In a recent First Draft Friday episode, I hosted a discussion on a topic that resonates with every writer: overcoming writer’s block. Today’s guest, Jeff Deck, a seasoned writing coach, ghostwriter and author, shared valuable insights and a framework to tackle this common challenge.
Jeff introduced the STICK framework, an approach to address the underlying issues causing writer’s block. Here’s a summary of what it entails:
- Self-belief (S): Jeff emphasizes the importance of cultivating a positive mindset. Overcoming self-doubt and believing in your ability to learn and grow as a writer is the first step to success.
- Time management (T): Acknowledging that time is often a precious resource, Jeff recommends setting manageable goals and utilizing productivity hacks. Even short, focused writing sessions, such as 15 minutes, can contribute significantly to your progress.
- Inspiration (I): When inspiration wanes, Jeff suggests revisiting the initial spark that led you to the story. Additionally, he proposes maintaining a generator — a spreadsheet filled with character, plot, and setting inspirations — ensuring a steady flow of creative ideas.
- Connection (C): Understanding your audience and the genre’s expectations is vital. Jeff advises writers to be aware of genre tropes and use them as guidelines, innovating within these boundaries to avoid alienating readers.
- Knowledge (K): Technical know-how is essential for a seamless writing process. Whether it’s constructing scenes, balancing dialogue or understanding genre-specific details, continuously honing your writing skills is crucial.
Navigating perfectionism
We also discussed perfectionism. Jeff advises writers to give themselves permission to write imperfect first drafts. Progress is made through multiple drafts and you must embrace imperfection.
It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute recording and hear the questions we answered from the live audience. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.
More info:
Try out Marlowe, our A.I., who can critique your novel: authors.ai/marlowe/
To explore more of Jeff’s insights and services, visit his website at JeffDeck.com. Jeff offers manuscript critiques and shares valuable tips through his email list.
Enjoy the show? Check out our upcoming and past First Draft Friday episodes.
TRANSCRIPT:
Alessandra: Hi, everyone. Welcome to First Draft Friday. I am your host from Authors AI. My name is Alessandra Torre and today I am joined by Jeff Deck, and we’re going to be talking all about writer’s block, which I am so excited to talk about this topic. And I know that everyone attending will probably have opinions and comments to make, so don’t be shy if you’re watching, please join the discussion. Use that comment box, and we’d love to have your questions and comments as we go. So Jeff, welcome to the show. Can you give everybody just a brief introduction?
Jeff: Sure. Yeah. Thanks so much Alessandra. I’m so glad to be on this show here with you and hopefully I can help some people move forward with their novels. So yeah, my name’s Jeff Deck. I’m a writing coach. I’m a ghost writer and I’m an author myself. I’ve written several books and a few of them are on the mantle behind me.
Alessandra: And what genre do you normally write in?
Jeff: So I write in various forms of fiction. I have urban fantasy, supernatural thriller titles to my name. I do some holiday romance under a pen name. I do have one non-fiction book as well called The Great Typo Hunt, but my first and foremost love is fiction, and so that’s what I kind of focus on when I’m helping people with their books
Alessandra: We’re the same way. We’re a hundred percent focused on fiction, at least for First Draft Friday and with Author AI, so you’re in good hands. And writer’s block is an interesting topic; it’s one we haven’t talked about. This is our 37th episode and we’ve talked about a lot of things, but writer’s block isn’t one of them. So, did you experience writer’s block early in your career or is it something you’ve mastered from the beginning?
Jeff: Three dozen shows without…
Alessandra: There’s a past we’ve mentioned, so we’ve never had a whole episode focused on it, so I’m excited.
Jeff: Yeah, I mean, as writers, you know, fiction writers in particular, we all get stuck at a certain point and we feel like we can’t move forward because there’s this barrier or block that is keeping us from reaching our goal. And so, we came up with the term “writer’s block” to kind of visualize it and make it into like a metaphor. The reason why I like to call it a myth is that I believe most of the time when we’re feeling stuck, like there’s not something like standing in the way of us, moving forward. Instead of there being something present that’s blocking us, it’s actually more of an absence, something that we’re missing that we need to move forward. And so, if people can kind of reframe their challenge in their head to like, what am I missing? then it’s going to be a lot easier to keep going than to visualize this thing standing in your way because I don’t really think that’s actually the case at all.
Alessandra: I love that. I love that simple mind mindset switch because you’re right. If we, it, it seems also like it’s much more easier to do like, oh, if I can figure out with this missing piece, it’s different than there’s something wrong with me and I’m just, you know, and it’s easy for us to say, oh, it’s writer’s block, so I can’t move past it and you know, and that’s what it is. So yeah, I like that missing… and I know that you have a specific framework that you suggest that people can use if they are blocked. Will that cover what those missing pieces could be?
Jeff: Yeah, definitely. It’s funny, too, to just look at like, well, kind of, as you were getting at this. It’s almost like this excuse to just kind of stop like, oh, it’s writer’s block. That’s like a famous term everyone’s familiar with, and so it almost gets romanticized. It’s just like this struggle. I was looking into the kind of history of writer’s block and back in the 19th century, you know, writers loved to talk about it and almost looked at it as this supernatural force from the outside. That was a term from writing, you know, it’s almost like the concept of the muse, but in reverse.
Alessandra: It’s the evil muse, kind of.
Jeff: Yeah, it’s like something, you know, whether it’s the muse or this malevolent writer’s block, either way you’re thinking of it as something like outside of you, rather than inside you, like a quality inside yourself that you can work on.
Alessandra: Let me ask you a quick question then. Do you think that writer’s block, whatever it is, is typically an issue specifically with your story? Or do you think it’s an issue that you are having that is mentally stopping you? You know, does that make sense?
Jeff: Yeah. Well, you used the word mindset earlier which I feel is totally relevant here because usually before it comes down to some sort of mechanical challenge with a story, you first need to address your mindset, your self-belief, that’s kind of the first step in the framework that I recommend. When you are asking yourself this question, like, instead of saying, what’s blocking me, like, what am I missing, or why can’t I get my novel done? There’s going to basically be five different things, and sometimes you’re missing multiple things on the list, but if you ask yourself, “All right, why can’t I get my novel done?” And you say, you know, “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can write this,” then that’s an issue of self-belief right. If you say, “Oh, you know, I can’t do this novel because I don’t have time to write this.” That’s an issue of time. If you don’t know what to write next, that’s an issue of inspiration. If you don’t think that anyone will want to read what you’re writing, then that’s an issue of connection. Like the audience that you’re writing for. And if you just don’t know how to write or how to finish the book that you are working on, then that’s like a knowledge gap. So I have those in order to form the word STICK – self-belief, time, inspiration, connection, knowledge. And not just because, you know, it makes a nice word that’s easy to remember, but because I feel like that order specifically is the way you kind of want to tackle your issues. You know, self-belief is – that’s the number or one thing that is going to be stopping you.
Like everything else can be figured out, but if you don’t believe that you can finish your book, if you don’t believe that you have what it takes or like this innate quality or whatever it is, then you’re never going to be able to get to the finish line and figure out how to make more time, how to get the inspiration, to figure out what to write next, to figure out who you’re writing for, or to figure out any kind of technical challenges with the writing itself. So, I feel like it really needs to start with developing a positive mindset, like a growth mindset that says, all right, you know, even if I don’t know something right now, I can learn that, like, I can have the capability to learn what I need to learn and move forward with this. Like, there’s nothing really stopping me except for just growth that I have yet to achieve, but I can achieve that as a writer.
Alessandra: And I think not knowledge just can often solve all five things, right? Like, if your issue is self-doubt, you know, even just, I mean, classes or talks or workshops on self-doubt and beating self-doubt because of imposter syndrome, there are so many different mental things that can cause authors – successful or debut authors. A lot of authors I know, the more successful or they really hit a level of success is when they doubted themselves the most. And they suddenly have all this pressure for their next book and it really froze them up. There are so many different things you can learn to help you with all five items.
Jeff: Yeah. And I’m glad that you mentioned that this is not just an issue that affects beginning writers but can affect authors still even like several books in. It’s a lifelong kind of process of actively maintaining the right mindset for ourselves. And we’re also always learning too. We’re always like, if you look at it as a growth mindset, even after you’ve written 5, 10, 20 books, there’s always still more for you to learn. And that’s kind of exciting too, because it’s an exciting thing when you know that you can keep adding to your tool set and keep building skills that could make the next books even better or go in some surprising direction you’ve never gone before. I mean, you’ve written a lot of novels, do you ever still find yourself having those days where like crap, I don’t if…
Alessandra: I was just thinking, like I started in romance and then I moved to suspense and psychological, but my first psychological fiction read, I needed to build a friendship between a man and a woman, and that was really the core of the story. And it was strictly platonic, but I couldn’t depend on all of the romance tools that I had used for the past, you know, 10 books. And it was a like, man, like I don’t know how to build an accurate friendship and just show that they’re getting closer without having intimacy, you know, or to have intimacy that wasn’t romantic in any way. And it really was daunting to me. Like, I was really intimidated by that relationship. And it was the same, the first time I wrote extended scenes from a male point of view or first person male, because I still to this day avoid writing first person male. I’ll write my men in third person and my heroines in first person still now because it’s very hard for me because I feel intimidated and I just don’t feel comfortable. We had a great question from Chris on YouTube, “Can writer’s block ever be beneficial? Like perhaps it comes about by way of burnout, can writers look at it as a help because it forced them to write?”
Jeff: Or to rest, yeah.
Alessandra: or to rest. I’m sorry – not to write.
Jeff: You must write.
Alessandra: How do you feel about that?
Jeff: I mean, that’s almost like a whole other issue in this like kind of work culture that we have where we’re just, you know, we’re always being encouraged to go, go, go, you know, keep writing more and more. Whatever kind of work you do, you need those times to rest and refresh. If you feel like you’re grinding out books, if you’re just kind of forcing yourself to write every day, I mean, there’s something to be said for a schedule of writing, but if you realize you’re not having fun writing, that’s going to come across to the reader as well. I mean, Alessandra, I’m sure if you have written like a scene or something and you feel like your heart’s not really in it like that, that always comes across on the page, right?
Alessandra: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. And I do think, Chris, I do think burnout and writer’s block are two different things and burnout is definitely a real thing. And I think a lot of times people, you know, writer’s block is just this crutch, we’re like, oh, got to be writer’s block. But a lot of times it is burnout and it’s not always. I was on a live chat with a writing coach a little while ago, and she was talking about a lot of writers are introverts and our job forces us to be extroverts; not our writing job, like our real-life job. And so, a lot of people are exhausted emotionally by the time they get home from being an extrovert all day and there’s just not any energy left to write to put into your characters. And I don’t think that that’s necessarily writer’s block; it’s just, you just need a day to recover, you know, or you need a couple of hours or write first thing in the morning before you get bogged down and drained by your day job, even if it’s just for a half hour or so. But I’m sure if you are super burnt out, it can trigger a lot of these other issues that are associated with writer’s block.
Jeff: Yeah. And sometimes you just need to refill the well, and we can’t. We can’t kind of like fall for these harmful mindsets. Like, oh, if you don’t write every single day, then you’re not a writer. You know, that drives me nuts when I hear stuff like that. It’s like, hey, sometimes we have other stuff going on and it’s like, you don’t get your writer’s license or ID badge taken away if you take a day or a week, or even a few weeks to just recuperate. Ultimately you’re going to be doing yourself and your readers a better service if you are coming to it as a source of joy and not a source of like, I have to do this or else I’m not a writer anymore.
Alessandra: Absolutely. So when we moved through STICK, so there was the mental, which… what does the S stand for?
Jeff: Self-belief.
Alessandra: Okay. And then the second T was…?
Jeff: So T is time, and so then that’s when you want to really work on using the time that you do have. Usually you do have like some time, you know, it’s not a lot, and you want to turn toward productivity hacks or tips or exercises. One thing that I like to do as far as using the time I have, even if it’s a small amount of time is to just say, all right I’m going to, let’s say, spend a maximum of 10 minutes, just sitting with a notebook and doing a little plan for what I’m going to write, so that when I use my small precious amount of time, you know, the writing window that I know exactly what I’m doing. So let’s say 10 minutes max for that, you could do like a little stopwatch and then you just write for 15 minutes and maybe you write like 300 words, maybe you write 400, but if you keep doing that day after day, then these little small steps and just little chunks of words can add up to something big. And so, knowing that, having faced…
Alessandra: You have a notebook and you write; do you spend that 10 minutes envisioning what you’re about to write or plotting it out? Is that what you’re doing?
Jeff: Just brainstorm, and I recommend like using a notebook, just so that you’re not sitting in front of your computer for this step, but like, let’s say, just writing on paper and kind of prepping yourself for that time when you’re going to then sit to down, you know, in front of your keyboard and have the document open. You’re not sitting down to the document right away because that’s when we can kind of freeze up.
Alessandra: Yeah. When I do get stuck, a lot of times I’ll hand-write scenes because it’s just mentally different for me. Like, I don’t know. It’s easier for me to sit down with a literal page and a pen. So, I love this. I’ve never done this and I’m going to try this now, like this afternoon because I’m a pantser and a lot of times I don’t know what I’m writing as I’m writing. And it leads to a lot of hours of me just sitting there staring at the screen. So I like the idea of kind of giving myself a mental fun break by figuring out just what’s going to happen in the scene and then sitting down at my computer, and like you said, for just 15 minutes and writing. I’m excited to try that.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, you figure 10 minutes for planning, 15 minutes for writing; that still adds up to less than half an hour, but you’ve put something that you like spend a little bit of time planning, so you’re going to be less likely to have to throw it out later. And then that’s like another step along the way. And if you do have enough time, you can join together like a few of those sessions in a day or maybe the first like brainstorming session that you have will cover enough material for two of those 15-minute writing sessions. It’s all about just keeping it manageable. So that’s worked a lot for me anyway.
Alessandra: And Diana asked what was the acronym again? And then Maren, I hope I’m pronounced your name right. You’re a rock star because you jumped in. So STICK is self-belief or self-doubt, conquering self-doubt. T was time, and then what was I?
Jeff: I is inspiration, and thanks for jumping in there. Maren is a rock star.
Alessandra: C – connection and knowledge. So inspiration, is that typically when we don’t know what we want to write or we’re just not feeling our story? What do you define as inspiration?
Jeff: I feel like inspiration is the issue where you’re like, all right, I started out with a lot of enthusiasm for this story and now I don’t know what to write next. I don’t know, maybe I’m starting to lose my kind of like fire for this. And so to get that inspiration going again, number one, it’s always important to be able to go back to what originally inspired you to write a story and kind of have that almost like a mission statement of inspiration to go back to. If you forget completely while you start a story, then you’ll never finish because something got you excited in the first place. But something to kind of as like a steady source of new ideas and inspiration along the way, something I find really helpful is to keep a spreadsheet of ideas and break it down into tabs for, let’s say, character inspiration, plot inspiration, setting inspiration, you know, let’s say like… well, character stuff can come down too, like character archetypes to draw inspiration from. And also like just visuals too, like actors and actresses that you can use at least as a starting point for characters.
I call this spreadsheet, the generator because you can bring it up and it’ll generate ideas for you, you know. Whether you’re going through and you’re picking out stuff manually. Or what I like to do sometimes is, if you have like a bunch of plot ideas in there and each one has like a number for the row, let’s say you’ve got a hundred plot ideas in there; you do like a random number generator on Google or something. And like, alright, number 83, what’s that say? Oh, well this could be the point where there’s like a gambling debt that needs to be paid off. And this character is doing this. You can draw a lot of inspiration from things that you already like, like stories, not just stories, but movies, TV shows, music, video games; things that you know kind of get your creative energy up. You can just take down notes for like character archetypes directly from like a show let’s say, or a song that really gets you in the mood for writing or makes you think of a particular character. Maybe you give each character their own kind of theme song. And this generator is something you can start and then have as a resource for multiple different books and stories and something you just kind of build over time.
Because I mean, there’s only so many original ideas and themes and archetypes and personalities. And we don’t always have to be trying to reinvent the wheel and readers really like to respond to things that kind of resonate with some sort of familiarity. So, you can have that kind of ready-made resource to turn to, so that during those moments where things kind of dry up, you’re like, all right, we could introduce a new minor character here. And let’s say we just rolled a 28 on our random number generator. And we see who’s in row 28, let’s have a character that really reminds us a little bit of Wilson Fisk from Daredevil, or this hero from this fantasy RPG that we really like. You’re not copying things necessarily, but you’re using things as a jumping-off point for inspiration.
Alessandra: And Chris said, regarding that hundred plot idea for inspiration, can writers ever research or be prepared too much? Could that bring about writer’s block?
Jeff: Yeah, research is a different kind of stage when you’re specifically looking up like facts that are going to be like necessary to fill in to like finish the story that you’re telling. I think it’s usually better at least, you know, the way I go about stories and maybe your experience has been different, Alessandra, but to kind of save that like research for after you’ve at least done the first draft. Where you really narrow down your needs for research to a set of specific questions that are relevant to the story that you wrote, rather than like starting to read a bunch of like books about the topic that you’re going to write about ahead of time and just coming up with all these potential answers for questions that may never be raised in the specific manuscript you’re writing.
Alessandra: I think that’s a great point and I think research can also be a big distraction, I know. If I’m writing and I’m like, gosh, I need like a city in Italy that they’re going to go to, you know, or just reference. Like, the characters telling a story about a trip to Italy, and then I go start researching Italian cities, like an hour has passed and really, I think my mind was just wanting a distraction from what I should be doing, which is writing this scene. So I think writing–research can definitely be a distraction. I use placeholders, I’ll just say, you know, enter information about weapons here or something. And then like you said, you might end up deleting that whole scene or you might end up deciding that that doesn’t make sense right there, and you’ve done a lot of research for nothing.
Jeff: Exactly. Yeah. Like you might do some really fascinating and lovely reading into like Venice and then your characters end up staying in Rome the whole time in the story. And it’s like, well, I guess I’ll have to write a story set in Venice now, but it’s not helpful for the story you are working on.
Alessandra: And just as a time check for those watching, if you have any questions, and I know I have a couple I’ve starred for us to come to, please shout out so I just want to make sure we get to your questions before we leave. And let’s zip through, so C was connection and K was something else. So connection, can you go into that a little more?
Jeff: Sure. Yeah. So, connection is all about knowing your audience. Like number one, knowing that there is an audience, for when you’re writing. And then knowing that that audience exists, how can you better write your story towards their expectations? You know, I’m a strong believer in being aware of genre tropes and expectations. If you start writing like a paranormal romance; I think you should be aware of what are the general trends for what the paranormal romances that are selling right now. If every single one of them has like, you know, let’s say a 25- to 30-year-old female as the main character. And then you’re writing one that has like a 50-year-old guy as the main character, then it’s going to be really hard to sell that later. And I’m not saying you can’t be like original that kind of thing, but just know the challenges that are going to be ahead of you, and being aware of those tropes can also feed into the inspiration part of it as well for knowing, like, what are the general kind of beats you have to hit in this story? And then you know, what are some ways you can kind of innovate without alienating the readership and their expectations for that kind of thing?
Alessandra: I love that innovate without alienation because it’s so true, like we all want to have kind of a different spin, but there are certain things that will alienate or just turn off or show that you don’t know about this genre that you’re writing in.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s all about just respecting their expectations and you know. If you can do that, then you’ll have an easier time connecting with your audience, you’ll know what they want.
Alessandra: All right. And then K is?
Jeff: And then K is simply knowledge and that’s like, you know, and this one just comes down usually to technical know-how. You know, if you don’t really know a lot about like the basics of constructing a scene or the balance of dialogue versus description in a setting, you know, this is the time to just pick up a couple of craft books and brush up on that kind of knowledge. Reread some of your favorite authors’ books kind of from a writer’s perspective, like looking at it with writer’s eyes, rather than just as a reader slash fan. Like all right, if this is kind of the balance of dialogue versus description in this scene, then that’s okay, I can do something like that because I know that I like this as a reader, so let’s go with that.
Alessandra: And this can definitely be a block. I know I tried to write… I had a great, great idea for a hockey romance and I sat down and I was paralyzed by the fact that I knew so little about hockey. I attended five or six hockey games, so I thought I would be able to do this, but I didn’t know anything about how the teams worked. I didn’t know about recruitment. I didn’t know where they lived. I didn’t know what they made. I didn’t know minor versus major. And so, even though I say like, oh, research can be like an excuse, in and certain things, especially historical fiction or something like that, that research is really needed. Or if you’re writing military fiction; it’s much easier if you’re a newer author to write something that you know because it just unlocks…. it’s removing a bunch of obstacles that you would’ve otherwise had. And then the whole knowledge about how to tell the story, I mean, you have to know your setting and everything, and then, like you said, like a lot of new romance authors get stuck at sex scenes or chemistry, or intimacy because they just don’t know how to write that yet. And a lot of times it just takes writing tons and tons and tons of scenes until you figure it out. We are out of time. I did want to get to a question that we missed. Chris said–this is going back to when we were talking about time–Is setting a time limit to actually write, can that be beneficial? or would that create undue pressure on you to do so and backfire?
Jeff: If you say, all right, I’m going to set the timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I’m going to write something, even if it’s just a couple hundred words, that’s okay. You have to be able to go easy on yourself and celebrate an accomplishment even if it’s just a small amount of words. Keep your expectations realistic, and it shouldn’t feel like a source of pressure and stress. It’s just like, you know, I mean, we can concentrate on anything for like 15 minutes, maybe not longer than that. Our attention spans are eroded these days, but if you could put on a pair of headphones or earbuds, put on some instrumental music that you really like and just sit there and just write for that short amount of time, then even if it’s just a small amount of words, you are ahead of where you were before that writing session began.
Alessandra: Yeah. And typically 15 minutes. I mean, I will feel comfortable putting my phone on airplane mode for 15 minutes. You know, like nothing horrible is going to, you know, I mean, unless my house is burning down. If I miss a call, whatever; I mean, I can give myself 15 minutes and not check email and not do anything and just focus on my story. Even though we’re over time, I just had a couple of questions come in, so if you’ve got a minute or two…
Jeff: I can stick around as long as you want.
Alessandra: Diana said, “Do you have any tips for overcoming perfectionist tendencies?”
Jeff: Yeah. And this is something that happens to a lot of writers. Like you’re putting down words and you feel like you want the words to be as perfect as they can be. If you find that you’re stopping and you’re editing as you go, you know… Let’s say let’s take that 15-minute writing session as an example. If you find that you’re stopping and revising the stuff that you’re putting down; you have to curb that instinct. That’s a manifestation of the perfectionist being like, oh, you know, this is not perfect, so this cannot stand, you know, less than perfect words cannot appear on the document. You know, Anne Lamont is an author and essayist I really admire. I don’t know if this is a PG video chat, but like she would talk about giving yourself permission to write, you know, S____ first drafts. Like nobody gets it right on the first try, and everything you see in a bookstore when you walk in; none of those is a first draft work. We just don’t see all the drafts that had to happen before those final products ended up on the shelves. Like, that progress is invisible to us. And I think if we can keep that in mind that can help to curb the perfectionist tendencies that we have because you know, it’s going to take a few tries, and that’s the case for most authors.
Alessandra: And Diana, what I do is I’ll let myself, well, first, I already know my first drafts are going to be horrible. But when I do what I am writing, and I know that it’s bad, I allow myself to use comments. So I’ll just put a comment that says, “This is garbage. Rewrite this ending later. Rewrite this thing later. Rewrite this chapter dialogue, whatever.” And then if I do come across something I’ve written, and I realize that something that happened in the prior scene or earlier is now going to conflict with this scene, then I’ll go back and I’ll just put a comment. I’ll just add a comment that says change this so that whatever. And a lot of times when I’m going through my rewrites, and I do heavy, extreme rewrites. When I go through my rewrites, those scenes that I thought were just garbage when I was writing them, like, aren’t bad at all. Like, I’m maybe like, this isn’t that bad. Like, honestly, this is pretty good and I’ll leave it. But a lot of times, and a lot of times the comments that I make, “Oh, I need to change this,” I ended up not needing to change it because I ended up changing whatever was going to trigger that. So I let myself use the comments tab, but I really try to just plow all the way through to the end before I go back and revise anything. And I love Mel’s comment. “I put {**UGH**} in my comments. And a lot of authors do that. They use asterisks, like two asterisks or two $ signs or something like that instead of actually using the comment feature so that they can do a find.
Jeff: The searchable.
Alessandra: We are out of time. If we didn’t get to your questions, I’m so sorry, guys, but fantastic questions and comments today. So thank you so much for joining us. If you’re interested in knowing more, Jeff, do you want to tell them where they can find you and what services and things you offer?
Jeff: Sure. Yeah. So you can just go to my website, jeffdeck.com to learn more about me and what I offer. There will be a little popup where you can join my email list and get a list of five helpful tips to finish your novel, or continue writing your novel that relates to some of the things we talked about today. And if you have a finished manuscript and you need a critique on it, I offer manuscript critiques as one of my services.
Alessandra: Thank you so much. And if you’ve joined us on a First Draft Friday before, you know that Authors.AI is where you can experience Marlowe, who is our artificial intelligence, who loves reading and giving feedback on fiction. So, be sure to check us out at Authors.AI and I hope you guys join us for another First Draft Friday. We’ll be back in two weeks. Thank you so much, Jeff. It’s been fantastic to have you. And thank you to everyone who joined. You guys are awesome, and we’ll see you in two weeks.
