Hello, Protagonists!
In this post, you’ll find:
🎥 The video replay of our February Book Club meeting
🤓 March Invitation + Book Club Discussion Questions: BIRD BY BIRD
Our Book Club is for our community members who want to dive even deeper into writing craft. Come nerd out with us! 🤓
🎥 The video replay of our February Book Club meeting
If you missed our book club meeting, you can watch the replay now.
We had such a fantastic discussion of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and talked about:
a confused protagonist - does this confuse the reader too much?
world-building - applicable to fantasy/sci-fi, historical, dystopian, and even contemporary novels
“rules” of the world (or game)
info-dumping vs spreading out the information
metaphor style
pacing
when to allow yourself to write beautiful prose
when to skip it in favor of moving the story along
book titles and how they affect our perception of a book (and whether we decide to buy it)
During the writers’ hangout portion, we talked about:
Plotters vs Pantsers: Do you outline or do you write by the seat of your pants? Is one method better than the other?
Work-for-hire (Netflix, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars)
what kind of outlines do they provide?
what is the experience like—rigid or easy or fun?
Do you have any tricks for coming up with good book titles?
Foreign sales:
How do books get published in other countries?
How much do those publishers get to change (title, book cover, etc.)?
»To keep our members’ conversations private from the general internet, the Book Club replay is behind a paywall.
If you’d like to join us in the Book Club, you can upgrade to a paid membership here:
or:
Get a complimentary paid subscription when your friends subscribe:
1 referral = one-month paid subscription, comped
2 referrals = three-month paid subscription, comped
3 referrals = one-year paid subscription, comped
🤓 March Invitation + Book Club Discussion Questions
Who is invited?
Writers who love reading and want to examine stories more closely, and
Readers who are curious about why they feel the way they do about a book.
When is the next meeting?
Sunday, March 23, 2025 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT
🥰 Introverts, you are welcome to keep your cameras off.
What is our next Book Pick?
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
This is an absolute classic for writers, and… I haven’t read it! So I am excited to dive into this inspirational non-fiction with you.
For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
During the book discussion, we’ll chat about:
How the book is constructed
mix of memoir, humor, and advice - did this resonate with you or not?
her archetype of a certain kind of writer
How we interpret the book’s advice from different points in the writing journey:
as beginning writers, authors with a couple books under their belts, and old fogeys like me who’ve been publishing for nearly a decade.
did this book resonate with you?
if so—why?
if not—why not? (We often learn more, as writers, from examining texts that don’t resonate with us.)
During the writers’ hangout portion, we will talk about:
The business of being an author:
When (or should you) invest in:
a freelance editor
a freelance publicist
a marketing consultant
marketing “book boxes” for creators on social media
ads on Facebook, Instagram, or elsewhere
Is it possible to make a full-time living as an author—and how does that work, financially?
Should you go full-time? or should you keep a day job?
» Read my deep dive on How Authors Make Money before our book club meeting
I think this is going to be a wonderful conversation!
In case you missed it, here are our books for the first half of the year:
March RSVP link is below!
To prevent Zoom-bombing from not-nice people, the RSVP (and Zoom link) is below the paywall.
This also allows us to keep our members’ book discussions private from the general internet; it’s nice to have a cozy, totally private space for just us!
If you’d like to join us in the Book Club, you can upgrade to a paid membership here:
or:
Get a complimentary paid subscription when your friends subscribe:
1 referral = one-month paid subscription, comped
2 referrals = three-month paid subscription, comped
3 referrals = one-year paid subscription, comped
💛💛💛💛💛
