The Running of the WIPs

How many stories can we collectively tell in one year?

Hey, Writer.

If you’ve been wanting to write a novel or other long-form fiction project (screenplay, graphic novel, TV series, etc.) and haven’t been able to do it, I have a fun challenge for you, that may end with you having a draft by the end of the next school year.

And… you might even enjoy the process.

It’s a writing challenge I’m basing on my successful Year of Writing Magically workshop. I’m making the principles I teach there accessible to anyone who wants to write a long-form fiction project in a challenge I’m calling the Running of the WIPs.

Or… rotWIPs for short.

It’s like the running of the bulls, kind of, except no one is likely to get gored.

I want to see how many sketch drafts¹ participants can finish between September ‘24 and June ‘25 following the same system I use to walk the writers in my Year of Writing Magically workshop through their projects.

So… let’s answer the questions I imagine you might have about this endeavor.

Why the Running of The WIPs? Isn’t that kind of… you know… gross?

Well… maybe. But it’s the title that came to me, and there’s something about the communal energy of the running of the bulls in Pamplona that feels like a fun way to describe it.

And rotWIPs as the shorthand for it makes me laugh.

It might be a mistake.

We’ll find out.

What is the Year of Writing Magically?

I started teaching my Year of Writing Magically workshop in 2023, and was astounded to see how much it helped writers write. As a result of the workshop, I wrote my first novel in almost 10 years.

My students reported that they wrote more than they had been able to before the workshop.

Many of them finished their sketch drafts.

And then a quarter of them wanted to come back and do it again in 2024.

That’s when I knew that what I was teaching wasn’t a workshop; it was an experience.

An experience I wanted everyone to have.

The problem is, the Year of Writing Magically workshop can only accommodate about 20 people. It’s just the nature of my approach; you need to have a small group of writers working together, getting to know each other, and feeling safe with each other. You get too many people into that soup, and some of the naturally quieter members can get squeezed out.

But I believe in this method. I know it works. It works for the workshop, it works for the clients, and when I taught some of it recently at a writer’s conference in Chicago, people stopped me in hallways to tell me that in just a few days, it had already changed their lives.

How does it work?

The Year of Writing Magically works its magic in two ways; writing as part of a supportive, encouraging community, and a willingness to do substantial mindset work.

I am not kidding; this is going to feel a bit like therapy. In order for you to be productive as a creative individual, you need to clear out the belief systems that are holding you back.

Here are some examples of the mindset work you’ll need to do:

1. You’re working even when you’re not writing. Creative people are creative all the time, even when there isn’t much to show for it. You have to accept that your creativity will come in ebbs and flows, and you have to tell that part of you that subscribes to the BICHOK ethos to shut up and just trust the process.

2. Your problem isn’t time, it’s energy. We all wonder why, when we have 20 minutes or three hours at the end of the day, we can’t just write. We feel like we’re failing… because the time is there. We’re just playing Fishdom or Angry Birds instead of writing. But here’s the thing; it’s not about the time. You have the time. What you don’t have is the energy. Your battery runs out when it runs out. The first exercise in the Running of the WIPs will be to examine your life, cut out the things that drain you as much as you can, increase the things that energize you as much as you can, and ask for help to cover the difference. Writing a book isn’t something you can add to your life; you need to make space for it.

3. Perfectionism sucks, dump it. Look, we all want to do good work. But our obsession with being Good is killing our productivity. Your job is to write the thing; it’ll be as good as you’re capable of making it, so don’t worry about it. The only way you get better at writing is to write, but if you fret over everything being Good, you’ll back up like a clogged septic system. Ditching perfectionism is a long process. We’ll be working on this shit all year.

That’s only a couple of examples of where we’ll be starting. Before you even get to your story, you’re going to have to work on yourself. If that’s not for you, you might want to skip this challenge, because it’s essential to the rest of it working.

Community is the other big, BIG, huge, massive, so-important-you-won’t-believe-it part of this experience.

I bring you together. I lead you. I show you how to do the thing. But you are going to be in this thing, from beginning to end, with the writers around you, and in order for that to work, you need to be the writer around them. That means participation. You need to be commenting on Substack or in your cohort’s Discord channel. You need to be active. You need to be present. I can show you how to do it, I can set the tone for the spaces you’ll be in, but you need to be the writer you want to write alongside.

So… you think you can do this at scale? Really?

I think so. Maybe.

Hey… you don’t know until you try.

I recently did a road trip to the Seattle are to work on this year’s novel. Driving for days on end is really good for me creatively, and afterwards, the writing just flows.

On the way to Seattle, that’s how it worked. I got there, wrote a ton, had a fabulous time.

On the way back to Denver, however, the novel faded into the background of my thoughts, and all I could think about was the Running of the WIPs.

It came to me in a sudden burst of inspiration, and I knew immediately that I wanted to do it; I wanted to scale this experience to reach as many writers as possible, and I wanted to see how many sketch drafts we could get done in one year.

And I decided Substack was how I wanted to do it.

Why Substack?

Substack is both easy and accessible. The challenge itself is going to be a lot of work; I didn’t want to create a huge tech learning curve for participants.

The posts come automatically through email or the app, and it’s not that complicated to sign up. I can offer different tiers so that everyone who wants to participate in the challenge can bring it into a space that’s right for them.

There are three tiers of participation, all of which pay at different levels. (Note: Paid subscriptions will not be available until September. If you subscribe to rotWIPs as a free subscriber, you’ll be notified when you can sign up.)

1. I’m the Self-Directed Type ($20/month): At this level, you get all the instructional posts and can find community in the comments section in Substack. Drop out at any time by canceling your subscription. Note: This participation level does not include access to a Discord server.

2. Putting My Money Where My WIP Is ($200/year): This is identical to the Put Me In A Cohort, Coach level, but you pay for the full year at once, and there’s no dropping out. I mean, you can stop working at any time, if you want, but you’re showing yourself the commitment by putting your money down. With this option, and the commitment, you get sorted into a private Discord server of about 20 like-minded writers, where you will be able to tag me and ask me questions and I’ll pop in to answer.

3. Me and My Friends Discount ($180/year/member, minimum 2 people): If you bring a group of two or more, you get a discount per member. If your group is 15-20 people, you can have your own private cohort on Discord; if your group is less than 15, you’ll share your Discord server with others. If it’s more, your group will be split across more servers, as it’s important to cap the cohort numbers at 20.

Note: For the Running of the WIPs, a “year” is the 10 months between September and June. In July and August, any posts here on the Substack will be free for everyone, and I will pause billing during those months. For example, someone who participates at the $20/month level will end up paying September-June, a total of $200, but will still receive communications during the two months in between. Anyone who has an unpaid subscription will receive posts in July and August only.

Why the school year schedule?

I love Back to School energy like no other energy of the year. Plus, the Running of the WIPs will start drafting when Nanowrimo is going, and that global creative energy will give us a boost. Plus, writers with kids in school might have a smidge extra time during the school year.

And also… I just really, really love Back to School energy.

That’s it, really.

I believe that the world becomes a better place with every person who creates a thing. If you want to write a novel or other long-form fiction project, I know I can help you get over yourself and get to the work… if you’re willing to let me.

That mindset shit is no joke. It’s a lot of inner work, but it’s worth it.

So, if you’re in, head over to the rotWIPs subscription page and sign up!

And if you’re not sure, tell your writer friends about it and see how they feel about it.

See you in September!

1. A sketch draft is basically a rough draft, but because so many writers have different definitions of a rough draft/first draft that the terms can get confusing. I call it a sketch draft, like the initial sketch that an artist does, then works in more layers until the whole work is done. It’s the hardest part of writing, and once you have this, you’re set up to finish the whole kit and kaboodle. Also, it’s completely doable in a year.