I mentioned in the last post that I had made some public declarations, to help to keep me accountable (and this blog is another one, I guess).

The first was NaNoWriMo almost three years ago now of course, but since I lost momentum after that I felt I needed another one. These sort of declarations are something that a lot of people encourage you to do, as there is good evidence that stating your goals out loud (or on the Internet, I suppose) is correlated with actually achieving them.

They are also recommended by a podcast I follow (and love) called The BestSeller Experiment . In this weekly show, two guys try to write, publish and market a bestselling novel in one year. It’s been running for two years now, and so I don’t think it’s a huge spoiler to say that they achieved their goal. Quite apart from following them on their crazy journey, their podcast is an absolute treasure-chest of advice from a number of well known authors that they have interviewed over that time. They touch on everything from the art of writing, motivation, sales techniques and literally everything you might want to know about writing a book. And they have a dedicated following who are also writing their own novels, including me!

Now obviously their public declaration was much more public than mine - when they interviewed Brian Cranston (of Breaking Bad fame) just 6 episodes in there was a certain part of the interview which went viral and really catapulted them into the limelight - but clearly it worked for them to have their ambitions out there in the world where they could come back and embarrass them if they failed.

So they encourage listeners to post their own declarations, which I recently did:

And they mentioned it on the podcast (along with some lovely kind words about the title of this novel), and a thinly veiled threat if I didn’t do what I’d declared! Skip ahead to 57 minutes here if you want to hear it.

So with all of that being said, I’m doing this in public to some degree. As such, I will be doing regular updates to this blog with my progress, and from time to time some other posts about the writing process, helpful resources I’ve found, and whatever else takes my fancy.

Is there anything in particular you want to know? Leave a comment, or find me on Twitter as @markhood

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