So who is behind Now Novel?

As you develop your story on Now Novel you'll meet our core team - co-founders, staff writers and community members. (As a member, you're part of our team because our members' insights and creative challenges inform every decision we reach.)

You'll also find published authors, professional editors and creative writing educators experienced in helping aspiring authors develop compelling, effective stories. Our writing coaches are located in the US, UK and South Africa.

Our backstory

When co-founder Bridget's first novel, Strange Nervous Laughter, was published by Struik in South Africa in 2007 and by Macmillan in the USA in 2009, she found her inbox flooded with emails all asking the same thing:

"How do you write a novel?"

Writing a book is challenging. It's a solitary process by nature. Yet there are many stages where it makes it much easier (and more motivating) to have a friendly guide. Someone who's developed and polished stories and can draw on their experience to answer your writing-related questions and help you stay accountable to your personal writing goals and objectives.

We created Now Novel with these benefits of guidance in mind, to connect aspiring authors with peers and experts who are committed to studying, practicing and improving the craft of storytelling.

As time went by, we found members desired a structured, simplified process for developing story ideas. Thus we created the Now Novel story dashboard, a tool you can use to outline a complete story in any genre, step-by-step, to save and refer to as you write.

In 2016 we added small critique groups to help members exchange constructive feedback and discussion. And in 2018 we overhauled the story dashboard completely after poring over members' helpful feedback and most requested features.

We continue to develop Now Novel as we engage with and learn from members' - writers' - greatest goals and challenges.