Hey there! Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. Only a few more months until my debut thriller—THE PERFECT HOME—is available. But hey! Did you know you can pre-order it right now and not have to worry about remembering it comes out on January 7, 2025? If you’re reading this and you don’t pre-order it, we can’t be friends anymore.

Several years ago, I had written a 160,000-word (!) novel and couldn’t wait to post a few chapters online so people could tell me how great it was.

Lol.

How great it was.

That should tell you how clueless I was at the time. I expected my publishing journey to go something like this:

• Write thing

• Post thing online

• People tell me how great the thing was

• Send thing to agents

• …who would tell me how great it was

• …who would sell it to a giant publisher

• …who would tell me how great it was

• …so that readers could tell me how great it was

Maybe I didn’t have those thoughts exactly. But given how cavalier I was about how easy it would be to get published, I was in desperate need of some humble pie.

One reader, an anonymous Reddit account I don’t even remember, was all too happy to serve a whole heap of it.

He gave me a pretty scathing review. He told me to brush up on basic technique. Had I heard of “show, don’t tell”?

Ugh.

Total disaster.

I’d been in writing workshops before and I knew I’d only get in my own way if I took it too personally, so I asked—hat in hand—if there was something, anything this reader liked about it.

His answer was simple. Nope.

I’d just spent all this time writing a huge epic novel…

…and apparently, it stank.

Maybe the whole getting-published thing might be a bigger mountain to climb than I thought.

True: that was just one person’s opinion. But no one else weighed in and said he was wrong. And when you send your work out into the world and 100% of the people who respond say it stinks, you feel like maybe they’re right.

If I was going to do what Albert Camus said—imagine Sisyphus happy while he did the eternal work of carrying that boulder up a hill—I knew I was going to need to bring a lifeline for the humbling climb up Mount Publishing.

Enter: The Compliments File.

The world is all too happy to tell you when your writing stinks.

So if you want to look on the bright side in your writing journey, you need to tilt things in your favor by saving the good comments.

I started this habit years ago. I opened a Notepad file, named it “Good Reviews,” and copied and pasted the first few positive replies I’d had.

Just little things at first.

A “good pacing” comment here, a “You could expand this into a novel” there.

If people ignored my writing? Or said something bad?

Simple: I’d leave it out.

A funny thing happens when you do that. If you write something down and repeat the experience, your brain tends to go: “Oh, this was the relevant information. I’ll hold onto that.”

In fact, I would have forgotten most of these compliments if I hadn’t saved them, too. I can still open up this file and think—”Oh, that’s right! They did say that, didn’t they?”

As Stephen King explained in On Writing, the nail upon which he pinned his rejection slips as a kid filled up as the world told him “no.” But over time, the rejections started getting lighter and kinder. He’d get an occasional “this is wrong for us, but you’re good. Keep at it.”

A look through my compliments file yields something similar:

• The happy notes start coming not just from random Redditors, but real-life editors. (Hey, that rhymed)

• Some of the compliments come with actual real-life acceptances

• The notes become a bit more serious than “good job” and start sounding like: “If you were a published author with three books under your belt, I’d say—yeah that makes sense”

Maybe the Compliments File has some sort of magic to it—the more you focus on the good, the more you tend to get.

And maybe not. Maybe the Compliments File is simply documentation of the hard work I was doing to tighten my prose, settle on a genre, and find my voice.

But either way, the file quote-unquote “worked.”

The compliments file was a nice occasional reminder that some people saw potential in me. If I received a nasty rejection (aside: why do some people reject you as though you sent them some sort of personal affront?) I could still go back to this file and remember: Hey. Not everyone thinks that way.

Publishing can indeed feel like a Sisyphean struggle. As though hauling that rock uphill will go on for eternity. And if Camus says “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” the Compliments File was my reminder that maybe I wasn’t as bad as I sometimes thought.

When I opened this file, I could review the evidence:

One day, somehow, I was going to get somewhere.

Fast-forward to the eve of 2025, the year of my debut novel.

Now I find myself in a different situation.

Though there will, of course, be no shortage of readers who may disagree, there are also many people who have complimented THE PERFECT HOME.

In fact, last month I got the amazing news that independent booksellers had named it an Indie Next pick for January 2025!

When my publisher relayed the news to me, the email included about a dozen complimentary quotes from booksellers.

The Compliments File, once a deserted wasteland, has become an embarrassment of riches.

Which got me to thinking.

Since the Compliments File has done its job—keeping my hope well-watered in the vast Sahara of the publishing world—is it maybe time to retire it?

At what point does the whole concept become an exercise in vanity? More of a pat-on-my-own-back than a private respite?

Or—and I just thought of this—is failing to save the compliments a new kind of arrogance? “I’m getting so many good comments, I don’t even need to save them anymore”?

Maybe the question is pointless. It’s not as if anyone cares about this file but me.

But it does hit on a key question for any writer:

At what point—what level of publishing-world validation—will you consider yourself to have “made it”?

You spend so much time crossing the desert that you forget what your plans are when you get there.

That’s how the deal for THE PERFECT HOME felt. The dream was to get published. Published anywhere. To get published by Scribner and Simon & Schuster?

I think of Bill Parcells, the famous football coach who talked about what it’s like winning a Superbowl:

That said, I’m not sure it’s productive to throw up a big ol’ “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner, pat myself on the back, and say: Okay, I’m done.

So I don’t know what I’ll do with the compliments file other than not delete it.

But in the meantime, it’s an honor to be on the Indie Next list, and if any of you indie booksellers are reading this: Thank you.

The Compliments File gives me long-term context for how far the journey has been, and I’m proud to be on your list for January.

Here are a few of the nice things booksellers said:

• “This is the perfect thriller to get lost in! I quickly devoured this wonderful debut novel.  Good story and character development with lots of surprising twists!!”

• “Fans of reality TV and suspense have found their "perfect read."

• “If you are looking for an addictive novel, you have found the perfect prescription for a thriller that delivers!”

• “​​The Perfect Home is a thriller written in dual perspectives from both husband and wife. The reader will be captivated from the first page to the very end.”

When I look back on where that Compliments File began, with a few nice notes on my tiny short stories and my low-ambition scribblings…

…I’m glad I kept it.

The rock is up the hill, and Sisyphus is indeed happy.

🖋️Writing Tip:🖋️ To Cut Down on “Psychological Distance,” Put Your Nouns to Work

Beginning writers will know the pain all too well:

Your temptation is to write perfunctory sentences all the time. “He did this. She did that. He walked over. She moved to greet him. He felt nervous. She felt confident.” Etc., etc., etc.

These sentences have their place. But if you filter everything through your character first, you run the risk of increasing “psychological distance” rather than letting the reader experience things for themselves.

• “He felt that…”

• “She noticed that…”

• “He thought that…”

• “She figured that…”

Used too often, sentences like these make the reader feel like passive observers.

You can’t change much about basic subject→verb structure. But if you need to mix it up, you can pick new subjects.

Don’t say “He noticed the trail narrowing” when the trail can just narrow on its own:

There’s no “psychological distance” of “He noticed” or “he felt” as the trail narrows around him. Just the direct experience of a trail narrowing.

As a result, your reader stays with you—as long as that trail is headed somewhere.

Just one more week until the January 7, 2025 publication of The Perfect Home!

Since this newsletter has 10,000 subscribers*, I’d like to ask you to pre-order if you haven’t already.

Don’t wait until the 7th! Pre-orders count towards first-week sales.

If you haven’t told family and friends about what Publisher’s Weekly called Wickedly entertaining, then you need to unsubscribe from this newsletter immediately because we are no longer friends.

JK. But not really.

Until next time,

DK

*Okay, I’m rounding up. In increments of 10,000.