Thread by @awesome_john

Okay #WritingCommunity, I'm going to tell you a story and then we're going to talk about Novel In A Year.

This is the story of how suspenders, puddles, and bad writing advice got me to today where I am SUPER excited about helping you finish and publish your book.

We're gonna start with me as a little boy in very white, very affluent NJ. I was a small sick little kid with a ton of health issues, so going outside was always dicey. My mom worried a lot. I remember being told to avoid puddles.

I loved puddles. I loved splashing in them. I loved looking into them. I loved walking right through them. You could tell me there were puddles and rather than avoid them, I was drawn to them. (This is mostly still true today)

But splashing around in them, coat unzipped (fuck zippers) often led to me getting sick. I didn't understand the connection, but pretty much any time it was cold and rainy, I'd get pneumonia and either be home for 3 weeks or hospitalized for 2. Puddles were bad but SO fun

Things that were bad but fun became somewhat of a theme for me for years. I didn't really like my life, I didn't feel like I could be myself, so breaking the arbitrary and inflexible rules felt like victories. I wasn't a "bad person", I was trying to be "a" person.

This carries forward to being in school, where I loved words as a passion and a tool and as sorcery and art, and there were SO many arbitrary and inflexible rules. Some made sense (capital letters), some didn't (Fragments are always bad).

I questioned a lot.

As a result of questioning, I got in trouble a lot, because the last thing traditional school wants you to be is creative. Add this to the abuse I was suffering at home and the fact that I didn't see myself as having "a life" and I stuffed my feelings with food. For years.

Years and years, I ate terribly. My weight yo-yo'd and I'd be teased and shamed for it, which meant I ate more and felt worse about myself. Never by kids, just my dad, which was enough. Later, in college, it continued. I reached into the mid-300 pounds.

Which leads me to suspenders. I have always been in love with the 20s, 30s, and 40s as art periods, fashion periods, and language periods. Men wore hats, they were private dicks, women were dames, and being fat wasn't bad because you had vests and suspenders.

The stories people told weren't built around appearance, they were about challenging questions (murder, robbery, social order) and I always wanted to dress the part. Thankfully I was in a relationship where I could adopt that as an aesthetic. It had plusses and minuses.

Loved the outfits, hated the prep. Hated how I looked in them, but loved the idea of one day being William Powell. Or Marlowe. Or the Op. I would consume stories, see the language, see those worlds, and hate myself more.

This spilled into my work, where I was trying to find myself and my passion again, and I would see what other coaches were doing and OOF.

I was right back in school with arbitrary questions and nobody jumping in puddles. And I was a fat guy in suspenders who hated himself.

About a year ago, I started seriously going to the gym, because I was staving off future heart attacks and muscle death. Turns out I like the gym. I like going. I like turning round me into muscle me. The big change is weight loss. Weekly progress. Feel me #writers?

In a year, I've dropped almost 70 pounds. I've changed my posture. I've gained so much strength. I've come off some of the meds. I feel good about how I move in the world.
Weekly progress I could see. Not abstract promises. Actual look at things and see them improved

Having gone from a 2XL to an L means none of my winter clothes fit. Means I use the suspenders now to literally hold up sweatpants. They're a tool, not a fashion statement. And tools are what this is all about.

Because there are a lot of "coaches" out there with big flashy glitz and little to back it up. Lots of superficial advice and rah-rah without the way to explain it in a way you can use, just more of the "this is how it is, don't question it if you want to succeed" nonsense.

Novel in a Year is my best toolkit that I can give to you. It's permission to play in puddles. It's a gym for your creativity. It's born from the years I asked questions and challenged things and it's priced for YOUR budget, not a coach's wants.

There are 2 programs, each with 3 price tiers, and as you go up in tier, you get more given to you. Just like going to the gym or asking more questions, you get more results. You make more progress.

I want authors running towards puddles. I want people to know they can splash the fuck around. I want people to come together, help one another (Novel In a Year 2 features weeks of feedback), and see so much progress they need suspenders to hold their pants up as they kick ass.

I believe in you. I want to help you over the course of 2020 to splash in puddles, be proud of yourself, find joy, finish your MS, make it a book, and do whatever humanly necessary and possible to get it into the hands of readers . I know you can do this. Novel in A Year is how.

Don't give up on yourself. I know things look hard. I know you can look in the mirror or at the pages and tell yourself you're not where you want to be. You can get there though. And it won't require you to sell a kidney or give up taco Tuesday.

For more information, go right here: writernextdoor.com/novel-in-a-yea…

I love you. We're gonna make 2020 amazing. Your book is going on my shelf. Let's go. I think I see some puddles up ahead.

/THREAD