Hello, Creative Army!

I’m your Stage 32 Writer Liaison, Emily J., and I’m writing to you from the Austin Film Festival where I’m working to tell as many writers as I can about Stage 32 and all the cool things happening on the platform. If you’re heading to AFF this year, be sure to stop by our table at registration and say hi to me and our Head of Community, Ashley. We’ll also be hosting our 10th Annual Rooftop Bash at the Speakeasy on Friday, October 27th, which you can RSVP to attend by clicking here.

One of the fun upcoming activities we’ll be talking about at AFF is our 9th Annual November Write Club! What is November Write Club? It’s a month-long challenge within Stage 32 where YOU set a goal for yourself for the month and then utilize the Stage 32 platform to get the support and resources you need to achieve it.

We’ll be officially launching it next week on Wednesday, November 1, here on the blog. When we do, your first task will be to state your November goal.

Unlike NaNoWriMo (or “National Novel Writing Month”), which challenges authors to write 50k words (!) in a month, your goal with November Write Club can be anything and isn’t limited to a word or page count. So before next week arrives and you have to launch into working on your goal, let’s look at how you can choose an achievable goal for the month that fits where you are in your writing journey.

1. Brainstorm

The first step of any goal-setting strategy is to have a “blue sky” moment where you just chill out, do whatever you need to do to relax (withOUT distractions - turn off YouTube), and just write everything that you want to do, have, or be (if you haven’t heard of this exercise before, check out Brian Moran’s book “The 12 Week Year”). Not within the month, just what are you working towards in your writing and/or filmmaking career.

2. Get Focused

Next, you want to pick out 1-3 tangible big dreams that are the main ones or even encompass multiple goals that you have. Start breaking down that primary dream you want to focus into the big steps and goals that could encompass a month's worth of work. For example, if you want to be a professional screenwriter, you should be generating new material regularly. So maybe the big tangible dream is “to be a professional screenwriter.” A big step or goal within that would be, write a new script draft.

Another goal might be to have a literary rep. Well, you can’t control someone signing you, but you can control the number of people with access to your work, how you present your work, and how you promote your work. So the goal for the month within the dream would be to submit your script or reach out to X number of representatives.

3. Build Out The Plan

You don’t need to know every little detail of what you’ll do this month (unless your goal is about creating a routine or hitting a numeric goal regularly, etc.). But now that you know what your “big step goal” is, you want to have a plan of action on how you’ll achieve it over 30 days (and maybe less if you remove the holidays and weekends).

So now, break down this big-step goal into even smaller tasks. Make them small, tangible, and feel “doable.” If they’re too large for you to do in what limited time you have in your day, then you’ll fall behind and lose momentum.

Take into consideration how many days you actually have available since not every day of your life has the same set schedule. For example, if your plan is to write one draft of a script over the month, that’s 3-4 pages a day - IF you write every day. But you might not be available to! So then, can you write 5 pages a day so that you can hit this goal in 20 out of 30 days? That might be the number of days available for your schedule, but not necessarily a feasible number of pages for you to knock out.

With your list of steps, can you fit them all into the month or do you need to make what you're working towards even smaller? Do you think you actually have more time where you could take it up a notch? It’s definitely better to underpromise and over-deliver, so give yourself a bit of a cushion if you can.

Let’s take the larger dream of get a literary rep. If your challenge goa for November is to send your materials to X number of reps - your plan wouldn’t just be to send out queries. Your tasks over the month would include –

• Check out this webinar from the legendary WME Story Editor Chris Lockhart on what makes a great logline
• Watch this webinar on what makes a great query
• Email the Success Team at success@stage32.com and ask them for a sample query and written pitch samples (we’ve got them both!) and use them to guide your own query letter style
• Proofread your base query letter and have friends take a look at it too!
• Research who to email by looking up writers whose careers you admire and what companies rep those writers
• THEN start querying and pitch them, planning to do a certain number per day, making changes to your query to suit the company so they’re not a copy and paste of the same letter

What could easily have been a goal to email 5 reps a day, just became a much more thorough plan that you’ll be proud of, will sustain you for the month, and won’t burn you out since you paced yourself.

*BONUS TIP*

Let’s say you lose momentum while you’re working on your goal - that’s what Stage 32 is here for!

The most important part of November Write Club isn’t necessarily your goal. It’s the connections you’re going to make by holding each other accountable and cheering each other on! In years past, we’ve had one blog a month for people to check in on. But this year, we’ll have:

• A weekly blog on Wednesdays, providing tips and resources
• A weekly Instagram Live on the Stage32 and Stage32Scripts accounts on Fridays where we’ll be giving out weekly prizes!
• And Writers’ Room members will have two dedicated Wednesday Webcasts

PLUS! Myself and the Success Team are available at success@stage32.com and in the lounges for any assistance you may need!

So start brainstorming! I can’t wait to see what you all are working towards next Wednesday when our 9th Annual November Write Club launches!

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Got an idea for a post? Or have you collaborated with Stage 32 members to create a project? We'd love to hear about it. Email Emily at blog@stage32.com and let's get your post published!

Please help support your fellow Stage 32ers by sharing this on social. Check out the social media buttons at the top to share on Instagram @stage32 , Twitter @stage32 , Facebook @stage32 , and LinkedIn @stage-32 .