Author Interview ~ Kim Stuart

Kimberly Stuart grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. She holds degrees from St. Olaf College and the University of Iowa. After teaching in Chicago, Minneapolis, Costa Rica and eastern Iowa, she took a huge pay increase to become a stay-at-home mom. She now makes her home in Iowa with her husband and two young children. Balancing Act is her first novel.









What book or project is coming out or has come out that you’d like to tell us about?

My debut novel, Balancing Act (NavPress), releases at the end of September. It’s a comic novel written for any mom who could use a laugh but doesn’t want to sacrifice authentic, complicated characters. (Read the first chapter at www.kimberlystuart.com )

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

I have no credentials to do what I do. (Thanks for opening the wound.) No M.F.A, no internship with Barbara Kingsolver (though I’m available, should she call), not even an English major to back me up. In fact, the only creative writing course I took in college was where I earned my lowest grade in four years.

So I have a very unimpressive résumé, which only underscores God’s hand in all this. I started writing a bit every week when my daughter, Ana, was under a year old. I had left my work as a teacher to stay home with her and was happy with my decision. But I began to itch for an outlet, a way in which I could use the parts of my head not involved with sippy cups and Desitin. I could have taken up knitting, which would have made FAR more sense and been much less destructive to the old ego, but instead I wrote.

I started by concocting these little vignettes to record what being a parent was teaching me about God. I got rave reviews from my mother. Seriously, she thought they were BRILLIANT. With all her superlatives in the back of my head, I gathered the courage to submit a piece to a non-fiction writing contest for the University of Iowa’s Alumni Magazine. The piece won first place, which made my mother insufferable.

That spring, I attended the Blue Ridge Writers Conference in North Carolina. I’d received the conference as a Christmas gift from my parents, who were still convinced it was merely a matter of time before Oprah came a-callin.’ I went to appease them and my husband, who forced me to pack my suitcase and get on the plane. I’d had two rejection slips since the magazine article and wasn’t feeling too much love from the publishing world, but who turns town an all-expenses-paid trip? At the very least, I figured I could do some bird watching.

At Blue Ridge, participants are able to sign up to meet one-on-one with faculty, and I ended up meeting Ray Blackston, the author of Flabbergasted, and Andrea Christian, an editor with NavPress at that time. Both of these lovely people were very encouraging to me and were particularly enthusiastic about the fiction piece I’d brought. It was a shabby, 3000-word beginning of a story about a mom headed back to work after having a baby.

The piece was rough, rough, rough, but it made Ray laugh and prompted Andrea to ask me to send it in to Nav. I was four months pregnant at the time with my son, Mitchell, and I think they must have thought, “Nice girl, but there’s no way she’s going to finish that book in her delicate condition.”

God was good, I had the unavoidable deadline of an expanding uterus, and I finished Balancing Act about a month before Mitch was born. Sent it off, had the baby, forgot what it felt like to be well-rested, and got a call from Nav a few months later. That phone call, which caused me to weep, turned into a two-book contract. I still can’t believe it. Chalk it up to a really big God.

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work?

Is that a joke?

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

I’m still neck-deep in the initial learning process, so the jury’s out. But I would say that I make the most mistakes when I forget God’s the one orchestrating all this, not me. This is not the first time I’ve had this particular tutorial, but it tends to be a lesson felt more acutely when others are watching.


What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

Another author once told me to guard ferociously the time I make to spend in prayer and with Scripture. To be honest, I did a little eye rolling at the time, thinking that was advice not related to publishing and writing, but he was right on the money. The chaos, the excitement, the negotiations, the writing itself—that’s all good but it so quickly spins out of control unless I’m remembering what’s and Who is really the center of the universe. Turns out, it’s not some woman in need of highlights juggling two kids, a husband, and a career in the middle of Iowa.

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

That an hour is an hour is an hour. My schedule is necessarily compressed because I’m a stay-at-home mom and no one around here is very impressed with parallel structure or the movement of plot. I know my own pace and I know what I need in order to tap in. I spent some time initially worrying that I wasn’t doing enough or that I was going about the process all wrong. I think you do what you can, when you can, working always to improve your craft while realizing you only have so many hours in a day.

What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

When it all comes down, an author has the most power in making a manuscript better. Editors, copy editors, writer’s groups, first readers—these are all fabulous resources. But the author herself needs to be the most rigorous of editors and the most willing to hack away at her work in the name of a better piece of writing. Much like birthing a child, all dignity flies out the window with the end in mind. (Sorry for the visual there, but the comparison is sound.)


What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)

Peace Like A River, Leif Enger; A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving; Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts On Faith, and Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott; Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver; To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee; About A Boy, Nick Hornby.

I love a story that braids together poignancy and comedy. It takes extraordinary talent and wisdom, so I’ll likely never get there, but the people listed above have done it with finesse.

What piece of writing have you done that you’re particularly proud of and why?

1. I’ve had many positive comments over the years on my annual Christmas letter.

2. Although I could nitpick it to its own sorry death, I am proud of Balancing Act because I made to the finish line. I can tell my daughter that it’s possible to be a mom and cultivate the crazy ideas and gifts God plants in a heart. It was an insane dream and it came to fruition, thanks be to God.

Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

The very slippery mixing of faith with business. Some do it with humility and morality. Others, not so much. I find the skank quotient particularly disappointing since we Jesus types are supposed to be different, wildly different, than the world at large.

Can you give us a view into a typical day of your writing life?

Please avert your eyes if you are not accustomed to the glamour of motherhood. Ah, I’ve just noticed you asked about my WRITING life. Wise move. My writing day is short as my real life is still wiping orifices and cleaning toilets. But for two and a half hours a day, I have a babysitter come to my home and take care of my children so I can write. My daughter started pre-school this fall, so on those two afternoons I pray my son will take a lingering nap so I can write while I have only one at home.

I get up early to walk and can’t jumpstart my brain before that, and I am the antithesis of a night person. A very wise writer told me early on to find the time of day when I’m at my best. My best time doesn’t always (or often) coincide with the best time for my family, but I try to make it fit.

My goal is always 1,000 new words a day, which I write after editing the previous day’s work. Because I have so little time, I try to give myself a head start by stopping partway through a scene so the next time I begin to write, I’m already mid-swim. This is particularly helpful since my head is often in sixteen places when I boot up my laptop and I need it to be in just one.

If you could choose to have one strength of another writer, what would it be and from whom?

I’d have to cheat and pick two: I’d like to have Barbara Kingsolver’s economy of words and Nick Hornby’s comic timing.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

My ultimate goal before I die is to say I got better. That’s it. I want to have a long and steady upward arc of getting better at the craft of writing. I find that thought daunting and inspiring, but I can’t dwell on it right now because my one-year-old is drooling on my big toe.

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

I went to the CBA circus, I mean, convention in Denver last July and when I returned home, my three-year-old daughter had drawn for me a lovely picture of a little girl, dressed all in black, with tears shooting wildly out of mournful eyes. Ana said, “It’s a little girl who’s crying because she misses her mommy.” She might as well have said, “You are a pathetic puke of a mom and I would like my old, non-traveling-to-conventions-to-sell-a-book-with-no-pictures mom back.” Not a good day. These moments come and go and I hate them. But despite the occasional nosedive into guilt, I really feel so very blessed to do what I do and hope I can do it until I’m a hundred.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Favorite: Finding out something I wrote struck a chord with someone or made him/her laugh. Belly laughs are best.

Least favorite: The anxiety of knowing real humans not within my genetic pool will read a flawed book that I wrote. I liken it to waiting in the wings of the Miss Universe pageant for the swimsuit competition, which is plenty traumatic on its own. But to my horror, I’m notified back stage this is the first year the judges have mandated thongs for all the contestants. No time for a Brazilian.

How much marketing do you do? Any advice in this area?

I’m still in process with the marketing of my first book and it’s a steep learning curve. My publishing house and my publicist know I’m game to help in any way I can. I’d like to do some speaking because I enjoy it and because it allows me to meet the people who read my stuff. I have a website, www.kimberlystuart.com, and I’ve found that’s a fantastic way to let readers know me better and to contact me with their comments. It’s also been a great way for booksellers to put a person behind the book I hope they recommend to customers. Word of mouth is still the best way to spread news of a good book, so I point blank ask everyone with a pulse to tell people about my work if they enjoy it.

Parting words?

If you think your dream is too lofty, impossible for a person like you, or just plain nuts, take heart. There’s a stay-at-home mom in the middle of America who would humbly remind you that absolutely nothing is impossible.