RIP NaNoWriMo, hello Draftsgiving
31 October 2026
Before I get started on today's ramble: there are still spots available for the Sydney launch of Choppy Water on Wednesday 4 November! Get your tickets now. More details at the end of this email.
Long, long-time readers may remember that I won National Novel Writing Month in 2012.
Before you get all congratulatory on me, the competition had thousands of winners. Anyone who wrote fifty thousand words in a month was declared a winner, and if memory serves, I only got across the line by giving the protagonist a middle name and using it every time he was mentioned. The resulting book, The Cut Out, was cursed – it included both a coronavirus epidemic and a military conflict on the Russia/Ukraine border.
Having said all that, I had a great time, and when NaNoWriMo officially folded last year (for a variety of reasons) that saddened me.
Fortunately, Novlr has picked up the torch! You may recall that Novlr is the writing app I use. (I'm also a co-owner of the company, except it's not really a company – long story.) Novlr recently announced an event they're calling "Draftsgiving". The goal? To write fifty thousand words in November. (Or 25,000, or 10,000 – pick your poison.)
Tomorrow is Sunday 1 November. I've signed up. If you're a writer – or you want to be – how about you join me?
Yesterday, while loitering near the baggage carousel at Canberra airport, I searched "Choppy Water Jack Heath review".
The top result (other than Goodreads.com) was a piece in a digital magazine that really got under my skin.
The review wasn't especially harsh. Three stars out of five. "All the pieces are there for the tension to keep tightening," one part reads. "But I kept waiting for (the book) to properly accelerate."
I read the review, shrugged, and put my phone back in my pocket. Over the last twenty years I've had much worse feedback than that. (I just checked Goodreads – Kill Your Husbands has 129 one-star reviews. "Stupid." "Painful." "Pointless.")
Part of being a writer is accepting that the moment your book is published, it's not yours anymore. Your reader is free to love it or hate it, interpret it or misinterpret it. To keep it, give it away, or use it to prop up the leg of a wobbly table. A shame that the search-engine's top-ranked review was so lukewarm, but I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.
As I carried my bags to my car, though, I kept thinking about the review, wondering what I could've done differently to please this particular reader. I thought the book had plenty of acceleration. Maybe even too much. (Quotes from other reviews: "Outrageous action." "Sometimes implausible." "Just horrific.")
And then I got that feeling. I don't know if it has a name, but it's recognisable to anyone living in 2026. A feeling of, Wait a minute.
I opened the Choppy Water review again. It mentioned the main character and the setting, but everything else seemed deliberately vague – as if the reviewer had read the blurb but not the book. Come to think of it, Choppy Water hadn't been published yet, and I wasn't aware of Allen & Unwin sending any advance copies to this website.
I checked out some of their other reviews. "There's something familiar about Susie Dent's Death Writ Large," begins one. "There's something immediately familiar about the premise of A Spy in the Blood," opens another. (The Choppy Water review begins, "There is nothing wrong with a familiar premise…")
Last night, for the first time ever, I lost sleep over a bad review. I lay awake much of the night, feeling more and more annoyed. I'd rather get one star from a human than three from a robot – a robot who criticised my book's lack of tension without even reading it. Who were these people, calling themselves magazine publishers while posting fake content for ad revenue? How could these tech companies legally sell a product whose only real value was to con artists? The internet was filling up with words, written by no-one, conveying nothing. Search engines offered AI summaries of all the AI-generated junk clogging up the results. My crap runneth over.
Maybe, I wondered in my sleepy delirium, the internet will get so full of slop as to become useless. Humanity might abandon it and go outside. The thought was equal parts frightening and exhilarating. I'd always been a bit of a hermit. But I supposed I should make an effort to see the real world while it was still habitable.
And hey, maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe the complete and total collapse of the internet would happen before Wednesday, and I'd have a great turnout for my book launches next week.
Speaking of…
On Wednesday 4 November I'll be at Gleebooks in Sydney, where I'll be interviewed about Choppy Water by bestselling author, columnist, and beloved radio personality Richard Glover. Expect smart questions and less-smart answers, along with wine, laughter, and the chance to mingle with fellow booklovers. We'll both be signing books. 6pm for a 6:30 start. Tickets are $6.50 when you buy a signed copy (or $16.50 for entry only) 🍷
Meanwhile, in Canberra…
We've had to reschedule the Canberra launch of Choppy Water. The new date is Friday November 6. Belconnen Library, 6 pm. Tickets are free, but disappearing fast. ⏳
And in Melbourne…
On Wednesday 11 November at 7:30pm I'll be interviewed by cosy-crime master Kate Solly at The Leaf Bookshop in Ashburton. Expect drinks, nibbles, and the kind of chaos you only get when two ADHDers are onstage together, followed by audience Q&A, book signing, and then me spending all night in the bookshop because I've misplaced my keys. Tickets are $22.49 at Eventbrite. 🗝️
See you soon,
Jack ❤️
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