Advertise on podcast: Keeping a Notebook

Read more and enroll in Projects & Practice. Read more and enroll in Winter Writing Nights: Exploring Voice and Language in Fiction. Subscribe to Nina's newsletter. ALSO! If you enroll in BOTH classes, you'll receive free access to Nina and Elana's The Business of Writing workshop. In this ninety-minute session, we will get deep into the business side of writing and publishing. We'll be transparent about rejections and successes, surprises and setbacks and risk-taking. Most of all, we'll turn our attention to what you want to know about the business of writing. You'll be able to pre-submit questions and/or ask them live. From querying agents to understanding advances, maintaining relationships with editors to making big pivots, setting expectations around publicity and sales to selling on proposal, we're so looking forward to sharing what we know with you. This workshop will be held on January 31st at 10am PST. It will be recorded and sent out in case you can't make it. If you'd like to join, sign up for both Projects & Practice and Winter Writing Nights. Nina will then send you a Zoom link and more info on The Business of Writing in mid-January. This episode of Keeping a Notebook references Anne-Laure Le Canff's Tiny Experiments and Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks. I recommend both books! Happy New Year, everyone!

Purchase Nina's new novel, Watch Over Me. Register for a morning of writing with Nina to benefit Diesel, A Bookstore. Enroll in Writing, Reading, Responding: The art of drafting and critiquing, in which Nina and Elana K. Arnold will discuss the making of Watch Over Me. (Remember to read the novel first!) Subscribe to "Letters from Nina" for behind-the-scenes looks at her process and projects, and to be the first to learn about class offerings.

You can rent Gaslight here. (Highly recommended!) Purchase Nina's new novel, Watch Over Me. Register for a morning of writing with Nina to benefit Diesel, A Bookstore. Enroll in Writing, Reading, Responding: The art of drafting and critiquing, in which Nina and Elana K. Arnold will discuss the making of Watch Over Me. (Remember to read the novel first!) Subscribe to "Letters from Nina" for behind-the-scenes looks at her process and projects, and to be the first to learn about class offerings.

Wednesday, September 16th with Tiffany D. Jackson 5 p.m. PST/ 7 p.m. CST/ 8 p.m. EST, hosted by YA @ Books Inc. Learn more and register here! Thursday, September 17th with Stephanie Perkins 3 p.m. PST/5 p.m. CST/6 p.m. EST, hosted by Books & Books Learn more here!   Subscribe to Letters from Nina for writing musings and exercises, class and event news, and more about Nina's books.

Join Nina in celebration of Watch Over Me's release! (If you order from a hosting bookstore, you'll receive a signed bookplate with your copy of Watch Over Me.) Tuesday, September 15th with Brandy Colbert 5 p.m. PST/7 p.m. CST/8 p.m. EST, hosted by Main St. Books Learn more and register here! Wednesday, September 16th with Tiffany D. Jackson 5 p.m. PST/ 7 p.m. CST/ 8 p.m. EST, hosted by YA @ Books Inc. Learn more and register here! Thursday, September 17th with Stephanie Perkins 3 p.m. PST/5 p.m. CST/6 p.m. EST, hosted by Books & Books Learn more here!   Subscribe to Letters from Nina for writing musings and exercises, class and event news, and more about Nina's books.

Announcement:The Slow Novel Lab is open for a special summer benefit session, with 50% of the profit going to Direct Relief! Nina examines messiness and her complicated feelings about it, both in herself and in others. She invites you to spend some time with a mess of your own--not to clean it up, but to see what it offers you in your work. If you’d like to share your mess, or what you wrote about it, or your experience of writing (or not writing) during this time, we'd love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #writinginplace on Twitter and Instagram. And you can see scenes from Nina's messy apartment, too. Follow along with the project on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nina_lacour/ and  https://www.instagram.com/theslownovellab/ Subscribe to Letters from Nina for the full text of this season along more photographs of Nina's home. Enroll in The Slow Novel Lab for an transformative and interactive six weeks with Nina and fellow participants.

Announcement:The Slow Novel Lab is open for a special summer benefit session, with 50% of the profit going to Direct Relief! Nina examines the anchors in her life: her work, her desk, the mug she drinks her morning coffee from. She offers a writing exercise to ease you into exploring your own anchors, and the anchors in your fiction. If you’d like to share your anchor, or what you wrote about it, or your experience of writing (or not writing) during this time, we'd love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #writinginplace on Twitter and Instagram. Follow along with the project on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nina_lacour/ and  https://www.instagram.com/theslownovellab/ Subscribe to Letters from Nina for the full text of this season along more photographs of Nina's home. Enroll in The Slow Novel Lab for an transformative and interactive six weeks with Nina and fellow participants.

Nina contemplates the windows in her new apartment, and what it's like to be on the inside when people outside pass by. She offers a two-part exercise for her listeners to be used first as a method of noticing and being in place, and then as an entryway to their fiction.  If you’d like to share your window, or what you wrote about it, or your experience of writing (or not writing) during this time, we'd love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #writinginplace on Twitter and Instagram. Follow along with the project on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nina_lacour/ and  https://www.instagram.com/theslownovellab/ Subscribe to Letters from Nina for the full text of this season along more photographs of Nina's home.

About the Shelter in Place podcast, hosted by Laura Joyce Davis: When the news came down about the mandate to shelter in place, Bay Area writer Laura Joyce Davis decided to mark this moment in history by chronicling her daily experience of sheltering in place. Episodes are short (~10 min.) and often feature other artists, scientists, therapists, and those whose work pushes us to faith, contemplation, and hope.  Subscribe to the Shelter in Place podcast. Follow Laura Joyce Davis on Instagram and Twitter.

This season opens in Nina's new home. She shares a story of disorientation, and finds her way back to writing. She invites listeners to write with her. To keep a notebook of these times. She offers a writing exercise as a way in.  If you’d like to share your object, or what you wrote about it, or your experience of writing (or not writing) during this time, we'd love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #writinginplace on Twitter and Instagram. Follow along with the project on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nina_lacour/ and  https://www.instagram.com/theslownovellab/ Subscribe to Letters from Nina for the full text of this season along more photographs of Nina's home.

New! Full transcripts of this season's episodes are now available at ninalacour.com/transcripts! Learn more about Nina's online class, The Slow Novel Lab! ninalacour.com/the-slow-novel-lab Today, Nina walks listeners through a part-brainstorming, part-outlining strategy for when they feel lost in the middle of their stories. It's easy to feel lost at sea in the middle, to doubt our paths and lose direction. But by completing this two-part exercise, you'll learn to identify phases of your novel so that the middle is not longer as overwhelming.

The Slow Novel Lab is now open for enrollment! Join the conversation at The Slow Novel Lab Instagram! Subscribe to Letters from Nina for more writing tips, book news and special offers! Highlights: I want to experience the pleasures and sorrows of life through the page.It’s no small feat to make a reader feel what your character is feeling, and much of my drafting and revision time is spent making sure I’m getting it right.If something isn’t working emotionally in your story, go back to what came before. To what hurt your character. To what they need or fear.

Join the conversation at The Slow Novel Lab Instagram! Subscribe to Letters from Nina for more writing tips, book news, and to hear when The Slow Novel Lab opens for enrollment! Highlights: -We need something to connect to. Details of setting. Histories. Hints or statements about how the characters came to be who and where they are. -Allow the past and present to have their own plots and progressions. -Showing is great, of course, but telling can be powerful. So don’t shy away from stating things plainly when your story warrants it.

Join the conversation at The Slow Novel Lab Instagram! Subscribe to Letters from Nina for more writing tips, book news, and to hear when The Slow Novel Lab opens for enrollment! Read Jocelyn K. Glei's blog post, "How to Feel Progress." Highlights: · Our goals have to be things we make happen for ourselves—not things we wait to be given. · Overwhelm is a powerful opponent of productivity—but if you’re clear-eyed in your priorities you should be able to fend it off. · Write yourself a new script—one that tells you what you secretly know: That you can do this. · Speak to yourself as you would a friend. Today is a new day. Today can be the day you write. · Writing is a practice. The more you do it, the better you’ll become at getting words on the page. · I want to see myself moving forward in a way that tracking words or page count is not going to give me. · Your work is a gift from you to yourself. Even when it’s messy, even when it’s not yet nearly what you want it to become.