We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Callie C. Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Callie below.

Callie, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I’ve always been a writer. I’m from a very small town in the middle of nowhere that to this day looks like a desolate wasteland. Being outside wasn’t fun, so in my free time I read (mostly Star Wars novels, more on that later). I’d also often jot down little stories. I wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t an uncomfortable patch of desert, and a galaxy far, far away was my favorite escape. This is how I discovered The First Essential Element of Writing: You MUST Read.

You must read hundreds of books or comics or scripts. Study the foundational and award-winning texts of your chosen area, but also make sure the majority of your reading is more recent. You must understand the industry as it is today. Further, you must read not only in the mediums and genres you enjoy, or that you wish to write for, but also outside of your comfort zone. This will expand your knowledge and awareness of the world, and make you a better human. You will be exposed to ideas you’d never before considered. This will all improve your writing.

The Second Essential Element of Writing is to find your community. Surround yourself with other writers, preferably at various stages of their careers. Those further along than you will have valuable insights and wisdom. Those who started after you will be inspired by you, and will have different insights and wisdom (trust me, it comes from everywhere). And those who are in a similar place as you will be stalwart friends and champions as you cheer each other on. I found my first writing community through my MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. When I moved to Los Angeles, I sought out friends who wrote for animation. Writing is inherently isolating, and writing friends are crucial.

One quick note on community: comparison is the thief of joy. If your friend recently signed with an agent and you are still without one, or just got their first (or fifth) book deal, be HAPPY for them. It’s very easy to slip into a jealous mentality, but this is poison. When you allow the success of others to diminish your own journey, it makes you miserable, and miserable to be around.

You must also, of course, write. And write. And write. And write. And write some more. This is the Third Essential Element of Writing.

I can’t tell you how many writers I know who don’t write. But YOU are the only one who will write your story. You are the only one who CAN write your story. It won’t find its way into the world without you, and you won’t learn how to be a better writer without actually writing.

One summer in middle school, after I’d read every Star Wars novel I could get my hands on, I decided to write a Star Wars story of my own. The galaxy needed more female Jedi who had adventures, separate from the famous male characters. This was back in what is now called the “Star Wars Legends” canon, before Ahsoka and Rey. Leia was around, but mostly concerned with how to run a government AND be a mother (which left no time for Jedi training), whereas Han never seemed too concerned about how to adventure AND be a father. I loved Han and Luke, Wedge and Corran, but I wanted to see myself in a Star Wars story. I wanted more female action heroes, so I wrote one.

I spent my summer nights typing away at my keyboard into the wee hours of the morning, armed only with a love for Star Wars and a desire to tell a story. That story is probably 97% action and maybe 3% character development (if we’re generously rounding up), but in many ways it was a masterclass. I’d think about scenes I’d written the night before and realize I’d written my character into a corner, or had her making choices that weren’t true to who she was, so I’d go back and rewrite them. I’d act out action scenes to get a sense of space and staging (something I still do today, though usually with the assistance of LEGOs). I learned how to use a thesaurus, and came up with bad metaphors (and one or two decent ones). I learned about what Ursula K. Le Guin calls “crowding and leaping” in her quintessential book on writing, Steering the Craft. I learned it’s helpful to have a plan when you start instead of realizing the summer is coming to an end so you should probably wrap things up (with more action and an epilogue that tied into Luke’s Jedi academy on Yavin IV, of course).

At the end of the summer, I’d written almost 60,000 words. That’s a novel! A novel that will never, EVER see the light of the day.

But you know what? Nothing is wasted. Say you wrote an entire pilot script and then realized you need to completely change the main character AND what they want AND the time period? This is excellent. You have learned what isn’t working about your story, and are that much closer to what will. You’ve become a better writer because you’ve written one more pilot than you had before. You’ve sharpened your skills, and the fact that you recognized changes need to be made is huge, and speaks to your maturity as a writer. (Even if you cried about it for a while and threw things and raided your emergency chocolate stash. It’s okay. We’ve all been there.)

Writing is a craft that translates across mediums. I’ve professionally written children’s novels, dozens of animation scripts, comics, and video game dialogue. It’s all narrative. It’s all story. It’s all character. It all informs one another. While I’ve listed Three Essential Elements of Writing here, the truth is there are many more. Writing is a craft that requires you to constantly learn and grow. I find that exciting. When I discovered that I’d never “arrive,” that success is relative, and that even if a fortune teller informed me I’d never make another cent writing–I’d still write.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My writing journey isn’t exactly linear since it involves multiple industries, but it does have a fairly traditional foundation: I went to graduate school at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and got an MFA from their Writing for Children and Young Adults program. I’d written plenty of stories prior to that, and had always loved writing, but getting an MFA helped me hone and focus my craft in ways that have applied to every industry I’ve worked in as a writer.

After graduating from VCFA in 2014 I set about trying to get a literary agent. I moved to Los Angeles in 2016 thinking I might pursue TV writing. My undergraduate degree was in film (which I’d taken for screenwriting), and I’d written a few TV pilots and spec scripts. After I’d been in LA about a year, I realized that I should look into animation, given that so much of animation writing is for kids, and I had an MFA in writing for children. I’d always loved animation, so I determined that after finishing the next revision of the novel I was working on at the time, I’d educate myself on the industry.

The following week I went to an event at my local comic shop and met my mentor. It’s because of that fateful meeting that I have an animation career. We got coffee after the event (I had no idea this was “networking”) and she said that when I had an animation sample ready, I should send it her way. I started going to writing events to meet other animation writers, and got coffee with anyone who would let me take up time on their calendar. I think having an MFA gave me a bit of instant credibility, as did having scripts already written, even if they were for live action.

While my animation career was getting established, I continued to work on my children’s books. I’d queried agents several times with different projects over the years, and finally at the beginning of 2020 I landed my literary agent. In 2021, we sold my debut middle grade fantasy novel THE HUNT FOR THE HOLLOWER.

At the end of 2021, I accepted a contract position at Riot Games, which directly resulted from my animation work. While at Riot, I also got to write several comics and dip my toes into video game dialogue. That contract ended recently, but I’m so grateful for where my career has taken me so far, and excited to see what comes next!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My first children’s novel (THE HUNT FOR THE HOLLOWER, a middle grade fantasy adventure romp) was certainly a journey! I love all of the industries I write in, but my books are my heart. My MFA is specifically in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and after graduating in 2014 I immediately set out trying to get a literary agent. Getting a literary agent means going through the querying process, which is usually pretty painful.

Querying involves researching literary agents to find who might be a good match for your work. You email each agent a sample (usually the first couple of chapters of your manuscript) and hope they ask to read more. You’re basically putting your heart on a platter and sending it to a bunch of people and hoping they’ll love it as much as you do!

I initially queried with a novel I’d written during my MFA program and while several agents had nice things to say about my writing (and many asked to read the entire novel), none of them loved it enough to sign me. So I took a different novel out of the drawer and polished that one, and sent it out. Similar response. I sent out a bunch of picture books I’d written. Still no offers.

Right after graduating in 2014, I had the inklings of a new novel. While I was querying and polishing these other projects, what would one day become THE HUNT FOR THE HOLLOWER was there in the back of my head. I wrote the first draft in 2016, revised it, sent it to friends for feedback, revised it again, send it out another time….and so on, until we all agreed it was ready to *shudders* query.

Hollower was the best thing I’d ever written, and I knew it. I optimistically sent it out to agent and after agent, while the response was generally positive, no one loved it enough to sign me. So I revised it again. And then sent it out again. Rinse and repeat.

Finally, an agent requested an R&R–that stands for “revise and resubmit,” and means an agent likes the manuscript a lot but thinks it needs a little more work before they can try to sell it. This agent and I got on the phone to talk through revisions, and I loved her feedback. She loved how I intended to implement said feedback. I was so close! Surely, this R&R was just a formality, and I’d have an agent at the end of it. I dove into revisions with gusto, turned it in when I was sure I’d done everything, and waited.

The email I finally got back did not proclaim my brilliance, or how wonderful this new draft was. It was a rather short, “let’s set a time to talk.” And when we finally did, the agent (very politely) said that somehow the manuscript was weaker than it was before, but she wasn’t sure why.

Reader, I was devastated. This milestone I’d been working towards for years, and had seemed so close to achieving, had slipped from my grasp. I threw myself into studying animation writing. For an entire year I only read and wrote animation scripts, and avoided the children’s section of bookstores.

But all the while, the last revision of HOLLOWER echoed in my head, along with my chats with the R&R agent (who I have only ever held with great respect, despite the unfortunate result of that R&R). I KNEW her initial concerns about the manuscript were correct, and I also knew I’d gotten closer to correcting them with the R&R I’d done. And as things percolated, I had a lightbulb moment. For several drafts I’d known that I needed to make things more personal for my main character, and had tried to do so. But at last, I understand EXACTLY how to do that, and it changed everything.

I set off on one final revision. I didn’t tell anyone I was working on HOLLOWER, and I planned to send it to exactly one reader when it was done: a friend from my MFA program who I trusted the most with my writing. If she said I should keep going, I would. If she said to shelve it, I’d move on. My year immersed in animation proved invaluable. Not only did I overhaul my main character’s stakes, I cut 11,000 words from the manuscript so overall it was tighter, more fluid.

My friend loved it, and that is the draft that got me an agent–the perfect agent for me. And I never could have gotten there without that very painful R&R experience. THE HUNT FOR THE HOLLOWER came out from Aladdin/Simon & Schuster in June 2023–nine whole years after those first scribbled notes about a wizardess who is terrible at magic and her tiny but very fierce wyvern familiar. The sequel, THE SEARCH FOR THE SHADOWSOUL, comes out September 17, 2024.

In hindsight, I’m so glad I didn’t get an agent and a book deal right out of graduate school. Nine years is a long time, but I needed those years. I needed to grow as a human and as a writer. And I plan to keep growing and writing.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

There’s an old idea that you can have only two of the following three: the work can be on time, the work can be good, or the worker can be pleasant to work with. I strive to deliver on all three.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.calliecmiller.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesupercallie/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calliecmiller/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSuperCallie

Image Credits
Adriana J. Boyd Ellen Tremiti Waltke