Writing Roots Podcast Newsletter - Issue #2

November is over, which means so is National Novel Writing Month! How did your goals go for the month? No matter what, remember that simply writing something is an accomplishment worth celebrating. Read through to get a discount code for those who participated in NaNoWriMo!

We’ve put together workbooks for you to continue to develop aspects of your story and your career as an author. The best news is they’re free! Just hop on over to our website for a complete list, as well as episodes to accompany your education in those particular facets of storytelling.

Interviews are back! You may recall we’ve moved studios over the summer, and in the process we lost our ability to conduct phone interviews. We’ve been waiting on the technology in order to expand our studio, and the pieces have arrived. That means you can look forward to lots more wisdom from a wide variety of sources in the future.

The Holidays are here, which means the season of gifting! If your non-writer friends are looking for ideas of what to get you, we encourage you to send them towards our merch store. Peruse it yourself and let them know what you want! Make sure they know about the promo code WRITERSAREAWESOME for a 15% discount! The promo code lasts through December 15th.

In our ongoing goal to be a resource for you, authors, we’d like to give you the opportunity to help us decide what we cover next. Therefore, we’re putting a poll together of topics we’re tossing around, and we’d love your input! Head on over to our Facebook page in order to pitch an idea, or vote on one of the ideas we’re currently considering. Those include Dark Psychology (tough topics to research), The Mindset of a Reader, Character Archetypes, and Types of Conflict. Vote now to share your thoughts!

The end of the year means another round of Frequently Asked Questions! We’ve been collecting your questions throughout the year, and even included some of the more popular ones we’ve found on the forums. We’ll be covering everything from the technical aspects of writing killer short stories to the ongoing debate of how, when, and if swear words belong in your story.

January brings a new year, and often new goals! We’ll be covering tips and tricks for building healthy habits to maintain your goals and pursue your dreams. That includes things like building the right playlists to how to find and keep in touch with your local writing community. 

February, we’re taking a look at the other side of the coin: author branding. Some of our most popular episodes and many of the questions we get center around marketing, so we’ve decided it’s time for a step-by-step guide to marketing yourself and your work even as you continue to write your masterpiece.

Commas. They’re the bane of the punctuation world, and I know I’ve personally spent way too much time debating if one belongs in a sentence or not. In fact, though we’ve covered punctuation several times throughout the years, we see them misused so often that commas got their own episode in November. 

Or pruning tip for you is this: count the commas you use. If there are any more than two in a sentence (unless you’re listing things), you want to consider rephrasing. Having more than two usually means you have several independent thoughts in a single sentence. Break them up. We aren’t writing in the 1850s anymore. If a comma belongs in an interjectory phrase, consider surrounding it with dashes, or perhaps making it its own sentence. Calculating your comma-to-word ratio can also help you cut down on long, confusing sentences. Aim for no more than one comma every fifteen words or so.

NaNoWriMo is over! Did you reach your goal? If not, were you at least writing? Then congratulations! Let the world know! Share a bit about your project (and maybe your NaNo cover) to our Facebook page. If you completed the challenge but don’t want to share it with the world yet, reward yourself by using the coupon code NANO21 at our Writing Roots merch store. We’d love to celebrate with you! 

We are also putting together a toolkit for writing clubs, and we want to know what your writing club does that makes it fun and keeps you returning to grow and share your stories again and again.

If you want to let our community know what you’re up to, send us an email. Be sure to include where you’re listening from and any links you’d like us to share here.

With NaNoWriMo complete, we anticipate a burst in people eager to take the next step in publishing their books. We don’t blame you! You’ve put all this work into the manuscript, and now you want to share it with the world. It’s also a popular New Year’s Resolution to be a published author by the end of the year, and we’re excited to help you along that journey.

Due to many people in exactly that position, we anticipate a small delay in processing your requests. Rest assured, we’re working as fast as we can and we’ll address them all in the order they were received. 

Meanwhile, we encourage you to take the month of December to self-edit your NaNo project. Go to a Christmas concert in the first week of the month, then buckle down and reread the book. Discover places to embellish thoughts that become important later, and trim scenes that turned out to be less interesting than you’d originally hoped. Find favorite moments and copy them to a separate document to use for promotional ideas.