Between Two Kingdoms
A memoir by Suleika Jaouad about her leukemia and life after illness.
Where Between Two Kingdoms comes up1 episode or test
Suleika Jaouad's memoir Between Two Kingdoms ran about two years past deadline until she switched the first chapters of part two from past to present tense. It took six months to drop her proposal's outline. For anyone building something, write into the question you can't answer, distrust the surface-story first draft, and step away on purpose.
- Aftermath written as if behind her
- She was still living it
- 150 pages drew "It's not working"
- Part two's first chapters rewritten
- Drafted on a laptop in the car
- Writing came alive
The book unlocked after being two years overdue
From Suleika Jaouad on writing Between Two Kingdoms
What was said about Between Two Kingdoms
1Writing into the question of how to move on from illness
Jaouad built the book around a question she couldn't answer, not a premise. For Between Two Kingdoms the question was how to move on from illness. She writes into questions she doesn't know the answer to, lets themes announce themselves in the first draft, and clarifies them in revision.
She kept saying she did not want to write about illness until Cheryl Strayed told her she had no business avoiding the thing she needed to interrogate. "Writing is where I puzzle through what I don't understand."
Her first drafts told a tidy surface story that had to be dug past. Jaouad says her early drafts were "full of lies": an aspirational story that fit the outline in her book proposal. It took her about six months to drop that outline and dig toward what she calls the truth beneath the truth beneath the truth.
A "good student" part of her wanted to follow the proposal. She later learned many writers don't write what they put in a proposal.
2Two years late: the block and the switch to present tense
Switching part two to present tense unlocked a book two years overdue. She had written the aftermath of her illness in past tense, as if it were behind her, though she was still in it. After about 150 private pages drew only "It's not working" from a writer she admired, she drove to the beach with friends and rewrote the first chapters of part two in present tense on a laptop in the car.
The writing came alive and the book unlocked. She learned to choose first readers carefully, because part of her had asked "is it as bad as I think?" hoping to hear she was wrong.
Muscling through the trauma made it worse; deliberate distance helped. Writing about trauma set off a trauma response and left her curled on the floor by 3 or 4 p.m. daily. The harder she pushed, the worse it got, and the breakthrough came only once she stepped away.
She now pairs butt-in-chair rigor with stepping away, "not as a break from the writing, but as something that actually facilitates the writing." The 'bed, bath, or bus' version means sleep, relax, or get on the road.
3How she drafted it and protected the time
She started with twenty short scenes, then wrote the connective tissue. Jaouad began Between Two Kingdoms with twenty stream-of-consciousness scenes, not worrying whether they fit together, then wrote the material linking them.
She says she thinks in scenes, and she drafts by hand first so the inner editor stays out of the way.
She left her phone in the mailbox and wrote for hours first. Each morning she walked her dog, left her phone in the mailbox, wrote a couple of hours, and retrieved the phone on the next walk.
She also ran self-styled residencies, house-sitting and dog-sitting in remote homes to be alone in her own brain.
The Most Freeing Writing Lesson You'll Ever Get (Suleika Jaouad Interview)
Written about the question of how to move on from illness, and finished about two years late. Switching the first chapters of part two from past to present tense unlocked it, and she began it with twenty short scenes joined by connective tissue.
Jaouad built the book around a question she couldn't answer, not a premise. For Between Two Kingdoms the question was how to move on from illness. She writes into questions she doesn't know the answer to, lets themes announce themselves in the first draft, and clarifies them in revision.
She kept saying she did not want to write about illness until Cheryl Strayed told her she had no business avoiding the thing she needed to interrogate. "Writing is where I puzzle through what I don't understand."
Her first drafts told a tidy surface story that had to be dug past. Jaouad says her early drafts were "full of lies": an aspirational story that fit the outline in her book proposal. It took her about six months to drop that outline and dig toward what she calls the truth beneath the truth beneath the truth.
A "good student" part of her wanted to follow the proposal. She later learned many writers don't write what they put in a proposal.
Switching part two to present tense unlocked a book two years overdue. She had written the aftermath of her illness in past tense, as if it were behind her, though she was still in it. After about 150 private pages drew only "It's not working" from a writer she admired, she drove to the beach with friends and rewrote the first chapters of part two in present tense on a laptop in the car.
The writing came alive and the book unlocked. She learned to choose first readers carefully, because part of her had asked "is it as bad as I think?" hoping to hear she was wrong.
Muscling through the trauma made it worse; deliberate distance helped. Writing about trauma set off a trauma response and left her curled on the floor by 3 or 4 p.m. daily. The harder she pushed, the worse it got, and the breakthrough came only once she stepped away.
She now pairs butt-in-chair rigor with stepping away, "not as a break from the writing, but as something that actually facilitates the writing." The 'bed, bath, or bus' version means sleep, relax, or get on the road.
She started with twenty short scenes, then wrote the connective tissue. Jaouad began Between Two Kingdoms with twenty stream-of-consciousness scenes, not worrying whether they fit together, then wrote the material linking them.
She says she thinks in scenes, and she drafts by hand first so the inner editor stays out of the way.
She left her phone in the mailbox and wrote for hours first. Each morning she walked her dog, left her phone in the mailbox, wrote a couple of hours, and retrieved the phone on the next walk.
She also ran self-styled residencies, house-sitting and dog-sitting in remote homes to be alone in her own brain.
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