Q&A with featured writer Nicole Nwosu
Nicole shares her writing journey, from publishing on Wattpad to creating a series
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When Nicole posted on Instagram about her YA book that takes place in university, I was intrigued. As you, dear reader, may already know, my book In Your Dreams takes place in university, and I wrote it as a YA (young adult) story before I ever heard of the term “NA” (new adult).
When I reached out to Nicole to ask about how she chose to market her series as YA, she was super approachable and friendly in her response. I learned that Nicole wrote two stories on Wattpad—a free online platform for sharing your writing and communicating with readers—that were later published in print, and she has a third book coming out soon. Her novel The Bad Boy and the Tomboy earned more than 100 million reads on Wattpad and won a 2015 “Cover-to-Cover” Watty Award. Congratulations, Nicole!
I appreciate Nicole’s openness and am excited to share this Q&A to help you learn more about her writing tips, books and upcoming new release, Across the Line, coming out April 2024!
Marisa: When did you first know you’re a writer, and that you wanted to write books?
Nicole: I don’t think I’ve ever had a moment where I first knew I was a writer. I remember I had always liked to read growing up, so later that made me want to write my own stories when I was a kid. Maybe it was around the time I was about 10.
I used to write random unfinished stories on my family desktop computer whenever I wasn’t playing computer games. Eventually that moved over to my personal laptop when I was about 13 and after one of my first stories became a viral hit online, I became very motivated to continue writing for fun.
Marisa: Can you tell us about your writing process? For example, when do you do most of your writing, and how deeply do you plan or not plan as you write a new story?
Nicole: I do most of my writing in my free time. Typically, my days are busy with school work or extracurricular activities, but now that it is summer, I have more time to do my writing. I like to do it during the day when I’m more alert or whenever I have a burst of energy (so that could happen at any time).
I usually don’t deeply plan when I write a new story. I’ll create a loose outline on the major plot points, but writing is ultimately an ever-changing and dynamic process. Many little things end up being changed and one or more plot points are likely to be moved or scrapped, or another idea might work better. So, in the back of my head, I know any plan that I make isn’t certain just because many things could change as I’m writing the story.
Marisa: When you’re done writing your first draft, what is your editing process?
Nicole: The first thing I do is try to bring the word count down to a reasonable number. I am a huge overwriter and this has always been one of my biggest issues. Ultimately, I try to make my word counts fit in a proper range.
Then I’ll focus on removing and changing any redundant words. For instance, my characters typically murmur or smile and laugh a lot, so I try to bring those words down as much as I can.
My editing process for traditional publishing usually involves an editor who helps me with all this and more. For instance, they will help me with adjusting and fixing any inconsistencies or any points of the story that don’t seem to drive the plot or are not relevant.
Marisa: You've self-published multiple books on Wattpad, and two of your books were published by Wattpad Books. Congratulations!! Can you tell us more about your publishing journey—that is, why you chose to publish stories on Wattpad, and what led to the publication of The Bad Boy and the Tomboy and Hitting the Crossbar?
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