December 2024 Newsletter

NaNoWriMo, Christmas Gift Guide, Interview with Sam Subity

Abby Henderson
December 07, 2024

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!

It’s December.

What is happening??

This is the last month of 2024.

I’m having trouble processing. It doesn’t help that I blinked and November was over.

But also, new year, new goals! If you know me, you know that I love all things lists, goals, organization, etc. I’m getting really excited to plan out the next year (I’ve already mapped out a couple of projects) and I hope to share some of my goals with you in the January 2025 (🤯) Newsletter.

Writing: The Chaos that is NaNoWriMo

Whoa. NaNoWriMo was… a lot.

In my last newsletter, I know I sounded pretty confident and I was. 1,700-ish words a day, easy! The thing is, I forgot that NaNoWriMo isn’t just a daily goal, it’s a monthly goal too. Which means, that if you miss even a day, your word goal the next day doubles and 3,400 words isn’t quite as easy to reach in a day.

I started the month with the intention of getting in my 50,000 words entirely in Project: Road Trip (which I mentioned in the November newsletter), but from day one, things began to deviate from my plan. You see, even the first time I sat down to write, I wasn’t enjoying it like I normally do. Usually, I love starting a new story, it’s exciting and fresh, but I never got that feeling from this project.

For 23 days, I ignored that feeling and pushed through, determined to finish NaNoWriMo the way it was originally intended. I knew that the story wasn’t working, the characters were flat and annoying and the setting wasn’t working. While I’m usually able to push past imperfections in my work, without a deep love for the story, I couldn’t keep doing it.

So, on the 24th, 7 days before the end of NaNoWriMo, I switched gears. That Sunday afternoon I came up with a completely new story idea. A Christmas story, a romance, set in a cozy inn, loosely based on the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. As soon as I started it, I felt better, the pressure that had been in my chest the entire month loosened and I started to enjoy the writing again.

Due to some procrastinating (and Thanksgiving), I crammed in the last 10,000 words on the last two days and finally reached the big number 50,000 ten minutes before midnight on November 30th.

I know this is already quite long, but I want to share a couple things I learned from this whole crazy shenanigan.

I can do it! I can write 50,000 words in 30 days. I can push through exhaustion and lack of motivation to reach my goals.
I should have listened to myself earlier. If I had paid attention to my feeling about Project: Road Trip, I would have stopped torturing myself earlier in the month and had a lot more fun with NaNoWriMo.
Strict word goals like this aren’t the most helpful thing for me. Like I mentioned earlier, not being able to miss a single day of writing without your daily goal doubling, doesn’t work for me. I need to be able to take a day off every now and then. If I feel a constant pressure to meet a word goal, it sucks the joy out of writing and actually makes me less productive.

I don’t usually share first drafts with people outside of my writing community, but I’m actually pretty happy with how Project:Christmas is turning out, so I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you. Here’s the first chapter of my Christmas romance temporarily named Project: Christmas!

Reading: Christmas Gift Guide Book Edition

It’s nearly Christmas time and you all know how much I love recommending books. With those two facts, it would be a mistake to not do something like this. If you’re looking for books to get the reader or writer in your life, I have plenty of suggestions. Email me if you want even more in one of the categories, I could go on forever.

Middle Grade Books:

The Last Shadow Warrior by Sam Subity (Fantasy) I love this book! (See the Spotlight section)
Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi (Fantasy) If you want to laugh so hard you cry, read this book and all the rest of the series.
A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen (Historical Fiction) Jennifer A. Nielsen writes the best MG historical fiction. Go read all of them, now!
Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh (Contemporary) This is one of those books that stuck with me for a long time. It contrasted the MG themes of friendship and innocence with the harder parts of life and the world so well.

Young Adult Books:

What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez (Historical Fantasy) I know I’ve mentioned this book at least one other time in a newsletter, but it’s one of my all-time favorite books so it deserves it. I just started the sequel, and so far, it’s just as good as book #1.
Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer (Contemporary Romance) I originally listened to this books as an audiobook, and it was one of those books that just had me sitting there listening to it when I ran out of tasks. It’s super funny and the main character is so much like me it’s almost embarrassing.
Skyward by Brandon Sanderson (Sci-fi) I was immediately sucked into this book by the world-building, characters, and fast pace of the story.
Shadow on the Mountain by Margi Preus (Historical Fiction) This is one of the first YA historical fiction books I ever read. I loved the characters and the setting of this WW2 novel.

Nonfiction Books:

I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai Malala’s story is incredible. She is incredible. It’s unbelievable how much she’s both been through and all the good she’s done because of it at only 27.
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown I read this book several years ago and was fascinated by the story of the 1936 American Olympic rowing team. I’d also 100% recommend the movie!

Craft Books/workbooks:

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody Out of all the books/other resources I have read on writing, this has been by far the most helpful. The way I plot has been changed forever.
The Emotional Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi If you’re a writer, you know the feeling of struggling to describer character emotion or come up with the right word for it. The Emotional Thesaurus has 130 different emotions each with a definition, physical signs, mental responses, associated power verbs, and more!
The Storyteller’s Workbook by Adrienne Young and Isabel Ibanez I’m currently using this to brainstorm/plot my new novel and it’s been so fun. Not only is it really pretty, but it organizes all the information really well. (Thanks for the birthday present, Ben and Heather!)

As my Christmas gift to all the writers subscribed to my newsletter, I’m doing another giveaway! If you’re interested in winning a copy of The Emotional Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, click the button below to enter the giveaway!

Spotlight: Interview with Sam Subity

In my last newsletter, you may remember me mentioning The Last Shadow Warrior as a book that has personal meaning to me and how I was going to explain it to you this now. Well, settle in. It’s story time.

Four years ago, when I was twelve years old, I saw a book at Barnes and Noble that I thought I would give a try. As you may have guessed, it was called The Last Shadow Warrior. I opened the book and was thrilled to discover that the book’s main character was also named Abby and she was also twelve. And the weirdest part, she also lived in Minnesota! (Book characters never live in Minnesota.)

I finished the book (loved it) and decided to email the author, a habit I had acquired at the time. I told him all the fun qualities that Abby Beckett (the MC) and I shared. We ended up emailing back and forth a little bit and eventually, I mentioned that I was working on my first book. Nervously, I asked if Sam would ever read a couple chapters of my book. You have no idea how excited I was when he said yes.

What happened next I believe is a key reason I am where I am today. A little while later, I got an email back from Sam. Despite sending him what I now know was a very, very rough first draft, he couldn’t have been more encouraging. He mentioned a couple stories that it reminded him of (one of which was my favorite book series at the time), told me a couple of his favorite parts, and offered a couple points he thought could use improvement. I now know that he greatly held back on the critique, but at the time that was just what I needed. His encouragement made me feel like maybe I could actually publish a book someday, that I could really do it.

Today, I am so happy to be able to do an interview with him. Please, please go check out his website and his books. The Last Shadow Warrior is amazing and I haven’t had the chance to read Valor Wings yet, but I’m sure it’s just as awesome!

Hello, Sam! Thank you so much for being willing to do an interview with me. First, would you tell my readers a little bit about you and your books?

Thank you for having me, Abby! I’m excited to see where your writing career goes, and someday to say I knew you before you were famous. Like you, I like to write mostly fantasy stories and have published two so far, both for the middle grade market, or generally kids ages 8 to 12-ish (though my son is 17 and still loves MG). The Last Shadow Warrior is what I call my mashup of Beowulf and Percy Jackson, and is a modern-day fantasy adventure based on Norse mythology. My newest book Valor Wings is basically Dunkirk with dragons, which is to say a historically accurate account of the famous evacuation at Dunkirk during World War II, except for, you know…the dragons.

What has been your greatest struggle as a writer and how did you overcome it?

Honestly, I’d say just finding the discipline to sit down and write consistently. I once read some frank writing advice that said, “If you don’t find the time to write, then no other writing advice will help you.” That’s so true! It’s so easy to let life get in the way and you look up a decade later and that book you’ve been meaning to finish is still…not finished. For me it really took my older brother dying of cancer in his thirties to really jolt me into the realization that the clock was ticking and I might never finish the book I’d wanted to write for years. Which is why it’s so impressive, Abby, that you’ve already developed a great writing habit at such a young age! Stick with that and someday your books will fill up an entire shelf at the local bookstore.

How do you keep track of all the pieces of your stories (subplots, side character arcs, foreshadowing etc.) so they don’t get tangled up or lost?

I like to use a spreadsheet to create a simple outline of my story at the start, and then fill it in with more detail as it develops, including subplots, character movement between chapters, major themes, pacing, etc. Sometimes when I’m stuck on how to reorganize major parts of a story, I write out each chapter’s main theme/plot elements on sticky notes and stick them on a wall where I can stand back, look at them, and move them around until I find the right arrangement.

What’s one book you can’t recommend enough?

I often recommend the book Alone by Megan E. Freeman to students when I do class visits. It’s one of those rare books that I think appeals to all types of readers. My son who I mentioned earlier wouldn’t read it for the longest time because it’s a novel-in-verse (ew, poetry!), but he finally agreed to try it out and loved it so much that he immediately read the sequel Away.

To read the rest of the interview, click the button below!

Quick Writing Update

Wrote 34,606 words in Project: Road Trip
Wrote 15,407 words in Project: Christmas
Wrote 1,457 words in Project: Europe
Won NaNoWriMo!! (Projects Road trip and Christmas)

What did you think of my NaNoWriMo project? If you’re a writer, who’s one person who’s greatly influenced your writing life? Let me know by replying directly to this email or leaving me a comment of the website that corresponds to The Introverted Writer!