This is K.M. Island and you are listening to the 400 seventh episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

In recent podcasts I've been sharing some personal things about the ups and downs of my writing journey.

Two things have really jumped out at me as a result.

One is just amazement over the tremendous size of the response I've received to these episodes and

posts. So many kind people have reached out with stories and

encouragement of their own, which just reaffirms to me how amazing the writing community is. I have interacted with

tens of thousands of people over the years and by far the bulk of you are amazing

individuals. You inspire me to be better, kinder, braver, and

more compassionate every day I am in contact with you. The second realization was that overwhelmingly we all tend to feel alone in our struggles.

Many of the emails I've been receiving have been from people who were grateful to learn that their

own feelings and struggles weren't unusual.

So we are definitely not alone.

We are all on this amazing journey together with more amazing people than we can imagine.

And I'm very grateful to be a part of it with you.

And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast, The Great Novel Writing Checklist. great novel writing checklist. I adore lists. They bring order to the chaos of my brain

and allow me to rest in the knowledge that even if I don't remember

everything I have to do, the list remembers.

This is why I'm going to share with you my ultimate novel writing checklist and just in the nick of time of her

nanomo too. But first, a caveat. Great as checklists are, a novel is not built upon lists alone.

As we talked about in last week's episode on formulaic story structure,

two greater reliance on lists can sap the organic energy right out of your writing.

However, there is, without question, a time and a place for novel writing checklists,

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