Week 1 Novel Quest 2025

This is Writing Quests’ Official Newsletter.

We are a couple of days in… how are we feeling? Here are some quick Tips for getting through this week’s Novel Quest Goals.

A timer can be your best friend. Break out a timer, set for ten minutes, and write.

Find a wordsprint online. There will be sprints on X, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, and other places. Search the terms wordsprints, word wars, write in. 1K 1 hour. Good way to find writers.

Running out of steam? Rescue a plot bunny! (Go back to the plot bunnies you had and make them work inside the novel as it is now)

Running out of steam and no plot bunnies? Phone a friend. Have your character phone a friend and ask for advice.

Who are you interviewing this year?

We have a full schedule of authors we are excited for you to meet.

Malcolm Newsome | November 2, 11am central time

Watch his interview here:

Preferred Pronouns: He/Him

Website: www.malcolmnewsome.com

Instagram: malcolm.newsome

Brief Bio: Malcolm Newsome is a traditionally published children’s book author and cyber security expert from the Chicago area. He writes with the aim of bringing hope and possibilities to the world. Malcolm is the author of beloved children’s picture books including, Dear Star Baby, Sydney’s Big Speech, I Am The Spirit of Justice (co-author), and The Daddy-Daughter Dance. When he’s not writing or spending time with family, you’ll probably find him either reading, spending time outside in his mini-orchard, baking bread, or being a lumberjack.

Eveline Rose | November 5, 6pm central time

Preferred Pronouns: She/ Her

Website: www.evelineroseauthor.com

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/evelineroseauthor/

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/EvelineRoseAuthor

Brief Bio: Eveline is an award-winning author who fell in love with storytelling in high school. She’s thrilled to share her small-town romantic suspense stories with you. Every book has a heroine who is stronger than she believes, and a protective hero who falls hard and will do anything to protect her. Eveline lives in the Chicago area with her cat, HRH, The Prince of Destruction, where she pours her heart and soul into her characters for your reading pleasure. She’s a foodie (so much so that she includes original recipes in every book and will publish an SSI Cookbook) who loves her coffee and wine, and happy endings.

Link to Live Show: https://youtube.com/live/Yd26RiQAqVg?feature=share

Margo Margen | November 9, 11am central time

Preferred Pronouns: She/ Her

Website: https://boardgamesmargomargan.wordpress.com/

The CroXdome Fandom Community Discord https://discord.gg/u9w2JG99Da

The Archer’s Quill (Substack) -

The Game Crafter Designer Page - https://www.thegamecrafter.com/designers/margo-margan

Brief Bio: Margo Margan is a freelance copywriter and columnist. As a hobby, she produces fiction of various forms, including short stories, comics, TV scripts, and tabletop roleplay modules. However, she hopes to take her fiction writing to the next level in the near future with her soon-to-be-self-published novella IVY. She is also an indie tabletop game designer. Her most notable title is the accolade-winning CroXcards, a strategy board game mixed with trading card game elements, featuring playable characters from her vast library of creative work.

Check out our next newsletter to find out more about who we are interviewing next…

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).

Novel Quest is finally here! Are you excited, nervous, nauseated? Maybe a bit of all three?

By now, you’ve likely already started writing or editing. Hopefully, you’re still having a fun, easy time. But in case you’re not, let’s talk about overwhelm.

Most people use the terms stress and overwhelm interchangeably, and try to treat feeling overwhelmed by axing tasks from your to-do list. However, overwhelm is not caused by having too much on your plate, but by having an imbalance of responsibilities dictated by others versus the responsibilities you’ve chosen for yourself. Axing those projects you’ve chosen actually makes overwhelm worse, not better.

If you’re reading this, it’s because you chose this as your personal challenge for the month. In the moments when it’s hard, when you’re thinking of giving up, just remember that you are in control. Perhaps you need to halve your goal or switch to a different project. Maybe you need to draw a line through the whole thing and start from the beginning (don’t delete those words, though, you have our permission to still count them). Quitting may seem tempting at those moments, but it won’t cure overwhelm. Only reasserting your control of your life can do that.

Remember, this is YOUR goal, not anyone else’s. We are incredibly proud to be working alongside you.

Your Writing Quest Guides