From Page One To Done: Fast Drafting Your Novel With Jessica Brody
The Creative Penn Podcast For WritersShow Notes
How can the Fast Drafting method help you finally finish your novel? And how do you make progress when you only have 30 minutes a day to write? Jessica Brody shares her tips for finishing first drafts after 20 years as an author.
In the intro, Clive Barker's Kickstarter, The Amazon Tax [Seth Godin]; Trad publisher announces “human-originated, AI-facilitated” book, The Everything Code [PanMacmillan; AI policy; CHAPTR]; Holy relics, churches, and memento mori in Bruges and Brussels.
This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.
This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Jessica Brody is the best-selling author of over 20 novels across different genres and age groups, as well as writing for Disney Publishing. She's also the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and other books and courses for writers at the Writing Mastery Academy. Her latest book is Page One to Done: Finish Your Novel in 30 Days with the Fast Drafting Method.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
Why a small advance can set you up for long-term success
Why 97% of first drafts are never finished
How to finish a novel writing 30 minutes a day
Why drafting and revising are two different jobs
How a pre-writing ritual primes your brain for flow
Writing a meta murder mystery after 20 years of teaching plot. You can pre-order How to Write a Murder with bonus extras at JessicaBrody.com/preorder
You can find Jessica at JessicaBrody.com and WritingMastery.com.
If you're drafting your own novel, I share my process for getting the first draft done in How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book.
Transcript of the interview with Jessica Brody
Jo: Jessica Brody is the best-selling author of over 20 novels across different genres and age groups, as well as writing for Disney Publishing. She's also the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and other books and courses for writers at the Writing Mastery Academy.
Her latest book is Page One to Done: Finish Your Novel in 30 Days with the Fast Drafting Method. So welcome to the show, Jessica.
Jessica: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so honoured to be here. My writing community speaks so highly of this podcast, so I'm excited.
Jo: Oh, well, thank you, and you were requested, so this is going to be a good one. First up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
Jessica: Well, I started writing when I was seven. I like to put in air quotes, I wrote my first, quote, “novel” when I was seven. It was about three pages long. I got the bug very early.
I didn't realise it was an actual career choice that you could take seriously until way later in life, after I'd already graduated college with a degree in economics and I was working as a financial analyst, and I was just writing on the side for fun.
Then, as luck would have it, I got laid off from my job, and I ended up trying to take writing a little bit more seriously in that time.
That's when I found the Save the Cat method, which absolutely changed everything for me. Before that, I had loads of rejection letters, and I eventually sold my first novel to St. Martin's Press, and I've been writing and publishing ever since. That was 20 years ago now.
Jo: 20 years, wow. It's so interesting. So you were in economics, you were a financial analyst, and you got into writing.
Did you have any pushback from either your own brain that was like, “I cannot make money this way,” or your family?
Or how did you make that leap? Because we just hear that it's not a career, financially, really.
Jessica: I know, and I think I went into it very blindly, using television as my
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