Elizabeth Kaufman: My Advice to Writers Is To Write

Elizabeth Kaufman had a career in data networking, specializing in network security products and architectures. She now lives in rural northern Colorado.

In this interview, Elizabeth discusses how a dare from a friend turned into her debut novel, Ruth Run, how her views on writing a novel changed throughout the process, and more.

Name: Elizabeth Kaufman
Literary agent: Nicole Aragi
Book title: Ruth Run
Publisher: Penguin Press
Release date: April 15, 2025
Genre/category: Literary fiction; mystery/thriller
Elevator pitch: Twenty-six-year-old Ruth engineers a backdoor into a microchip so she can rob banks through their firewalls. She has $250 million stashed offshore when she realizes someone has discovered her hack and is coming after her. She runs, hoping to disappear, until she gets tired of being afraid and doubles back to confront her pursuers.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

A friend challenged me to write something fun that she’d enjoy reading. I’d given up on publishing fiction, so my only goal was to make her laugh. And I was trying to sneak some technical content in there—a little fiber hidden in the ice cream. I didn’t think I could write a novel, but I hate to wimp on a dare, which she knew. This is not the stupidest thing I’ve done on impulse.

The entire process took just under two years—I started the book May 13, 2023, and it’s out April 15, 2025. The most significant plot change from first draft to final was the end. My initial ending was a lot lighter. I was so surprised to have written the thing at all, and it wasn’t going further than one person’s email. When the story turned into a novel, I wanted an ending that made sense for Ruth.

So many surprises. I’d co-authored a technical book for Wiley in 1999 and thought I knew something about the process. The first step was the same—write the book. Everything else was different. Penguin is a meticulous press, and the people have deep, sometimes arcane expertise in each step of production. So much goes into a beautiful book. And a quality audiobook—it’s a good thing that wasn’t my job. I learned I can’t use commas. My whole relationship to punctuation is more rudimentary than I’d imagined. Probably the most useful lesson was that once the text is finalized, there’s a year of mostly gut-curdling silence. It was best for me to think of Ruth as lost luggage. Maybe I’d see it again someday, but waiting for news was a fast ride to madness.

I’m a rookie and every bit of this surprised me. As a committed not-novelist, I was surprised to find I have a lot of opinions about novel writing and writing in general. I count syllables in dialogue—that was something I didn’t know about myself. I got stuck a couple of times and realized I was distracted by some idea of the story inconsistent with the characters. I’ve always been irritated by authors who say they can’t control their characters. It seems so precious when we all know who runs the keyboard. Turns out to be mostly true and I’ve had to retract my judgey thoughts about that. Probably the biggest surprise is that people like the story and say interesting things about it.

Pain relief. I hope they laugh. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

I got so lucky to get an agent and a contract and a book. For people that want to publish, that’s going to seem like the most interesting part of the story. Maybe it is, but the part I could control was thousands of hours of writing that came before all that, learning how to edit my own stuff, making things no one else ever saw. I can’t tell anyone how to reproduce the insanely improbable events that turned Ruth Run into a novel. I can’t tell anyone how to write either, but that’s the job and the thing we can work on without waiting for miracles. And if you do get some publishing gatekeeper person to look at your stuff, they’re going to decide in 30 seconds whether or not to keep reading. So, my advice to writers is to write. Talking about writing is like reading about running. It’s fun, but beside the point. So, if you’re a writer reading this, stop. Go work on your own story.