Hi all!

Our 6 week Blueprint Sprint is over, but the work is just beginning (honestly I’m still working on my Inside Outline but it’s fine everything is fine wahhh).

Your “outlines” are excellent tools to help you road test your own idea and run it by trusted friends and colleagues. Take yourself and the work seriously. Approach it professionally. Talk ab…

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There will be no Live this week because of the holiday. Our last Blueprint Live on Substack session will be Monday, Feb 23 2026 from 6:30-7:30 EST. Scroll down for a chance to be critiqued during the Live! (And note our final write-along is still this week: Thursday 2/19 10:00-11:30 AM EST.)

Week 6: The Inside Outline, Impact Outline or Outcome Outline.

This is when you put everything together. We’ve probably recorded more episodes about this part of the process than about any other single thing.

We’ve talked about creating it for a brand new fresh book.

We’ve talked endlessly about using it for revision and in particular, how I myself use it for revision.

It even led to my coining what’s become my favorite book drafting truth: GOOD WRITING COMES LAST. And also to my writing the following epic additional truth: I am firmly of the opinion that very few things require my whole ass. But damn it… this is one of them.

It’s time to put the whole story on the page. BUT THERE ARE RULES (and assignment sheets, linked below).

No more than 3 pages. 12 point font. Single spaced. Line between each item.

Cheating… cheats you. I swear. Here’s why.

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What’s a Because of That story? It’s short. It doesn’t have e…

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Well, that’s a good question, actually. And hey, what kind of change are we talking about here?

This week in the 6 week Blueprint Sprint, we’re contemplating change and structure. Fun all around, because how does my protagonist change is a gnarly question for novel and memoir writers while structure may or may not present the same challenge… but structure is paramount for the non fiction crowd while the arc of change, usually for the reader, might be more clear.

In other words, these two seemingly simple questions are (we know you’re not surprised) a challenging exercise that should take all the work you’ve done just that much further.

If you think of this sprint in terms of expanding a small idea into something worthy of an entire book, you’re spot on. This week, these exercises, sit smack in the middle of that process. Imagine yourself as slowly blowing a very big bubble—a bubble that will hold your reader within it for the length of a book… or longer.

This is the work that prevents that bubble from popping.

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Here’s the thing: you WANT your flap copy to make some people put the book down. In this Live, we talked about why, and how to get it right. Here’s the recording.

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Hey kids. It’s still Flap Copy Week.

Truth: I procrastinated making mine so I could make this for you instead. Maybe you’re still objecting to this whole process, because flap copy feels like jumping ahead—like daydreaming about your book on the shelf instead of doing the “real work” of writing the book.

But here’s the thing I never forget (thanks, Jennie):

Your flap copy is your promise to the reader.

And it’s also the thing you come back to, over and over, as a writer, to make sure you’re keeping that promise—or making a conscious, thoughtful decision to change it.

That’s why we write it now.
That’s why we rewrite it.
That’s why it sucks.

It’s honestly way easier just to go write. Something that’s kinda what you’re getting at, or maybe belongs somewhere, or isn’t it all just a shitty first draft anyway?

I mean, sure. But we’re trying to write shitty first drafts* of the actual books we said we were going to write—the book the reader thinks they’re picking up.

And most early flap copy drafts fail for the same reason:

They’re too vague to do any real work.

If a line of your flap copy could describe any book, it describes none—least of all yours. Here are a few classics we see all the time:

• must find herself

• must face her fears

• must come to terms with her mistakes

• must risk everything

None of these are wrong. They’re just unfinished. They gesture toward stakes without naming them. They imply change without cost. They sound meaningful without being specific.

And specificity is the entire job of flap copy.

Below the paywall, I’ve laid this out in a way you can actually use, and included
a one-page guide to the most common flap copy traps and what to say instead when you catch yourself reaching for them.

It’s designed to sit next to your draft while you work. And yes, you’re allowed to steal the structure shamelessly.

*(Jennie hates that phrase but she’s not reading over my shoulder and sometimes it’s comforting, right, to think all we have to do is get something down no matter how terrible but also let’s at least be heading in the right direction shall we?)

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What’s cancelled? The week’s schedule included a write-along tomorro…

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Hey kids it’s FLAP COPY WEEK—aka Week 3 of the Blueprint Sprint.

Oh man.

I hate and love this. Because I never forget the Jennie maxim: your flap copy is your promise to the reader. That’s why we write it now, even though it may seem like the kind of jumping ahead and daydreaming about your book on the shelf that gets in the way of doing the work to get the book there.

That’s why we write it now—even though it feels like the kind of jumping ahead, shelf-daydreaming nonsense that’s supposed to get in the way of doing the real work.

But this is the work.

This is the book you said you were going to write.
This is the book the reader thinks they’re picking up.
This is the promise that keeps you on track—or forces you to admit you need to change it.

And yes: this is uncomfortable on purpose.

Because writing flap copy this early does one very useful thing—it reveals misalignment while it’s still fixable.

Before you’ve written 80,000 gorgeous, wrong words.

Before you’ve fallen in love with subplots that don’t belong.

Before you’ve committed to a promise you can’t (or don’t want to) keep.

Before we go any further, let’s get one thing straight.

This version of flap copy is NOT:

• your final version

• publishable

• locking you in forever.

It IS:

• clarifying intent

• listening to what the book wants to be

• finding misalignment early, while it’s fixable

Below the paywall, I’ll walk you through exactly what belongs in flap copy (and what absolutely does not), how this plays out differently for nonfiction vs fiction/memoir, and give you concrete ways to draft—even if you’re stuck or convinced you’re “bad at marketing.”

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Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my…

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This week is about finding the line between the book you want to write and the book someone else will want to pick up.

That doesn’t mean selling out. It doesn’t mean flattening your ideas. It means learning to see your own work clearly—as story, as object, as something that lives on a shelf.

We’re compressing your book down to its super simple version (twice), experimenting with working titles, naming genre or category, and starting to define the reader who needs this book. None of this has to be perfect. All of it has to be honest.

This work feeds directly into next week’s flap copy assignment, but it’s also foundational in its own right. If things have felt vague or slippery so far, this is often where they snap into focus.

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A few more resources and thoughts as you narrow in on that point:

The few words you land on will probably never feel like enough—because to you, they represent an entire schema of thinking. They’re shorthand for a worldview—but that shorthand should convey that worldview to the reader/listener.

A lot of good points have a reverse that could also be true: cheaters never prosper/you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

Or sometimes they seem so obviously true that you question them: death is inevitable, we have to live anyway. Yet they work, because we don’t think about them day to day, or often prefer not to think about them at all.

I found myself attempting to explain this part of the process (and my own point*) to my French professor yesterday. He’s a poet. I’m not a great French speaker. But we got there.

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Hi everyone—

This week is our foundation week. You’re doing two short, high-impact moves that will pay off again and again (if you let them):

1. Find Your Why (writer-facing)

2. Name Your Point (reader-facing)
   …and if you’re writing nonfiction, you’ll add:

3. Why You (why you’re the right person to write this book)

These only sound like easy questions, but the minute …

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