Speaker 1: 0:32

That helped me not get hung up on the nitty-gritty like what do I name this mountain range, or what Halloween costume should this side character wear, and instead I could focus on writing a compelling story. And it worked. I wrote my 114,000-word draft in only 88 days, which was way faster than I had imagined I could write, since I could only allot a couple of hours to write most nights. Fast drafting made the writing process fun and it took a lot of the pressure out of it. I can now say that, after finishing my first draft, I still love writing, maybe even more than I did when I started, and I can't wait to keep writing more novels.

Speaker 2: 1:09

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming, so each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So, whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. Craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:43

In today's episode, we're diving into one of the biggest roadblocks that stops aspiring novelists in their tracks, and that roadblock is perfectionism. If you're someone who rewrites the same chapter over and over and over, or if you've been researching and planning for years without actually writing, or if you've convinced yourself that you need every detail figured out before you start, then this episode is for you. You're going to hear from three writers who were trapped in perfectionist paralysis. You'll hear from Pornika, who delayed starting her novel for months because she thought she needed every name, location and world-building detail figured out first. You'll hear from Amy, who was starting her eighth novel but had never finished one before, mainly because she'd spend weeks editing each chapter before moving forward. And you'll hear from Kara, who wrote an almost 100,000-word novel but got so overwhelmed trying to fix its problems that she couldn't make forward progress.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Now here's what I love about these stories. Each writer found their own breakthrough moment that shifted them from perfectionist paralysis to forward momentum. They discovered that the secret wasn't in writing perfect first drafts. It was actually learning how to let their writing be messy and not perfect that allowed them to make real progress. So if you've been waiting to feel ready or trying to get your first draft perfect before moving forward, then these stories will show you exactly why that approach is keeping you stuck and what to do instead.

Speaker 2: 3:01

But before we dive into the details, I have something super exciting to share. My Notes to Novel course is opening for enrollment very soon. This is my signature eight-week program designed to help you confidently write a story you're proud of, without the self-doubt, frustration or overwhelm that stops most writers in their tracks. So if you've been wanting to work with me on your novel and follow a step-by-step framework to turn your ideas into a finished draft, then this is your chance. I'll be sharing more details soon, but if you want to be the first to know when doors open and snag a few extra goodies in the meantime, make sure you're on the waitlist at savannahgilbocom forward slash waitlist.

Speaker 1: 3:42

I'm Pornika Kakunaya, from Pennsylvania, and I'm a fantasy writer and reader who loves traveling, baking and finding a cup of good coffee. By day I'm a full-time corporate finance girly but my nights are spent working on a fantasy, action and worldview novel with elemental magic in a university setting. Before taking Savannah's Notes to Novel course, I thought it would take me years to write a book. Don't get me wrong. It takes a lot of effort to write a novel. But Notes to Novel made my goal much more attainable. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I knew I was probably going to struggle with getting caught up with the right word choice and little details like that. That fear made me put off starting my novel because I thought that if I had every name and location and world-building detail figured out before I started writing, then maybe I wouldn't run into as many roadblocks while writing. But obviously that just made my goal of writing a novel even harder to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 4:32

But when Nosa Novel introduced the concept of fast-drafting to me, it was like my lightbulb moment. Fast drafting means always writing with forward momentum and not stopping to edit your pages while you're writing. You can use tools like Magical Revisions and Details TK as placeholders for things that you don't have figured out yet, and then you can come back to those things later on. That helped me not get hung up on the nitty-gritty like what do I name this mountain range or what Halloween costume should this side character wear, and instead I could focus on writing a compelling story.

Speaker 1: 5:04

And it worked. I wrote my 114,000-word draft in only 88 days, which was way faster than I had imagined I could write, since I could only allot a couple of hours to write most nights, and now that my first draft is done, I have a better idea of what scenes I need to edit versus what scenes I need to get rid of. If I tried to edit my draft while writing, I would have wasted so much time editing paragraphs or scenes that would have just been deleted later on and that would have been so discouraging. Fast drafting made the writing process fun, and it took a lot of the pressure out of it. I can now say that, after finishing my first draft, I still love writing, maybe even more than I did when I started, and I can't wait to keep writing more novels.

Speaker 3: 5:46

Hello fellow writers. My name is Amy Blackford, aka Amy B. I live in Atlanta, georgia, and write young adult science fiction and fantasy. When I started to outline novel number eight, I had this intuitive feeling there were still some missing pieces to the novel puzzle and, before being published, I really wanted to know the nuts and bolts of how to write a solid novel that didn't take eight years to edit before finally giving up and moving on to the next one. I'm sure some of you can relate to this. When I came across Notes to Novel, I knew this was the course and I wish I had more than five minutes. But believe me when I say Savannah Gilbo gives you the keys to the novel kingdom and I want to give you just a taste of some of my biggest aha takeaways.

Speaker 3: 6:31

Number one theme Did you know there are 10 universal themes for stories Before Notes to Novel? I didn't. I've never even heard anyone discuss this before, and figuring your theme out is the basis for everything that will follow. So it's the most essential question you need to ask yourself before writing a book why am I writing this book and what am I trying to say? Your novel's theme is what dictates your protagonist's main character arc. So, whatever your theme is at the beginning of your novel, your protagonist should believe the opposite of what your overall message is and, through the plot and interaction with other characters, come into alignment with the theme by the end of the book.

Speaker 3: 7:14

Number two content genre versus commercial genre. Commercial genre is where your book sits on a shelf, while content genre determines the emotional journey your reader expects when they pick up your book. So you may be writing a YA fantasy, but that doesn't tell the reader what kind of story to expect. Is it a thriller, a romance, action or a mystery? Every content genre has key scenes that must be included within your story for your reader to truly feel satisfied. So being able to know what those key scenes are, once you've decided your content genre, allows you to make certain they're present, which meets your reader's expectations. Our job as writers is to do this. Of course, do it in a new and unique way.

Speaker 3: 8:02

Number three fast first draft and magical edits. Oh, this one really is a doozer and, believe you me, I see now why it takes so long to write a novel. I love to edit every chapter, sometimes for weeks, before moving on to the next With magical editing tricks. Savannah explains why it's so important to allow that first draft to be messy and get the words on the page. Don't go backwards, move forward. It makes no sense to paint and decorate a house if you haven't built a solid frame. Let that sink in for a minute.

Speaker 3: 8:39

Before taking this course, I understood character arcs but still had a hard time with understanding the difference between showing versus telling, when to add backstory and how important interiority is, having that balance between external dialogue, action and internal thoughts that give readers the emotional journey they're looking for when they pick up a book. I feel confident after taking this course I'm going to write many novels of all genres and understand before I draft that first line. I'm in the power seat because I'll know what I want to say and why, and that will give me the ability to provide my readers with the emotional satisfaction and entertainment they want when they pick up one of my books. So if you've been hacking away, getting conflicting feedback and critique groups and want to know how to craft a powerful story in any genre of your choosing with precision, I highly suggest you take notes to novel. It's truly the best gift you can give yourself as a writer.

Speaker 4: 9:44

My name is Kara Kentley. I write contemporary romance because I love love. So, anyways, I had always wondered if I could write a book and always wanted to write a book, and during the pandemic I sat down one day. I'd had this story floating around in my head for quite a while and it was pretty well developed in my head anyways, and I sat down and wrote it. I just wrote it off the top of my head. Over the course of about three and a half weeks I wrote a full 100,000 word novel. Then I went to revise it and I realized it had a bunch of problems. The story it wasn't a bad. It wasn't what I wrote wasn't bad, but what I wrote could have been a lot better. So I started revising and I read a lot about revising and I thought I would be able to do this and I realized that the second half of my novel was not as good as the first half. So I started trying to fix that and I rewrote that like a couple times and thought this isn't going anywhere. I really don't know what I'm doing, and so I started.

Speaker 4: 11:02

Like I said, I was looking around things on revising. I stumbled upon Savannah's podcast. It became a devoted listener because her podcasts are perfect for while you're walking your dog, which I had to do every day, I could listen to one of her podcasts. So then one night I go on her website, realize she has this notes to novels class and thought, okay, I should look into this and see what if this might help me. So I signed up for it and my original plan was to go into it and revise this novel that I had. But then when I started out I thought that maybe I should. I'd had an idea for a second novel and maybe I should start from scratch and see what it was like to start a novel from scratch, and that that might help me revise that first thing I wrote. So during the course of Notes to Novel, I worked on the second book that I had and we started out with a whole lot of like, a whole lot of exercises on things such as why you wrote this, what your theme was, character development, those kinds of things. I found a lot of that hard and thought like, okay, should I be doing this? This is so hard, but the work that I put into that, I think, made it easier to outline and then easier to write, so I was really grateful for that part of it.

Speaker 4: 12:32

But for me the big aha moment in Notes to Novel was structure. My original story that I wrote definitely had some structure and scenes flowed and things like that, but there were also saggy parts and parts that didn't really add anything to the plot or the conflict. There was a lot of dialogue that didn't maybe need to be dialogue. So what I learned in Notes to Novel was a whole lot about structuring, putting my thoughts into a structure that would work to move my characters and plot along through an arc that made sense and went along with my theme. And so for me that was a big takeaway and a big moment where I realized that structure in a novel sounds really intimidating but when broken down it's actually doable, and so that was kind of what I took away. The outlining process is how you're setting up that structure.

Speaker 4: 13:44

I outlined during the course of Notes to Novel my second story and then, after the class was over, I sat down and wrote it, and I will say writing it was a lot easier when I knew where I was going and I knew why it fit in with the structure and what the ultimate goal was.

Speaker 4: 14:07

So my second novel what the ultimate goal was. So my second novel I wrote maybe not as fast but definitely much more thoughtfully, and in the end I felt like the structure of it was better. Since then, I'm one of these people that I don't want to revise it immediately. I'm going to let it sit for a couple months before I get back to it. So since then I went back to that first book, really pinpointed what some of my issues were, and now I'm working on revising that, which is really turning out to be rewriting large portions of it. But I know that my story, now where I'm headed and my scenes are so much better than what I originally wrote, because everything is moving forward and pacing towards the conclusion of the book and it all relates to the theme, and so that's the big thing that I got out of Notes to Novel. So I'm so glad I took the class and I use what I learned in it every single time I sit down to write.

Speaker 2: 15:15

All right.

Speaker 2: 15:15

So I hope hearing from Pornika, amy and Kara gave you exactly the permission you needed today. Whether it was Pornika's realization that fast drafting was the way to go and helped her write 114,000 words in 88 days, or Amy's discovery of magical revisions that broke her endless editing cycle, or Kara's breakthrough that structure actually made writing easier and more enjoyable, either way, there's something here for every perfectionist listening. Now here's what I want you to remember Perfectionism is not about having high standards. It's really about fear Fear of not being good enough, fear of judgment, fear of failure. You name it, and the only way through that fear is to start writing before you feel ready and keep writing even when it feels messy. Now, if these stories have inspired you to finally break through your own perfectionist roadblocks, I have some exciting news.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Notes to Novel. My signature eight-week live program is opening for enrollment on august 19th. This is the same program that helped pornica, amy and cara, and hundreds of other perfectionist writers, transform from chronic editors into confident finishers. But here's the thing I want you to be prepared when doors open, because this live round always fills up fast, and that's why I've created a vip waitlist that gives you early access before the public launch, plus some really fun and incredible bonuses while you wait. When you join the waitlist, you'll get my novel writing roadblocks guide with real stories like the ones you heard today, early bird access to notes to novel, a few free live Q&A sessions with me, quick and straightforward mindset videos to help you break through creative blocks, and inspiring stories from writers who've made the journey from stuck to unstoppable. Head over to savannagilbocom forward slash waitlist to get on the VIP waitlist and to get early access when doors to Notes to Novel open. And if you're listening to this after August 19th, don't worry, you can still join the waitlist to be the first to know when Notes to Novel opens for enrollment again.

Speaker 2: 17:12

All right. So that's it for this episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. Head over to savannagilbocom forward slash podcast for the complete show notes, including the resources I mentioned today, as well as bonus materials to help you implement what you've learned. And if you're ready to get more personalized guidance for your specific writing stage, whether you're just starting out, stuck somewhere in the middle of a draft, drowning in revisions or getting ready to publish, take my free 30-second quiz at savannahgilbocom forward slash quiz. You'll get a customized podcast playlist that'll meet you right where you're at and help you get to your next big milestone. Last but not least, make sure to follow this podcast in your podcast player of choice, because I'll be back next week with another episode full of actionable tips, tools and strategies to help you become a better writer. Until then, happy writing.