☀️July in Connecticut, five fail-safe craft principles, and a new way to work with me!

My Novel Beginning launches, Play It Again reviews, and some summer reading recs

How generous are you? Generous enough to let a family with two kiddos stay in your beautiful, sun-spangled, expansive home for a month — every year?

Lucky for me, I have friends who are exactly that generous. This marks the fifth summer I’ve spent in Fairfield, CT, for the month of July, while our dear friends take their kids to Europe, where they’re from. What started as a one-off week has become one of our most beloved family rituals, made possible by the extraordinary generosity of spirit of people we love.

There are many holiday moments I dig. Christmas. Any holiday that involves eating. But none I look forward to more than the Fourth of July — not because I’m particularly patriotic, but because it means I’m on the couch in Fairfield with a Tajin-rimmed Michelada in hand, watching Wimbledon between dips in the pool, the smell of veggie sausages on the grill drifting in from outside. Truly my happy place!

July in Connecticut is a reset for the nervous system in its complete absence of FOMO. Slow mornings. Early nights. There is something deliciously indulgent about being in bed by 9pm while the sky is still dusky outside. More than anything, it’s the physical space — the house, the backyard, the sun-stretched days — that allows us to truly relaaaxxxx.

My wife and I always try to pay this kind of generosity forward. While we were living the surburban dream, no fewer than three families stayed at our pad in BK. It just confirms something I already believe: there’s nothing better than being able to give people space to breathe, and have fun.

We then tacked on a quick lakeside trip with my brother-from-another-mother Dan Fox — Uncle Dan to our girls — and are now back in NYC, ready for the dog days of August. Summah in the city, long golden evenings, the lit life fully resumed. How are you spending your summer? Let me know in the comments. 💬

---

After eight published novels and years of developmental editing, these are the principles I come back to again and again — with my own work and with the writers I coach.

1. Show the story; don’t explain it.
The most common pattern in first drafts is the writer explaining the story to the reader: having characters tell us about their personalities, or think directly about the book’s themes or their own arcs. It makes sense: a first draft is often the writer figuring out what the story is. The work of revision is converting that explanation into scene work. Readers don’t need to be told that your protagonist is disciplined and perfectionist — they need to watch her do something that makes them feel it (label her lunch even though she lives alone?), and come to that conclusion themselves. It’s the difference between being told about a great love affair or terrible break-up, and being in the room for it, riding along for every high and low. We want to make readers feel, not just inform them — that’s the magic of fiction.

2. Give your protagonist an active agenda.
Readers connect most deeply to characters who want something and are going after it versus those floating through life. An active protagonist has a clear goal — something they’re chasing, in real time — and the plot is driven by their decisions. The opposite is a character who largely reacts: things happen to them, opportunities arrive before they’ve pursued anything. A useful test as you write or revise: in each scene, can you name the choice or decision your hero makes? If the answer across several chapters is “er, none,” your story has started happening to them instead of being driven by them.

3. Create and sustain tension, don’t resolve it too quickly.
It’s common in early drafts to smooth the path for your protagonist — to give them the things they want before they’ve had to fight for them. I think writers do this because we instinctively want ease for the people we love, and by the time we’re deep in a manuscript, we love our characters. But in fiction, the struggle is the story. At every point when your character wants something — an opportunity, something practical — make sure it isn’t simply handed to them. Make ‘em earn it, through cleverness, hard work or difficult decisions. This does two things at once: it makes the plot more engaging and it reveals character. Tension keeps readers flicking the pages.

4. Make every scene a scene.
A scene is not just recording what a character does. It’s seeing something happen — a decision made, a relationship shifted, new information that changes what happens next. If you can’t name the key thing that happened in a scene, it isn’t a scene yet. A useful rule to write and revise by: dramatize change, summarize transitions, and cut arrangement. Logistics, travel, phone calls that set up the scene we actually want — these might be a line. Save your pages for the moments that move things forward and deepen emotion. Every chapter should end somewhere different — emotionally, narratively — from where it began.

5. Trust your specifics.
"The lake was beautiful” paints, well, nothing. "The silvered afternoon light turned the lake into a mirror, its surface broken only by a diving kingfisher" — ah, that's a world we see. Specifics create a rich picture: the cracked leather of the barstool, the smell of the burnt coffee, the exact thing he said that she couldn’t stop thinking about on the drive home. If your novel promises access to a special world — an industry, a subculture, a city, a community — your narrator should never generalize. The specific detail is what makes a book feel inhabited, like only you could have written it. Go through your draft and find every place you’ve reached for the general when the particular was right there.

If craft is your crack — hi, you're my people. Let's work together. Find out more about My Novel Beginning below, and join the waitlist for The Draft or The Revision to be first to hear when the next cohorts open.

---

🌱New 4-Week Class: Intro to Novel Writing

My Novel Year are full-year, high-touch programs priced accordingly — and some writers wanted a more accessible entry point into working with me. I heard you, and I'm happy to announce something new launching this month!

My Novel Beginning is a live intro-to-writing-a-novel course, kicking off over four Monday nights, live on Zoom, starting September 21, 6:00–7:30pm ET. Week 1 is also offered Tuesday September 22, so no one misses night one for Yom Kippur. Only $500.

I’m pouring everything I’ve learned — and everything I wish I’d known — about writing a story that sells and navigating the publishing industry into four fun weeks. It’s designed for anyone who wants to write a novel but doesn’t know where to start, or for anyone who has started but worries their idea isn’t strong enough to sustain a book that’ll sell.

Over four weeks, we’ll cover how publishing actually works: how to get an agent and what they do, what editors are looking for, what readers are looking for, and what advances pay these days. Then we’ll turn to your book: how to build a story with a premise that pleases your readers and realizes your vision, and exactly what goes into a strong outline.

You don’t need anything to start. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to jump into your draft — including your logline and story concept, which I’ll be editing live in class. You’ll connect with me directly, every single week.

And if you choose to continue into My Novel Year: The Draft, your full $500 fee credits toward tuition, making My Novel Beginning effectively free :)

The class is capped at ten to keep the room cozy and leave space for everyone’s Qs.

Want the full curriculum, testimonials from writers I’ve worked with, and more on who this is for? It’s all on the website, babe. First come, first serve, so hop to it.

---

🌈Love seeing the love for Play It Again!

My new romcom Play It Again is out now — I think it’s a ton of cute gay fun, but don’t just take my word for it! Shoutout to everyone who’s left a sweet review on Goodreads or Amazon; I really, really appreciate it.

“Georgia Clark is one of my go-to auto-buy romance authors. She has really mastered the art of a multi character romance novel. I adore this group of misfit, former repertory players and their sweet mission to revive the theater of their youth with romantic surprises along the way. Georgia is so funny and this novel is full of her characteristic wit and charm. I loved it and can’t wait to discuss it with my book club!”

“Clark has made a sturdy case that the supposedly larger life is not necessarily elsewhere, only more expensively lit. Sometimes it is the life that survives the missed cue, the private jet, the bad lanyard, the old lie, and still heads into the night hungry for curly fries.”

“Oh, I loved this queer romance and tribute to theater kids! I was not a theater kid myself, but I loved how this book so skillfully used the world-building of theater to build a new world of the novel. I was all in with Jazz and her intentional creation of queer community. I loved that there was an epilogue. Delightful all-around.”

BUY PLAY IT AGAIN NOW (and leave a review to support me!) 🌈

---

🤤Current Obsessions 👀

This month’s curated list of faves, finds, and future buys…

• My poolside read of choice was Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman. Highly recommend this beautifully rendered queer coming-of-age lit fic that perfectly captures a long, hot teenage summer that changes everything. A gorgeous debut, edited by my editor and friend, Katy Nishimoto.

• I’m currently tearing through The Make-Believe by Hannah Murray, a memoir about the writer’s slippery slide into joining a cult (!). Prose is straight-forward but the story is hypnotic and has me firmly under its spell. Cannot put it down.

• I just made a lunch date at abcv, one of NYC’s best vegetarian spots, for their excellent Restaurant Week menu: summer roll of stone fruit & tender baby vegetables, elderflower dipping sauce, herbs; mushroom walnut bolognese, carrot paccheri, celery, mint; vegan chocolate cake, amarena cherries = heaven.

• This month, I’ll be checking out comedian Cat Cohen’s new show, seeing The Invite with my wife tomorrow afternoon at Nitehawk cinema in Williamsburg, and taking myself on a solo date to see the new Spiderman. I’d also love to see the new Rocky Horror show on Broadway, and will reliably be at some Domino Park events, our local.

• And you can catch me at Generation Women’s August 11 show at Joe’s Pub! Theme is Heat, our stickiest, sexiest show of the year. Grab live or livestream tix.

⭐️That’s it from me!⭐️

Can’t wait to hear from you in the comments — keep writing, keep reading, and thanks for following along!

Little lakeside stay with Dan and the fam