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Welcome to the Tuesday Telegrams, a semimonthly newsletter from award-winning author Naseem Jamnia. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, where I update you on projects, offer behind-the-scenes looks, delve into craft, and other publishing and writing topics.

It might be October, but some of you may already be gearing up for NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. While the organization no longer exists (there was some financial and LLM/"AI" drama), the practice of writing 50,000 words within a month—the lowest cut-off for a novel-length* work—is alive and well.

It may sound impossible to write 50,000 words in 30 days, but it's doable—it breaks down to roughly 1700 words a day. The trick to using NaNo to draft a project is to hit those word counts daily, if possible, because falling behind a few days quickly stacks up; the other trick is to not look back at the previous pages and get caught up in editing.

(Many people use NaNo as a way to revise a project or simply work on a project without necessarily trying to draft it from start to finish—there's no right or wrong way to use this month to work on something. But traditionally, the idea is to start a project on November 1, and have at least 50,000 words written by November 30.)

Here's the thing: Most people who want to write a novel have no idea how to do so. Here's another thing: Most people drop off a week or two into NaNo, because the commitment of ~1700 words a day is a lot, and because they often have no idea how to write a novel. Here's a third thing: It is absolutely possible to draft a novel even if you're a new writer—if you do some work ahead of time.

I used to be a pantser, someone who wrote by the seat of my pants. Now, I call myself a planster: someone who has to do some planning before the exploratory work

I truly, honestly believe that the more you learn about craft*, the less able you are to pants a project. I'm not saying exploratory work isn't a thing—it absolutely is. But if you know anything about storytelling, you can't help but need to have those elements before you put pen to page.

I'm going to walk you through prewriting and how you can use that to set guideposts for yourself to draft a novel (or any project), including for NaNoWriMo.

... However. Once I started writing this post, I didn't stop until I had over 6000 words of material. Which is a lot, even for me.

Until I turn it into a work/ebookbook, I've made a separate document to walk through these steps. Click here to read this post, "Prewriting Your Way to NaNo Victory," in full.

Where I've Been

I was psyched to be part of Tachyon's 30th Anniversary reading, hosted by C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez. Tachyon is the published for The Bruising of Qilwa, and it was so great to read alongside such fabulous other Tachyon authors.

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My introduction comes in at around 49:23! (Hopefully I linked that above correctly!)

Upcoming Workshops

I'm teaching a revision workshop with Clarion West on November 13th and 20th. I'd love to see y'all there! On the 13th, we'll be doing a live session of Reading Like a Scientist (my "how to read for craft" course), and on the 20th, I'll break down how you can use that to plan revisions.

I'd love to see you there!!

Solidarity Corner

If you have organizations or causes you'd like me to spotlight here, please send those links my way. We get through these things when we do so together.

To help Palestinians facing genocide:

• A list of verified mutual aid links​
• ​Gaza Funds spotlights current crowdfunding campaigns that are not getting as much attention
• The Sameer Project​
• The Al Jawad School in Gaza
• The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund​
• ​Crips for eSIMS for Gaza​
• The BDS Movement calls for specific brands to be boycotted in order to be effective in their targeting, but we can also be discerning individually. Here is another list of companies profiting off genocide. The only ethical consumption under capitalism is when we trace where the money goes.
• A list of Palestinian-owned brands and Palestinian goods​

To help others:

• ​Community-supported initiatives for recent events, courtesy of author Sarah Gailey's Stone Soup newsletter​
• ​CARE provides both ongoing recovery care for those impacted by Hurricane Helene
• A list of crowdfunding campaigns for displaced Black families, displaced Latine families, displaced Filipino families, and displaced disabled people from the LA fires, including affected small businesses
• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has pages for various international atrocious
• ​A list of charities grouped by recent events around the world
• Some resources to help Lebanese communities affected by Israel's bombings
• ​UNHCR's donation page to help Syrian refugees
• The International Rescue Committee's page on Sudan
• ​Oman Tigray and the IRC's page on Tigray
• ​IRC page on the DR Congo
• The Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is not a mutual aid organization but does good work
• ​Keep Iran Connected to the internet (unfortunately via Starlink)

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