Confession: as a child, I had a one-item bucket list. Write and publish a book. A book, singular. Being a practical kid, I knew how difficult it can be to actually get a book on the shelves, regardless of how well-written it is. So I had a back-up plan: go to university, get a job that would pay the bills, have a few kids, and write a novel later in life. So, bucket-list on hand and on-hold, in 2002, I started my psychology degree at the University of Calgary. But somewhere in my mess of courses on Brain & Behaviour, Personality, and Statistics, I took a class in the Creative Writing department, and, with the help of two wonderful, encouraging writing professors, Cleavage, my first novel, emerged.

Fast forward a couple years—past submitting my manuscript to NeWest Press, past edits and more edits and then copy edits, past picking the cover page and writing the acknowledgements section and waiting, waiting, and then more waiting. It was here! In my hands. My book! It was a few months after my twenty-fourth birthday, and I’d crossed off the one item on my bucket list. But what surprised me when promoting Cleavage was a question that kept coming up. Interspersed between congratulations and discussions of the content, friends, family, and readers kept asking: “So, have you started another book yet?” or “When is the second one coming out?”

I’d been so focused on the one book, the moment when I’d really be a legitimate published author. But now I’d crossed that hurdle. And, unlike some other major life events, writing books was not supposed to be a one-shot deal; I could do it again and again. Soon, the itch to write came, and that itch became Swallow, my second novel.

So, how is writing a second book different from writing a first?

For me, writing a second novel carried more weight than writing my first. With Cleavage, I was setting my own bar. But with Swallow, I’d already established myself as a writer—people had read and reviewed my work before. I had something to live up to. With a second book, there’s pressure to do something different, to push boundaries that you didn’t the first time around. I can think of several authors whose first books I loved, and whose second books I waited for, only to be disappointed.

I didn’t want that for Swallow. I worked to create differences between the two manuscripts—differences in narrative voice, in length, and in structure. But, at the same time, I also felt I had to deliver a second novel that was authentically my style, something different enough to be unique, but not so different that readers who enjoyed Cleavage wouldn’t love Swallow, too. In the time between Cleavage and Swallow, I’d grown, both in life, and as a writer, and with that came the expectation to produce something even better that the first book. Pressure! I’d written Cleavage as part of a class, so I had regular feedback from a panel of peers. On top of that, I’d shown bits and pieces to family and friends for their opinions along the way. Swallow I’d written on my own—I didn’t know what people would think.

Cleavage was written without much awareness of an audience. In his 1987 article “Closing my eyes as I speak: An argument for ignoring audience,” English professor and scholar Peter Elbow argued that focusing on one’s audience can actually impair writing skill by making writers self-conscious. He went on to say that it can be beneficial for an author to become absorbed with the story and the language, to focus on the meaning he or she is making as opposed to the communicative purpose of writing. According to Elbow, “the ability to turn off audience awareness—especially when it confuses our thinking or blocks our discourse is also a ‘higher’ skill […] the ability to use language in what we would call the ‘desert island’ mode […] only gradually through growth and development do we learn to ‘unplug’ to any significant degree,” (pp. 10-11).

Personally, I found it a lot harder to ‘unplug’ when writing Swallow. I had the reader in mind from the start, and was already thinking ahead about publication. I knew how monumental publishing Cleavage had been for me, and I was eager to experience that again. But I learned the hard way that you can’t rush an ending, and ended up re-writing the final fifty pages or so of Swallow. I had to stop thinking about publication and let the story pour out authentically and naturally from the characters, and at its own pace.

Cleavage had a wonderful rawness to it that can only be captured by a first book. I want to relay a quote passed along to me from my wonderful friend Naomi K. Lewis (who also happens to be an amazing writer). When Naomi finished the final draft of her first novel, her editor, Laurel Boone, told her, “This won’t be the best book you’ll ever write, but it has an energy you’ll never find again.” I love Cleavage, my “first born”—but I love Swallow, too, because I can see in it my growth as a writer, and because I now see both books as part of my journey, as opposed to a goal on a bucket list I need to cross off.

Which is a good thing, because Swallow hasn’t hit the shelves yet, and people are already asking me if I’ve got plans for a third!  

Theanna Bischoff is a novelist, creative writing instructor, and freelance editor who currently lives in Calgary, Alberta. She is the author of two novels: Cleavage (NeWest Press, 2008), which was shortlisted for both the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book–Canada & the Caribbean, and the 2009 Re-Lit Awards; and Swallow (NeWest Press, 2012). Theanna holds a Concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Calgary (2006) and a Masters Degree in Educational Psychology (2007).