Original interview conducted over IG Live on November 16, 2020.
I was so excited to have the opportunity to speak with Faith Noelle a few months ago! We discussed how she got into writing, what inspired her story Beauty, the querying process that landed her with her dream agent, and her best advice for surviving the query trenches.
You can keep up with Faith’s journey to publication on Twitter, Instagram or by subscribing to her blog!
Faith’s bio from her blog:
Faith has always been inspired by the books she reads, and she hopes that she is able to inspire others through her own writing. A lover of YA, she writes both fantasy and contemporary stories about brown girls who are far from perfect, but who embody strength, resilience, and creativity. She is currently working with her literary agent, Rachel Brooks at BookEnds Literary Agency, to get her debut novel – a fairytale-inspired fantasy adventure – published. Faith hopes to create a supportive community of readers and writers who connect through a shared love of stories. Whether it’s a novel filled with magic and monsters, or a short piece that takes place in a familiar town, she hopes that everyone can find something to connect to in her writing.
Faith Noelle currently resides in Pennsylvania where she is pursuing a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. In addition to writing, she enjoys reading, playing guitar and songwriting, having game nights with her family and friends, having Harry Potter marathons, and teaching herself Spanish.
Danielle: Where are you from and how did you get into writing?
Faith Noelle: I am originally from D.C. I am currently living in Philadelphia. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I don’t feel like I have a fun story about how I got into it, I just remember I’ve been writing since I was little. I wrote my first multi-chapter story when I was 7 or 8 years old. It was not good, but it was the first real story I wrote.
D: Do you remember what it was about?
F: I lost it because I handwrote it, but I do remember that it was somewhat based on the Seven Sisters’ constellation and it had these seven sisters in it and I wanted them to become the constellation so it dramatically ended with them all getting hit by a bus so that they could die and become the stars in the sky.
D: Was your family supportive of your writing? Did they encourage you?
F: My family was very supportive. A lot of us are very creative people. My mom has always been super supportive of my writing. When I was younger I wanted to do writing as a full-time career, and she was supportive of that. Now I’m kind of splitting [my focus]. I’m currently in grad school to become a therapist so I have a “real job” that I’m working towards as well because I am also passionate about that. When writing was my main focus, I still felt very supported.
D: Could you give us a brief description of your book? It sounds so cool!
F: It’s kind of a twist of Beauty and the Beast. We all know the typical tale of the vain prince who gets turned into a beast. However, my story asks the question: “What if the curse turned the vainest person into the most beautiful person in the world? Could that be a curse?” The story follows my main character Raina who is this vain spoiled rich girl who messes with the wrong enchantress and gets herself cursed and we see the effects of that. I call it a fairytale-inspired story instead of a retelling because it’s not quite a retelling. It also turns itself into an adventure story for a little bit.
D: How did you come up with the idea?
F: I started the story in high school, so I’ve been working on it for a while. Just for context, I’m 24 right now. I got the idea because I was involved in a lot of organizations promoting body positivity in high school and college, so that has always been important to me. While being involved in that, I kept thinking about how we’re all so obsessed with attaining beauty and thinking that “if I’m the most beautiful person everything will be good.”
“I wondered if that’s really an ideal thing? If you’re the most beautiful person, is that really as positive of a thing as people think it is? Or is it more of a curse? And that was a scary idea.”
D: How many stories had you written up to that point? How did you know that this was the one you wanted to move forward with and publish?
F: I had written first drafts of two full stories before then, but this one was the first time I had written something where I was at the point in my life where I could think about querying. I wrote my first story in middle school, so I wasn’t thinking much about publishing then and my second one in high school. And with both of those stories, I wasn’t thinking in depth about what it meant to publish something. I think one of the biggest reasons I chose to publish Beauty was because I had shown my work to people for the first time in a way where I could get feedback and make it better.
I worked on the bulk of Beauty when I was a creative writing minor in college. I was in writing workshops and I had to show them something, so while I was in the middle of writing Beauty I was showing it to people and getting feedback to make it better. Seeing it get better was helpful for me. I thought “oh this could be something that is publishable.” So that’s what got me thinking that I could publish this one in particular.
D: Was your teacher encouraging you to publish it too?
F: I definitely got good feedback from him, encouraging feedback. Helpful feedback as well, but also feedback that helped me really see, yes this Is good.
D: Once you figured out that this was the book you wanted to move forward with, what was your process for finding agents to submit to and narrowing down that list?
F: The process of [querying] differs for each person. It’s unlikely that the first person you submit to is going to immediately sign you. In the end, I queried twenty or so agents. My process for finding people to submit to started with Manuscript Wishlist, it was very helpful. It’s kind of like a dating app [for writers] because you get to see what the agents are interested in and that was helpful for me to get started.
I made a list and separated it into three categories: my top agents, the agents I wasn’t as excited about but were still good, and then the “if all else fails these people could still potentially be interested in me” agents. The people at the bottom of my list weren’t agents I didn’t like, they had stated they were not looking for manuscripts that specifically matched mine. People who had any interest in fairytale retellings instantly went to the top of my lists.
I heard the advice to query in batches of 10 because it’s better to have a couple out at a time instead of sending out one at a time, so that’s what I started doing. Once I got a rejection, and I did get several of those, I was like okay now I can find a new person and send my manuscript out to them.
D: So, you found your current agent Rachel and she wanted to sign you, what was THE CALL with her like? What were the feelings like?
F: Too many to really name! It was really cool. She emailed me to set up a time for the call and it kind of felt unreal. After the call, I knew I wanted her to be my agent. It started with her just telling me what she liked about my book and fangirling over it a little bit and we fangirled together over the characters. I think what sold her for me was seeing how passionate another person could be about your book. After that, I reached out to the other agents who still had my book to give them a chance to make an offer. But hearing someone who was as excited about my book as I was, I knew it was a good match.
We also talked about potential edits and things we could do to spruce it up before going on submission. It was a fun call. It was just talking to another human being, it felt like talking to a friend who happened to be an agent. It was a really good conversation.
D: Us writers on the other side sometimes see agents as these big scary entities who just want to reject our manuscripts, but that’s not the case.
F:
“Yeah, finding that person as I said who is excited about your book and makes you fall in love with it again, I think that’s a good sign of someone who would be good to work with. A big part of finding a good agent has to do with personalities, who you would work well with.”
D: What has the process been like preparing for submission?
F: Some things I don’t know fully. I don’t know what’s standard and what’s unique to my book. Once I signed, I got an edit letter from Rachel. For those of you who don’t know it’s a letter with a big picture developmental type edits and more specific line edits. I went through my manuscript and changed things as I saw fit. She never framed the edits as something that I was required to do. It’s still your book, so you still get the final say [on edits]. I spent some time working on that. With Rachel I got to have my own timeline, there wasn’t really a deadline.
I did the initial edits and sent it back to her then she sent me a document with track changes and a few smaller edits. That’s where we are right now. We’re taking a pause and letting the publishers and editors survive the rest of 2020 and we plan to go on submission in the new year. I feel like people at this point are on break and focused on the holidays. We’re waiting until everyone is refreshed and ready to get back to work. I’m finishing an edit or two, but I’m mostly just waiting to go on submission in January.
D: Are you working on anything else right now?
F: Yes, I do have other things that I’m working on. I am not doing Nanowrimo right now, it’s too much pressure for me to try to set a specific goal to reach in November. But I’m in the outlining stages of another fairytale-inspired story.
D: Is Beauty going to be a series?
F: We’ll see how I feel about writing a series. I think there should be more standalone fantasy books (laughs). I also just feel like there’s a lot of pressure that comes with writing a series. I don’t know if I can write within the time constraints that are required to write a series. So, we’re not opposed to doing that, but I don’t plan for it to be a series yet.
D: Do you have any advice for anyone going through the query trenches or revising?
F: One helpful thing is to make it fun. When you’re in the middle of querying it’s also important to keep your cheerleaders around you, the people who are going to encourage you and remind you that you are a good writer and you are talented. You will experience some level of rejection, not everyone is going to love your book, but that doesn’t mean that you are a bad writer or that something is wrong with your book. I got a lot of rejection from agents who didn’t say there was anything wrong with the book, they simply said “it’s not a good fit for me” and I didn’t really know what to do with that (laughs). Querying is all about finding out who is a good fit for you, who is a good agent for you.
“Because you will face some level of rejection during this process, keep your cheerleaders around you, keep those people who are going to encourage you because you will definitely need that.”
D: Are there any resources/books you recommend to help people with their publishing journey or story structure etc.?
F: I’m not the kind of person who uses a lot of craft books, but If anyone wants tools and resources for worldbuilding, springhole.net is very helpful. It has a lot of big picture questions to help you with world-building.
D: What stories are you loving right now? This can include books, movies TV shows, etc.
F: I’m reading a lot of ARCs right now, there are so many I’ve loved. I’m releasing an interview with Dana Swift who wrote Cast In Firelight and I loved that book a lot. Another fantasy book that I fell in love with is the Cruel Prince and that whole series by Holly Black which was surprising because I don’t normally like fae/fairy type books.
Fun Speed Round Questions!
Lakehouse or beach house?
Can I say neither? I guess I would say beach house. I don’t like water, I don’t swim. Beach house for the view.
Winter or Summer?
Also neither. Fall.
Favorite musical?
Dear Evan Hansen. Also, Hamilton and Waitress.
Favorite drink?
Water. I don’t like coffee or tea, I think they’re disgusting. I’m that one weird person who thinks they’re both gross.
What is your Hogwarts house?
Ravenclaw
Favorite Harry Potter book?
The 5th one (The Order of the Phoenix)
Favorite Harry Potter movie?
The Prisoner of Azkaban
Disney or Pixar?
(hesitates) Disney.
