Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

Vanessa Riley

Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels. vanessariley.substack.com

  1. 6d ago

    Who Gets the Book Thrown at Them?

    Three names: Crystal Mason. E.L.A. Chanel Miller. Their stories are different, but each bore the brunt of injustice while others—the folks society deemed worthy of protecting—well, their futures were too promising to ruin. So they were given grace. Until the outcry became too loud to ignore. How loud can you scream? Who Gets the Book Thrown at Them? The last seven days have had my mind spinning. On September 24, Crystal Mason was finally able to breathe. You see, in 2018, Mason was convicted of illegal voting in Texas and sentenced to five years in prison after she cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election. At the time, she was still on federal supervised release for an earlier tax-fraud conviction, and she did not know being on supervised release made her ineligible to vote. Her provisional ballot was never counted, but the law came for her anyway. Think about that for a moment. A ballot that never counted. A woman who said she did not know she was ineligible. Well, that situation gave her a five-year prison sentence. After years of appeals, in March 2024, the Texas Second Court of Appeals reversed Mason’s conviction and entered a judgment of acquittal. The court found the evidence insufficient to prove that she actually knew she was ineligible to vote. But prosecutors didn’t want to take the L. They continued to try to revive the conviction. But in the last seven days, on September 24, 2026, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals—the state’s highest criminal court—rejected these efforts and left Mason’s acquittal in place. Eight years after her conviction for casting a ballot, she’s finally free of the charges. I guess justice delayed is better than denied, right? Then on September 25, another court confronted the disturbing use of government power. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher found the federal government in contempt after immigration authorities deported a young asylum seeker identified as E.L.A. to El Salvador despite court orders to protect him here. E.L.A., the young minor identified in the papers, had come to the United States as an unaccompanied minor at sixteen. The government wrongly deported him, acknowledged the error and facilitated his return to the United States. Then it deported him again. Judge Gallagher has now ordered the government to facilitate his return. One wonders what will happen, to a teen imigrant who came here seeking a better life. So, you’re asking yourself, Vanessa, what do these two events mean? At first glance, perhaps nothing more than two court rulings happening within twenty-four hours of each other. But I can’t unsee who gets swept into the mashing jaws of American justice—and gets grace. Crystal Mason is a Black woman who casts a provisional ballot and was given a 5-year sentence. E.L.A. is an immigrant: a young Salvadoran asylum seeker who came to this country for asylum, and despite court orders, was deported. Twice. The woman—the Black woman, and the immigrant get the harshest penalties. Which brings me to Cornell. On September 28, a criminal investigation was reopened into allegations involving a former Cornell University student and members of Cornell’s student Greek fraternity, Chi Phi. Jane Doe has been trying to get justice since October 2024, because no one wanted to purse her case beyond school discipline. In a civil lawsuit filed this month, Doe alleges that she’d been drinking, went to the Chi Phi fraternity house, was pressured to take what she was told was ketamine, became increasingly impaired, and was sexually assaulted by multiple men over a period of hours. These are allegations. The men have not been convicted of these alleged assaults, and the reopened criminal investigation will have to determine what the evidence establishes. One particularly disturbing part of the complaint involves an alleged Snapchat group conversation among fraternity members. According to the lawsuit, messages alerted fraternity members that a woman was upstairs and available for sex. Doe alleges that additional men subsequently entered the room and that assaults continued for hours. She reported the incident to Cornell University Police. Cornell conducted its own disciplinary investigation. The university says the resulting sanctions included suspensions and expulsions, and Cornell permanently removed the Chi Phi chapter from campus. But criminal charges did not follow. Then, on September 14, 2026, Doe filed a civil lawsuit against Cornell, Chi Phi, seven former fraternity members and others, alleging negligence, sexual assault, sexual battery, breach of contract and other violations of New York law. So today, two weeks later, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced that he was reopening the criminal investigation and present evidence to a grand jury. And I couldn’t help thinking: Haven’t we been here before? White young man or men, sexual assault, no punishment. Yes, we have, with the case of Chanel Miller. In 2015, nineteen-year-old Stanford freshman and competitive swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted Miller, then twenty-two, after a fraternity party. Miller was unconscious. Turner was caught assaulting her behind a dumpster. Two heroes intervened. A jury heard the evidence, and in March 2016, Turner was convicted of three felony sexual-assault offenses. Prosecutors sought six years in prison, but Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail, three years of probation, and sex-offender registration. Turner ultimately served about three months. At sentencing, Judge Persky explicitly considered the consequences imprisonment would have for the convicted felon Brock Turner: “Obviously, a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” His life mattered more. The judge worried about Turner’s education, his future, and reputation, something Turner forgot about when he committed sexual assault behind a dumpster. And what about her life? What about the woman who woke up in a hospital and had to piece together what had happened to her? What about the future she thought she’d have? And how this cruel act will constantly remind her of the lack of care a perpetrator and a judge had for her? In America, whose mistake becomes criminality? I ask that question, but it’s kind of obvious. White males from good families, going to a good school, get great grace. Their futures are considered, not the immigrant E.L.A. facing death in El Salvador. I don’t know what a grand jury will ultimately conclude about the allegations at Cornell. An indictment has to be handed down, then a trial will sort through facts. And of course, all that can happen is that a judge like Persky could rule for a light or non-existent punishment. Taken together, these stories force me to see the specter of American justice. The ghosts of the past still determine who gets the book thrown at them—and whose promising future makes the world hesitate before picking up the book or throwing stones. Maybe privilege doesn’t guarantee protection, but it definitely softens the arc of justice. And as I look at this week, I can see how race, immigration status, money, education, and institutional prestige still determine every outcome. No one is guaranteed to come save us from ourselves. And too many of us don’t recognize that something is fully wrong until we find ourselves in the crosshairs of those very circumstances. I’ve talked before about being our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. But right now, I also need you to focus on you. It’s Time for Your Story We are surrounded by messages every day telling us that we’re not important. That our experiences don’t matter. That our voices don’t matter. I’m here to tell you the opposite. You matter. Your voice matters. And your story matters more than ever. Now is the time to write your words down before someone else writes their limited vision of them. Tell your story. They’re banning more books and someday someone will decide yours—woman, immigrant, minority, etc. isn’t worth hearing. Bret Stephens wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times published Sept 22, (same week) accusing the National Book Award as being DEI—checks notes—for not choosing enough straight white male authors on the list. Write it before the airways become clogged with people trying to define who you are, what your experience means, and why you shouldn’t be remembered. Starting in October and throughout this final quarter of the year, I’m dedicating myself to teaching. I have several teaching events lined up, and I’m excited about them. But I’m going to use this platform to teach writing—to share techniques I’ve learned and mastered and methods that have allowed me to tell the stories I needed to tell. Because we need all our stories out there. We are living through a profound deficit of empathy while too many people are drowning in a deficit of hope. I believe books open doorways. I believe poems carry us through misery to soar in triumph. I believe stories allow one human to inhabit another’s world long enough to recognize their humanity. I believe in you. So we will not surrender to the drumbeat of despair. I don’t care whether the toll comes from a government bell, a judge, a politician, an institution, a rejection letter, or simply life’s circumstances. You are somebody. Your story belongs here. And I’m committed to helping you tell it, just as so many of you have helped me continue telling mine. So buckle up. We’re going for a ride. This is our learning quarter. This is our writing quarter. Get your journals together. Sharpen your pencils. Charge your laptops. And if you haven’t subscribed, subscribe and come along. We’re going to write. For my paid subscribers, I’ll have worksheets and exercises to help you do the work. Heck, I’m probably going to give a few away. That’s how committed I am to this. Because I want us all wri

  2. Sep 22

    SORRY DOESN’T GIVE TIME BACK

    There is nothing worse than looking into your child’s eyes and realizing they’ve been struggling—and somehow, you missed it. I know that look. And years later, I still carry the guilt. I read Nikole Hannah-Jones’s devastating piece in The New York Times, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” That part— I could feel her daughter looking at her. “Did you know…when you decided to put me here?” The question hit me straight in the heart and took me back a number of years to my own guilt bomb. Flashback: 2023 My dearest darling daughter was in her senior year of high school, and she was flailing. I can remember her soft brown eyes glancing up at me, filled with despair, like she had just realized her mother was human and not a superhero. In those small irises were water droplets and the look of failure. Seeing that in your child’s eyes is worse than a nightmare. My daughter had been homeschooled from the very beginning, and I can still remember clicking through the web searching for school programs, drilling through curricula—from IXL to Abeka—constructing strengths-and-weaknesses charts, researching resources, all nine yards, trying to choose a program that aligned with our family values and had the flexibility to accommodate an active-duty military man and a scientist-type, consulting, writer mom. Homeschooling fit the demands and worked until about third grade, when I realized Georgia’s limited homeschooling oversight could allow my child to miss key testing and other things. We decided to switch her to public school. We lucked out and found a hybrid county public school, Connections Academy. They had everything—or at least promise of everything. High praise from teachers and students, a solid curriculum, and the majority of the classes would still be taught in an online atmosphere . My daughter could continue to be at home or travel with me while attending school. I believed deeply in flexible, in-depth education. I still do. I believe in investing in my child’s education, so when there were weaknesses and I couldn’t help, I found tutors, sought out additional summer programs like Kumon, and did whatever was required to make sure my baby learned and enjoyed learning. From third through eleventh grade, my daughter got A’s and B’s. I thought she was fine. She wasn’t. In her senior year, my daughter cracked under the pressure. She had a pile of unfinished assignments, grades dipping toward D’s and F’s because of incompletes, and she started talking about not wanting to go to college. Then she admitted she had trouble reading and keeping up and that, when stressed, numbers floated. I was in shock. I reached out to the school for help. It took a while for the emails to return from the void, but there was no real help. Mandated county testing for this type of situation wasn’t a priority for them. Perhaps they, too, were shocked that an A-B student could have such problems. It soon became obvious that this excellent school didn’t have the resources or desire to be part of the solution. My husband and I had to save her on our own. We worked with our doctors to get her diagnosed. I was stunned by the diagnosis. My daughter had a learning disability that had gone undiagnosed for years. I’m not going to get too deeply into her private medical information. But some of its characteristics look like ADHD. It definitely bears anxious fruit, and it can affect her ability to perform certain mathematical processes. She required accommodations and a learning plan. Hubby and I had to implement them to get my daughter back to wanting to learn. Back to the Present I read Hannah-Jones’s piece, and my heart broke for her and her daughter. A mother’s guilt knows no end. Something inside crumbles, ripping at our insides, when our child is in agony—or worse, when they look up with failure written in their eyes and they see it written in ours. How did we let this happen? These kids are right to put some of the blame on us. We are the busy, opinionated generation with all these high moral principles, but sometimes lacking the time to invest, dissect, and implement. My daughter is now thriving and enjoying her college experience, but part of me still bears this grief. How did I not see it? How many years of suffering happened because I missed the problem? Then guilt joins in: How could I have spent this much time thinking about my child’s education and not known? How could I not recognize that she was struggling? Sorry doesn’t cut it. We can’t give time back. I’ve learned that looks deceive. I had interpreted working around the clock as passion. You simply do that when you love learning. Maybe that belief kept me blind. Achievement can disguise struggle. You can love your child ferociously. You can research. You can advocate. You can pay attention. You can invest time and money. You can believe you are doing everything you’re supposed to do for them and the next generation—and still fail. Back to Hannah-Jones In her New York Times article, Nikole Hannah-Jones talks about the battle of advocating against segregated schools and trying to create an equal, common baseline for schoolchildren everywhere. She had to reckon with the fact that schools with inequities based on the complexion of their student body or a lack of a strong tax base don’t always make it up to snuff. Sometimes folks do the bare minimum, not the unpaid extra that can make a difference. Putting middle-class or rich kids into these schools doesn’t automatically change what’s happening. And she had to trade her fear of putting her kid in a higher-performing school, where rich kids can exhibit both racism and classism, for the opportunity to give her daughter a competitive, quality education. She thought she was doing the right thing by placing her only daughter, her only child, in her neighborhood public school. She may have been deluded into thinking that the predominantly Black neighborhood school wouldn’t play in her face because she writes for The New York Times. Unfortunately, she found that some allowed neglect to fester into behavioral issues at lunchtime; she found folders of ungraded schoolwork, which made it harder to ensure a student corrected mistakes and learned. Hannah-Jones’s daughter fell behind and needed many tutoring sessions to catch up. The Ruby Bridges Interlude On September 8, Ruby Bridges turned seventy-two. She was the famous six-year-old who, in 1960, became the first Black child to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Federal marshals escorted her past screaming white crowds to get her into the building. I made a birthday post about her, and more than a hundred thousand people on Instagram (and Facebook) have viewed it. We know the picture. The little Black girl. The white dress. The braids. Or maybe we know Norman Rockwell’s rendering of that walk, The Problem We All Live With. But what I wanted people to remember was what existed outside the frame, beyond the braids and the federal marshals. Picture the crowd. The slurs. The angry men and women screaming at her. The death threats. The image of a Black baby doll in a coffin. Ruby had nightmares about that. White parents who defied the boycott and continued sending their children to William Frantz were threatened too. Federal marshals also escorted white children into the school. All this chaos because people wanted a better education for their children. Sometimes history is easier to tolerate when we crop the photograph and look at the child, not the system. Many of us have had to deal with the system, particularly when it comes to education. We celebrate that courage now because of the success of school integration. But most of us don’t have the guts or the fearlessness it took to be Ruby—or any of the kids who attended with her. Back to the New York Times Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote an extraordinary and painful essay in The New York Times titled “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” Please read the whole thing. Don’t read only a headline. Don’t read a social-media snippet. Don’t even rely on the pieces I’m quoting here. Read the essay. Hannah-Jones wrestles with something that I think is far more complicated than a debate about public schools, private schools, integration, vouchers, property taxes, or school choice. She’s wrestling with what happens when our ideals collide with our children. Hannah-Jones deliberately chose a public-school education for her daughter, Najya, while advocating for educational integration and equality. Looking back years later, she confronted the possibility that her daughter had borne a cost for that decision. Najya told her: “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted.” Wow. She might as well have said that she did not get the education she deserved. I know that Hannah-Jones had to herself: Why didn’t I see it? Hannah-Jones apologized to her daughter and admitted that Najya “had borne the cost not only of our unjust society but also of my ideals.” That’s a transparent admission. It holds a lot of grief and what-ifs. I think we are all okay if our values or busyness cost us something. We are destroyed when they cost our children. There’s another little girl from New Orleans, Leona Tate, who integrated McDonogh 19 Elementary School at the same time Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz. She was another of the little Black girls helping to dismantle Jim Crow, but the victory we inherited was purchased partly with their childhoods. When Hannah-Jones asked Tate about her parents’ decision to put her on that front line, Tate did not condemn them. She said: “Somebody had to do it.” She’s right. Somebody had to do it. But I don’t know how any parent can stand by and let their child be miserable for th

  3. Sep 15

    Before She Says A Word

    The best dress in the room doesn’t need three paragraphs. Jane Austen can slay it in five words: “Their dress had every advantage.” Translation: fashionable, confident, ready for the room—but perhaps not much more. And Bob Mackie? He could obliterate us all, defining a character or a career with carefully sewn sequins. Before She Says A Word What Bob Mackie Taught Me About Dressing a Character “Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.” These lines open the fifth chapter of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Our heroine, Anne Elliot, is giving us what she saw of the Musgrove sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, as they entered the room—the cottage in Uppercross. Not once does Austen describe what the sisters are wearing, but the rest of the sentence fills our heads with an image. Austen is a masterclass in dressing for the room and the moment. That’s not a one-off. Austen uses Catherine Morland’s anxiety as she decides what to wear to a ball to highlight what it means for a young woman to realize she’s going to be looked at the minute she enters the room. In Mansfield Park, we get a little bit of color when Fanny Price hopes that her dress, a white dress, is not too fine. Mrs. Norris reassures her, “A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white.” None of this tells us the details, the trimmings of the dress. But again, it expresses the anxiety of a woman wondering if she’s holding up to the rules that society places on her. And it also gives us this very weak reassurance that she’s all right. Yet to the reader, the detail tells us so much about Fanny and Mrs. Norris. Now, while I love to spill on the details, partially because I’m a fabric-and-notion girly, Austen has made me more conscious of what I want the outfit to say about the person and the moment. So today’s essay is more about a designer whom Austen, once she got over the shock of the curve-hugging lines, might approve of: Bob Mackie, the gowns he designed, and the messages they spoke to the audience. Mackie the Industry Vet Robert Gordon “Bob” Mackie was born March 24, 1939, in Monterey Park, California. He began his career as a sketch artist, working for major costume designers including Edith Head and Jean Louis. While working for Jean, the young Mackie drew the design sketch for Marilyn Monroe’s crystal-covered “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” gown. His early breakthrough came when Mitzi Gaynor hired him in 1966 for her Las Vegas revue and television specials. His designs became household legends with his work for The Carol Burnett Show. He designed for Burnett throughout the 11-year run, including the legendary green velvet curtain-rod dress for the skit, 1976 “Went with the Wind!” With Cher, Mackie became known in the music industry. His revealing, beaded designs for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour helped make Mackie a household name; later creations included Cher’s dramatic 1986 Oscars feathered ensemble and the gown she wore to accept her 1988 Best Actress Oscar. Mackie designed for Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Liza Minnelli, Lola Falana, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Madonna, Beyoncé, RuPaul, and many others. He shared an Oscar nomination for costume design for Ross’s Lady Sings the Blues (1972) with Ray Aghayan and Norma Koch. He never stopped designing, and younger stars like Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Zendaya, and more have taken to Mackie like a rite of passage. Mackie and the Light As I’ve studied the designs of the 1600s and the Georgian and Regency periods, I’m fascinated by silhouettes and fabrics. Every article and material indicates not only status but access and even the internals of a character. I’ve studied how candlelight can skip across silk, even change direction based on how the fabric is woven. I’ve learned to notice how the weight of velvet flows differently as a woman comes down stairs. My Lady Worthing mysteries are seasonal, so that is a fun thing to explore. Mackie knew the importance of light, particularly how beads throw light across a ballroom, how the shimmer can accentuate the length of a leg or arm, how swaying can start before a movement as well as linger when it’s done. His flame dresses, worn by Tina, Cher, Beyoncé, Miley, and probably more, are perfect examples of this balance. That is one of the reasons I have always loved Bob Mackie. Mackie understood something fundamental about clothes: the dress does not exist separately from the body. The light is entwined with the camera angles and the music, whether the performer is singing, acting, or offering a joke. Mackie and the Entrance Something that I pay attention to is how a character enters a room. Is it dramatic? Does it follow a confrontation? And for those of us still hung up on the movie Sinners, we all understand what it means to be invited in. The entrance reveals so much. Mackie knew this. Carol Burnett wanted to spoof Gone With the Wind. Mackie knew the iconic green-curtain dress in the movie made Scarlett O’Hara a beauty that Rhett almost couldn’t reject. The script called for Burnett’s character to come downstairs wearing curtains. Mackie decided simply draping curtains around her wasn’t funny enough. So the minute Carol had to reveal herself, Mackie knew typical elegance wasn’t the answer. The outfit had to be a part of the joke. Mackie made his curtain dress and insisted the curtain rod remain inside. It’s iconic. It tells its own joke the minute the dress is seen. The resulting green velvet confection—with its sweeping skirt, extravagant tassels, and horizontal rod extending from the shoulders—became one of television’s greatest sight gags. It is hilarious because it is also gorgeous. There is volume. There is drape. There are yards of sumptuous fabric. There are tassels and layers and a silhouette that would not be entirely out of place in a nineteenth-century fashion plate. Until you notice she is wearing the window. That’s Mackie. Fabric could create desire. Fabric could create glamour. And fabric could deliver a punch line. The costume is now in the Smithsonian. It was just that much of the moment. Mackie Made Her The Moment It’s 1975. Cher is heading for a divorce from TV partner and husband Sonny Bono. Everyone knew Sonny and Cher. Mackie knew the way Cher looked had to show glamour and a woman standing on her own. Bob Mackie was there to dress this new, solo Cher. The internet is littered with reels and videos showing dress reveals, all designed by Mackie. Cher becomes emblematic of sexiness, strength, and beauty while reclaiming the charm and humor everyone knew when she was married. While working with Cher, Mackie met Tina Turner. Tina and Cher performed together repeatedly, and Mackie was designing the clothes. Mackie later remembered this as an unsettled period for Tina. She’d left Ike and, as Mackie put it, was “kind of hiding out.” Tina had been working smaller venues to rebuild herself as a solo act. Mackie remembered her as searching for “a different life.” His clothes helped distinguish the emerging Tina Turner from the woman audiences associated with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. He designed for her body in motion. Mackie understood that Tina wasn’t going to stand elegantly under a spotlight. She’d strut, kick, and dance around the entire stage. He emphasized her legs with extremely high slits and short skirts, with trunks sewn underneath so she could move freely. Mackie created a gold-and-silver chain-fringe bodysuit with enormous pleated gold-lamé wings for Tina’s solo nightclub performances, including one at Caesars Palace. He made sure the wings would remain behind her until she suddenly extended her arms and opened them to their full span. When Tina did, the world stopped for just a second. She was a beautiful butterfly. In her 2020 memoir, she remembered wearing the winged costume and feeling as though she were about to take flight and soar. Mackie knew what she needed, what Cher needed, and made it happen in sequins and shimmer. When I write, I have to remember that costume design—the clothing that each character wears—becomes part of the choreography. I have to anticipate what the body will do and make sure that the outfit does not compete with the performer but becomes the performer’s second skin. My Mackie Moment In 1958, Eunice W. Johnson transformed a charity fashion show into a traveling institution, the Ebony Fashion Fair. Eunice, the powerhouse, went into European and American fashion houses—spaces that had often excluded Black people—and bought couture. She put powerful statement brands on Black models. For fifty years, Ebony Fashion Fair presented Black audiences with an extraordinary proposition: This beauty belongs to you, too. In 2001, Eunice commissioned Bob Mackie to create an ensemble for the Ebony Fashion Fair. The Chicago History Museum describes the result as a skintight, 1930s-style, heavily beaded gown with a separate face-framing hood and an ostrich-feather coat. The gown was lined with sheer silk selected to match the Black model’s skin tone, creating the illusion of a nude body beneath the beadwork. Virginia Heaven, the costume curator of the Chicago History Museum, described the finished ensemble afterward as “part fairy princess, part Vegas showgirl, part Barbie doll.” Speaking of Barbie dolls, I collect a few. A few years ago, I found out that Mackie designed an “International Beauty Collection” for Mattel. Fantasy Goddess of Africa originated in 1999. Mackie’s archives describe the Africa doll as being inspired by a “Serengeti sunset.” I had to get one. She’s wearing a fitted, embroidered, and beaded gown, with cinnamon skin, cuffs, neckpiece, and headdress. I looked at her today. Took her out of her box and smiled

  4. Sep 8

    AI Is Hiding Bodies and Money

    Writers, if you’re letting AI write your scenes, your chapters, or your books, I have one question: What exactly do you own? I went looking for answers and found the bodies—the AI Gamble can cost you everything. An influencer and trademark lawyer, Jennifer Brantley (@thefineprintlawyer on IG), posted a really interesting reel about why AI might be “hiding the bodies.” It was provocative, particularly in light of some of the publishing deals we’ve recently seen fall apart. I’ve talked before about the case of a young Black author reportedly on the verge of a nearly $2 million deal—only for the deal to collapse. Now, we don’t know exactly why that happened, and I don’t want to pretend that we do. But Brantley’s reel raised an interesting possibility: What happens when an agent or publisher loses confidence that the work they’re buying was actually written by the author? And more specifically: What happens when they don’t know how much AI was used to create it? That sent me straight down a research rabbit hole. Because Brantley brought up something I had not seriously considered before: AI-generated material may not be protected by copyright. Now, y’all know I occasionally play a lawyer on Substack. And as a historical-fiction writer, I spend an obscene amount of time researching things, weighing evidence, trying to figure out what actually happened versus what somebody merely said happened. So I went looking and found facts: In January 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office released Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability. In this report, the U.S. Copyright Office says: “Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material.” (page iii) Y’all see that? Getting ChatGPT, Claude, or any of the others to draft a novel means it can’t be copyrighted. The report also says: “Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material.” This means the lawyers and the U.S. Copyright Office will have to play Solemn and split your baby into pieces, figuring out which parts belong to which mother. The part of the novel creation process where AI can be used for research and brainstorming is allowed, as I stated in Receipts Please, but if you think your human control comes from designing a prompt for the AI, guess again. According to the U.S. Copyright Office on page 18: “prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control.” In other words, simply typing an AI Prompt like, Write me a novel about X or a scene about Y or a chapter with A-P level of specificity, does not make you the author of that expression for purposes of copyright. Think about the danger you’ve put your idea in by having AI write it. There is a ton of what people call “AI slop” being sold right now—on Amazon and elsewhere. Books and other products that someone may have generated substantially or entirely with AI and then put into the marketplace. These products make money. Lack of copyright protection doesn’t magically claw back the money somebody already earned selling something. But what happens when somebody else copies that same AI-generated material? What exactly does the purported author own? What can they defend? I’ve had conversations with showrunners, and Hollywood is buzzing, hunting for unique IP, intellectual property. I’m talking about books being acquired for serious money—especially books with film and television potential. Copyrighted books are IP. Imagine somebody is prepared to invest seven figures in a property because it is deliciously marketable. Everybody can see the movie. Everybody can see the limited series. People want the rights. Except now, the buyers are asking who actually wrote this? If substantial portions of the manuscript were generated by AI, those portions may not have copyright protection. No one’s going to pay big bucks for 2/3 of a manuscript. And what stops the studio from now running with the idea without you? They can because there’s no copyright. Suddenly this isn’t merely an ethical debate about whether writers “should” use AI. It’s a chain-of-title problem. It’s a rights problem. It’s a due-diligence problem. It’s a very expensive problem. And to be clear, the Copyright Office is not saying that touching AI makes your book uncopyrightable. Quite the opposite. On page 41 of the report, the US Copyright Office says that using AI as an assistive tool does not prevent copyright protection. Human-authored material remains protectable. Human creative selection, editing, coordination, and arrangement may be protectable. Creative human modifications of AI-generated material may also qualify for protection. But this line drawn in the sand is fuzzy. Figuring out what one actually has is the new problem. If AI gives you something and you substantially transform it, what portion is yours? How much modification is enough? What constitutes sufficient human creative control? For those who think the courts are already too invasive, wait until they have to start digging into these cases. If millions of dollars are riding on the answer, figuring this out will be extremely expensive. Which brings me back to that publishing deal. Could uncertainty about AI have been the reason that particular deal collapsed? I don’t know. The people involved aren’t actually talking. So none of us knows. But I now understand a little better why an agent, publisher, studio or producer spending serious money on intellectual property might be deeply concerned about the origin of a work. They aren’t Amazon Indie Publishing or what I like to call the Wild West where just about anything uploaded is sellable. Today’s markets are not just buying good ideas. They are buying rights. And they need to know that the person selling those rights actually has something to sell that has protections So here’s my advice to writers looking for shortcuts: Don’t. Shortcuts have a way of coming back and making you bleed in ways you couldn’t see when you took them. Nothing beats putting your butt in the chair and doing the work. And there’s another issue writers need to start thinking about. If you’re working with an editor, a critique partner, or a critique group, establish ground rules about AI. Prohibit them from feeding your manuscript into an AI system. Know what tools they’re using. Know what happens to the material that you’re sharing after the critique or edit. Your unpublished manuscript is your work. Your ideas, characters, and pages should not become somebody else’s AI input without your knowledge. That doesn’t mean we should panic. It means writers need to know what is happening to their work. New technology doesn’t change the hardest part of being a writer. Creating is scary. Comparison is inevitable. And writing can be lonely. You sit in a room by yourself, putting words onto a screen or paper, wondering whether any of it works. But that’s the work of being a writer. This weekend I was doing a little research of my own, and I discovered something that stopped me. Murder in St. James’s Park is my thirty-first novel. And Lady Worthing belongs to an extraordinarily small group of historical mystery series written by Black authors and featuring Black protagonists as sleuths. There are 5 series. * 1806 Abigail Carrington Monroe, Lady Worthing, joins: * 1920s Lanie Price by Persia Walker * 1923 Annalee Spain by Patricia Raybon * 1926 Louise Lloyd by Nekesa Afia * 1948 Easy Rawlins by Walter Mosley I didn’t know it was that rare. The discovery made me realize how privileged I am to have sat in a chair, alone, creating and getting published the Lady Worthing Mysteries. Abigail exists because of my imagination, life experiences, and love of history—and because of the labor. Sitting in that chair. Pounding those keys. Figuring out who she is. Watching her grow. Watching her struggle. Watching her come into her own. Even if that means the untimely demise of her husband. I’m just saying. And now I’m getting ready to write the next Lady Worthing mystery. You’d think after thirty-one novels—and after spending four books with these characters—the beginning shouldn’t scare me, not anymore. It does. How do I begin? Where do I begin? What belongs in this book? What doesn’t? I’m doing my pre-work now. I’m thinking about these characters I know so well and asking what new growth should we see from them. Because I don’t want them to be stagnant. And I don’t think you come to these books to read stagnant characters. But I know this much: No AI prompt is going to write the next Lady Worthing mystery for me. There isn’t a shortcut around the blank page, but I get to decide what happens next. That’s writing. That’s authorship. That’s the work. So I’m going to put my butt in the chair and do it. I suggest y’all do the same. This week’s reading list is the rare historical mystery series: Lanie Price Mystery Series by Persia Walker — Set in 1920s Harlem, society reporter Lanie Price uses her journalistic instincts to investigate murder, secrets, and corruption amid the glamour and tensions of the Harlem Renaissance. Annalee Spain Mystery Series by Patricia Raybon — Set in 1920s Denver, young Black theologian and professor Annalee Spain investigates murders while confronting racism, danger, and the social constraints of the era. Harlem Renaissance Mystery Series by Nekesa Afia — Beginning with Dead Dead Girls, the series follows Louise Lloyd through 1920s Harlem as she investigates murders threatening Black women in her community. Easy Rawlins Mystery Series by Walter Mosley — Beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress, set in 1948 Los Angeles, Black WWII veteran Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is drawn into finding a missing woman and begins his long career as an unofficial private detective. Murder in St. James’s Park is out. That’s book 4 in

  5. Sep 1

    From GPS to Jolene

    One gave us a better way to navigate the world. The other wrote songs that imagined a bigger one. But Gladys Mae West and Dolly Parton had something else in common: they outsmarted the stereotypes waiting for them. From GPS to Jolene Last week’s death of Dolly Parton and hearing the story of her roots got me thinking about another little Southern woman we lost earlier this year—Dr. Gladys Mae West. Now, Gladys Mae West and Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean are probably two names you wouldn’t expect to hear strung together in a sentence, much less an essay. But stay with me. I’d like to offer you a bit of knowledge about these two super women and who they became because of stereotypes. Dr. Gladys Mae West and Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean, both products of rural America, both faced stereotypes as obstacles to their success, and both understood education made a difference. Both changed the world. First, a little bit about Dr. West. Gladys Mae Brown was born in 1930 in rural Dinwiddie County, Virginia. This was Jim Crow Virginia. And America had a picture of a Black girl from the South: ignorant, incapable, intellectually inferior. So, opportunities for a Negro girl were limited. Her options were working in the tobacco fields, growing corn or cotton, or finding a position in the local tobacco-processing factory. Gladys Mae wanted something different. Education or book-learning called to her at an early age. She excelled in school, became valedictorian of her high-school class, and earned a scholarship to Virginia State College, now Virginia State University. There she earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1952 and her master’s in mathematics in 1955. Think about those dates. She was fighting for higher education before Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954. Segregation ruled the land as she pursued higher degrees in mathematics. In 1956, she was hired as a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was the second Black woman hired there and one of only four Black professional employees at the facility. This was her big break in science. Gladys Mae became a programmer working on computers and sophisticated data satellites. In the 1960s, she helped study the relationship between Pluto and Neptune and worked on satellite ocean-monitoring projects. West used complex algorithms that accounted for gravitational, tidal, and other forces, and programmed an IBM 7030 computer to produce accurate mathematical models that became crucial to satellite geodesy and the precision of GPS. She worked at Dahlgren for 42 years. When she retired, she returned to school and earned a doctorate at Virginia Tech at age 70. This is a stupendous accomplishment for the girl who could have spent her life in a tobacco factory. It becomes extraordinary knowing that every time you pull out your phone and ask for directions or track a package, you’ve touched Dr. Gladys Mae West’s technology. When a plane finds its route, a ship crosses an ocean, an ambulance finds an address, your Uber or Lyft or Instacart finds you, it’s because of the little lady who didn’t let Jim Crow stereotypes stop her. Now that Other little Southern Lady Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946 in rural Tennessee, one of twelve children. Her family was poor. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, couldn’t read or write. America had a stereotype for her, too: the poor, uneducated Appalachian hillbilly. But Dolly learned to read and write, and when she encountered the town tramp, she wasn’t reviled by this Appalachian woman. She was intrigued by her beauty and red fingernails. As Dr. Gladys Mae pushed away from the stereotypes, Dolly leaned in. She took that stereotype, put it in heels, added rhinestones, teased its hair toward the heavens, made it work for her, and started a music career. At age 10 she began writing songs and performing publicly. At age 13, she performed at the Grand Ole Opry and was introduced by Johnny Cash. She received 3 encores. After high school, she moved to Nashville to pursue music full-time and landed a spot on the Porter Wagner show in 1967. This gave her the opportunity to perform on TV and to continue developing her songwriting talents. We know her for “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and “I Will Always Love You.” “I Will Always Love You,” written as a farewell to Porter Wagoner, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1974. Eighteen years later, Whitney Houston recorded her famous cover for The Bodyguard in 1992, and it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1992. Whitney Houston’s recording became one of the biggest-selling singles in music history. Dolly, who wrote the song and retained publishing rights, received royalties, some of which she donated to charities and invested in Black Nashville neighborhoods. Dolly is one of the most charitable singers in the world, having given through her foundation, the Imagination Library, money to provide free books directly into the hands of children. What began in one Tennessee county grew across the United States and then beyond it. Today the program operates in five countries—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland—and distributes more than two million free books every month. Hundreds of millions of books have gone into children’s hands. Two southern women have both impacted the world. They understood how stereotypes can hinder a career and then plotted paths to succeed. So one confronted the stereotype with quiet mathematical precision. The other dressed the stereotype in rhinestones and laughed all the way to the bank. Just two little dreamers who understood the same fundamental truth: Your beginnings may describe where you started. They do not have to determine where you end. That’s sort of sounds like how a writer writes a novel. So if Dr. Gladys Mae and Dolly can dream big, what’s stopping you? By the time you hear this podcast, Book Number 32, Murder in St. James’s Park, will be out in the world. This is the next installment in the Lady Worthing Mystery Series. Lady Worthing has been experiencing a few marital difficulties. Let’s just say… That might not be the case by the end of this book. Check it out. Order it where books are sold. Tell your library about it. Request it. Read it. Talk about it. And then come back and tell me what you think. And Bookmiser has a few signed copies of Fire Sword and Sea and Murder in St. James’s Park. You can also try one of my partners in the fight, bookstores large and small, who are in the trenches with me. You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com, under the podcast link in the About tab. Hey. Let’s keep rising and creating together. I need you. That is the truth. Like, share, subscribe, and stay connected to Write of Passage. Thank you for being here. I want you to come again. This is Vanessa Riley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Aug 25

    Euphoria

    The Five-Minute High. Writers, you know that glorious feeling when you finally hit Send? Enjoy it. Because in about five minutes, you’re going to remember everything you should’ve changed. Euphoria: The Joy of Hitting Send There’s a particular state of euphoria that happens when a writer finally hits Send. If you follow authors on social media—and hopefully you’re following me—you’ve seen us post about this magical, mythical thing called THE END. We celebrate it. We take pictures of it. We announce it to the world. And it is absolutely worth celebrating. But here’s the secret: the end isn’t really the end. It’s not the end until that book is published and out into the world. Still, one of the greatest moments in this entire process is when you attach that finished version of the document to your Trad editor’s email or if your Indie to your developmental or line editor’s email, and hit Send. There is nothing quite like it. Before the Euphoria Let me back up for those who don’t know my process. I write the book, but I also work with a personal editor—someone who knows my gifts, knows my weaknesses, and, most importantly, knows how to push me. That editor is actually the first person who really sees the book. They see it as pages in the rawest, ugliest version. The version where someone has to say, “Girl, what were you thinking? I cannot get from A to Z with this.” Sometimes it’s not that bad. Sometimes it absolutely is. But that relationship matters. One of my editors has been with me for twenty-nine of my books. Think about that. They know my writing. They know what I’m capable of. That’s part of my process. Your process may look completely different. And that is exactly how it should be. Whatever it is, you work that process and finish. You Have to Get to the End For me, I have to hit the end. I need to write the book from beginning to end before I can step back and ask the most important question: What is this book really about? Now, if you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I am a serial outliner, serial timeline maker, serial spreadsheet girly. I do in-depth character analysis. I chart tension arcs. I study character journeys. I build character profiles. I work through scenes. And we haven’t even started talking about the historical research. That is an entirely different bucket. I do all of that work. And yet something organic still happens during the writing. Some arcs I imagined at the beginning become sharper and more important. Others disappear. A theme that seemed small suddenly becomes the heartbeat of the entire book. A character reveals something I didn’t fully understand when I started. That’s why I need to reach the end. Only then can I look backward and ask: What journey did I actually put these characters through? What changed? What survived? What is this story saying? Sometimes the answer is a deeper version of what I thought the book was about. Sometimes it is something completely different. But I cannot fully know until I get to the end. Stop Polishing Those First Three Chapters When I was a young writer, I would polish and polish and polish those first three chapters. Then I would polish them some more. Now? Let’s just call me a pro. I know better. There is more than a fifty-percent chance that the synopsis I write before I start a book is not going to be the synopsis of the book I actually finish. That original synopsis is an educated guess. It is based on facts, research, character work, structure, and everything else I know at that moment. But it is still a guess. By the time I hit the end, I finally know what book I wrote. And then one of my favorite parts of the process begins. Editing. That is when we spit-shine the prose. That is when I deepen the dialogue so the words say what I need them to say while the subtext whispers everything the characters aren’t willing to admit. That is when I paint the house. That is when I put clothes on the characters—and those clothes need to do more than look pretty. Jane Austen understood that. Clothing can tell us about accomplishment, aspiration, money, status, personality, and how someone wants the world to see them. Is this a person of high style? Or did they just roll out of bed? Every detail should carry meaning. But I don’t necessarily know what the meaning should be until I know the whole story. Sprint to the End So, to every writer out there struggling to finish the book, my advice is simple: Finish the book. Work in sprints. Write out of order. Write the scenes in your head that are so vivid you can practically see the characters standing in front of you. Get words onto the page. You can stitch them together later. Don’t spend months polishing something when you don’t even know whether it belongs in the final book. Sprint toward the end. Dirty write. Put down the thoughts. Put down the dialogue. Put down enough description to remind yourself what is happening. Literally, anything can be fixed when you have reached the end. Why I Work With a Personal Editor People sometimes ask why I work with a personal editor. Some writers use critique groups, and critique groups can be wonderful. But they can also be hit or miss, and sometimes the problem is simply timing. You need feedback now. I’d rather have an established relationship with someone I trust—someone who knows my abilities and understands the kinds of stories I’m trying to tell. Unfortunately, once you submit the manuscript to your publishing editor, you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to get. I’ve had great editors. I’ve had…editors. I’ve had manuscripts go straight to copyedits. I’ve also rewritten whole books in copyedits. Don’t try that at home. It makes people mad. (Even when the rewrite gets a starred review.) But at the end of the day, your name is on that book. The story needs to say what you intended it to say. The message needs to be the message you meant to deliver. So sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And Then I Hit Send Last week, I had one of those euphoric weeks. I’m dancing. Enjoying life. I’d hit send. And it was glorious for approximately five minutes. Because five minutes later, I thought of something else I could add. Not quite so glorious. But that’s publishing. Luckily, there’s a long journey between the book you turn in and the book that is finalized and ready for print. You’ll have opportunities to tweak things. You’ll have opportunities to sharpen things. And I love that process. In fact, after all of this work, I cannot wait to start the next book. That’s the joy of writing. That’s my joy in telling stories. know what a privilege it is to be able to do this—to write these books and to come here every week and tell you what’s going on inside my head, and hopefully I am giving you a little encouragement along the way. Keep Finding the Hope Because the world can feel pretty dark. I’m sending prayers and blessings to Gary, Indiana, and to everyone who is suffering. I’m sending hope to those who are sick and those caring for sick relatives. I’m sending inspiration to everyone who feels desperate, exhausted, or is simply tired of carrying what they’re carrying. And I’m going to repeat something I said last week: if you are feeling like you’re on the edge, please get help. Reach out to someone who can help you. You are worthy of that help. There is hope. Keep looking for it. And Now, Book Number 31 By this time next week, book number thirty-one will be out in the world. That’s right. Another Lady Worthing Mystery. And this one is Murder in St. James’s Park. We started with Murder in Westminster, where you first met Lady Worthing. Then came Murder in Drury Lane, where you watched her work a murder case in one of her favorite haunts. Book three was Murder in Berkeley Square, where she found herself stuck in a blizzard with a collection of very rich people, all didn’t deserve to make it out alive. But Lady Worthing survived. Her gang of friends—her found family—survived. And now we have Murder in St. James’s Park. Lady Worthing has been experiencing a few marital difficulties. Let’s just say… That might not be the case by the end of this book. And for those of you who know St. James’s Park, remember: it’s right behind her house. I’m giving you clues. So if you haven’t already, go purchase your copy of Murder in St. James’s Park. Tell your library about it. Request it. Read it. Talk about it. And then come back and tell me what you think. In the meantime, Be blessed. Keep writing. Keep reading. And most of all, keep finding the hope. Get these books from Bookmiser. They will have a few signed copies of Fire Sword and Sea and Murder in St. James’s Park, because I am doing an event with them, and the FRIENDS OF THE SANDY SPRINGS LIBRARY Saturday, August 29, 2026 2:00-3:30 p.m. Sandy Springs Library - Call (770) 509-5611 for more info or to reserve a signed copy. You can also try one of my partners in the fight, bookstores large and small, who are in the trenches with me. You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com, under the podcast link in the About tab. Hey. Let’s keep rising and creating together. I need you. That is the truth. Like, share, subscribe, and stay connected to Write of Passage. Thank you for being here. I want you to come again. This is Vanessa Riley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Aug 18

    Young, Black, and Digitally Lynched

    I’ve done it. Last week, I told you I was on deadline, and now I am free. That is right—I have finished my 32nd book. I turned it in to my publisher. It will be my next historical fiction, coming in at 105,000 words, and I am so excited. I did something I’ve never done before. Multiple POVs. Caribbean history blended with American history. I have cars and horse-drawn carriages. Letters written and sealed under wax. Candlelight and electric lights. I can’t give you much more detail yet, but it is my brand—a powerful saga, women-centric, with women doing things we need to know about, finding rooms they weren’t supposed to be in and pushing forward questions we all should be asking and answering. So I should be coming out of deadline talking about nothing but joy. But at the same time, one of the most disconcerting things has been happening. There is always nonsense going on in the book sphere, the academic sphere, and the tech sphere—the three worlds I pay a lot of attention to. And this past week, it was academia. There was a young Black professor at Cambridge named Jason Arday. He was not a perfect person. None of us are. But he suddenly became the center of accusations of plagiarism and an enormous public storm. In a matter of days, it became a nightmare in the press. An investigation by NewsCord, which I will link her, counted every substantive and distinct article about Jason Arday from July 24 through August 14, 2026. Their count was: * 249 articles in 22 days * 188 articles in the final nine days—from his August 5 resignation through August 14 * That’s an average of 20.9 articles per day Article after article. Imagine the tons of social-media impressions fueled by this much press. People attacked him, defending him, picked him apart. 9 days, his final 9 day, 188 articles. That looks like a digital lynching. It must feel like that. And it proves something I’ve talked about: when somebody has a grievance, when somebody needs a scapegoat, why so often a Black neck, a POC neck, or a woman’s neck becomes a doormat to step on. Today, I don’t want to use my words to talk about what happened to Jason Arday. I want you to hear his family’s words. While the rest of the world was debating a professor’s humanity, they watched someone they loved go through this storm. Now they are grieving him. This has been an incredibly painful time for our family, and we are still coming to terms with the tragic loss of our beloved Jason. What has become clear over the past 72 hours is the profound impact he had on people. We are grateful to all who have created light in this dark time through kindness, generosity and solidarity. Your presence here to remember him this evening means a lot to us, and while we cannot be there in person, please know that we stand with you in spirit. The public cruelty Jason was subjected to was too much for any man to bear. The outpouring of love, support and grief since his death means so much to us, although it is bittersweet. Kindness is needed in life, not just in death. We’ll never know what might have been different had he experienced more of it while he was still here. What we do know is how deeply he was loved, and we wish to especially thank those who knew Jason in life and tried to get through to him, who supported him in his darkest hour, and who saw the person in the middle of this awful storm. If you would like to share a message of condolence, memory, or support with Jason Arday’s family, please do so using this contact: TheArdayFamily@gmail.com No book recs today. I want to publicize a legitimate Go Fund Me for his family. https://gofund.me/ce60c7ec0 And if you are struggling with your mental health: In the United States: Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It is available 24 hours a day. In the United Kingdom and Ireland: Call Samaritans at 116 123, free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In England: For urgent mental-health help, call NHS 111 and select the mental-health option. If someone’s life is in immediate danger, call emergency services—911 in the United States or 999 in the United Kingdom. If you are worried about somebody, ask about them. Help them connect with professional support. Kindness is needed in life, not just in death. Let’s be better and have a better week. * Support your local bookstores, especially your indies. You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com, under the podcast link in the About tab. Hey. Let’s keep building together. I need you. That is the truth. Like, share, subscribe, and stay connected to Write of Passage. Thank you for being here. I want you to come again. This is Vanessa Riley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vanessariley.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 11

    Deadline Hell Exposed

    That deadline you confidently agreed to because you were absolutely certain Future You would be organized, disciplined, and completely undistracted? Yeah. Future You lied. I’m exposing deadline hell. How writers get here—and how we get out. Deadline Hell Exposed: How Writers Get In—and How We Get Out No, I haven’t disappeared. I’ve been in deadline hell. And since I’m currently working my way through it, I thought I’d take a moment to explain exactly what deadline hell is. Deadline hell does not necessarily mean you waited until the last minute to finish your book. Though, yes, sometimes that happens. Deadline hell is what happens when you have an unforgiving deadline—either one you set for yourself or one you agreed to—and suddenly the calendar and the manuscript are having two very different conversations. The problem begins when we agree to deadlines while imagining ourselves as completely different people. We imagine Future Writer Us. Future Writer Us is studious. Diligent. Disciplined. Future Writer Us wakes up every morning refreshed and inspired. Life is going perfectly. Nobody needs anything. Nothing breaks. There are no emergencies, unexpected trips, illnesses, distractions, family obligations, or days when our brains simply refuse to cooperate. Future Writer Us just writes. And because we know approximately how many words we can produce in a day, a week, or a month, we look at the deadline and think: Absolutely. I can deliver that. Welcome to the dreamworld. Here is something I’ve learned: until you really understand how you write and have developed the discipline to consistently produce, give yourself 1.5 times longer than you think you need. Trust me. You’ll be grateful for the padding. Of course, some of us know this and still let that beautifully padded time slip away. Hello. It’s me. Know How You Work I’m an everyday writer. That means I’m going to write or research every single day until I get that bad boy done. Sometimes I have an actual word-count goal. I use Scrivener, which has a wonderful—and occasionally terrifying—feature that lets you enter your target word count and deadline. It calculates how many words you need to write each day to get there. In the beginning, maybe that number is five hundred words a day. Notice I didn’t say five hundred good words. I said five hundred words. Then life happens. Suddenly that daily target is 2,500 words. When you’ve been in the game for a while, that number doesn’t necessarily frighten you. It probably should. But fear isn’t going to finish the book. Right now, my deadline for my next book is August 15. This will be book number 32. With the exception of one book during COVID—and perhaps one or two deadlines that had to move by a couple of weeks—I’ve hit my deadlines. I don’t say that to brag. I say it because deadlines are about knowing yourself. As a writer, you get better by writing. There is no substitute for putting yourself in the chair and doing the work. There will always be something more interesting happening somewhere else. The book does not care. You still have to finish it. So, from someone currently residing somewhere around Dante’s fifth circle of Deadline Hell, here are the things that keep me moving. 1. Limit Social Media You can scroll forever. What looks like a huge block of writing time can become a very small one frighteningly fast. But as an author, I also can’t simply tell you to abandon social media. Social media is one of the ways we get our stories into the world. Publishers expect authors to participate in promotion. As you develop readers, they’re going to want to know what you’re writing, what you’re thinking about, and what’s coming next. Connection matters. I’ve taken long social-media breaks before, and I’ve found that rebuilding that connection afterward can be difficult. Algorithms aren’t necessarily kind when you’ve been gone for a long time—particularly if you don’t already have an enormous following. So don’t disappear. Set boundaries. Do what you need to do, then get back to the book. 2. Accept That You Don’t Have All the Answers I have a decent outline. I have a plan. That’s it. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a plantser. I plan my books, but I deliberately leave room for inspiration and for the story to change based on how the characters begin speaking, behaving, and moving through scenes. An outline is a map, not a prison. Characters reveal things. Scenes develop differently than expected. Something you thought would be important becomes unnecessary. And something you barely noticed becomes the heart of the book. Leave yourself enough room to discover the story you’re actually writing. 3. I Don’t Truly Know the Ending Until I Type “Done” I know. That sounds scary. I usually know where I’m heading. But because I allow the manuscript to change, I don’t know exactly how the book will end until I get there. I don’t completely know what will stay. I don’t completely know what will leave. And that’s okay. The first draft isn’t the final declaration of what the book must be. It’s how I discover what the book is. 4. Save the Additional Deep Research for When You Know You Need It By the second or third revision, I’ve already typed DONE on that first draft. Now I’m adding facts. That means additional research. And research takes time. But there’s something incredibly thrilling about researching during later revisions. I know what I need. I’m looking for the details that will convince the reader they are genuinely inhabiting characters’s world. That’s very different from researching everything that might be useful before the book is written. There is nothing worse than spending hours researching fascinating details only to discover that none of them belong in the manuscript. Research what you need to understand the story and the characters. Then, once the story exists, research what you need to make the reader believe in them. 5. Be Realistic When the Deadline Is No Longer Possible At some point, optimism becomes denial. If you’re within seven days of turning in a manuscript and there is simply no earthly way you’re going to finish, communicate. If you’re traditionally published, reach out to your editor. If you’re independently publishing, take a serious look at the entire production process—editing, formatting, covers, distribution, marketing—and especially at what you’ve already communicated to readers. I hate moving a deadline. Point blank. But truth and expectations matter. Ignoring an impossible deadline doesn’t make it possible. It just makes the eventual conversation harder. 6. Revisions Get Faster as You Approach the End This is one of the benefits of having written and revised a lot of books: the closer I get to the end, the faster my revisions tend to move. Why? Because by then, I finally understand what the book is saying. When I’m drafting early chapters, I’m moving toward a conclusion I haven’t completely discovered. I’m following the through line of the book. There is a message underneath the plot, there’s a theme the story is trying to express. There are question i want the reader to wrestle with. The last quarter is where all that lives. Finishing the last quarter of the manuscript, I understand it. I finally know the direction we are heading. It may not have been what the maps said. Then revision becomes sculpting. I’m refining. Tightening. Cleaning. Making sure the earlier chapters are leading toward what I now know is waiting at the end. By the time I reach those later chapters in the revision process, there’s often much less work to do because the manuscript is already traveling down the right path. And that’s a beautiful feeling. The Part About Deadline Hell Nobody Likes to Mention Your beautifully balanced lifestyle? It may get a little…less balanced. Your meals may become questionable. Your workout routine becomes negotiable. I am literally dictating this while I’m on the treadmill because I firmly believe I need some way to burn off the stress and keep my energy moving. You still have to eat. You still have to sleep. You still need nourishment. Maybe every meal isn’t going to be a perfectly balanced culinary wonder. Maybe you’re manifesting your way through the pantry while trying to squeeze the last thousand words onto the page. Do what you have to do. Within reason. The goal is to finish the book, not emerge from the deadline needing six weeks to recover. Forty Thousand Words to Go So here I am. August 15 is approaching. I’ve got about 40K to sculpt. Scary but beautiful. But I’m proud of this story. I cannot wait until I can tell you exactly what I’ve been writing. For the writers reading this, I hope this encourages you to keep going. Keep writing. Keep learning how you write—not how somebody on the internet says it’s supposed to be done. Build the discipline to sit in the chair when the words aren’t perfect. Give yourself enough time to discover the book. Learn. Revise. Learn some more. And be honest enough to know when that schedule needs to change. And for the readers, consider this your little peek behind the curtain. This is what my Deadline Hell looks like. If you’re not following me on social media, come find me there. I share more about this process, the books, and the strange behind-the-scenes reality of building stories for a living. And, of course, follow me here at Write of Passage. I love having this space to talk with you about writing, reading, and everything that happens between the first word and DONE. Now I have to get back to work. But I’m climbing my way out of Dante’s Deadline Hell. I’m ready to enjoy free time and sunshine again, but I must finish this book. Be strong this week, my friends. Write your stories. This week’s book list is filled with writer friends with books coming out or just rele

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Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels. vanessariley.substack.com

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