About Me

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How long have you been writing?
When I was 9 years old, I remember writing a poem called Splat, Spider and it was accepted as a finalist in a poetry writing contest that I’m pretty sure was a scam. For a cool $50 back in the 90s, they would publish my poem in the book along with other submissions. My parents simply did not want to spend that money. If you would ask me as a parent today, I would have 100% agreed, but back then, their failure to finance my dream was absolutely devastating. They never agreed to the publication, and I resented them for it ever since. Even now as I think back to that time, it makes me sad. I was so proud and I wanted recognition. That will always be my earliest memory of my work and the recognition of feeling like the talent that I held was something special.

What’s your ideal writing day like?
Waking up early on a crisp fall day in Wisconsin, taking my coffee out to my deck and writing on the couch with a dog or two curled at my side until lunch time. I would then take a break to be active for a while and get other things done. Sadly/frustratingly/annoyingly my biggest creativity spark comes when I am trying to fall asleep at night. That’s when I quickly jot down my ideas on my phone or bedside notebook to look at again in the morning and start the process all over again.

How long does it take you to write a book?
This is my debut novel, so it took me a little over five years. I could have gotten it done earlier, but I have a husband, two jobs, two kids, two dogs and a hamster, so it takes time. I also realized that this is very much permanent, and very much about my life, so I didn’t want to put out slop. 

Do you miss bedside nursing?
I do and I don’t. I miss the patient interactions. I miss the feeling like I was directly making a difference in someone’s life. I don’t miss the walking-on-egg shells kind of living and the burnout that we were all feeling as nurses at the bedside before COVID even happened. You will hear me complain about this a little more in depth in the book. I still teach at a technical college and a component to that is my clinical course, so I still interact with patients, just in a different empire. That’s good enough for me.

Why do you write?
I write because writing has been part of me for as long as I can remember. Of all the things I have questioned about myself throughout my life, writing was never one of them. It was the one thing I always knew I was good at; my God-given talent. I’m good at it, too. Hopefully I’m allowed to call it out that way without sounding like an asshole.

Putting my thoughts on paper releases something in me that I imagine a drug high must release in an addict. There’s a relief in it. A rush. Something restless inside me quiets down once the words start flowing. I’m addicted to the pages. I’m addicted to watching an empty screen slowly fill with pieces of my brain. I’m addicted to the clinking and tapping of the keyboard as my fingers try to keep up with thoughts that have been waiting all day to escape.

Sometimes I pound the keys harder than necessary, as though the words will come out more honestly if I physically beat them onto the page. As you will read about in my book, I also struggle with being addicted to being wanted and the feedback I get from a well-written story. The message from someone telling me a sentence made them laugh. The person who says a chapter made them cry. The reader who tells me they saw themselves somewhere inside something I wrote. The praise. The validation. The reassurance that whatever strange thing has been living inside my head was worth putting into the world in a raw and sometimes brutally honest (TMI) way.

What’s a typical day like for you?
My dream is to write full-time, but when you make a dollar per book you need a full-time job. I have two jobs. So, on my busiest day during the week, I drop the kids off at school at 8am, work my RN job (desk job) until 1:30pm and then I head on over to the hospital to teach clinical from 2pm-10pm. It seems like a lot to people, but the two jobs are so different that I love the busyness. That is two days out of the week. On the other three weekdays I am typically done working at 4:30pm and head home to have dinner with the family, a post meal walk with my husband and dogs, and then I either watch some trash TV with a few glasses of wine or write a bit. No matter what day of the week it is, I religiously go to bed around 8:30pm or 9:00pm and read my Kindle until 11pm or midnight. I typically read around 200 books a year. 

Weekends are reserved for baseball and softball tournaments, writing whenever I can steal a few hours away from the fields, and occasionally folding the laundry my husband has already washed and dried so I can continue pretending I participate equally in the household chores.

How do you know when a book is over?
Even after I hired an editor, I still went through the book about four more times editing it to the point where I didn’t find it funny anymore, and I was just getting annoyed. That’s when I knew it was time to get it out of my hands.

Do you always know the whole story, including the ending, when you begin?
Obviously, since my first book was nonfiction, I knew what I was writing about, but I guess I had no idea how much of my life I was going to share in a brutally honest way that could obviously paint me in a bad light. There was something cathartic about getting it all out, however. I have found that the readers who have read Newest Nurse on the Planet are truly thankful for the raw honesty, and a lot have told me they can relate to it completely. That made me feel more like I was helping others, and less like I was embarrassing the family. 

Do you have a favorite character in your own novels?
My brother. He wasn’t ever number one in my life when he was alive. He deserves to be the main character in my stories, and I will continue to put pieces of him into my future writings as well.

How do you recommend new writers get started?

Just write. I was so nervous that my words weren’t good enough, I obsessed over timelines and deadlines. Just get everything out and then worry about it. Write until your fingers hurt. Find readers that will give you honest feedback, and if you are good at wasting money like I am, the main thing to spend a pretty penny on is an editor. Mine found things I had read a million times and never noticed errors with. HIRE. AN. EDITOR.

What’s next for Author Kristy Polden?
I really want to start a podcast about the book – I want other nurses to write in about their stories, and I want to share them for nurses and non-nurses alike. I want to do a True Crime Tuesday segment where I tell stories of nurses as the perpetrator and/or victim. I also want to share nursing ghost stories, stories about getting burnt out or when a nurse was called to HR for stupid reasons, stories of survival, trauma, and miracles. I want to share it all! This is currently in production through Spotify as The Newest Nurse Podcast– More to come soon (hopefully)!

My next book will be fiction/thriller – The Ghosts We Carry Home, and I am hoping to release it in 2027.

In fifth grade I entered my short story in the elementary school writing contest. I lost to a girl who wrote a thriller where the killer used an icicle as a weapon, and when it melted, the killer got away with murder.

I don’t remember what my story was about.

I only remember that I lost.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the first time I learned that being creative or clever or serious or heartfelt didn’t always win. Sometimes spectacle wins. Shock wins. 

Sometimes something sharper and louder takes the prize, and the quiet kid with the careful story goes home with nothing but a ribbon of disappointment.

I’ve been trying to become the story that wins ever since.

I’ve chased approval through mirrors and men, through the nods of authority figures, and through the subtle satisfaction that comes when someone says, you’re good at this. I crave to be known. I want to be seen, and I desire even more to be chosen. 

It’s embarrassing to admit how much of my self-worth has depended on external validation. 

Deep down I’m always the chubby teen who was made fun of for being chubby, then called fat even when I lost weight. That cuts dangerously deep because it taught me early that approval is a shifting target, and no matter how much I shrink, someone will always need me to take up less space. 

It’s like your body gets archived in everyone else’s memory and you don’t get a say in the updated version. I could have run a marathon, shaved down to muscle and bone, and they still would’ve squinted at me and seen the old draft. I’ve spent my whole life trying to escape my former self.

The worst part is I treated my former self the way they did. I was cruel to her. I starved her, punished her, talked about her like she was an embarrassment I had to outrun. I acted like she was the villain. She’s the one who survived the hallways. She’s the one who learned how to keep going after the comments and the laughter and sideways glances. She’s the one who carried me here.

I’m learning to love the girl I tried to bury.

She wasn’t the problem.

She was the proof I was strong and resilient. She’s proof that someone worked hard to become a better version of a neglected rough draft. Something that could turn into a bestseller.

 My approach to writing is deeply personal and instinctive. I usually start with a feeling, a memory, or a moment that I can’t quite let go of, and then I write until I understand why it stayed with me in the first place. I’m not someone who meticulously plans every sentence before I begin. I tend to get the story onto the page first. It's messy, emotional, funny, uncomfortable, or all of the above, and then shape it through revisions.

I’m drawn to honesty in writing, especially the kind that makes people laugh one minute and feel punched in the chest the next. Humor is a huge part of my voice, but I don’t use it to avoid difficult subjects. If anything, I think humor gives readers enough breathing room to stay with me when the story gets heavy.

I also write the way I naturally tell stories. I want readers to feel like they’re sitting across from me at a table while I’m saying, “You're not going to believe what happened next.” I pay attention to rhythm, dialogue, small details, and the moments people might normally leave out because they’re embarrassing or uncomfortable. Those are usually the parts I find most interesting.

For me, writing is also a little obsessive. Once a story gets into my head, it's difficult to leave it alone. There's something incredibly satisfying about taking a chaotic collection of memories and emotions and turning them into something another person can recognize themselves in. 

Ultimately, my approach is to write honestly, revise relentlessly, and never take myself so seriously that I lose the humor in being human.