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© 2025 A. Trevor Thrall
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The 12 Week Year for Writers podcast is hosted by Trevor Thrall, Ph.D., author of The 12 Week Year for Writers. We dive deep on strategies and tools to help writers be their most productive selves.
36 Episodes
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Send us a text Check out the Embracing Uncertainty Workshop, October 20, 2025! The draft feels stuck, the notes aren’t talking, and your outline suddenly looks like wishful thinking. We’ve all been there. Trevor sits down with writing coach and historian-turned-book coach Christina Larocco to unpack a calm, repeatable way to turn uncertainty into momentum—without waiting for a muse or getting lost in another stack of sources. Christina shares the simple two-column exercise that changes every...
Send us a text The biggest challenge for most writers isn't talent or ideas—it's simply showing up. Ever meant to write but somehow the coffee, inbox, or laundry won instead? You're not alone. In this deep dive into the psychology of writing consistency, I explore the three major obstacles that keep us from getting our butts in the chair: fear, energy depletion, and what I call the "lizard brain." Rather than beating ourselves up for lacking willpower or discipline, I offer practical, proven...
Send us a text Landing a publishing deal often feels like an impossible dream for aspiring authors. What makes one manuscript stand out among thousands? How can you ensure your pitch letter doesn't end up in the rejection pile? In this revealing conversation, former book editor Jason Kuznicki pulls back the curtain on what really happens when editors evaluate submissions. Drawing from his experience reviewing hundreds of pitch letters at the Cato Institute, Jason dispels common myths about t...
Send us a text Procrastination afflicts even the most talented and ambitious writers. That half-finished manuscript, the brilliant idea gathering dust, the writing project continually pushed to tomorrow—we all know the struggle. In this candid exploration, Trevor Thrall dives deep into the psychology behind why writers procrastinate and offers battle-tested strategies to overcome this creativity-killing habit. Drawing from personal experience and years of coaching writers, Trevor unpacks the...
Send us a text It happens to all of us: you make a beautiful plan, you’re pumped and ready to go. Then life happens, things go sideways, and you suddenly find yourself weeks behind. If you don’t do something drastic, you aren’t going to hit your goals. What the heck do you do now? For most of us, our plans need significant adjustment midstream more often than not. The problem is that most people don’t feel comfortable with what to do at that point. Do I give up? Do I pull some all nighters t...
Send us a text We’re all getting the message every day. Generative AI is changing the world at warp speed. Every week reveals new possibilities for working more efficiently. Nothing will be the same. A robot is going to cook all your hamburgers and fries. No one will have a job within 10 years. And writers will go the way of the dodo. To that I say: raspberry sound. Humans will always have a place in the loop. In this episode I: Explain my human centric theory of AIDiscuss the limits of AI a...
1Send us a text Do any of the following scenarios sound familiar? You know you need to do some research for your book, but you have no idea where to startYou want to write a book about a new topic, or a novel that takes place in a new setting perhaps, but you are so worried that you won’t sound authoritative or convincing enough, so you spend months doing research, never sure whether you’ve done enoughYou’ve just created a great plan, and doing research is in the plan, but when you start ...
Send us a text Is there a rock in your shoe keeping you from writing? I don't just mean a garden variety obstacle, I'm talking about a major productivity or dream killer. Is there something that needs to change for you to reach your goals? In today's episode, we discuss The Rock and the Response. We talk about how the obvious layer of the rock almost hides a more important inner layer of dangerous emotion. We consider how difficult it can be to recognize the real causes behind our roc...
Send us a text Everywhere I look I see workshops promising to help you get a fast start to 2024. And that’s great! But here’s the thing: how many times have you or someone you know got off to a quick start on a new writing project but never quite finished it? That’s why this episode is all about Starting to Finish. We'll talk about five common reasons people don't finish their writing and five concrete steps you can take to avoid them. For more information and tools for the productive writer,...
Send us a text Do you ever hear yourself saying these sorts of things? - I don’t have enough time to write - I don’t have enough energy to keep going to the end - I am so demoralized at how slow this is going - I’m losing my enthusiasm for this writing project I’ve been at it so long If you find yourself in one of these situations, you need to become a master of making slow progress. This idea of slow progress gets very little discussion these days, but I think it deserves a lot more. In toda...
Send us a text Did you know that the average person spends just 47 seconds before switching from looking at one screen/window on their computer to looking at another? Or that it takes 25 minutes to regain focus after an interruption? Staying focused in the best of times is a brutal task. Staying focused when life gets crazy is that much harder. In this episode we'll talk about five strategies for finding focus that all happen before you sit down to write. Ezra Klein, "Beyond the 'Matrix' Theo...
Send us a text Have you ever had one of those periods where you just couldn’t write consistently? Maybe your schedule was too chaotic. Maybe you got super busy at work. Or maybe you found yourself looking at the clock and seeing it was time to write but you wound up finding something else to do? Maybe you were going great guns but then went on vacation and when you came back you found that your momentum was gone and you never got back on track? Or maybe you made plans to get to work early eve...
Send us a text Did you ever have a writing project where everything just clicked? I mean, from the beginning when you had the idea to the finished product, everything just went great, and quickly? And on the other hand, did you ever have a writing project that did nothing but give you trouble, from the day you started it until the day you finished it, or just dropped it? I've had my share of both. And lately I've been reflecting on some of the things that determine how things go with my writi...
Send us a text If you write fiction (and even if you don't), my guess is that you use, have used, or are thinking about using Scrivener, one of the most popular writing apps on the planet. If you are thinking about it, or need some help making the most of Scrivener, this week's guest is the person to ask for help. Gwen Hernandez is an engineer turned author. She writes the popular Men of Steele series but she has another claim to fame as well. After a friend told her about this cool new wri...
Send us a text Welcome to the Get Your Writing Done podcast, I’m Trevor Thrall, author of The 12 Week Year for Writers. If you enjoy today’s episode, please submit a review wherever you get your podcasts. And for weekly updates on the podcast and other writing resources, you can subscribe to my newsletter at GYWD.com Are you the kind of person who likes to hash out all the details before you start writing? Or are you the kind of person who likes to take an idea, start writing, and see where ...
Send us a text Are great writers born or made? Is your productivity level something fixed, or can you become a more productive person over time? If you haven’t written a book by age 30, will you ever? Do rejections mean you’re a failure? In this podcast we take another look at the writer’s mindset. Our focus today is the importance of a growth mindset. Research shows that adopting a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset, plays a huge role in how people live their lives. Thanks to its i...
Send us a text It’s a new year and for many of us that means it’s time to launch ambitious new writing projects. And that’s great, because the world needs more of what you’re doing. But it turns out that the launch phase is fraught with perils and risks. How many of us have had a blinding epiphany strike while in the shower, only to realize later that the idea wasn’t so brilliant after all? Or have you ever spent a week enthusiastically pursuing a new project only to hit a brick wall and real...
Send us a text If you aren’t a 12 Week Year follower, you might be surprised to learn that a key element of the 12 Week Year system is, in fact, a 13th week. The 13th week is dedicated to assessing the previous 12 so that you can look at what went well, what didn’t go so well, and identify lessons learned to help you shape your next 12 Week plan. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any time, or read the book, you’ll know that I have a low opinion of New Year’s resolutions and annual ...
Send us a text Let me ask you a simple question: Why do you write? This question - so simple and unassuming and yet so profound - is the starting point for our conversation about motivation. We all have good days and bad days. I’m sure we have all experienced some high highs and some low lows. But some people seem to have a higher baseline level of motivation than others. Some people pretty much always seem excited about their work in progress. And other people - don’t. If you’re looking to...
Send us a text Today I sit down with Susan Scott, counselor, leadership coach, author, and founder of Life Inspired, Inc., a company that provides life design and coaching for leaders and life coaches. Our topic today is resilience. As I discuss in the 12WY for Writers, resilience is a critical element of the writer’s mindset. Every writer - no matter the type or genre, has to deal with rejections, criticism, false starts, and negative reviews that all writers. Without resilience - an abilit...
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