Kelly ChastainMarch 5, 2026

How to Plan a Writing Session So You Actually Get Shit Done

Today we kick off our first Writing Community Hour over at The Rogue MFA YouTube channel. We gather every other Thursday at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST. The complete schedule is listed on our community page.

Bri put together a great post called 5 Ways to Write When you’re Not Writing, because sometimes you’re motivated, but maybe not necessarily inspired. We can also help you get unstuck. If you want to join, but you don’t know what to do in the hour this graphic can help.

No matter where you’re at, we can’t wait to hang out with you and get some writing done together. Here are a few more ways to approach it.

If You Want to Finish Something

There’s nothing quite like the dopamine rush of checking a box or crossing something off a list.

  • Write a character’s backstory that outlines their internal conflicts, their trauma responses, and why they’re just so darn stubborn/independent/brazen/nihilistic
  • Clean up that one scene that you know isn’t quite working, and that you’ve been avoiding, because you think it’s going to take way more time or work than it actually will
  • Write a list of the worst things that could happen to your characters, followed by a list of scenarios that will bring the worst to life, followed by a list of ways each character might each handle the scenario. (Hello, nascent plot outline)
  • Read the articles you’ve been saving in your “research file” instead of just squirreling them away like a bushy-tailed archivist
  • Write the pivotal emotional moment for your characters that you’ve been avoiding. This could be anger, a confession, declarations of love, grief, etc…

If You Want to Figure Something Out

When things stop being inspiring, or you know that something’s just off, here are some questions you can ask to help get you back on track.

  • Do my characters make choices or do things just happen to them? OR if they’re making choices, do they actually have consequences? If your character didn’t get what they wanted, and would be fine after a nap and a snack, the stakes aren’t high enough. Let them make a decision that could fuck their whole life up.
  • What character could I remove entirely without it impacting the plot? Who’s not earning their keep here, or which characters are doing the same work in the story? Sometimes we run out of steam because we’re writing the same scenario, relationship, or problem with two separate side characters when one would be far more potent. Redundancy can make your work drag.
  • What promise did I make in the first chapter and am I delivering on it? This helps you to identify where your B plot may have taken over to the point where the whole book has shifted. It’ll shed light on where you’ve gone off course in the story, and how to get yourself back on track.
  • What would happen if I cut my favorite scene? Oh, this one’s a heart breaker. Especially when you love it and it’s the most beautiful writing in the whole book. A beautifully written scene that doesn’t belong will run your story off the rails and not in a good way. You can always paste the language into a new doc and use it in a later project, so it’s not gone forever. But the key is to get honest about whether or not it’s serving your story. If not, give it the boot.
  • What feedback do I keep hearing and also keep dismissing? Sometimes it’s not the feedback itself, but the mountain of work required to fix the issues. Once we dig into it, we often find it’s not nearly as hard as we made ourselves believe it would be. Sometimes, we dismiss feedback because it isn’t immediately obvious to us how to fix the issue. You have an hour to brainstorm ideas.

If You Want to Improve Your Writing

Choose one scene where something important happens and:

  • Focus on your character’s interiority. Instead of focusing only on what they do, dig into what they think, feel, and fear in that moment. What connections and conclusions have they drawn? What do they believe, know, or understand that they didn’t before this scene started? Help your readers see the change.
  • Focus on your character’s movement. Sometimes, you’ve created a rich inner world, but the characters themselves feel like they’re floating in space or the conversation reads like talking heads in a room. Get into their movements, mannerisms, and body language that supports or belies their inner state.
  • Ratchet up the sensory details. We understand the world through our senses, and when you add sensory detail to your story, your world and characters feel more real to us. Rely less on sight, and see how you can incorporate smell, sounds, taste, and touch, particularly texture. If you want guidance, grab the free mini course, and use that as your structure for the community writing hour.
  • Sharpen your dialogue. Cut it by 30% and you’ll make it faster, less monologue-y, and it will sound more like real people talking. Let them cut each other off, stammer, change the subject, and tell each other no.

We can’t wait to see you at The Rogue Community Writing Hour!

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Kelly ChastainFebruary 12, 2026

Finding Accountability in The Rogue Writing Community

Sometimes wrangling the people in our lives to help us with accountability isn’t an option. We either can’t find the type of people we need, or we need steel-plated boundaries with the ones we have. Exhausting.

Good news! Not all is lost. Let’s go outside of our hometown and look at some of the most helpful accountability tools available. And who can help most? Strangers on the Internet.

Sprints

There are a few different types, but the gist is the same. You sit down and you write for a specific amount of time with no distractions or editing. Just writing as many words as you can.

  • Group or Community Sprints – These happen in real life and on the internet. They were a big part of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) machine, and the added dose of competition never hurt. Usually, these took place in regional hubs and meetups. You can still find group writing sessions and sprints in local creative spaces like community centers, bookstores, and libraries.
  • Solo Sprints – Folks who sprint on their own tend to use the pomodora method. 25 minutes of keyboard mayhem, followed by a 5 minute break. After 3 or 4 cycles, they take a 30 minute breather.

Project-Based Groups With a Targeted End Goal

The most famous of these before their scandalous fiery end was NaNoWriMo. The idea was to write a novel (or 50k words) in a single month (November). There were stats, badges, word trackers, and a lot of encouragement around. Bri was in HEAVEN watching that little graph chart up.

  • If you’re into the gamification aspect of NaNo, Trackbear, is a way to track your writing progress and customize your writing goals. And you can also use a good, old-fashioned spreadsheet.
  • Groups like NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) still exist, and can be a great way to find accountability for a specific project.
  • Bri and her romance writer’s group do RoWritMo (Romance Writing Month) every November, with custom-designed, romance-themed badges for progress and milestones. They’re always open for new challengers to join!

Contests

There’s nothing like cash prizes and a deadline to keep you in the chair.

  • Reedsy posts a prompt every Friday, and writers submit their story by the following Monday for the chance to win $250. If you’re looking for a way to sit down and write anything, this is a great strategy.
  • If you need a little more time, but still like the structure, several literary magazines have contests with cash prizes and publication attached. The competition guidelines are typically published months in advance and let writers know the theme or craft-based parameters.

Online Writing Communities

We think the best one is ours, The Rogue Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST. The full calendar of dates is on our Community page. 

We’re curious! What does your ideal community look like? We’d love to hear from you so we can make ours even better. The survey takes 2 minutes, and after telling us what to do, you’ll be heady with power. Muahh! Thanks in advance, truly.

My Ideal Community

Whether you find accountability and community among friends, or join a larger collective online, we’re stoked that you’re taking your work seriously.

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Kelly ChastainFebruary 5, 2026

Building A Writing Community From The Inside Out

Being a writer is one of the best/worst things to ever happen to us. The thrill of free drafting, finishing a project, or submitting work to a magazine is equal parts nerve-racking and satisfying. But keeping ourselves accountable to our writing practice can be one of the biggest hurdles.

You have amazing ideas, all playing like a film in your mind, but getting them onto paper? Well, sometimes it takes more than cajoling. It takes a writing community, where creative co-working and accountability are baked in.

The accountability aspects of a Writing Community are the writer’s equivalent to body-doubling for ADHDers. We hang out and complete our tasks, separately but together. It works because other people in the group are also counting on us. We can be good at letting ourselves down, but we don’t do that to our friends. All of a sudden your motivation to get work done hits a new high.

Your Friends

You probably know some writers already because we’re moths to a flame, and we can’t help but find each other in the wild. You might already be encouraging each other, and listening to their plot hole woes. You may have gone to college with them. This is the perfect person to ask to form a writing community.

Let them know that you’re trying to finish a project, or that you’d simply like to write more consistently, and see where you have time in you schedules to do that together. Writers very rarely say no to scheduled writing time.

Don’t have any writer friends?

Add Writer to Your Identity

This doesn’t mean you need to slap it to your social profiles or your LinkedIn bio (do people still use that site?). And if saying, “I’m a writer” makes you feel like an imposter, there’s always this classic, deployed during lunch in the break room. “This weekend I did some creative writing.” Then see who else nods along.

Because the thing about creative writers is that we don’t just like it. We freaking LOVE it. And as soon as you out yourself, the folks around you who also have a mountain of journals littered with dialog scraps and half-baked character sketches, are going to come forward like they’ve been summoned by an oracle.

Odds are, they’d like to have more community, and especially accountability, for their work too, or they’re already in a group and might invite you to join. You win either way. Drop the hints, and not just at work. With the folks you’ve befriended at the gym, the coffee shop regulars, the parents at school pick up and drop off, and the people you see consistently.

Mentors

If no one raises their hand about creative writing, you have people in your life who know other creative writers. I love to introduce my friend circles to one another instead of keeping them in their separate camps. We’re all friends for a reason: they’re cool and we have shared interests. If there’s overlap, I instinctively want them to connect.

Start talking to people in your life who you consider mentors, even if you don’t think they could possibly help you. The sheer range of interests among my friend groups is mind boggling, and it’s probably true for your friend groups too. So…

Make it known that you’re looking to find or start a writing community.

Other Artists

Now if all else fails and you don’t have any writers in your general vicinity, I know you have artists. Crafters, knitters, scrap-bookers, clay earring makers. Needing dedicated time to create isn’t exclusive to literary arts. It’s a common phenomenon in the creative community at large, and you can use that to your advantage.

Of course it’s ideal to find a writing community or a group that’s story centered. But it isn’t required. Your friend who’s trying desperately to finish crocheting that damn baby blanket before her little niece has a baby of her own, would love it if you said, “We’re setting aside an hour every Thursday night to do nothing but craft.”

Take a peek around you and see who you can link up with. Next week, we’re talking about additional ways to find and build community, and how to stay accountable to your projects and goals. What they are, where to find them, and how to get involved.

Until then, tie yourself to the chair if that’s what it takes.

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