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Meet Kayla Jean Murphy: On Demolishing the Draft and Starting Over
by Writing Workshops Staff
8 hours ago
There is a kind of writerly courage that doesn't get talked about much in writing classes: the courage to throw away the novel you've already finished. Kayla Jean Murphy knows this courage intimately, and she has built a six-month mentorship around it. In Starting from Scratch: Rewriting Your Novel, her IndieMFA fiction program at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature, six writers commit to demolishing a first draft they have already written and generating a new one from scratch, together.
Murphy, whose debut novel More Abundantly is forthcoming from West Virginia University Press in 2027 and whose Pushcart-nominated stories have appeared in Joyland, Soft Union, and elsewhere, came to fiction late and learned the hard way that writing rarely arrives whole.
"I had this idea that 'good' writing either flowed from you or it didn't," she says in the interview below. "For me, it turns out, good writing doesn't always just 'flow.'"
The mentorship is built on that hard-won truth: 500 new words a day, five days a week, paired with bi-weekly one-on-one feedback that evolves from line edits early on to structural and manuscript-level notes as your draft matures. By the end of Week 24, you will have a 60,000 to 80,000-word novel draft, a "carrier bag" of literary influences shaping your voice, and a cohort of fellow novelists who have stared down the same blank page beside you.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Kayla:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Kayla. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Kayla Jean Murphy: I'm a writer from south central Pennsylvania, and I always draw a blank when trying to introduce myself in an interesting way! I began writing while I was working a research assistant job. The research study had hardly any participants, so I filled the time dissecting short stories and trying to write my own. I got my MFA from Virginia Tech. I think Christiansburg, Virginia is the most beautiful place in the world.
I live in Pennsylvania now with my husband and daughter. Aside from writing, I love cooking, cake decorating, and sitting in screened porches sipping iced tea.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life—and how does this class address that?
Kayla Jean Murphy: I wish someone had taught me that the majority of the work in writing is actually editing and re-writing. I had this idea that "good" writing either flowed from you or it didn't. For me, it turns out, good writing doesn't always just "flow." So, when working on a novel, I have to remain committed to a certain number of words per day, regardless of how I feel about myself or the work, with faith that I'm moving towards a cohesive whole.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Kayla Jean Murphy: Students will walk away from this class with the confidence that can only come from having written a new novel draft from scratch. I firmly believe that if you can rewrite a novel from scratch, any other limits you may have put on yourself as a writer will dissolve.
"If you can re-write a novel from scratch, any other limits you may have put on yourself as a writer will dissolve."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Kayla Jean Murphy: I've been reading my friend Calvin's in-progress short story collection. I reread this sentence from his story "Nobody's Fault":
"A new year stumbles towards us from the future. What I'm saying is there are rooms we have been pushed through the doors of where we have seen things only we have seen."
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop—one you were teaching or one you took as a student—where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Kayla Jean Murphy: When I was writing the second draft of More Abundantly, I met with my thesis advisor every two weeks, and we reviewed what I had submitted the week prior.
I always showed up to these meeting nervous and nauseous because I was giving the novel draft everything I had, yet I knew my excerpts would be marked up with harsh edits.
My thesis advisor pointed to the dialogue tag I had used. It said, "she joked."
"The only dialogue tag you should ever use is 'said'," he said. "You should write in such a way that your reader knows when your characters are laughing, joking, angry, sarcastic, without you having to tell them."
This completely changed my approach. I could no longer take the easy way out and rely on a verb or adverb to do the heavy lifting. I had to write better dialogue.
This rule has made it so that I rarely have to cut expository or unimportant dialogue from my writing.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept—a small, specific technique.
Kayla Jean Murphy: Challenging myself to avoid starting sentences with: the, he, she, they, etc.
Relying on the sound/shape/symmetry of letters and words to determine the direction of the sentence.
This is the kind of sentence-level attention you will bring to your own pages over six months of close, one-on-one mentorship.
Apply for Starting from Scratch →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Kayla Jean Murphy: Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann. It's funny and heartbreaking, the sentences are sharp, and it's also a perfect summer read.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Kayla Jean Murphy: I mostly agree with the very popular "show, don't tell" advice, but I think it can be taken too far. My favorite writers strike a perfect balance. They know when to show and when to tell.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but…"
Kayla Jean Murphy: there is no secret or shortcut to becoming a better writer. Only daily practice, openness to critique, and persistence.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Kayla Jean Murphy: The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe—in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Kayla Jean Murphy: Down to earth. I'm showing you what has worked for me, and we're in this together.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Kayla Jean Murphy: I didn't really start writing creatively, in a serious sense, until after college. I was about 25 when I wrote my first short story. I hear a lot of writers talk about how they wrote stories and books from a young age. That just wasn't me! I believed that I wasn't capable of writing fiction for a long time. I thought some people just had the talent for it, and some didn't. I didn't believe I could write a novel until I was writing it.
"I didn't believe I could write a novel until I was writing it."
That late-blooming arrival to fiction is the heart of what Murphy offers her cohort: the lived knowledge that the writer you will become is not the writer you are when you sit down at the desk. Six months. Six writers. One completed manuscript at the end. If you have a draft sitting in a drawer that you are afraid to open, or if you have been telling yourself you will revise it later, Starting from Scratch is the structured, intimate, and stubbornly practical path back to your novel. Applications are open now for the fall 2026 cohort.
Six months. Six writers. One completed novel draft. Apply now for the fall 2026 cohort.
Apply for the Fall 2026 Cohort →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
