It Took Her 10 Years and 4 Rejected Books Before Anyone Said Yes. Here's What Kept Her Writing Anyway.

Wendelin Van Draanen had already written and shelved four rejected manuscripts by the time an editor finally said yes. Not one book she kept revising and resubmitting — four separate books, written back to back, while working full-time as a teacher and raising two kids.

Thirty years later, she's published 40 novels, including the Edgar Award-winning Sammy Keyes mystery series and Flipped, which Rob Reiner turned into a Warner Bros. film. Her latest, Ghosted, a first-love romantasy, releases October 6th.

We sat down with her on Writers With Wrinkles to talk about what actually kept her going through a decade of rejection, why she's stayed with the same editor her entire career, and what it was really like handing her most personal book to Hollywood.

The Rejection Math Nobody Talks About

Here's the part that tends to surprise people: Van Draanen didn't wait to hear back on book one before starting book two. She didn't even wait to hear back on book two before starting book three.

"I was sure somebody would love it in New York," she told us. "So before they could send me rejections, I had already started on the second one. And when the rejections came in for the first one, I'm like, 'Oh wait till you read this, and then you're gonna understand what I'm doing.'"

By the time the rejections on book two arrived, she'd finished book three. By the time those rejections came back, she'd written book four. She calls this "putting hope in the mail" — the idea that as long as something new is out in the world waiting for a yes, you're still in the game.

It's easy to read that as pure grit. But talk to her for more than five minutes and it's clear the real fuel wasn't willpower — it was the character. Sammy Keyes, she says, was "the friend I wish I'd had when I was in middle school." Writing her wasn't a chore to push through. It was an escape she looked forward to.

That distinction matters if you're in your own stretch of rejections right now: the writers who last aren't necessarily the most disciplined ones. They're the ones who found a story they'd keep writing even if no one was watching.

The Editor Who Fished Her Out of the Slush Pile

When an associate editor named Nancy Sisko finally pulled Van Draanen's manuscript out of the slush pile, Sisko wasn't yet in a position to acquire it. She had to wait — and push — until she landed at a new publishing house with the authority to buy not one book, but all four.

That was three decades ago. Van Draanen has published almost every one of her 40 books with Sisko since.

In an industry where authors are routinely told to chase the highest bidder, that kind of loyalty is unusual enough that both of our hosts had never heard of a career quite like it. Van Draanen has a name for the advice she gets from other authors about "looking out for number one." She calls it "just not me."

"It's a business, and you have to acknowledge these publishing houses are no longer there to nurture your ego," she said. "But I feel like I need to live my life in a way that I present in my books — where friendship is important... You need to respect that partnership and not just toss it aside because you're hot stuff now."

It's a philosophy that shows up in her fiction, too. Even though Sammy Keyes is technically a mystery series, Van Draanen describes it as fundamentally about relationships between friends — which tracks, given she wrote all 18 books with Sisko as her editor the entire way through.

What Happens When Hollywood Actually Reads the Book

Before Flipped, Van Draanen had already had one book adapted — Nickelodeon turned Shredder Man into a TV movie that diverged wildly from her original story in its second half. She'd already learned, painfully, to separate her creation from someone else's adaptation.

So when Rob Reiner called about turning Flipped into a film, she wasn't naive about what usually happens next.

Except this time was different. "He said, 'I read the book. I loved the book. Why would I mess with a book?'" she recalled. "That's not something you hear a lot from people in Hollywood."

When the script arrived, the dialogue was lifted straight from her pages — including the ending, which had been generating fan mail for years from readers who wanted more. Van Draanen was so certain Hollywood would change it that she drove to Los Angeles to pitch Reiner her own idea for how to give fans the on-screen kiss they'd been begging for.

Reiner listened politely. Then he shot the ending exactly as she'd written it.

"How many authors can say they've had this kind of experience?" she said. "Not very many."

She's candid that this kind of outcome is rare — most authors who get an option never even see a movie made. "It's yes until it's no," she said of Hollywood deals, in contrast to publishing, where "it's no until it's yes." Having two of her books actually make it to screen, she says, is like the stars aligning twice.

Why Ghosted Took 10 Years to Write

Van Draanen's newest novel, Ghosted, sat in her head for a decade before she wrote a word of it — not because she was busy, but because she didn't know how to end it.

"Once I hit the ending, once I thought of the ending, then I got to work," she said. From there, it took her roughly nine months to a year of diligent writing to produce a full draft, followed by months of revision.

It's a pattern that shows up across her career: the writing itself is rarely the slow part. The thinking — the years spent circling a story until the ending clicks — is where the real time goes. She's never working on two books simultaneously, either. "My whole brain power goes into the story," she said. "It would be distracting the way that my brain works. I'm all in."

Ghosted is out October 6th and available for pre-order now.

The Book Festival Story That United Two Authors

Not every part of the conversation was about craft. Van Draanen and co-host Lisa Schmidt discovered, mid-interview, that they'd separately survived the exact same nightmare experience at the exact same indie bookstore — one that failed to stock their books, then months later tried to arrange a parking-lot handoff to return a single unsold copy.

It's the kind of story that doesn't make it into an author's polished social media feed, which is exactly why we wanted to include it. As Lisa put it: so many writers see other authors posting only the wins that they start to think bad events, canceled signings, and no-show audiences are happening to them alone. They're not.

Listen to the Full Episode

This conversation covers a lot more than we could fit here — including how Van Draanen structured all 18 Sammy Keyes books around one month of story time per book, and why she thinks finishing what you start matters more than any craft technique you'll ever learn.

Listen to the full episode of Writers With Wrinkles wherever you get your podcasts, and pre-order Ghosted before it releases October 6th.