Hello new subscribers, welcome. And introducing The 90-Day Novel.

Hello everyone,

I’m so happy to have you here. Thanks to some wonderfully generous substacking and newslettering friends (thank you Emma Gannon and thank you Amy B. Scher), I have so many new subscribers. I wanted to say a big hello and thank you for signing up, introduce myself and this substack, and ask you a couple of questions plus present my 90-Day Novel proposal.

ABOUT ME

• I’m the author of the THE NINE LIVES OF ROSE NAPOLITANO, and CONSENT: A MEMOIR OF UNWANTED ATTENTION and I’ve been a writer for 20 years.

• As of next year (2024) I will have published 25 books, across many genres (novels, memoirs, serious nonfiction, YA, Middle Grade)

• I’ve taught in three MFA programs in Creative Writing.

• I work privately with writers either Plot Doctoring (I love helping writers revise, restructure, and reimagine a book), or getting writers from word one to the end.

• I sometimes offer online writing classes and sponsor writing retreats, online and/or in person, and one of those is in Barcelona, where I live part-time.

• I started this substack because I love writing community and writing about writing and after 20 years, I hope I have some valuable experience, advice, and support to offer about the writing life and publishing.

• As you can see from the photo above, coffee makes me happy. It’s my essential writing tool.

My ongoing columns for The Plot Doctor:

PUBLISHING, THEN & NOW which talks about how the business has changed over 20 years, and includes most recently, an interview with Literary Agent, Miriam Altshuler, and will soon include many more interviews with agents and editors.

TUTORIALS on important writing skills like Flashbacks, Section Breaks, Scene-Setting, Dialogue Tags, you name it. All the things.

Opinions about the writing life, like Writing & Drinking, Why I Block the Internet When I Write, and Let’s Talk Finances for Writers, about how writers make money.

Questions for you & THE NINETY-DAY NOVEL (or memoir!)

-What do you want to know about publishing that you wish someone would tell you?

-What challenges are you facing as a writer that you want to share/talk about?

-Are you interested in participating in monthly zoom check-ins, exclusive to (paying) subscribers to The Plot Doctor?

On this note: I’m a big believer in what I’ve come to think of as the 90-Day Novel (getting a book draft out in a 3-month period of time).

From September 15^th-December 15^th this fall, I’m thinking of running a 90-Day Novel Program on my substack. If I get a critical mass of interested (paying) subscribers who want to commit to this (1k words per day for 90 days), I’ll run special bi-weekly zoom check-in’s for accountability and moral support, plus trouble-shooting, so we can all get from word 1 to word 90,000 together, keep each other updated on our progress, and cheer each other on. It’s a chance to start something new, rework something old, or simply be in community as you write, write, write along with me and a couple of my writer friends!

We’ll talk how to start, how to middle, how to end, and all the things you need to get all the way there. (That’s a pretty good deal for $5 a month!)

Do you want to join us?

Hope to hear from you, and please drop a line in the comments section below!

Love,

Donna