Danya Kukafka, author of 'Notes on an Execution' - Writer talks about the pressure of the second book, the process journal and how to feel the plot
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we chat to Danya Kukafka. Her first debut, 'Girl in the Snow', was released in 2017 and was extremely successful. It was a national bestseller, translated in many languages, and then the pressure came. The pressure of that difficult second book... how do you follow up on success?
Danya started to write furiously, and along came 'Notes on an Execution'. It tells the story of Ansel Packer, who is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he's done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn't want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. Through a kaleidoscope of women--a mother, a sister, a homicide detective--we learn the story of Ansel's life.
We talk about why her writing routine has changed since that book, how she's hopefully made it calmer and healthier. You can hear about her first idea for the story and how it was mostly the feeling of the plot rather than all the details that became clear.
We chat through her process journal, how working in publishing helps her write, and why what she thinks will happen in the book rarely comes true.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine where we take a look through an author's working day. |
| 0:14.2 | This week we're chatting to Danja Kakovka. |
| 0:16.8 | Her newest novel is Notes on an Execution. |
| 0:20.1 | It tells a serial killer's story from the perspective of the women that he knows. |
| 0:25.0 | We chat about how she plays with the nuggets of a story while she's writing, also how important |
| 0:30.4 | her process journal is, and why the pressure of the big second book made her write furiously. I actually don't think it was about the content so much as it was about the pressure of writing a second book. You know, you wrote your debut, it's out, everyone's like, what are you doing next? And you're not sure if the first one was a fluke. You know, you're not sure if you can do it again. And now that I'm at my third, I'm like, okay, I can definitely do it again. It's just going to take the time that it's going to take. |
| 0:55.5 | There's more with Dan Yucca Kavka in this week's writer's routine. |
| 1:06.9 | Yes. Hello, welcome to writer's routine. |
| 1:09.9 | My name's Dan Simpson. Thank you so much for listening. |
| 1:12.5 | We take a look through an author's working day. The idea is simple. We try and steal some of their |
| 1:19.5 | tips and tricks, how they get stuff done to help us and give us the best chance of getting |
| 1:26.3 | that idea from our heads down onto the page. |
| 1:29.7 | And this week's episode is brought to you by a software which helps you do that. It's called |
| 1:34.2 | Plotter. I'm very excited that for a little while Plotter are helping to power this show. |
| 1:39.1 | Just like they can power your writing. Plotter is a tool that does what the title says. Nice and |
| 1:43.8 | simple. Plotter plots. It helps does what the title says. Nice and simple. Plotter |
| 1:45.2 | plots. It helps you plan your books the way that you think. It lets you outline faster, |
| 1:50.8 | organize smarter, and generally turbocharger productivity. If you're a visual writer, this is |
| 1:55.5 | perfect, because when you open it up, you get a digital cork board where you can easily |
| 1:59.2 | swap between the timeline, the outline, |
| 2:01.1 | your notes, the details on characters and places. You can even tag them all. |
| 2:05.6 | Color code them too. So you can easily switch between what you need, where you want to put |
... |
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