Interview: Graduate Nicole Magoon

Nicole Magoon is a 2022 graduate of the Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop. She lives in London, by way of innumerable US cities. She has one husband, three children, and four superpowers, including [REDACTED BY GOVERNMENT]. By day she works on “corporate strategy,” which is def vaguely villainous, and by night she writes*. She has a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from Harvard Business School**, and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults***. She is represented by Kari Sutherland of kt literary.

*Really, the best superpower of all

**Yeah, she’s legit evil, nothing to be done about it

***Villains can reform

You graduated from Your Personal Odyssey (YPO) in 2022. How did you fit the YPO schedule into your life at home?

With extreme discipline, support from my family, and subpar sleep! The YPO schedule is no joke, and I wanted to make the most of the program, so I had to be rigorous about carving out blocks of time, including abandoning any semblance of social interaction beyond going to work. My parents and my husband get all the credit for watching my kids so I could get big chunks of evening and weekend time to study and write, and I also sent everything in at one minute to the deadline. 🙂

How did your writing change as a result of going through the workshop?

My writing became more intentional as a result of YPO. I’ve historically been an instinctive writer, and I didn’t give that much thought to why something worked or didn’t work. I just had a sense for it. YPO gave me the tools to analyze why. After the workshop, I could tell that something felt out of the blue because I hadn’t established a sufficient causal chain, or that a character didn’t inspire because I hadn’t made them active enough. I’m trying to shift my process to account for those ‘whys’ and plan a bit more effectively, though my process is always a work in process!

You did a custom module for YPO. How did it differ from the standard module? What did you choose to focus on, and how did that help your craft?

I loved the custom module. I wanted more on both character and plot (which are certainly better related), so Odyssey Director Jeanne Cavelos crafted a module with a combination of deep dives into the two. It helped so much to spend more time with those in an intertwined way, and it enabled me to go deeper into areas I’d begun to explore with Jeanne but hadn’t quite cracked yet. I was also really impressed with the quality of the content outside the “standard” modules; Odyssey has such a wealth of knowledge in its repository, and the custom module offered some very targeted topics (for example, YA-specific lectures).

During YPO you met with and received detailed feedback from Jeanne Cavelos, received and gave critiques, and had the opportunity to virtually attend lectures. What did you find the most helpful about the workshop?

I found receiving Jeanne’s feedback and talking it through with her the most helpful. Jeanne was so thoughtful in her critiques and feedback on my exercises; she took the time to note both specific details where I could tactically improve and to draw out the themes that went across my work. She was incredibly generous with her time, and so genuinely enthusiastic about helping me grow as a writer—I cannot even count the hours she spent brainstorming with me over Zoom. Her engagement continually inspired me to keep pushing myself, prioritize my writing in the face of “life stuff,” and experiment to improve.

How many stages did your work go through before you sent it off to your agent? How much of your time was spent writing the first draft, and how much time was spent in revision? What sort of revisions did you do?

That novel was written pre-Odyssey, and I probably spent over a year writing and revising it to a “clean” draft (I drafted it editorially and in circles, so I didn’t have a true first draft), then I revised it in Pitch Wars (a two-month intensive revision mentorship program that sadly doesn’t exist anymore), and I sent it to my wonderful agent after that!

What’s the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

My biggest weakness is trying to edit when I’m supposed to be drafting—I have perfectionist tendencies (don’t all writers?), and I consistently hate the first thing I put on the page. I find that the bigger a chunk of time I have, the more I can get into the flow of just writing, so I’m currently working on carving out bigger blocks of time from my schedule, which YPO was amazing practice for!