Writer Wednesday: Kendra Broekhuis
I’m happy to welcome author Kendra Brockhuis to my blog to discuss her writing journey.
When did you decide you would be an author? Was it something you fell into, felt called to…?
My husband and I got married and one month later moved to Guatemala to teach at an English immersion school. I realized the “cool” thing to do when one moves overseas is to start a blog, so I did. This is where my deep love for writing began. While in Guatemala, writing became much more than a way to keep in touch. It was also a way for me to process whatever was happening in my life, including our move overseas, my passage into motherhood, and my grief. I wrote Christian nonfiction articles and social media for about a decade before pivoting to fiction in 2020.
What’s your pet peeve?
I asked my husband for help on this question and he said: “You don’t love clutter.” He’s right. It’s not about having a perfectly clean house—though I do enjoy the two seconds after I’ve cleaned my house that it stays clean—it’s more about holding onto things our family doesn’t use that take up space in our home and make me feel sensory overload.
What was your most embarrassing moment as a writer?
I once visited a book club who’d just read and discussed my book. A few days later, one of the women from that book club posted a review online saying how much she didn’t like it. Readers are very much entitled to their opinions on what they enjoy, but it was slightly embarrassing to rub elbows in the intimate space of a living room with someone who goes on to publicly bash your work.
What has been your most difficult challenge as an author?
See above answer. I love getting to create. I love getting to work with a publishing house of people dedicated to helping me write the stories I want to write! The hard part is learning to be okay with my work not being everyone’s cup of tea. It’s all too easy to focus on the negative, even when you have encouragement coming from people who both enjoy and invest a lot in your work.
How do you process rejections and/or negative reviews?
Rejections are hard because in the writing world, they often come after 6-8 weeks of waiting and checking your phone for email notifications an unhealthy amount of times. Negative reviews are hard, and I’ll stop jabbering about why. Here’s a random list of a few things that help me:
- Giving myself a day to feel hurt by those things, then opening my computer and getting back to the work that I love.
- Buffering myself from reviews in general. Author Camille Pagán shared the idea of having someone you trust read your reviews and give you the basics. My husband has done this for me recently.
- Being around people who “get” the difficulties of writing books—they remind me I’m not alone.
- Being around people who know nothing about writing books—they remind me there’s a great big world out there I am not the center of, and there’s more to life than this work.
- Clarifying my motivations and mindset. I am playing the long game in writing and publishing. This requires an attitude of accepting feedback and realizing how much I still have to learn. Also, I’m creating stories for the joy of creating stories. The work is the reward. The most joy I experience as an author is not even reading a positive review, but those precious days of getting to stare at the Word document of my current Work In Progress.
What do you feel is the best success so far in your writing career?
I’m constantly having to redefine success, and maybe that’s a success in itself? Here are a few things that make me feel successful as an author: Being adaptive to the publishing world in order to keep writing. Putting in the time to finish writing an entire novel. Getting to connect with other people—both authors and readers—who love the joy of books.
Creativity and connection—those are things I celebrate as a success!
What is your current work in process?
My next novel is a quirky dramedy called The Housewarming. It’s about a family who moves into a strict HOA neighborhood and, on their first night there, the house next door burns down, sending the block into juicy, what-just-happened spiral of drama.
Bio: Kendra Broekhuis writes stories on life’s heavy stuff with a dose of humor and a lot of love. She is the author of the novels Nearly Beloved and Between You and Us, as well as the nonfiction book Here Goes Nothing: An Introvert’s Reckless Attempt to Love Her Neighbor. For her day job, she stays home with her four kids and drives them from one place to another in her minivan. She and her family live in Milwaukee.
Website: http://www.kendrabroekhuis.com
Newsletter: http://www.kendrabroekhuis.com/newsletter
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kendrabroekhuisauthor
Latest book release: Nearly Beloved with WaterBrook.
I met Joanie Shawhan with some mutual friends for lunch several times to talk about our writing dreams, before either of us ever got published. I instantly fell in love with her bubbly personality. She’s gone through the shadow of ovarian cancer and her passion to help others going through cancer is inspiring. I asked her about her writer’s journey.