On the second day of NaNoWriMo, we welcome back one of our most popular Instagram Live guests from last year: Ann Dávila Cardinal. (Watch her 2020 IG Live chat here.) We’ll get philosophical about what it is we need to dive into this first draft. What material do we need to make the art?

Ann Dávila Cardinal is a novelist and director of student recruitment for VCFA where she earned her MFA in Writing. Her young adult novels, Five Midnights and Category Five, were released by Tor Teen, and her debut adult novel, The Storyteller’s Death, is coming in October 2023.