The 90-Day Novel (or Memoir)! Program Details in Full.

You can be writing any kind of book you want: academic tome, nonfiction masterpiece. You can even be revising. The only thing you need to be doing is WRITING.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Hello everyone,

Welcome to September, and if you’re new here, thank you for subscribing! If you haven't already, please consider checking out my interview with Literary Agent, Miriam Altshuler about the ups and downs of getting an agent, my recent tutorial on How to Write a Sex Scene, my opinion piece on Writing & Drinking, or my thoughts on how writers make money, Let’s Talk Finances for Writers. My hope is that The Plot Doctor is a useful tool for all kinds of writers at many stages of their writing life, including at the very beginning and even for those just writing for fun.

And because I still and will always live my life according to the academic calendar, it’s back to school for all of us, and therefore the perfect time to commit (or recommit!) to a project. Back in August, I mentioned trying out a 90-Day novel-writing program on The Plot Doctor, so here goes. A number of you have already committed and I hope you stay that way. I hope I can get a few more of you to join in too, because it’s going to be AMAZING and also amazingly productive.

Here’s all you need to know.

Dates: September 15th-December 15th

This is roughly 90 days (I know, not exactly but close enough). The general rule for the length of a book is 90k words (or between 80-90k. This means that if you are writing . . .

1,000 Words Per Day, for 90 Days

Give or take a few hundred words, or if you even do 500-ish words, by the time 90 days are up and you are getting ready for the Christmas holidays if you happen to celebrate them, or just looking forward to the approach of winter as I do, or just brewing yourself a nice hot chocolate because it’s cold out, by the middle of that month you’ll have . . .

A finished or close-to-finished draft of a book on December 15th

And hooray for you and for us! It’s really as easy as committing to sit down for a few minutes a day for 90-ish days and writing. But the best part is that you’ll be . . .

Doing this in COMMUNITY with other people via The Plot Doctor

So you won’t be alone with this book-writing business. In fact, you’ll have the chance to speak to and connect with other participating writers who are doing the same thing at the same time including yours truly via . . .

Bi-Weekly Zoom Sessions, starting Thursday Sept. 21st, noon - 1pm, Eastern

We’ll hop on zoom for an hour to say hi, report how things are going and discuss people’s progress, as well as commiserate, support one another, trouble-shoot any pesky plotting/writing issues, and just gather for some conversation, laughter, and all-around goodness on the following dates (all noon to 1pm, Eastern):

September 21st, October 5th, October 19th, November 2nd, November 16th, November 30th, December 14th.

All this, plus occasional craft tips, accountability advice, and excellent cheerleading

From yours truly. Because I do love to cheerlead people writing their books. I’m very good at it actually.

Last thing . . .

Participation for the 90-Day Novel Program is for Paying Subscribers.

I’ll be sending out the zoom link and all related meeting-info behind a paywall. So if you haven’t yet become a paying subscriber to The Plot Doctor, please do!

So I hope you’ll join me and everyone else already signed up for a full fall semester of pouring out words onto the page and getting to the finish line when I’ll be celebrating our final session together with a glass of wine or perhaps a low-alcohol cocktail since by then I’ll be back in Barcelona and it will be happy hour for me. Hooray!

Please RSVP below.