One More Week!
Novel Quest Event Schedule, Who we already Interviewed? Who are we interviewing next? Calling for Developers, and a Peptalk
This is Writing Quests’ Official Newsletter.
Novel Quest 2025
One more week to gooooooooo!! How are we feeling? Here are some quick Tips for getting through this week’s Novel Quest Goals.
What would X do? Have a (mental) stable of favorite authors. You know their books and writing style well. Whenever you get stuck or find yourself in a quandary, imagine yourself with your own story wall panel of your favorite authors. What would they advise you to do?
Character motivation is key. If you find yourself a bit stuck, imagine yourself having a heated discussion with your main or side character. What is their main motivation? What would they tell you to persuade you to do something? How should you respond? Remember, as the author, you need to make things more difficult for them before you ever let them act to make things better.
Are you having difficulty turning off your internal editor? Distracted by a thought on how to correct something that you’ve written? Jot it down (and count the words written in this meta note) and clearly mark it (META NOTE). Describe what the thought is, even describe how this might change your story at this point. Then, with the thought that the storyline is now the changed one, continue on. You can come back to resolve the META NOTES after November.
Who are you interviewing this year?
We have a full schedule of authors we are excited for you to meet.
Who we just interviewed!
Gwen Tolios | November 23, 11am central time
Watch her interview here:
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
Brief Bio: Gwen Tolios is a queer author from Chicago, who lives with a cat that refuses to cuddle. She primarily writes fantasy short stories, but also has a sapphic romance.
Social Media: IG, BlueSky, and Tumblr as GwenTolios
Website: www.gwentolios.com
Check out her current Substack serial - Chicago’s Grimm - that’s a retelling of Grimm Fairytales in Chicago.
Who are we interviewing soon?
Gertrude Daly | November 26, 6pm central time
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Doctor Miriam, a memoir https://a.co/d/geE0YHU
Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Stories https://a.co/d/9jPcA19:
Her live stream link:
S & E Black | November 30, 11am central time
Preferred pronouns: Shannon: She/Her, Edward: He/His
Short bio: Husband & Wife duo, Shannon Vierra & Edward Ayllon, under the pen name S. & E. Black, are the authors of The Chimera Snare—a dark fantasy book series. A decade-long creative endeavor, their debut novel, Fragments, promises to transport readers into a realm of compelling magic and emotional impact as two earthbound teenagers work together to thwart a reality-bending menace. Fragments is accompanied by exclusive swag created in collaboration with small businesses to create an atmospheric, immersive experience.
Social media: FB: https://www.facebook.com/thechimerasnare / IG: https://instagram.com/thechimerasnare / TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@thechimerasnare
Website: https://www.thechimerasnare.com/
Amy Gash & Elise Howard| December 3, 6pm central time
Preferred Pronouns Amy Gash (she/her) & Elise Howard (she/her)
Book website: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amy-gash/believe-in-the-world/9781643755533/
Book Instagram: @believe_in_the_world_book
Personal handles:
Instagram: @amyg400; @fernelise
Facebook: facebook.com/amy.gash.1; facebook.com/elise.howard
Bluesky @elisehoward.bsky.social
Amy’s website: https://amygasheditorial.com/
Elise’s website: https://www.defliterary.com/agents/elise-howard
Bios:
Amy Gash has been a book editor at major New York City publishing houses for 30 years, most recently as executive editor at Algonquin Books/Hachette Book Group, where she acquired and edited narrative nonfiction and fiction for adults. Today she works independently, helping writers with developmental editing, line editing, and proposal writing. Her first collection of quotations from children’s books was What the Dormouse Said: Lessons for Grown-ups from Children’s Books.
Elise Howard is a literary agent, anthologist, and writer who has previously worked as a publisher and editor, mainly of children’s books. Her newest book, PLANT THIS, NOT THAT: OVER 200 NATIVE PLANT SWAPS FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE, POLLINATOR-FRIENDLY GARDEN, will be published by Workman in March 2026. When she is not reading, writing, editing, selling, or thinking about books, Elise is usually gardening with native plants or trying to persuade others to do so. She lives, works, and gardens in Manhattan and Western Massachusetts.
Check out our next newsletter to find out more about who we are interviewing next…
Call for Developers
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).
Peptalk
We’re in the final week! You’re in the (figurative) final chapter, and only one more week remains before the creative storm runs dry!
Wherever you are progress-wise, you’re probably ready for this month to be over. Which means you’ll need some extra pep to keep you going.
For some of us, the month has been smooth sailing, we’ve hit or exceeded our word counts every day, but the creative energy has dissipated. For some of us, we’ve fallen behind and need to log more hours this week to catch up. For some of us, this might be when we realize we’ve fallen so far behind, we can’t meet our goal.
No matter where you are at, you may be tired of all this and be tempted to quit.
Don’t quit!
Take a deep breath. Instead of looking at how much work is left to do, take a look at all the work you’ve already accomplished. You did that all in just three weeks! How amazing is that?
They say hard work beats out talent every time. We know this, but do we believe it? You never know the times you quit before making a breakthrough. Don’t let your story be another thing you ‘almost’ accomplished.
If you can’t reach your original goal, change it! Would you feel proud of writing 10,000 words? How about 12 hours of editing? Would you feel accomplished getting to the mid-point of your story? Of making time to write every remaining day of the month, even if it’s only for a few minutes or a few sentences? Consider what you can do in these final days, and think about how you’ll feel knowing you worked on your project until the end.
Remember why you signed up for this challenge in the first place. Some part of you knew the world needed your words, your voice, your story. Some part of you knew you would benefit from telling it.
You’ve got this.
From your Quest Guide,
Katie