Obsidian Tavern
Obsidian Tavern

A course in The Working Writer Bundle

Go the Distance

The write-a-book course — go from a finished short to a complete first draft of a novel.

You can finish a short story. So why does a book feel impossible?

It isn’t that a book is harder. It’s that a book is longer. Sounds like the same thing. It isn’t. A short is a sprint — you hold the whole thing in your head and write it ugly before you talk yourself out of it. A book takes months. And months is enough time for every doubt you have to catch up with you, sit down at the desk, and start talking.

Go the Distance is built against the two things that actually kill books. Not craft. You already have craft. The two things are distance and the voice it wakes up.

Get it in The Working Writer Bundle See what’s inside

No AI. Nothing writes the book for you.

No. 02 · how a book dies

Here’s how a book actually dies

You start strong. The first fifty pages fly, because you’ve been thinking about them for months and they were basically already written in your head.

Then you hit the part you hadn’t thought about. You stop to figure out what happens next. And figuring it out quietly turns into not writing, which turns into a week away from the doc, which turns into the doc feeling like a stranger when you open it again.

Or you push through, and you get to the middle. And somewhere in the middle you become completely certain the book is bad and you’re wasting your life. Right on cue, a shiny new idea shows up — one that hasn’t disappointed you yet. And you start over.

That’s it. Not talent. Not time. Two specific failure points, and a writer who never knew they were coming.

A long road across a wide landscape
A book is a short story held for longer, against more doubt.

No. 03 · the method

I hand you the map. The walking is yours.

I’m not going to teach you to write. You did that already, on your shorts. The first half gives you just enough architecture that you never stall from not knowing what’s next. Not a 90-page outline you’ll hide inside instead of writing. Just enough spine that the road is always visible.

The second half gets you through the middle. The exact place books die has its own section, placed precisely where you’ll hit it, so when the voice shows up telling you to quit, there’s already a chapter waiting that saw it coming.

Remove the two reasons people quit, and you’re left with a book that’s genuinely hard to write and completely possible to finish. No AI. This is you, a world you already built, and the endurance to go the distance.

No. 04 · what’s inside

Six sections. 28 lessons. One book across the middle.

A clean teaching model built in front of you across the whole course, plus a real published novel of mine I keep pulling the curtain back on so you can watch every move survive contact with a finished book.

GD

Go the Distance

Fixes: “I can finish a short but a book feels impossible.”

From a world and a finished short to a complete first draft of a novel — built against the two things that actually kill books: the stall, and the murky middle where you become sure the whole thing is garbage and want to quit.

Open all 6 sections, 28 lessons →
  • Section 1 — The Book-Shaped Idea (5 lessons). Most ideas can’t survive being a book. Find one that can — mining your world and shorts, the one question your book answers, the logline and the promise.
  • Section 2 — The Spine (5 lessons). Just enough outline that you never stall. Act math, the turns that hold it up, scene blueprints, one map you can hold in your head.
  • Section 3 — The Drafting Engine (7 lessons). Where the book gets written. Wire up a witness, draft it ugly at book scale, momentum over mood, and how to come back after you’ve stopped.
  • Section 4 — Crossing the Middle (5 lessons). The exact spot books die. The sagging middle as a craft problem, the voice that says quit, and the halfway recommit — placed precisely where you’ll need it.
  • Section 5 — Landing It (4 lessons). The downhill half. Paying off the promise, writing the ending ugly too, and knowing done means whole, not good.
  • Section 6 — The Handoff (4 lessons). What you actually have, the handoff to EditForge, and why the next book is easier.

Plus an Obsidian setup lesson, a “real book start to finish” walkthrough of my novel The Culling, and a complete worked book, “The Ledger of Small Debts.”

No. 05 · is this you?

Let’s make sure this is for you

This is for you if

  • ✓ You’ve finished a short and a book still feels like a different species
  • ✓ You’ve started books before and died somewhere in the middle
  • ✓ You want architecture and honest talk more than a pep rally
  • ✓ You’re okay with the work. It’s a book. There’s work.

This is not for you if

  • × You want AI to write it. Wrong course, genuinely.
  • × You’ve never finished anything short. Start with the shorts course first.
  • × You already finish novels consistently. You don’t need this.

No. 06 · the honest part

The writers who finish books aren’t the most talented

They’re the ones who saw the middle coming and kept typing anyway. Go the Distance is worth $149 on its own — the biggest craft course in the whole library, and the one that gets people across the part where everyone else quits. It only comes inside The Working Writer Bundle.

Standalone, those six would run over $500. The bundle is $99 right now, $199 at launch.

BUNDLE ONLY

Go the Distance is only in The Working Writer Bundle

Worth $149 on its own — but you can’t buy it on its own. It comes inside The Working Writer Bundle with every other course, for less than this one would have cost you alone.

Get the bundle

Lifetime access · one payment · 30-day refund window