Now that Novel Quest is over

This is Writing Quests’ Official Newsletter.

Another Novel Quest is over! Although it’s now December, we have a few additional housekeeping items to recommend. So before you close your laptop and take a well-deserved nap, read these tips and finish your Novel Quest on a high note.

• Finish your story:

  • If possible, get to the end of your story. This depends on how much work is left and what your post-Novel Quest schedule will allow, but your future self will definitely be happier with a completed first draft than 4/5ths of a first draft.

  • If finishing your story isn’t possible, outline what you know about the rest of your story. You may think you’ll remember all those amazing creative breakthroughs you had in November, but your brain is a dirty liar who will have long forgotten that promise by the new year.

• Back up your project:

  • Hopefully you’ve been taking time to do this all month long. If you haven’t, make sure your project is backed up somewhere now! On a flashdrive, an external hard drive, cloud storage, wherever you prefer. Just make sure the file name is clear, searchable, and distinguishable from any older copies.

• Take a break:

  • See the friends and family you missed seeing while you were writing. You can hang out with your writing buddies too, so long as you agree to put down the pens.

  • Rest your hands! You’ve done a lot of writing and/or editing, and that puts you at risk of a repetitive strain injury. Try some hand, wrist, and arm stretches if you’re feeling sore.

  • Refill your well of creativity. Watch a movie, read a book, listen to some music with lyrics, whatever you cut out in November is fair game now.

We had a full schedule of authors we are excited for you to meet. Check out our VODs on YouTube to watch their interviews.

Amy Gash & Elise Howard| December 3, 6pm central time

Preferred Pronouns Amy Gash (she/her) & Elise Howard (she/her)

Book website: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amy-gash/believe-in-the-world/9781643755533/

Book Instagram: @believe_in_the_world_book

Personal handles:

Instagram: @amyg400; @fernelise

Facebook: facebook.com/amy.gash.1; facebook.com/elise.howard

Bluesky @elisehoward.bsky.social

Amy’s website: https://amygasheditorial.com/

Elise’s website: https://www.defliterary.com/agents/elise-howard

Bios:

Amy Gash has been a book editor at major New York City publishing houses for 30 years, most recently as executive editor at Algonquin Books/Hachette Book Group, where she acquired and edited narrative nonfiction and fiction for adults. Today she works independently, helping writers with developmental editing, line editing, and proposal writing. Her first collection of quotations from children’s books was What the Dormouse Said: Lessons for Grown-ups from Children’s Books.

Elise Howard is a literary agent, anthologist, and writer who has previously worked as a publisher and editor, mainly of children’s books. Her newest book, PLANT THIS, NOT THAT: OVER 200 NATIVE PLANT SWAPS FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE, POLLINATOR-FRIENDLY GARDEN, will be published by Workman in March 2026. When she is not reading, writing, editing, selling, or thinking about books, Elise is usually gardening with native plants or trying to persuade others to do so. She lives, works, and gardens in Manhattan and Western Massachusetts.

Watch their interview:

We are seeking volunteers to help with the Questy development. In particular, it would be helpful to find individuals with skills/experience/interest in

• php/Symphony dev

• React web

• UI and UX

We are on a journey to create a flexible writing progress tracker (Questy) that will have some nice features, including:

• supporting common Quests (defined writing challenges)

• supporting individual projects of different formats (novels, series, plays, short stories, etc)

• supporting some community communication capabilities, beginning with buddies

• supporting community/buddy progress tracking graphs (similar to what NaNo Faces provided when it was active).

You can read more about the project at GitHub (especially see our plans on our wiki).

Hi Writing Questers,

We recently had Amy Gash and Elise Howard on our TGIO party. You can see their interview there. They generously shared a few tips on how to make your book stand out in the marketplace. Today, we will focus on editing tips.

For Editing

Get people who will give you honest feedback and be open to their suggestions.

Revise, revise, revise. Many writers send stuff too early, and agents/editors can’t take it. The same can be true in self-published spaces. If you haven’t revised your book well enough, it won’t keep your audience.

Figure out what your book is about. Your romance isn’t girl meets boy, conflict, happily ever after. Most readers, and all editors, are looking for something more, something deeper.

Give your log line. 15 words or less to describe your book. For example, the log line of Ansley Ashe’s novella, The Big Intersection, is: Allison Pecanac lives her life at the intersection of forever and screwed.

Give your elevator pitch. One paragraph to describe your book. Same example, The Big Intersection:

Stay-at-home mom Allison Pecanac’s world gets turned upside down at a stoplight when the blue car in front of her doesn’t move. Trapped behind the car, Allison gets out to see if the occupant needs help while her daughter Justine stays in the car. What she finds is a man dying of a stab wound. Worse, she knows the man, despite the fact they have never met. And she knows that when the cops go to solve this crime Justine will be suspect number one.

And synopsis, or the one page description of what your book is about. Again, from The Big Intersection, the three paragraph synopsis is:

Stay-at-home mom Allison Pecanac seems to be winning the war against cynicism when her world gets turned upside down at a stoplight. Trapped behind a blue car, Allison gets out to see if the driver needs aid. What she finds is a famous actor dying of a stab wound. Despite the fact that her daughter Justine has been in the car with her, Allison knows Justine and her half-sisters
Amelia and Celeste are going to be suspects in the upcoming investigation. Hopeful that there may be something the paramedics can do, Allison calls 911 anyway. The actor, Gabriel McDuff dies.

The investigator assigned to the case, Detective Davie Grover, is still convinced Allison killed her first husband, Thomas. Grover refuses to believe someone other than Justine killed Gabriel. With Detective Grover so hell-bent on proving Justine or her sisters are the killers, Allison’s current husband, investigative reporter Joe Pecanac, starts digging around. But Allison is having problems just sitting back. Going back to her investigative reporting days, Allison begins questioning her sources and drawing her own conclusions. Conclusions that clash with Joe’s theory of the case. Their marriage starts to crumble.

In a final twist, Allison is able to clear Justine, at least to Joe’s satisfaction, but unbeknownst to her someone in her house is going to be arrested for covering up the crime.

It’s never too early to start building an audience. Even if you don’t have work out yet, just read in your desired genre and post what you’re reading on social media. Share snippets of your work when you have it. Be excited to be there and connect with readers in your genre. It’s never too early to learn how to talk about the things you love.

We want to thank Amy and Elise for such great tips! It was a pleasure having them on Writing Quests!