Some writers will intentionally trigger those responses by putting a book up for pre-order long before it’s done, or schedule a proofreader or editor.
In this book, we’ve given you a deadline—one year—with one assignment a day. Each assignment is a stepping stone to help you meet your deadline.
So, go ahead. Give yourself mini-deadlines designed to help you reach your ultimate goal.
Note: If you become overwhelmed, the deadline has become a detriment, and your productivity could go down. At that point, it’s time to make a hard choice. Just admitting that you’re at this point is difficult. It feels like a failure, but chances are, the quality of your writing is suffering. Consider rescheduling with an outside editor, proofreader or asking for a deadline extension from your publisher.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 293
The Business Behind The Writing
This is not a business or marketing book. But. We’ve seen too many friends and colleagues run into financial problems because they didn't know what they didn’t know. So, we’re going to share what we have learned. Just remember, we are not financial advisors or lawyers. If you need help, please seek guidance from professionals.
The following are tips we’ve picked up along our publishing journey:
When you begin making money, think about putting aside 25% of that for taxes. Unlike other jobs, the taxes do not come out of your check automatically. Truly, the cost of self-employment taxes can be high and shocking.
Designate a file both physical and electronic for business expense receipts. Keeping these handy and in one place will save you time and stress come tax time.
Make a note of your car’s mileage on January 1st. If you use your car to drive to conferences or other business related excursions, you may be able to count mileage on your taxes. Note dates, and trip miles as well.
One general business thought is to sink roughly 10% of profits back into your business, covering websites, postage, domain name registrations, promotional costs, etc.
Treat yourself upon occasion.
Know that book money is never guaranteed money. You can never predict how much you’ll make with any given release, because there are too many outside variables. Paying off debt when you can and saving for a dry spell is often lifesaving. Most financial advisers will advise paying down debt before anything else.
Consider creating an LLC. The laws vary from state to state.
Once again, we want to remind you that we are not financial advisors or lawyers. If you have questions on this topic, seek professional counsel.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 294
Reflect and Catch Up
If you want to be a professional author you need to approach the career like you would any other job. Research the writing profession. You can begin by reading: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, How to Get Happily Published by Judith Appelbaum, and The Writer’s Market. Ignore the romanticized idea that says being an author is something magical and mystical – that you lounge around waiting for your Muse to whisper in your ear, or for your dreams to coalesce, and then you’re simply the vessel through which all the stories flow. Being an author is a job. Writing is work. Treat the career with the respect it deserves. Period.
—New York Times bestselling author PC Cast
Day 295
Epilogues: Are They Necessary?
We are reaching the end of our writing days. How much of your rough draft is written? Have you finished? Do you think the story will require an epilogue?
If you ask ten writers about their opinion on epilogues, you’ll get twenty different answers. Some people love them, because they can offer one more note of happiness to the ever after. Some hate them, suggesting that the writer should have proven there’s a happily ever after or a happily for now, or tied up every loose end and subplot by the last chapter. Others believe they are unnecessary unless you are teasing readers with a glimpse of the next book.
As the author of your tale, you must decide whether or not an epilogue is necessary. Our stories have both had and not had epilogues. It always depend on the story.
Before you write an epilogue, ask yourself two questions:
1. Should this information be incorporated into earlier chapters?
2. Would your time be better served moving onto the next book? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you might want to rethink the epilogue.
Your assignment: Write the required number of words to finish your book within the next 6 days. To do this, you must first figure out how many scenes you have left to write. So, instead of worrying about word count, you’re going to write by scene for the next 6 days. You’ll need to divide the number of scenes by 6 in order to know how many scenes you need to write each of the next 6 days.
You can use this week as practice for meeting publication deadlines!
Day 296
Grammar Basics: Adjectives
An adjective describes a noun. Most native English speakers don’t consciously realize it, but there is an order to how we use our adjectives. The order can get really refined, and if you’re curious, we encourage you to research further. For our purposes, the order of adjectives go before a noun. Like this:
Amount/ Size /Age /Shape /Color /Noun
Beware of stacking too many adjectives in a row, however. When adjectives are lumped together, they can lose impact.
Your assignment: Write your required daily word count.
Day 297
Professional Jealousy
At some point, you will probably think another author is better than you. Or maybe you’ll wonder why so and so has all these amazing things happening to them. They might even be living your dream, while you’re still struggling. It happens to all of us.
The thing to remember is that another author’s success can lead to more sales for you. When Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey hit it big, the sale of other vampire and BDSM books skyrocketed!
JILL: I prefer to look at the careers of other authors as benchmarks. Am I where I should be in my career relative to other writers? How many series do I have in comparison? Are we promoting ourselves at the same level with blogs or reader events? Are they foregoing social media to write more words? Should I?
The fact is, you and I can’t write all the books. There must be others. Think of it like adding a new pet to the household. You don’t stop loving your old pets. No, your love grows to include the new addition. Along the same vein, your readers have a place in their heart for a multitude of authors.
At the end of the day, when I stop focusing on others, magnifying what they’re doing, how their careers are progressing, if they’re deserving, etc., and start focusing on my own journey, I’m much more productive and happier with my place in life. Am I the person I want to be? Am I doing everything in my power to succeed? That’s where my satisfaction originates.
Your assignment: Write your required daily scene(s).
Day 298
It Goes Without Saying
Sometimes you can include backstory or a company’s history in dialogue. This can help prevent an information dump.
JILL: In Share the Darkness (soon to rereleased as Sworn to Protect), I wanted to convey that my character Hannah hadn’t put down roots or bothered to make her workspace personal. Her reasons for needing distance become clear later in the book, but here is how I used dialogue to share this info. Below is a snippet:
“Take a peek at your office. Where are the pictures? Where’s the dead plant? You don’t have a single doodad on your desk. You’re also the only person who’s left all those silly inspirational sayings on the wall.”
“I kind of like them.”
Your assignment: Write your required daily word count.
Day 299
Grammar the Professionals Wished You Knew
If we had to guess, we’d say proofreaders and editors wished authors knew more about mi
splaced modifiers and dangling participles.
The noun is the life of the party, err, participle.
Participles are modifiers. Like adjectives, they need to modify a noun. A dangling participle is a participle that has no noun to modify.
Sometimes it’s not a good time to dangle.
A modifier describes or clarifies a detail about something in your sentence. A dangling modifier means that something is not modified clearly in the sentence, usually because that something—the subject—is left out. Dangling modifiers are not your friend.
Wrong: Writing the book, a cat sat on my laptop. (Who wrote the book? Not the cat. The one writing the book is missing from the sentence.).
Right: A cat sat on my laptop as I wrote the book.
Your assignment: Write your required daily word count.
Day 300
The End
If you haven’t finished your draft already, chances are good you are far enough along to finish today, even if you have to do a series of writing sprints—writing for short bursts of time, allowing zero distractions, then taking a break before writing again.
Just remember, the end of your novel is just as important as the beginning. The end can help set up your next book, or leave your readers dying for more or—yikes!—ruin the entire story.
Have you tied up every loose plot thread?
Have you addressed every issue you brought up?
Did you stay true to your theme?
And what about your last line? It is as much a hook as your chapter enders?
Your assignment: Finish your rough draft!
Bonus assignment: Brainstorm 3 alternate last lines for your book.
Day 301
Reflect and Catch Up
Congratulations! You have finished your rough draft. Today is a day for celebration. And sleep. You have accomplished an incredible feat!
Focus. Magnify. Accomplish. Triumph!
Day 302
RENEW
RENEW Day 1
Congratulations, guys! You have completed your first draft! This is a major accomplishment, and we are so proud of you. We hope you are proud of you, too. Not many people understand how difficult it can be to complete an entire manuscript, but we do, so take a bow.
Now. What’s the first thing you do after you type The End?
Answer: RENEW!
R - Review and Release Stress
E - Enjoy
N - Need
E - Engage
W - Wakeup
GENA: Once I finish a book, I like to set up a “nest.” I gather all the things I require: alkaline water, snacks, my iPad, my laptop, a notebook, pen, my phone, and a crapton of dogs and cats. We all pile into bed and I read, play ridiculous games, and binge all the shows I missed while I lived in my office, chained to my computer and remember what it’s like to feel human.
JILL: Without question, the first thing I do is take a nap! During that last push to finish my manuscript, I’m often working until the wee hours of the night and going on very little sleep. I have “rewarded” myself with a nap since college, and it’s something my family expects.
Let’s break down RENEW.
R – Review and Release Stress. While you worked on your manuscript, chores, errands and other things may have piled up. These little details build and nag, creating a stressful background. Now’s the time to catch up. Make that phone call, research whether to change streaming services, throw out the expired food in the fridge. Whatever you’ve put off, get those off your to-do list now, so you’ll go into the editing stage of your manuscript with nothing else to worry about.
E – Enjoy. You’ve buckled down and used your entertainment time to work. Why not have a little fun? You can catch up on your favorite show, hang out with your friends, or window-shop. Whatever you prefer! Maybe you like to reward yourself with cheesecake or maybe you’ve been living off junk food and need to reintroduce veggies to your diet. This is a great time to treat yourself.
N – Need, both physical and emotional. Take a look at what you need. Even if you achieved eight hours of sleep a night, writing a novel is still physically and mentally taxing, so take a moment to consider what you require going forward. You have probably been sitting for hours at a time, every single day. Consider going for a walk or taking a swim, or even just stretching out your tired muscles before catching up on your sleep.
It’s as important to emotionally recharge as it is to take care of your physical needs. Check in with your emotions. Completing a novel is a major accomplishment, and you could be ecstatic, disappointed or simply drained by the end result.
E – Engage. You’ve been hunkered down in your writing cave, but now metaphorical spring has arrived, and you can take your bearish self out into the sunshine to reconnect. If you’ve been writing during your lunch hour, maybe it’s time for drinks after work. Or go on that special playdate with your child or romantic date with your significant other. If you’ve fallen behind, you can catch up on calls, emails, texts and social media.
W – Wakeup. You’ve been in a book fog for months. Now it’s time to challenge your thoughts in a different way. Read a book. Visit a museum to appreciate art or sculpture. We highly recommend reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
Your assignment: Don’t feel like you have to take on every aspect of RENEW today. Over the rest of this week, we’ll give you ideas and suggestions to help return balance to your life. For now, grab a piece of paper and draft a side-by-side column. Column one is for things you put off and need to get done. The second column is a list of things you enjoy, but missed because you were writing.
Note: Between the completion and revision of our manuscript, we like to give ourselves a few days rest. That way, we can return to it with fresh eyes. This might not suit your current wants/needs. People are different, and everyone works in different ways. What aids one may not aid another. If you’d rather wait and RENEW after the revision process and final readthrough, that’s perfectly fine. Just don’t forget to look over this daily guide for tips and tricks.
Day 303
RENEW
RENEW Day 2
Ready to RENEW? The next five assignments will follow the days of R-E-N-E-W in letter order, the method we prefer for ourselves. But. You can tackle the R-E-N-E-W days in any order you desire. Whatever works best! You can even do a little of each all five days. There are no rules.
When we complete a novel, the first thing we do is catch up on calls, emails, texts and social media. (Hopefully not too many calls. Shudder.) To keep ourselves from becoming overwhelmed, we ignore the total number of responses and replies that are due and just tackle them one email, one text, one online property at a time. Baby steps all the way to the end!
Bonus: The more tasks you complete before revising your rough draft, the less your brain can use as fodder for procrastination. By now you might have a love-hate relationship with writing. Sometimes we’d rather clean our bathrooms for the sixth time than draft another scene.
JILL: I like doing the easiest tasks first. There’s something about successfully crossing something off my list that spurs me on to complete more. Don’t be afraid to break up bigger assignments into smaller ones that are easier to handle. Make one or two of your tasks fun! Build in things you look forward to in your to-do list so you aren’t tempted to trash it.
GENA: I’m the opposite of Jill. I do the most difficult tasks first, just to get them over with. (I also eat the crust before I eat the sandwich, saving the best for last.) Setting up a reward system hasn’t really worked for me. After telling myself I could have a cookie when I finished writing my scene, I spent the next hour thinking, “I want that cookie. Man, that cookie is going to taste so good.” I got nothing done. So, I ate the cookie while working on my scene and magic happened...which means I reward myself as I work. That. That is the method I recommend for anyone like me.
Your assignment: (If you choose to accept it.) Look at Column One from yesterday’s project. Focus
ing on one task at a time, complete as many sub-tasks as possible.
Day 304
RENEW
RENEW Day 3
What do you enjoy doing? What makes you happy? Reading works by other authors? Binging a beloved TV show? Nature walk? Going out to eat?
All Write Already: Year Of Your Book Page 23
