Welcome to Day 28.
I’m Sporty Shelly today. 🎽
We only have three days left.
And over these final days, my job is to make sure you don’t walk away from this challenge with a beautifully plotted story and a big question mark hanging over it: okay… but what do I actually do now?
I don’t want you leaving here with structure and no momentum.
I want you prepared to keep going on your own.
I’ve said this a lot by now, but it matters enough to repeat: writing a book is not about talent or knowing what you’re doing or even plotting it perfectly.
It’s about doing it.
The people who finish books—the people who get published, who build careers—are the ones who sit down consistently, protect their writing time, and step into the identity of a writer. They make it a practice, and they make it happen.
That’s what we work on inside the Academy, and that’s what these final days of the challenge are designed to support.
The sticky spot most writers get stuck in
Today we’re talking about a place where a lot of writers panic, stall, or give up: the in-between moments.
When you sit down to write your first full draft—what I often call a zero draft—you’re taking the structure you’ve built here and writing straight through it. Beginning to end. Messy. Imperfect. Incomplete.
This is not a freewrite, but it is rough. You’re not stopping every few pages to polish. You’re not going back to make chapters perfect before moving on. You’re moving forward.
And here’s where people get stuck:
They’ve planned the big scenes.
They know the mentor moment.
They know the trials.
They know the ordeal.
But when they sit down to write, they think: I feel like I’m missing something. There are gaps. I don’t know how to connect these scenes.
That fear often triggers perfectionism: if I can’t write a good first draft, what’s the point?
So I want you to hear two important things.
First: it is completely normal—and completely fine—for your first draft to be missing a lot. Most writers leave out huge amounts because the story feels obvious to them. The context is already in your head.
That’s why many first drafts come in around 40–50k words, even though a novel is closer to 90k. The next draft is where we fill, expand, clarify, and strengthen.
Second: those “missing” bits are often not big, dramatic scenes.
They’re like connective tissue.
What we’re practising today
Today is about getting comfortable writing those in-between moments without pressure, without overthinking, and without trying to make them impressive.
Here’s what I want you to do:
Pick 1 beat in your story that you know really well. One scene that feels clear and solid in your mind:
the threshold
meeting the mentor
a test or trial
any moment you feel confident about
Then choose 1 direction:
write what happens just before that scene
orwrite what happens just after that scene
Set a timer for 20 minutes and write it.
This is a freewrite, so don’t edit ot polish. Don’t worry if it feels boring or quiet. These moments often are, and they matter more than we think.
Think of it as a ligament, not the muscle. It’s what lets the story move.
What to share
In the comments, tell me:
which beat you chose
whether you wrote before or after it
anything that surprised you while writing it
Reflection question
Where does your story actually start to move once you stop aiming for the “important” scenes?
Have fun with this one. It can feel strange at first because we’re trained to chase the flashy moments, but this is the work that gets books finished.
Tomorrow and the day after, we’ll zoom out and talk about how you carry this forward over the rest of the year.
I’ll see you then.
Xx Shelly
