Kids, this is a Blueprint for a Book Summer Challenge Bonus Episode. I’ll be dropping these weekly throughout the Summer 2022 Challenge. Some of you are already signed up and challenging away, turning in weekly assignments and pushing yourself to get this done.

Some of you are #AmWriting supporters who’ve put your $$$ where your <3 is (that’s an old school pre-emoji keyboard heart, in case you’re wondering). We appreciate you—and so you’re getting these bonus episodes too.

I touched on this in the bonus for Blueprint episode 1—but now I get to really dig in. The change is the theme, y’all. If your readers are going to learn how to be happier parents—the theme is around happiness and why it matters (and why we resist it, in the case of my own non-fiction). If your protagonist is going to learn to value what’s important to her over what she’s been told she should value, that’s your theme (oh, and also why it matters and why it’s so hard to trust ourselves to figure out what makes us happy). Or if she’s going to learn that you cannot be happy while you’re hiding yourself from the people she loves… why, your theme might just be around being true to yourself and understanding what will make you happy! (Hello, yes, I have a single theme that I return to again and again, as do many of us.)

But you may not be able to spot that theme from the beginning. So trust me—to find your theme, keep coming back to that change, in yourself, the protagonist(s) or the reader until you can put that baby on a bumper sticker. That’s when you know you’ve got it.

How to listen: if you’ve listened to any previous Bonus episodes or Minisodes, this one should already BE in your podcast feed. If not, click on the link to listen and you’ll find yourself at amwriting.substack.com. You COULD listen there, but we’re guessing you’d rather get all subscriber episodes, from now on, in your usual podcast-listening app. It’s easy, and you only have to do it once to get every #Minisode from now on right where you want it.

So click “listen in podcast app.” You’ll get an email with a link in it. Click the link—ON YOUR PHONE—and you will get a menu of the most popular podcast apps. Chose yours and click, and you’ll have a new “private” podcast feed for supporters only.

If your favorite listening app isn’t included, fear not. There’s an RSS link in the email. Your podcast app has a way to add that—it’s probably a “+” sign somewhere on your main page. Add the link once, and any time we do a #SupporterMini, you’ll get it without having to do a thing. (Trust us, it’s easy. This is WHY we chose Substack.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe