"I did Nanowrimo last year, and felt like I'd tread water for 50,000 words

I had this good burst in the beginning, but then I just had this empty wasteland of story that I hadn't populated with anything.

It was really clear at the end of those 50,000 words that I didn't know story craft beyond maybe plot point three. I think I knew going in that I didn't really have a clear motive for my protagonist and I think I thought I could figure it out along the way. Now I realise you can't possibly figure that out along the way, when every single scene develops from that motive.

But without that compass of the motive ,everything just turned into a trope because you don't get any forward movement. So I was in the middle of the story and even though I had some interesting character dynamics, it was just the same thing happening over and over again, now we're doing it in the forest, now we're doing it in the village.

I was totally stranded on an island with that book, and I wanted to try something new that I could do front to back and actually finish.

The writing part was not the problem, it was story craft that I still needed to figure out.

After I paid for the Academy I had this moment of "Did I just sign up for something I don't really need?" Because I've watched all Rachael's videos and I didn't know if it was going to be any different than that.

I really had this idea that I had mastered the plot embryo - I don't know how after those 50000 words I thought that, but I thought that there wasn't much Rachael could tell me about it, to clarify it any more. I wondered "How am I going to get any more out of this system than I already have?"

But every week of the Academy, in the middle of class, I was like "Oh my god Rachael, I get it finally!" This is so much bigger than that 15 minute video! There's this whole extra layer under that.

And it's flexible too, it was like "Here's Rachael's advice, here's what's going to make a really satisfying, marketable, commercial story, but play with that. See what happens within that."

I already had confidence in Rachael's teaching style from doing some Novel Navigation Sessions with her - but it's funny when I think about how much I didn't take things on board as much as I thought I had. Just because I didn't know enough to know howto take it on board.

Everyone says to learn to write you just need to write, which is hard because I've always felt like I didn't have enough ideas. 

Now I know I'm not devoid of ideas, I can actually sit down and take a day and create a bunch of stories.

And I might not want to write all of them, but I have that ability. And I can take that, turn it into a fully fleshed out plot embryo and basically feel like that's the whole outline.

I also took on a really ambitious project that had a lot of different moving parts so the fact that I left the Academy 90% ready to start drafting is impressive I think.

Now I have four completed plot embryos for this new novel, I'm ready to go, I have my first two or three scenes mapped out. And I feel so excited about this story, I look at my plot embryos like "Oh my God, this is so totally a full novel here!"

I also feel like I have all the tools to go back and fix my previous novel when I'm ready to do that.

It feels so cocky to say it, but I feel really confident and competent that I can go forward and with any story seed I have, I can turn that into a fully fleshed out narrative again. Rather than meandering in story wasteland like my last novel. 

I'm starting to feel like "I can actually do this in a day next time."

There will be people like me who will think "I've done some Novel Navigation Sessions with Rachael and I've watched the videos and so I get this" and I would just say that you don't know the half of it! In a really good way.

The videos are just the tip of the iceberg. And the Academy is everything underneath that, it's really expansive, it's so much bigger than that. If anyone has already used the plot embryo method to craft stories, it's so worth the investment to get the bigger picture and do the deeper dive.

It's time now for me to start putting words on paper. I'm so excited for that, and to talk to new students. I will continue to be front of the line waiting for Rachael's next thing, because I think she's a great teacher."