tracichee.com and/or post your own responses with the hashtag #workandprocess. Let’s go. <3  Happy launch day, little book! ️❤️ I have spent ten years with you, dreaming you up, writing you into existence, and now you’re out there, in the world, finding your readers. And even though our time together is over, I find comfort in the thought that stories, as long as they’re shared, are never really done. People, as long as we carry them in our hearts, are never really gone. They live on in the reading, in the loving, and in passing them on. So into the world, little book! As always, I hope you find the readers who need you. ️❤️
. My undying gratitude to my editor, Stacey Barney, and the entire team at Penguin, for taking this journey with me, and to all the innumerable people who have encouraged and supported me along the way. ❤️️ I couldn’t have done this without you. . And last but never least, thank you, dear readers, because Kelanna is yours now—the characters, the adventures, the tall tales. Please take good care of them for me. ️❤️ . Still need to pick up your copy? Try Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indie Bound!  One more sleep till THE STORYTELLER! ⚡️ That means it’s your last day to preorder (Indie Bound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon) and submit your receipt for a stunning engraved bookmark!
⚡️ Can’t wait to read? I’m revealing quotes on my Instagram—come play! 📕  Hi ho, readers, what are you looking forward to today? The release of THE STORYTELLER in EIGHT DAYS? 🌊 A blueberry muffin or another delicious treat? 🍩🍷🍓 One of the amazing Asian-authored YAs releasing TOMORROW, like Julie Dao's KINGDOM OF THE BLAZING PHOENIX, Emiko Jean's EMPRESS OF ALL SEASONS, Natasha Ngan's GIRLS OF PAPER AND FIRE, Livia Blackburne's UMBERTOUCHED, and Lydia Kang's TOXIC? 👸🏻👸🏻👸🏻👸🏻👸🏻 Or, if you’re in the US, CASTING YOUR VOTE? 👍🏼
Get out there and seek some adventures, readers! And vote! Unless you have already, in which case, thank you! 🌈  Three 🌟 stars 🌟 for 🌟 #TheStoryteller! 📕 The lovely folks at School Library Journal call it “a fast-paced adventure with fully developed characters.” And only THIRTEEN MORE DAYS until it hits shelves! ⚡️ Thanks SLJ!!!
 TWO WEEKS until the launch of The Storyteller! Thank you to everyone who came out to see me at Texas Book Festival this weekend, and especially to the lucky readers who picked up early copies of The Storyteller!!! 🔥 Don’t forget! The pre-order campaign is on until release day, so you’ve only got a couple weeks to order your copies and submit your receipts for one of those beautiful engraved bookmarks! http://bit.ly/TheStorytellerPreOrder  “They were speed incarnate. They were the water and the wind in motion. They were the Current of Faith.” 🏴☠️ My outlaw heroes are returning in THE STORYTELLER for their greatest adventure yet! Who else is excited to return to the world of Kelanna? 🙋🏻♀️
 THE STORYTELLER got its second starred review! ⭐️⭐️ Booklist says, “Chee pulls out all the stops to beautifully obliterate her readers’ hearts.” 😭😭💔😭 Thanks to Booklist for this thoughtful review, which will run in a few weeks! And for all you readers out there, get ready. 😈🔥⚔️💔
And don't forget, the pre-order campaign is still on! Get your copy of THE STORYTELLER from your favorite retailer (like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indie Bound) and submit your receipt to receive a beautiful engraved bookmark!  ONE MONTH until The Storyteller and THREE WEEKS until midterm elections! This is one of my favorite quotes from The Storyteller, and I feel like it’s particularly appropriate for the state of the world today. 🔥 But we are our own hope, aren’t we? We are the people who are going to prove that the world is still worth fighting for, because we are the people who are going to fight for it. ✨ How are you fighting this week? How are you using your voice, your vote, your platform, your actions to change our world for the better?
“Someone had to do something. Someone had to show them that the world was still worth fighting for.” #tracichee#thestoryteller |
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