Self-doubt is one of the biggest obstacles a writer will ever face. It creeps in at the worst moments—undermining confidence, stalling progress, and making you question whether your stories are even worth telling. Conquering self-doubt in writing isn’t about eliminating it altogether; it’s about learning to work with it. The key is recognizing self-doubt for what it really is: not a stop sign, but a challenge to grow.
Not long ago, Louis Scenti wrote in about a personal challenge many writers face:
Perhaps this is a condition that many people struggle with but I feel quite alone. I can’t seem to shut off the critical voice, the saboteur, if you will, that says things like “why bother, nobody id interested in what you write,” or “you’re old and coming back to writing in your sixties—well, you just don’t have time to improve, it’s too late.”
In other words, I cannot seem to shut off my rational/critical brain and fully access the child-like part of me that finds writing pure fun; pure flow. Sometimes I can’t even sit down in my chair and face the keyboard. Any thoughts or ideas?
If you’ve ever found yourself battling a relentless inner critic—the voice telling you your writing is worthless, you’re too late, or you don’t have what it takes—you’re not alone. In fact, I’d argue all writers face this at some point (usually at multiple points) in their careers.
The inner critic often masquerades as a rational voice. It tells us that it’s just looking out for us, that it’s saving us from embarrassment, failure, or wasted effort. To a point, this is true, since the inner critic is often a highly sophisticated (and in some ways autonomous) manifestation of our inner protector—a voice we developed early in life to guide us to the safest choices. As a very young child, safety was paramount. But often this limiting protector/inner guide/critic doesn’t evolve apace with our maturing capabilities. Uncalibrated, it can remain with us our entire lives, even as its advice grows progressively less helpful and increasingly self-destructive. We could argue that the out-of-control inner critic is on a mission to destroy what it sees as our greatest enemy: ourselves.
Therefore, this voice is usually rooted in fear—of not being good enough, of being judged, or of spending time on something that may not lead to immediate validation. One of the most important things to understand about this voice is that it’s not an objective judge of your abilities. Instead, it’s a deeply ingrained response to past experiences, external pressures, and personal insecurities. The more power you give it, the louder it becomes. Alternatively, the more you recognize it for what it is, the more likely you can transform it back into a force that can legitimately guide, protect, and enhance positive growth.
Proven Ways to Conquer Self-Doubt in Writing Your Fiction
Because self-doubt in writing (as in life) is all but ubiquitous, advice is everywhere. Most focuses on practical steps for either muscling past the self-doubt or building better habits to contain or redirect it. Most of this advice is good:
1. Give your inner critic a name (such as my favorite “Judgy McJudgerson”).
I’ve written much in the past about dealing with the challenge of the inner critic. You can find some of those posts linked below. Today, I want to examine five ways to conquer self-doubt in writing that go deeper than just practical tips, so you can learn to address the underlying factors and motivations that keep the inner critic coming back time after time. Particularly, I want to examine each of the different “flavors” of self-doubt that Louis articulated in his query.
1. Embrace Your Inner Critic as a Necessary Archetype for Conquering Self-Doubt in Writing
You can’t destroy the inner critic. You can’t cut it off. You can’t stuff it inside some mental compartment and forget about it. It will always come back.
Why? Because it’s you.
Even though the toxic inner critic generally speaks in the voice of someone outside of ourselves (often an authoritarian voice, whether specific or generic), it arises from within. The only way to “get rid of it” is to integrate it—to make peace with its purpose for existence, recalibrate it into better functionality, and absorb it into our higher consciousness where we can exercise control over it.
In describing his inner critic, Louis used a key word. He wrote:
I can’t seem to shut off the critical voice, the saboteur, if you will….
In her book Sacred Contracts, archetype maestra Carolyn Myss posits four “archetypes of survival” inherent to every personality. One of these archetypes is the Saboteur. She writes:
The Saboteur archetype is made up of the fears and issues related to low self-esteem that cause you to make choices in life that block your own empowerment and success. [Y]ou need to face this powerful archetype that we all possess and make it an ally.
Rescued from the shadow, the Saboteur/Inner Critic can once again become the Protector it was intended to be. Instead of acting as a negative voice of self-sabotage or -destruction, it becomes a neutral ally highlighting pitfalls and recommending actionable choices.
2. Face Your Fears to Overcome Self-Doubt and Unlock Your Creative Potential
FDR’s quote has become a cliche, but it’s truer than truth:
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
In my own adventures, as I have circled the things I want and the fear that stands in my way, I have realized that is rarely the thing itself that frightens me—it is dread of my own fear response that holds me back. I recently shared a quote I have found profound in my own creative (aka, life) journey:
Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
Here’s another one I ran onto recently, from Mary Kate Teske, which is even truer:
No one ever tells you that bravery feels like fear.
The next time you sit at the page (or feel dread at the thought of doing so), take a moment to lean into what you’re feeling in your body. Instead of naming it fear and trying to move away from it, recognize it as your instinct toward bravery. This is your creative self in its very essence—desiring growth, transformation, experience. The very fact you are experiencing this deep inner tension and discomfort signals you are unwilling to settle for the status quo. Your inner self wants more—knows you need more. Via the very discomfort that may make you feel you are not big enough or good enough to continue, you are already proving your own profound courage.
Frankly, writing is scary. I’d even go so far as to say it should be scary. At the very least, congratulate yourself for pushing your own edges.
3. Recognize Ebb Periods: How to Conquer Self-Doubt in Writing
In general, writers tend to put far too much pressure on the act of writing. Yes, that part’s important (obviously), but there are many other aspects of the creative process that are equally valid and, in many instances, impossible to do without.
Some days are typing days, and some are thinking days, but both are writing days.
When we’re not actively writing every day (or sometimes even after missing just one day), our toxic inner critic’s algorithm tends to lean heavily on themes of productivity equaling worth. But just as we gain more by fully welcoming and integrating the inner critic back into a healthy role, we also achieve our best creative states when we are able to welcome and use both sides of our brain. Some people tend to emphasize intuition and emotion to the point nothing ever gets written, structured, or edited. However, many people who struggle with the toxic inner critic tend to overemphasize logic and willpower to the point they need to be reminded that sometimes not writing is actually the most creative thing you can do.
Louis wrote:
Sometimes I can’t even sit down in my chair and face the keyboard.
Each author must look within to determine whether such a circumstance is the result of running away from fear instead of moving bravely into it—or whether, in some instances, a deeper and wiser voice is offering what turns out to be a good point. Very often, the resistance to sitting down to write at least partially results from the writer’s unreadiness. Sometimes that unreadiness is best dealt with by simply diving in and creating your way out of it. Other times, inner wisdom dictates something is missing:
Perhaps a bit more research is required to understand how to execute the scene.
Perhaps a bit more study into the mechanics of storytelling and writing would smooth the process.
Rarely is it productive to shame ourselves for legitimate feelings of not wanting to “sit down and face the keyboard.” Rather, allow what is to be. Take a moment to sit with it; listen to it. There is a message of truth there if only we can learn to recognize it. Once recognized, it often transforms from an obstacle to an ally.
But how do you know if you should be listening to your resistance to sitting at the keyboard—or resisting the resistance and moving forward anyway?
The answer is probably: whichever requires more courage.
Sometimes not writing can feel like the scarier option. If so, take a look at that. But if not writing feels like an escape, then turn around and sit at the keyboard once again. Wherever you are facing your fears—wherever you are feeling your own bravery—that is where the most answers will be found.
At the heart of the struggle against self-doubt is the desire to reconnect with the joy of writing and the childlike sense of play that allows creativity to flow freely. The Child is another innate archetype, one intimately associated with creativity (I’ve written about in-depth about the Child here and in my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs). One of the main quests of my own life has been the desire to understand why accessing my childhood experience of creativity became so much more difficult in adulthood and, most importantly, how do I get it back?
That saga is ongoing for me (although I made an interesting breakthrough the other day, which, if it pans out, I will share in the future). One of the keys, however, is simply remembering tenets of childhood creativity and rewiring our well-meaning adult habits to return to them.
For example:
The Child creates for the fun of it. No deadlines. No focus on productivity.
If the Child doesn’t feel like creating, it doesn’t. If it feels like napping or eating or crying or laughing instead of playing, that’s what it does.
The Child does not (naturally) feel guilty for not creating or for creating “badly.”
The Child follows its joy (the disconnect most adults experience from embodied joy is one of our greatest creative blocks).
The Child has no (or little) ego and approaches the world with the simultaneous humility and hubris of ignorance.
The Child is a wide-open canvas of possibility and curiosity: it sees everything as new and potentially interesting.
The list goes on. Returning to childhood is no small feat. Indeed, in Carol S. Pearson’s cycle of archetypes, she begins with the childlike Innocent and ends with the Holy Fool—the culmination of that lifelong quest to return to untamed wonder.
If that culmination feels a bit out of reach as yet and if your writing feels heavy, you can try the following practical approaches:
Write badly on purpose. Give yourself permission to write nonsense, knowing you can always revise later.
Separate creation from evaluation. Draft first, critique later. Mixing the two is like trying to drive with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake.
Reframe writing as exploration. Instead of thinking, “I have to write something good,” try “I wonder where this sentence will take me?”
Louis brings up one more important aspect of the inner critic—its ability to weaponize time against us. Writers returning to their craft after years (or decades) away, or those first picking up the pen after a lifetime of other pursuits, may feel an intense pressure to “catch up.” The critic whispers they don’t have enough time to improve, that they missed their chance, or that they should have started earlier.
But creativity isn’t a young person’s game. Many successful authors didn’t publish their first books until their fifties, sixties, or later. Frank McCourt published Angela’s Ashes at 66. Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods at 65.
Every chapter of life brings its own challenges and opportunities. Creativity and its expression remain our most important asset at every stage of life. In each chapter of life, we are someone new. In each chapter, we have something to say that is important. The stories and archetypes of the Third Act of life are not the same as the stories of the First Act. Experience is a writer’s greatest asset. You have lived more life and gained more wisdom and perspective. You bring something to the page younger writers simply can’t. The fear that it’s “too late” is an illusion designed by a dysfunctional inner critic to keep you from taking action.
More than that, I believe everything you write adds value to the world. The very act of writing changes reality. It changes you. It’s like investing advice: the best time to start is today.
Although the inner critic isn’t likely to ever fully disappear, it doesn’t have to be in charge. You don’t have to wait for permission to create, and you don’t have to prove your worth before you start.
Writing is an act of courage at any age, in any season of life. The only way to silence the voice that says “why bother?” is to sit down and write anyway.
In Summary:
Self-doubt is a common struggle for writers, often stemming from fear of failure, perfectionism, or external criticism. Overcoming these doubts is possible through intentional mindset shifts and strategic habits. By recognizing negative thought patterns, setting realistic goals, and cultivating a supportive creative environment, writers can build confidence in their abilities. Ultimately, the key to conquering self-doubt lies in persistence, self-compassion, and a focus on growth rather than perfection.
Key Takeaways:
Self-doubt is a challenge, not a stop sign. Recognizing it as a natural part of the creative process allows you to work with it instead of against it.
Your inner critic is not your enemy. Reframe it as the Protector archetype and transform it into an ally that guides rather than hinders you.
Fear signals opportunity for growth. Instead of avoiding fear, lean into it as a sign you’re stepping beyond your comfort zone.
Creative ebbs are natural and necessary. Not every moment needs to be productive. Sometimes stepping back leads to deeper insights.
Reignite your childlike creativity. Approach writing with curiosity, playfulness, and a sense of wonder rather than pressure.
It’s never too late to start writing. Your experiences add richness to your storytelling, no matter when you begin.
Want more?
As you can see from what we’ve been talking about today, understanding archetypes—and their shadows—is a valuable resource that can help you break free from creative self-doubt and write with greater depth and confidence. My eight-week email course Shadow Archetypes: Writing Complex Fictional Characters explores how these deep psychological patterns shape both your characters, by extension, you as well. In recognizing and working with shadow archetypes, you can uncover new layers of complexity in your storytelling that can help you transform inner obstacles into strengths. If you’re interested in joining me in bringing your most compelling characters to life, you can find out more here.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you conquer self-doubt in writing, and what strategies have helped you stay creative even when the inner critic gets loud? Tell me in the comments!
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How do you keep the happiness and joy in your writing practice, along with managing the business side of being an author? Marissa Meyer gives her tips.
Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.
Joanna: Marissa Meyer is the New York Times bestselling author of fantasy romance and graphic novels, including The Lunar Chronicles. The Happy Writer: Get More Ideas, Write More Words, and Find More Joy from First Draft to Publication and Beyond is her latest book for authors. So welcome to the show, Marissa.
Marissa: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Joanna: It’s great to have you on. So first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
Marissa: Oh, goodness. I always wanted to be a writer. I am one of those. I was a huge reader growing up, loved stories, had a big imagination. So, really, from the time that I was a little kid, I started making up stories and telling them to my parents, asking them to write them down into little books for me.
Then as I got older, I, of course, started writing them myself. Then —
At some point I realized that this is a job. This is something that people actually can get paid for.
You could actually get paid to come up with stories and get your name printed on a book.
I think I realized really early on that that was for me, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life. So I kept writing.
As a teenager, I got really into fan fiction and credit that a lot with learning how to tell a complete story. Beginning, middle, end. I got my bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a master’s degree in publishing because I thought writing might be a difficult career to break into.
I wanted to have a backup plan, and thought, well, if this writing thing doesn’t pan out, maybe I can be an editor, maybe I can be a publicist or an agent or something.
The deeper I got into learning about publishing, the more it really just cemented how passionate I was about writing and how much I just really wanted to be the writer in this publishing equation.
So I wrote many multiple manuscripts that went nowhere, but eventually got the idea for a Cinderella retelling about a cyborg, a futuristic retelling. So that became my debut novel, Cinder.
Joanna: Wow. Okay, so it’s really interesting that you did publishing as a degree, as well as writing.
Did you have a job before you became a full-time author?
Like did you work in the publishing industry? Or did you just go straight from uni into full-time writer?
Marissa: No, I did. From university, I got a job as an editor at a very small publishing house in Seattle. That publisher focused mostly on fine art books. So those beautiful coffee table books that you get at museum exhibits and art galleries. You know those books.
So it had virtually nothing to do with my ultimate career of being a fiction writer, but it taught me a lot about just the behind the scenes, what goes into creating a book, and the actual production of it, the marketing of it, all of these various aspects.
So I did that for five years, and then I spent about a year as a freelance typesetter and proofreader. At which point my first novel sold, and I got to become a full-time writer.
Joanna: That’s very cool. I love that you did typesetting and stuff like that. We’ll come back to the business side, but let’s get into the book.
So you use the words “happy” and “joy” in the book title, but I feel like many writers think suffering and pain is more of a hallmark of the creative process.
If writers are not feeling the ‘joy’ and the ‘happy’ right now, what are some tips for getting back to that?
Marissa: Thank you so much for asking this question. It is so funny to me that we do have this stereotype of the writer. That you must be struggling in order to create art, and you must be suffering some way. If it’s not painful, then how can you possibly call it quality?
This stereotype really bugs me, and I’m really trying to dismantle it with this book. But that said, we’re also not shying away from the fact that writing, it’s not just fun and play all the time. There are struggles, there are challenges, no matter where you are on your journey.
Whether you’re suffering from writer’s block or burnout, whether you’re in the query trenches and you’re facing rejection or criticism. There’s a million things, of course, that can be roadblocks in our path to being happier writers.
That is largely what this book is about, trying to refocus our attention, not on all the things that can go wrong, not on all of the struggles that we face, but looking at the things that we really do love and enjoy about the craft of writing. The hobby, the career.
We get into it because we do have a passion. It’s not the sort of job or hobby that most of us take on just for the heck of it. I mean —
You start writing because you love to write.
So I really encourage writers to find what it is that appeals to them about this. Do you love the process of taking a messy, complicated plot and fitting it together like a big jigsaw puzzle and that satisfying feeling when everything comes together?
Or do you love that you have the freedom to go to a cafe with your laptop and sip lattes all day and stare out at the people and let the world inspire you? Or maybe you love the research process and learning about things that you are so curious and interested in and just want to do deep dives into it.
There’s a lot of things that we can find joy and satisfaction in. So that’s going to be different for every writer, and that’s going to be different based on where you are, both in the process of writing a particular book, but also where you are in your overall career.
I always encourage writers to go back to that. What can I find joy in today?
Joanna: I love the research. I also love saying with a finished book, “I made this.” I always enjoy holding that book in my hand. You, coming from this fine art books thing you did early on, I guess you must love the really beautiful special editions and all that as well.
Marissa: Oh, I love it, and the smell! I love the smell of a new book. You don’t always get it when a lot of books these days just come in like a cardboard box, but some of these special editions will come wrapped in plastic, and so they still maintain the smell of the ink and the binding glue. Ah, I just nerd out over it.
Joanna: Well, and that is important too, isn’t it? I feel like we’ve come around to that. Like there was a lot of focus on digital for a while, especially for independent authors, but now it’s really come round to beautiful, physical products.
That, to me, is a very exciting part of the process, finishing the whole thing with something beautiful. That satisfaction is really part of it.
Marissa: Absolutely. I’m really big on celebrations.
I think it’s so important to take a moment and say, “I made this thing. I accomplished this. I had a goal. I had a dream, and I kept moving. It took months or years or decades, but I did it.”
That is such a huge part of the process.
It’s really easy—and especially like for me, I’m about 20 books now into my career— it can be easy to be like, “Oh, just another one. Set it on the shelf, and keep on working on the next deadline.” I really have tried to be very conscientious about it.
No, let’s pause. Let’s pop some champagne. Let’s take a night off. Let’s get a massage. Like, what is it that’s going to make me feel like, yes, I’ve done it again, and I’m really proud of this moment.
Joanna: That’s great. Well, you do have a section on the writing process in the book. Of course, every author is different, but if people haven’t got to that 20 books place—
Tell us how you get that first draft done. Any tips for actually finishing a book?
Which I know some people have an issue with.
Marissa: Finishing is hard. I think it’s important for people to know that everyone struggles with finishing. We talk a lot about the siren song of the next project because at some point in every book you’re going to reach that point where you’re in the murky middle and it feels endless.
You’re confused about the plot, you’re frustrated that things aren’t going well, and suddenly you get a sparkly new idea for the next thing.
It’s so easy to think, “Ah! That one’s going to be really easy and really fun, and it’s not going have any of these other problems that I’m dealing with right now.”
It’s very tempting to switch over and to follow that path of least resistance. I think it’s important to know that that fantasy of the next one being so easy, probably not reality. Probably you will get to relatively the same point in the process and, once again, be hit with, “Ah, this is hard. It’s work. What else can I do?”
For me, one of the tips that I started using fairly early in my career is when I am at the start of a project, and I’m really excited, and I’ve got lots of ideas, and you can feel all the potential for it, and there’s a reason that you’re choosing to write this thing out of all your other ideas. Why am I focusing my time on this one?
I will write down either a list, or I will write a little letter to myself detailing all of the things about this project that I cannot wait for.
Maybe it’s the romance that I’m really excited to write, or I just love the protagonist, or there’s a really big twist in the plot that I can’t wait to see how readers are going to react to.
Whatever it is, I will write down everything that I really love about this idea. Then when I’m a third of the way or halfway through the book and suddenly hating it and feeling like this is the worst thing I’ve ever written, and I can’t believe that I chose this, what was I thinking, I’ll go back and I’ll read that list.
I will remind myself why I chose this one in the beginning, and what do I love about it? What do I still love about it? Then I will take those ideas and I will try to incorporate them into the next scene or chapter, or couple of chapters that I’m going to write.
“All right, I love the romance.” Well, let’s have a romantic scene. “I think the villain is so cool.” Well, let’s have a scene where we really get to see how cool the villain is. You know, whatever it is, focus on that, and that will hopefully help you get over that bad period.
Joanna: Do you write out of order if you get to that point?
You’re like, I’m just going to write the climax scene because I know that will be fun, or do you write linearly?
Marissa: It really depends on the project. I have done both, and I think both processes work. Some books are more difficult than others.
The books that I’m struggling with more, then I will tend to jump around and go ahead to write a scene that I’m really excited about, but not always.
Some books have very complicated plots that are very interwoven, and in those cases, it can be less of a mental gymnastics challenge if you do write it linearly. So it really depends.
I think, for me —
Momentum and forward progress and consistency. Whatever you need to do to keep moving forward and keep on top of your goals —
whether it’s a word count goal or a chapter goal or whatever it is, anything you can do any day to keep moving forward is going to be helpful.
Joanna: Sometimes that moving forward might not be getting new words down. You also have a section about filling the creative well. Sometimes, especially when you’ve written as many books as we both have, it can be like, okay, do you know what I need? Some more input.
What are some ways that you fill your creative well?
Marissa: Absolutely, and that’s such an important thing to note. Like you say, sometimes getting words down is not the answer.
If you’re facing some amount of creative burnout, or if you’re just really stuck in a plot and feel like things just aren’t working, or maybe you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and you’re not really sure how to fix it, sometimes the best thing you can do is take a step back, and do it intentionally.
I think there’s a distinction between saying, “I have writer’s block and I can’t possibly write anything today,” versus, “I am choosing not to write today because I recognize that I need a moment and need some space to refill the well and tap into that creative spark again.”
So, for me, when I decide I’m going to take a day off, there’s a myriad of things that I might choose to do with that time. I think getting outside, going for walks, or if you can go to a park or go on a hike somewhere, if you can go swimming. Anything like that tends to, for me, really generate some new ideas.
Spending time with my family is always good. A lot of times I will use those days off to tackle other projects, things that have kind of been looming in the background. Maybe they’re taking up more mental space than they should be.
That could be things like getting your car washed, or that could be like reorganizing your pantry, just things that have been really bugging you lately.
Maybe it’s time to take a day and clear some of those things out because that will help clear your mental clutter as well.
Or you might take a day and be like, I’m going to do some really fun research about this project. Or I’m going to take a day and spend some time brainstorming or reoutlining my plot.
So you can also take a more hands on approach to writing. There’s really no right or wrong here. Whatever you feel like you need, give it a shot and see if it helps break something loose.
Joanna: You mentioned fun research there. What does that look like for you?
Marissa: All of it. I really enjoy research. I love reading. I love doing deep dives, you know, going on Wikipedia and clicking the little further reading links at the bottom and seeing the rabbit holes you go down.
Also, if I can find a way to do a hands-on or more of an experiential research, that’s the best. Of course, we all fantasize about being able to travel. If you can go to the place where your setting is inspired by, that is worth gold.
It’s not always an option, of course, for different reasons, but if you can get out and see the world and take in these really great sensory details, it is so helpful.
It could also be talking to an expert on something about your story, something about your protagonist or your plot, because they’re going to have just the best insights. They’re going to clue you into things that you never would have even known to look up to research.
I’ve crawled under cars to see how they work because I don’t know anything about cars, but I had a mechanic character, so I better learn something about cars.
I love cooking. If there’s a dish that my character has to cook or bake or is served, I’ll find a recipe and give it a try myself. Just little things like that to just kind of give you that hands on experience. I think it adds a lot to the authenticity as you’re writing.
Joanna: It also makes it more of a fun process.
Marissa: It’s more fun. Why not? We’re all about trying to make it more fun.
Joanna: Yes, exactly. Well, then coming to writing series, because it feels like, obviously we need tropes in the books. If we’re writing different books in a series, we need to make sure the characters are consistent and all that.
How do you keep coming up with new ideas for series?
I feel like a lot of people now are sort of like, okay, is it the same thing, the same thing? What stays the same in a series book and what changes? How do you get ideas for that?
Marissa: That’s a good question, and it’s going to depend on if your series follows one main protagonist versus if it’s more like a loosely connected series with maybe different protagonists or different love interests in each book. Generally, I think it’s more common that you’ve got the solo protagonist who has a complete character arc.
So when I’m thinking of the entire series as a whole and trying to step back and see kind of a big picture, I will give a lot of thought to the protagonist’s arc. Where do they start page one, book one? And where am I hoping they’re going to end up?
Within that, depending on how many books you have in your series, there’s probably going to be some reversals. There might be that in book one, your protagonist might end on a really high note.
Book two, it might be the opposite. They may be way down at the bottom now. Something terrible has happened that they have to claw their way out of.
Or they learn something about themselves in book one, but then book two, you flip it on its head and say, “They thought this thing, but surprise, actually, it’s a negative in some way.”
Playing around with these different moments as the character is changing, developing, learning about secrets, exploring their world.
Generally speaking, we tend to think of character arcs as being upward, but I think it’s helpful to think of it more as a roller coaster. There should be dips, there should be lots of places where things are going wrong.
So that’s one thing that I’m thinking about as I’m putting together a series. Then I’m also thinking about my antagonist and my conflicts. I have often likened it to like old video games, where every level ends with a boss, but then the very end of the game has the big boss that you’re really trying to defeat.
So the first boss, you have barely enough skills to defeat that first boss, and maybe it takes a few tries to beat that first level, but you do it. Oh, but now you have to do the second level, and that next boss is going to be even harder.
As you go, you’re getting better. Your characters are picking up new skills, new weapons, new allies. So at the end of every book we have a conflict, a climax, something that we have to face, and everyone is going to be a step up, a little more difficult than the last one.
So that we know by the time our character is finally ready to face that big conflict, the big struggle, the antagonist, villain, whatever it is you have at the end of the series, that you have given them the skills that they need to actually defeat them.
Joanna: There’s some great advice there. So let’s come into more of the business side because you do have this section on the to-do list. I love this because the to-do list is never ending. For indie authors, we’re publishing, as well as marketing and writing and everything.
How do authors say no and reduce that to-do list, in order to stop being so overwhelmed?
Marissa: Oh, my gosh. It is hard, and I will admit this is something that I personally have really struggled with. I’m a yes person. I like to say yes. I like to please people. I like to feel like I am doing everything within my power to make a book a success, to further my career. So I get it.
I absolutely get how difficult it is to recognize when we need a little space, or we need some downtime, or when we need to take a step back. For me, and I didn’t come up with this, I read it in some productivity guide, self help guide, a long time ago, but it really resonated with me.
Every time you say yes to something, you are also saying no to something.
For example, if you say, yes, I will be on this panel at this book festival.
Okay, let’s say you have to travel there. Let’s say it’s a full day being on the panel. There’s probably going to be a signing. Maybe there’s an author dinner. Another full day of travel going back home. So we’ve got essentially two to three days for that yes.
There’s lots of times when, great, I can’t wait. I’m looking forward to this. I’m going to meet some readers, I’m going to network with authors.
Maybe you recognize that by saying yes to that, I’m saying no to three days with my family, or I’m saying no to three days of working on my novel, or I’m saying no to a day where I could relax and spend a day reading a book and refilling my well.
So none of these are the right option, none of them are the wrong option, but just recognizing that there are pros and cons, and give and take, and be really picky about what you’re spending your time on and what you are making your priority at any given point.
Joanna: It is interesting. You mentioned a panel there, and I feel like conferences and conventions are one of these things that is quite difficult. Now, you and I, again, have been doing this a while, so we have a community, like we have author friends.
There are people listening who might be introverts. They might feel very uncomfortable about going to writing conferences, and they’re like, should I just say no to that? I guess that the question is—
When should you go to something, even if you feel you want to say no?
When do you have to push yourself as an author, and when should you give into those feelings? I know it’s tough, but when have you done this as an early writer and then later stage?
Marissa: This is one of those things where I really think people have to tap into their own psyche and recognize, what are my limitations, what are my goals? For me, early in my career, I did it all. If I was invited to something, it was an automatic yes.
I also did not have children at the start of my career, so for me, when it really started to change, as far as recognizing my time is limited, my energy is limited, I have to step back and say no to more things, was when I had kids.
Then it really became that balancing act of, when do you focus on the writing and the career? When do you focus on family?
That said, I mean, the publishing process, the writing process, there’s ups and downs. There are times when you are really focused on selling a book, on marketing a book, promoting. That’s both with in-person events, doing book signings, doing the festivals. There’s also social media, sending out newsletters.
There’s going to be periods where you’re trying to get your book noticed by readers, but that doesn’t have to be all day, all the time, for years and years and years.
You can really focus on it for one, two, three months, whatever your capacity is, and then step back. Maybe take a hiatus on social media.
Maybe say, for these next five months, I need to write a new book, and I need to focus on being with my family and do some self-care. So for these five months, I’m saying no to all other requests. I mean, whatever it is. I’m just throwing out numbers. Of course, this is going to be different for everybody.
So really think about —
What are my limitations? Know that you really can’t do it all.
I hate saying that because I am one of those people where I feel like I can do it all, just let me try. But you really can’t.
You have to make choices sometimes and recognize that if you’re trying to do it all for too long, then that’s a recipe for burnout. That’s the last thing we want.
The last thing we want is to get to a point in our career where we dread the writing, or we dread the travel, or we dread the book events.
So whenever you start to feel like it’s too much, listen to that and give yourself some space. Realize that the world is not going to fall apart if you take a little bit of time off.
Joanna: I love that. Actually, I prefer this sort of campaign focus, which is what you were really saying there. It’s like, go hard for, say, three months, and then take a couple of months off. I do that. I kind of step back from social media.
Some people feel like they have to do, I know the TikTok authors in particular, are doing a lot of videos every single day. They feel like if they stop, it’s all going to end.
The race never stops, does it? It never stops unless you stop.
Marissa: It’s true. There’s always going to be the next goal post. There’s always going to be that next thing that you’re thinking, “Oh, if I just get this many followers, then I can slow down.”
Then you get that many followers, and you think, “Oh, but I’ve got a book coming out in two months, so I’ll keep going until then, and then I’ll slow down.” “Oh, but now I’ve got this other thing.” I mean, it’s always going to push back. It’s always going to be something else.
It’s hard to recognize when you do need some personal space, but it’s also really important. Not just for our mental health and wellbeing, but for our creativity too.
Joanna: Okay, so another thing that some people are not that happy or joyful about is pitching publishers and agents. Mostly people are quite stressed about that.
Now, you work with traditional publishers. I’m primarily an independent author. There are pros and cons.
Tell us a bit more about your experience with traditional publishing.
Any tips for people who want to position themselves in a world of publishing flux, as ever?
Marissa: Definitely one of the most stressful periods in a career is the pitching to the agents, the querying trenches, the submission trenches. It can do some damage on your confidence, on your everything. So it’s a really difficult period.
If your goal is to be traditionally published, as opposed to independently published, and as you say, great options. There’s so many great directions that we have available to us today.
If you really think you want to be traditionally published, of course, number one, just make sure you’ve written the best book that you can. Get some feedback. Have some critique partners go over it.
Edit and polish it to within an inch of its life.
Then when you feel like, okay, I’ve done the best I can do, write your query letter. Again, get feedback there, because query letters are particularly tricky, and there is a science and an art to them. Do your research.
Then send it off, and, number one, celebrate because it’s so huge. It’s such a huge accomplishment to get to the point where you’re querying. So regardless of whether you get 10 agents interested and it goes to auction at publishers, or if no one bites, like regardless, you have written a complete book and submitted it.
That’s so awesome, so like take a moment to congratulate yourselves and go out for pizza or whatever, whatever you do to celebrate. Then start writing the next thing.
The worst thing that we can do is have this book sent out, and then just spend all day, every day, worried about it and stressing about it and having that anxiety building up and checking our email 100 times a day, which like you’re probably going to do anyway.
If you can, try to refocus your energy on something new, what is the next project you can be excited about?
Then dive into it, body and soul and spirit, and try to immerse yourself in a new story.
This is for a number of reasons. One, because it’s going to be a great distraction. But two, when and if your book on submission gets picked up, your agent is going to ask you, what else you got? So it’s great to have something else that you can talk about.
Joanna: Then what I do like in your book—I mean, I like lots of things—but you do also —
Talk about what might happen if you break up with an agent, or lose an agent or an editor or a publicist.
I like that you covered this because so many people think, “Oh, if I get an agent or a publisher, that’s it forever. My whole life is amazing, and I’m rich and famous, and everything will work out.”
So why might some of these things happen over a career, and what’s the kind of attitude you need to survive it all?
Marissa: This was one of the big surprises for me, as I started to expand my group, my network of writers, how common it is to break up with an agent or to switch publishers, publishing houses, to switch editors. It happens all the time.
This was shocking to me because I very much felt like, no, when you’ve got an agent and a publisher, you are set forever. That is your career, those are your people. So I was really surprised that that is not the case.
There’s so many reasons why one of these relationships may not work out. I’ve had friends whose agents have retired, whose editors have moved to different publishers. So it might be something rather innocuous. Life just happens.
Or it could be a matter of just not being the right fit for each other. Maybe your agent only represents kid lit and you want to move into adult. Or you really want to start writing romance, but they don’t represent romance.
It could be a matter of my agents not communicating with me. Or I feel like they’re no longer focused on me and my career, and I feel like I’m not getting the attention that I really need and want out of an agent.
Again, there’s so many reasons, but it does happen. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just a little blip, another blip in your journey.
By and large, the friends I have who have left an agent, or whose agent has left their career or whatever, then when they find someone new, more often than not, they end up feeling like, you know what? This was the right thing.
I really took my time, I found someone new who is a great fit for me, who is excited about my career and my upcoming projects, and who is really working it and making things happen, and making book deals happen.
So I know it’s really hard in that moment because you can feel like I worked so hard to get this agent, why would I ever leave them and go back to querying?
So really try to take a big picture look and think, well, I might be going through a bad spot now, but what is the potential payoff in the end? What do I stand to succeed and to gain in doing this? So it’s a tough decision. It’s not a fun part of the career, but it is a reality for a lot of us.
Joanna: If you want a long-term career, you’re the one who is in charge.
So you just make some more choices and carry on. We don’t let that end our careers.
Marissa: Absolutely, and you’re always going to be your best advocate.
We think of our agents as our advocates, and we think of our editors as our advocates. They absolutely are, but ultimately, no one is paying as much attention to your career as you are. So we really have to speak up for ourselves, first and foremost.
Joanna: We’re almost out of time, but I have to ask you about book marketing because it is a part of every author’s life, and again, something where happiness and joy might not be such a big part. So how can we make marketing more fun?
What do you enjoy most about book marketing?
Marissa: Oh, my gosh. If you figure it out, you let me know.
Joanna: Well, I like podcasting. So, there you go.
Marissa: I also really enjoyed podcasting, although I did just retire my podcast because, again, too many things, too many spinning plates, and you have to make some tough choices sometimes.
For me, you know, find the things that you do enjoy. I learned early on, I don’t like Facebook, and I don’t like Twitter/X. It was difficult pulling back from those because I had a fair amount of followers, but when I did, it was clearly the right decision. I wish I’d done that a long time ago.
Then it allowed me to focus my energy and my attention on Instagram, which is the platform that I just naturally gravitate toward best. I just enjoy it the most.
Pick and choose the things that you do get some enjoyment out of, and then set boundaries around it.
We were talking about the TikTokers who feel like they have to make multiple videos every day. Figure out what—again, back to limitations— what is your capacity?
Have a plan in place and say, okay, I’m going to post three times a week, or five times a week. Or maybe I’m going do Fan Art Fridays, and I’m going do New Book Tuesdays or whatever it is, and then maybe I’ll have one fun family post, or one fun “this is a quirky thing about me” post every week.
So you can kind of have a plan and break it down so that you’re not every morning looking at your phone thinking, “Oh, I have to post on Instagram again,” or, “I have to do a TikTok video. Now, what am I going to talk about?”
I also think it’s helpful to maybe once a month, or maybe at the start of a big promo season, spend some time doing your big brainstorming and kind of like batch.
I like batching things, like the things on my to-do list.
So I’ll spend a day brainstorming what I want to post, and then I’ll spend a few hours taking the necessary photos and trying to put together the captions or trying to put together the graphics or whatever. Then that’s done, and I don’t have to worry about that for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, if you’re really productive.
So it’s a really nice, efficient way to tackle that and then be able to move back to writing, which is, for most of us, the thing that we would rather be doing.
Joanna: Absolutely. Now, the book is The Happy Writer.
Where can people find you and all your books online?
Marissa: Thank you so much. I can be found on Instagram at MarissaMeyerAuthor, or on my website at MarissaMeyer.com. Books are available pretty much wherever you like to get your books.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Marissa. That was great.
Marissa: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
When is it worth writing a Second Edition of a book that already sells well? How might elements of memoir impact non-fiction self-help books?
What are the challenges and opportunities of a second edition, as well as practical tips? I discuss these things and more with Matty Dalrymple on The Indy Author Podcast, a fantastic show that covers the craft of writing and author business.
You can watch the video below, or here on YouTube, or listen to The Indy Author Podcast on your favourite podcast app.
Show notes:
Joanna shares insights into the changes in nonfiction writing, especially the inclusion of personal elements influenced by her memoir writing. The conversation delves into the challenges and benefits of creating a new edition versus updating an existing one, the impact of technology, including AI, on the writing and publishing industry, and the importance of storytelling in nonfiction. Joanna also discusses practical strategies for updating nonfiction books and shares her experiences in podcasting and book marketing.
00:00 Introduction and Initial Thoughts on Writing
01:06 Joanna Penn’s Background and Achievements
01:56 The Evolution of Nonfiction Writing
02:40 Personal Elements in Nonfiction
04:41 Business Perspective on Writing
06:27 Restructuring and Craft Changes
07:51 Memoir and Personal Insights
10:02 Challenges and Considerations in Updating Books
15:49 The Role of AI in Writing and Publishing
26:25 Stratification of Audio Rights
27:47 Current Audio Platforms and AI Narration
29:10 Selling Direct and Revenue Models
30:28 Blogging and Alternative Platforms
40:20 Podcasting as a Marketing Tool
42:31 Second Editions vs. Updates
49:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Transcript:
Matty: Hello fellow Creative Voyagers. This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I talked with Joanna Penn about the evolving author and second editions, including the release of the second edition of Joanna’s book, How to Write Non-Fiction.
Joanna discusses the changes in her nonfiction writing, including the importance of storytelling, which led her to apply some of the personal elements and insights she’s used in her memoir into this new edition.
We delve into the challenges and benefits of putting out a new edition versus updating an existing one, the evolving landscape of self-publishing and the impact of new technologies on the writing business. And now let’s hear from Joanna Penn about the evolving author and second editions.
Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast today my guest is Joanna Penn. Hey, Joanna, how are you doing?
Joanna: Hi, Matty. I’m great. Lovely to be here.
Matty: It is lovely to have you here and for anyone who’s may be very new to the indie author space. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Joanna Penn writes Nonfiction for Authors and is an award-winning New York Times and USA today bestselling author of Thrillers, Dark Fantasy, and Memoir as J.F. Penn.
She’s also an award-winning podcaster of the wonderful The Creative Penn Podcast, a creative entrepreneur and an international professional speaker. Joanne was last on the podcast in episode way back in episode 54. Futurist Trends we can prepare for now, and that was in November of 2020. And so I’m gonna go back and re-listen to that, see how that turned out.
The futurist things are always fun to look back on, you know? Yeah. Then sometimes quite embarrassing. Obviously I, I doubt it will be embarrassing. I suspect it will be very prophetic of what we talked about back then. But Joanna came back on the podcast. We’re gonna be talking about sort of two things.
One is writing nonfiction because Joanna’s second edition of the How to Write Nonfiction is going to be out right around the time this airs. And also talking about her thinking behind doing a second edition. So Joanna, the first How to Write nonfiction came out in 2018, I think, right?
Joanna: Yes. I know. It seems like another world at this point.
Matty: Yeah, well it was sort of surprising until, you know, you announced that you were gonna have a second edition and I started thinking about it. But writing nonfiction, I think at a glance would be one of those like, how much can it change? Um, so I’m just, uh, curious to hear from you, what did change —
What changed so much that made you feel like a second edition was something you wanted to put out?
Joanna: Well, this question is so great because I actually think the biggest thing that is important in nonfiction is how much personal stuff we put in it.
Because let’s face it, AI can write generic nonfiction. And so when I was thinking about a second edition, and there’s various reasons, but the main one was I’ve written a memoir since then.
My book Pilgrimage, which is a travel memoir / midlife memoir. And that changed the way I write so much. And memoir of course is a form of nonfiction.
Pilgrimage, my first limited edition hardback with color photos inside
So I wanted to include all my thoughts and experiences of writing memoir into this book. I decided not to change the title to How to Write Nonfiction and or Memoir ’cause that just would’ve been a bit much. So that was one of the biggest changes.
I have changed, and my writing craft has changed.
I wanted to include all this craft stuff I’d learned around writing memoir. So that’s one of the biggest additions and changes to the book, but also to myself. And I could not have written in that before. And I was very struck when I read the first edition, you know, as I was sort of preparing for the second one was like, ‘oh my goodness, my writing has changed so much.’
I think sometimes we have periods, you know, it’s not a linear up and to the right. As we get better over time, if we keep practicing and keep publishing, it’s more that there are these books that sometimes we write that make such a big difference to us, and Pilgrimage did that for me.
And then also Writing the Shadow, which I wrote directly after Pilgrimage. So I actually feel like two of the most significant books in my creative career were written in the last couple of years and the pandemic obviously made a big difference to our mental health. And I put a lot more of that in there.
Joanna Penn with gold foil edition of Writing the Shadow (Kickstarter only)
I feel like the mindset stuff has changed. All that to say that, the writing craft was actually one of the reasons I wanted to address it.
From the business perspective, ’cause you cover both on this show as well, from the business perspective —
How to Write Non-Fiction is one of my top sellers.
And so I was looking at my business thinking, hmm, I’m getting to the point where I’m a little bit less happy about promoting it as the first edition because there’s a lot that has changed in our business.
As well, even down to things like I wanted to change the publishing and the marketing tips and thoughts and make them more evergreen, change some of the affiliate links and of course also add in AI.
I have added in AI prompts in different parts of the book to help people use AI tools in an ethical and practical way.
And then finally, is the audiobook. So this is both business and craft, is that in 2018, I paid a narrator to do the audio book. Of course one of our double down on being human and being a voice brand, you are a voice brand as well, is that people do like to hear the voice of the author.
I wanted to record the audio bookmyself and in looking at it, it was like, okay, no, I need to do a new edition in order to record the audio book.
So that’s like loads of reasons why, I guess.
Matty: You talked specifically about the fact that you wanted to add in memoir. If you look across other differences between the first and second edition, are there areas where the subject matter was the same, but the approach you used had differed based on some of these experiences that you’re describing?
Like where were the biggest changes, do you feel?
Joanna: Yeah, so I guess the first thing is —
I restructured the book.
Just a sort of practical tip for people. I exported the addition from Vellum, so, which is a formatting tool if people don’t know. And then imported that into a new Scrivener project.
So I did start with practically the first edition. I didn’t start from scratch and the first thing I did was reorder things. That was really strange. I was like, Ooh, why is that in that order? And I felt that even my creative process had changed. In that sense, I also, there were I think five parts in the old one.
And now there’s only three parts in terms of before you write and then the actual writing and editing process. And then the business of nonfiction.
It’s interesting ’cause originally I had split kind of publishing marketing business and now I just feel like that’s all one thing. And so I amalgamated some of those things the other.
The other big shift I sort of feel is that —
I don’t wanna write specific how-to things that people can get from other places. It needs to be more personal.
So I kind of mush together a lot of the publishing stuff in order to write a more evergreen approach. And sort of again, the more mindset side, the more emotional side, the more feeling side that people can’t necessarily get from something else.
So that was a big shift, is that reorganization and then . Obviously, as I said, adding in more personal elements, I put more of the personal side around writing memoir. And also I think when I first wrote the book, I was mainly writing more prescriptive self-help. And so it was practical for me to say, this is how you structure a non-fiction book.
And these are, you know, you can use subheadings and you know, you write nonfiction too. It’s some, sometimes it’s like, okay, just write, I’m writing this chapter and you just write it.
Whereas with memoir, it can just take a lot longer. So I think I include a lot more allowance for self-doubt and for experimentation, and I’ve also really embraced being a discovery writer since 2018, being an intuitive writer, things that I was slightly maybe embarrassed about in the past.
My own creative confidence is stronger and that comes through.
I pretty much rewrote almost every single sentence in the book, even though if people have the first edition, the topics, I mean, like you said, how much changes in that way. You still do a lot of the same things. But I do feel like to me it is a very, very different book.
And I’m actually narrating the audio book [as we record this].
As I’m reading it, I’m like, oh, this sounds a lot more like me than the 2018 version of me. I mean, you have your Writing Short book that’s a few years old now. Do you ever have a sense of I should rewrite anything ’cause you’ve got more experience?
Matty: Yeah, for sure. One of the things is that I’ve spoken on that topic a lot, and so I have a better sense of the things that I can see an audience responds to or the questions they ask. Also there was just a certain amount, like Mark and I tried to keep it fairly evergreen, so we tried to limit references to particular services or particular platforms, but you can’t really write a book on nonfiction without mentioning some of those.
And some of those, like, some of the names of the platforms have changed. I think probably at least one of the platforms has gone away. So yeah, that is definitely, it’s definitely on my list. It’s been on my list to re-look at for a while, but it just hasn’t bubbled to the top because of some other nonfiction work that I’ve been looking at.
Joanna: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say on that because there are other books that are older of mine, like Career Change.
Some people have asked me for new versions of my other books.
The last time I rewrote Career Change, that was 2012, or Business for Authors, which was 2014, even like How to Market a Book. But these are books I don’t want to touch, at least at the moment.
I’m not interested in revisiting those topics, at least at the moment. But also, like I said about the money side, as authors, we have to consider —
Do I spend the time reworking this older book, or do I spend the time writing a new book? There has to be a really valid business reason to do it.
And as you say, if it’s just that Twitter is now X or you know, different sites of changed, you know, Smashwords got bought by Draft2Digital, and you know, these are the types of things that happen that date books.
But as a nonfiction reader, and I know you read a lot as well, it’s like some things make a difference and other things don’t.
And so it’s where’s the balance. But I would say to people listening, if you are feeling like, desperately feeling like it’s not me anymore, that’s kind of what I was feeling. That book doesn’t represent me and it sells enough copies that I need it to. That’s kind of why I made that decision.
Matty: I think that idea of what is your goal for the book is really important because I don’t know that I went into writing, Taking the Short Tack with this goal, but my evolved goal is that it’s really a calling card for me to pitch myself as a speaker on the topic of short fiction, and I’ve definitely made more money from speaking engagements than I have through the book.
And so that book is gonna be out there as my calling card forever. And so I don’t have the same impetus as if I were saying to myself, oh, I really have a whole different perspective on short fiction. I really have a whole different bunch of different things to say about short fiction. So yeah, what the book is doing for you is an important consideration for sure.
When you realized that you wanted to incorporate a memoir as part of your offerings to people in the nonfiction area —
Did you think about doing a book specific to memoir?
I did. And it may come up at some other point in my life. When I did Pilgrimage as part of the Kickstarter for it, I had a stretch goal, which was that I would write a little book on writing memoir, and that was, it’s about 10,000 words, so it was about an hour of audio narration, which I did for backers.
And so I had that material and I had thought I could expand that. So for about a year I sat on that thinking I would expand it into how to write memoir. And then I looked at the other books on memoir and I thought, I don’t have the chops for this. You know, I really did just think, no, there are some already.
You must feel the same way too. Because our books, there are other books on, like both of us have books on public speaking. Right, right. We both have completely valid things to say and neither of us, you know, have any issue with the other one having a book on it. Right. And neither of us feel bad about that.
But when I looked at some of these other memoir books, I was like, I’m not even on the same level as those people because they’ve been doing it for so long. Like professional speaking. Both of us have been doing that for more than a decade, like probably two at this point. And so we know that topic.
And with nonfiction, you know, I’ve written what 15, 17 nonfiction books or whatever it is. So I feel like I can do that with memoir. I’ve only written the one and although it was probably one of the most difficult books I’ve ever done, I don’t feel like I had enough experience.
But it’s such a great question because originally back in the day, if I learn, as soon as I learned something, I would write a book on it, but it’s almost like —
Memoir is this very particular thing that is so emotional and can be so life changing for people that it takes a lot more work
— and I almost feel like it might be something I do later in my life, but I think I need to write some more memoir first. I don’t know. What do you think about memoir? Because you, you know, nonfiction is such a big category.
Matty: I am realizing like memoirs, the kind of thing that when I’m thinking of nonfiction categories, I don’t think of it because I think of memoirs like its own thing. It’s not, it’s not fiction, but I don’t really categorize it as nonfiction either.
And honestly, I’m not a big memoir reader and most of my exposure to memoir has been talking with people to an extent for the podcast, but also I have a video series called What I Learned, where I asked people what they learned from their latest book that they’d like to share with their fellow readers and what they learned that they would like to share with their fellow writers.
And a number of the people I interviewed for that were Memoirists. And I almost felt as if the, the impetus for people writing a memoir was much more personal than either with nonfiction or for fiction.
I mean, I think a lot of people dive into fiction because they think, oh, I really wanna explore this idea of, uh, somebody coming of age in a certain era and they face this certain challenge or whatever it might be, whatever sort of drives the plot or drives the characters or whatever the impetus is.
But I think that all the memoirists that I spoke with were writing from a very personal perspective, like it was triggered by a personal event or triggered by a personal revelation or something like that.
And I thought, man, if I were to try to look for the commonality, like if I were providing advice, I don’t know what I’d provide because that really would be kind of a mindset book and, and it would almost be like a psychology book in a way.
Joanna: Yeah. Well, and that’s why I think there’s a lot more in there, but I also think that’s why I’ve very much emphasized the personal element. But I think it’s also important for us in our more general nonfiction books, as I, as I said —
One of the things that generative AI, ChatGPT etc, are very, very good at is providing generic advice.
That is completely fine. And there’s a sort of rising number of people who are using these tools as coaches, you know, to answer questions about how to live and how to date and how to cook.
I use it quite a lot for that and all these things that, so when I was revisiting this, and also just on your point on memoir, it, it, you are having to face this challenge of how much do I share about my struggles?
How much do I share about my life? So in the book, and this chapter was actually in the first edition. You know, I talk about how a nonfiction book changed my life and it was a memoir, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And in the first, in the first edition, I had not written a memoir. And then obviously now I have and I can almost —
I appreciate so much more how important it is to share those personal moments in our nonfiction work.
So even with our, with our public speaking, for example, in my book I share the physical things that happen when you’re about to go on stage and you’re like, you know, having to go to the toilet for the 10th time. And, you know, and the real gut stuff that people assume is just them, but is actually, most people have these reactions.
And so being more, talking more about physical sensations, about mental things, I think these are just so important for making our books stand out and for this idea of doubling down on being human and just connecting on a much more personal level. So I’d urge people listening —
Please, if you’re writing nonfiction, even if it is more self-helpy or not memoir, try and include aspects of yourself and your life and your personal thoughts into your books.
And sometimes that can be journal entries.
I often use journal entries, which, you know, I mine my own journals in the past for things that I can put in that helps or doing a survey. And asking for people’s permission to use quotes from real people. It, ’cause then you get more different voices into the book.
So anything we can do to bring all material alive with more human content, I think,
Matty: yeah, I think that that idea of the importance of storytelling in, even in kind of instructional nonfiction, obviously in memoir.
I’m thinking back to some of the advice that Michael and I shared in From Page to Platform, and part of that was definitely the importance of incorporating stories into presentations.
I just got off a call with Mark because he and I are gonna be co-authoring a book on, it’s called The Podcast Guest Playbook, and we were talking about the, yeah, yeah. We could send it to all our podcast guests. We were talking about the importance of story. So it would be cool. Here’s a book idea, just the idea of how best to tell stories.
I mean, I know that this, this won’t be a new book, but a new take on it, especially in the context of ai, the importance of telling stories in all these ways, telling stories and making them personal, and having that be the way we double down on being human.
Joanna: That book on being a podcast guest is great because I spend a lot of time, I’m sure you do, educating people on how to be a good podcast guest, but here is a tip with ai, which I found super, super useful, is you can —
Use AI tools to do research on podcast hosts, and then you can also get ChatGPT or Claude to write you a pitch email directly targeting that particular host.
You can, even, if you are happy to upload your book and say, What are the 20 podcasts I should pitch for this book? Write me a pitch to the host of The Indy Author so this would fit her show. And part of me is like, oh no, that means we’ll get a ton more pitches.
But part of me is like, yes, please, because the number of terrible pitches we get, and I’m sure you do as well. It’s like, I would really like some better pitches. So I’m excited about your book.
Matty: Oh, good. Good. I’ll let you notice it too. And it’s out there. Yeah. I think my, one of my biggest gripes in that area is people who pitch, who should really be pitching a book tour type of podcast, you know, who just wanna come on and talk about their latest book, not a sort of share more give tips, And not give tips.
More general information for, so I’m going to, I wanna use that discussion about AI because I was looking through your, your catalog of books and . Some of them just based on the title and based on me having read them, seem very evergreen. I think in general there’s sort of historically a recommendation that the more evergreen you can make the book, the less often you have to think about revisiting it for factual reasons as opposed to personal mindset reasons.
But one of them, which I imagine is, is the most time-bound one, is Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds. Assuming that you’d have to go back to frequently to update, did you do it just as like a snapshot in time and figured it would, that’s what it would be. What is your thought about future editions of that book?
Joanna: Well, what is classic, because I am usually five years early, so that book, that must have been what I came on last time to talk about in 2020.
That came out in November, 2020, and is only now coming true.
So it’s actually right now it’s incredibly correct. At the time the interviews I were doing, people were saying, you are completely mad and what are you talking about?
But actually it’s, it’s starting to come true. For example, data licensing deals for our work. This is now finally starting to happen. Only a couple of months ago, or even perhaps a month ago, the Author’s Guild said they are gonna work with Created by Humans to do data licensing. And of course we’ve got tons of companies signing data, licensing deals.
I think Harper Collins, As well as some of the other big publishers like Time Magazine and all of this signing deals. News Corp certainly did that. So also in there things like blockchain technology and we don’t need to go into that, but that is now really having a resurgence.
Generative ai, certainly around nonfiction. I talked about AI for voice and that is also now going mainstream. So amusingly, that book is exactly now on time almost. Well, that’s four years later.
People could read that book now and they’d be like, oh, that’s exactly what’s going on. It’s not futurist at all. (But it’s 5 years old)
So I think what’s interesting, the virtual world hasn’t happened so much.
I was, you know, looking at the early days of metaverse, but I think that is gonna come with some of the world building AIs, which are starting to develop now. So we saw in the last week the release of OpenAI’s, sora.com, which is generative video. And there’s a lot of these ones where it will generate a world as you move through it.
That’s what we need for metaverse. A lot of these technologies are only now just starting to happen. So if I was to write another one like that, it would be another sort of futurist look forward into where we might be in another five years. But to be honest, I think that where we are, even just now, we’ve got enough to be working on. I’m not planning on updating that.
I think one of the biggest shifts for authors is going to be audio books with AI voices.
Now, you and I have practiced, you know, obviously professional speaking, but also we’ve both been podcasting for a long time, and so we are more happy with voice and we’ve had a lot of practice and I’ve done voice training for narration and all of this.
I also want to narrate my books, but most people are not in our situation. And so most people want to get their book into audio. I would love to have my books in lots of different voices as well, accents and languages. And that is only possible with AI.
No one can afford to have their audio books in every language, in every accent, in every country in the world. It’s impossible without AI.
And yet what we have is in the West, in English, we have this total dominant world, whereas in some countries, they have nothing because there’s no audiobook market.
So if we want people to be able to listen to audiobooks in their own language or their own dialect, then we need AI to help us leverage that with translation and with AI narration. So I think all of those things are super exciting.
I actually think that even just using our, the existing AI technologies we have today, we have a lot more to do over the next five years.
Matty: I think AI audio is such an interesting topic and I am just waiting. I keep checking in with, you know, platforms like ElevenLabs and things like that, and seeing how things are going there because I would love to be able to make AI generated, audio trained on my own voice.
And as for my co-authored books with Michael LaRonn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre, we all have plenty of audio that an AI could be trained on to, you know, it would be fun for short t There were certainly chapters that Mark contribute to more, and some that I contributed to more.
It would be super cool to have each of us read the chapters that we were more driving. And even for like my dream scenario for my fiction, I also just keep checking in and seeing how it’s doing on fiction. I’m like, yeah, I’m still not there yet.
We actually have, like Michael and I have AI generated audio, Google Play generated audio for From Page to Platform, but I keep checking back in on fiction and it’s not quite there yet, but the woman who narrates my fiction, which who I love, she doesn’t really do this as a full-time gig anymore.
She’s just kind of fitting me in as a favor. And so there’s often many months between the time and ebook and a print book go become available and when the audio becomes available.
I think the dream scenario for all of us would be she trains AI on her voice and we do some kind of royalty split —
or I pay her some amount for the benefit of using a voice that sounds consistent with my other books and brings all the things that I love about her.
And so, uh, that’s another thing I’m waiting for.
Joanna: Yeah. Well, just on that audio again, in that 2020 book, one of the things I said is —
We need stratification of audio rights —
for the reason you just said is that, um, at the moment when people license their audio, they’re licensing the whole book. It’s just like audiobook rights, It’s just one thing and that’s designed for an old world now where there’s one voice or multicast reading one book, so it might be audio book in English or whatever.
But what we need is like you said, you might pay your human narrator a particular thing, and we might sell that at a higher price, human narrated audio.
Then we might have AI generated audio where we can license that separately, maybe to an auto translation narration app for different languages and then maybe we have multicast.
And what I also think is a kind of hybrid model where on a multicast audio, let’s say there are two main characters, Matty and Jo, and we are human, but there are 20 minor characters that we can then use AI for.
And then we stitch those together into a multicast human AI audio experience, which I think is very, very, very cool and will save time and money and enable more production to go ahead. So that’s, that’s just on one thing on the platforms.
Where we are right now with AI audio is —
— and you are in the US and you always get the best things. So what we do have is Amazon actually do have their own audio, and that’s still in a private beta. It’s in the US only. It’s invitation only.
So there are quite a lot of mainly romance authors doing AI audio through Amazon, not through ACX, but through Amazon audio. Then we’ve got Google Play Audio, which you can do if you have an ebook wide. You can then do Google narration.
And then we’ve got ElevenLabs. I mean, there’s a whole load of them, but ElevenLabs really is the sort of best in class, and a number of traditional publishers are now doing deals with them to do the different translation and narration type ideas With Spotify and FindawayVoices.
At the moment, they still only allow Google, but there are rumors that they will allow something like ElevenLabs files in the future if they can sort out the verification of the ownership of the IP. That’s the main issue.
It’s not the quality of the AI narration that is the issue, it’s the ownership of the IP.
So I think where we are in 2025 is we’re going to see — the dams will be broken and this will all start happening and be much more open.
But for authors, what we have to remember, and this is why this stratification thing I think is important, the revenue model of audio has shifted dramatically and one of the very good things now with selling direct, which is another thing that’s really kind of come of age over the last five years is that —
Now I’m happy for people to get it wherever, but for authors to have revenue and for narrators to have revenue, we need these different stratification of rights and the different ways of selling.
So that’s just to encourage people to think wide is not just not Amazon. It’s also things like selling audio, selling bundle deals.
People pay decent money for an audio bundle because, you know, nonfiction, particularly people love audio. I listened to tons of audio nonfiction, so there’s a few things to consider.
Matty: Yeah, I’m definitely someone who likes to read words on a page when I’m reading fiction, but I like to hear it when I’m absorbing nonfiction.
I dunno why my brain works in different ways in that way, but for people who do like nonfiction, reading words on a page, nonfiction, I’m wondering about other platforms like, blog sounds so old fashioned, but, you know, sharing, especially mindset driven nonfiction on things like Medium or Substack or something like that.
Is blogging on SubStack or Medium something you considered as an outlet for what you’re sharing for nonfiction?
Joanna: It’s interesting. I used to blog as in, I used to put articles on my own website and I used to do guest articles for other people’s websites. Then what happened probably about five years ago, maybe, maybe a bit longer.
The Alliance of Independent Authors, of which we are both members and advisors. And your campaign manager I think. Yeah. So the Alliance of Independent Authors SelfPublishingAdvice.org blog started I think around then, anyway, that was one of the reasons I stopped blogging. Also, Kindlepreneur and a whole load of other sites where there were more than one writer involved.
And so I just felt like I cannot compete with article writing in a world where there are multiple people writing very good articles, I guess Medium and Substack maybe came around the same time, and I felt like, how do I compete in this space for a long time?
I started so early in self-publishing. I started in 2008. My website was one of the very first.
I didn’t have to compete then because there were very few people doing that, and then things started to change. So then I went really hard into audio-first.
So mainly the only articles now on my website is the transcription of the podcasts. I’ll sometimes do extra ones, but I do share articles in my Patreon, which is behind a paywall.
So that is something I do still do articles on. But in terms of Substack and Medium and all that, I also felt like I didn’t want to be part of the kind of mass article making machine that I felt almost was a big thing between 2008 to 2018 maybe.
So it was like a decade there of blogging, like you said, we called it blogging and people did blog tours and redid all this, and now I feel like things have shifted. That’s how I feel. I don’t know. I mean, how do you feel about this?
Matty: Well, it’s not something that I pursued because I do sort of feel as if I have a certain number of words in my head to share. And if I’m gonna expend them, I’m gonna expend them on my own books. Certainly not on other people’s blogs.
But I just don’t think in a way that I think would lend itself to platforms like Substack and Medium, I don’t read those things myself. And so I always think venturing into something that you don’t enjoy as a consumer is tricky. You know —
Trying to create things that are in a style you don’t consume yourself is tricky.
And it is interesting because I think all those informational sort of, you know, do I need an ISBN kind of questions, those are becoming so easy to answer with ai. And I have started just always tacking on at the end of my ChatGPT questions, please give me links to all your source material to make sure that that it’s right.
But those things that are just sharing information, I’ve gotta believe, are eventually gonna start going away. Because if people can get it easily through something like Chat, GPT or Claude or whatever, then there’s gonna be less impetus for that. But then I think it goes back to what you were saying before about leaning into our humanity and sharing stories and being personal because.
Those are the things that people are gonna be going to an individual person for. And I kind of feel like the people I’ve spoken to on the podcast who ha, who are active on Substack or Medium or outlets like that are doing it because they feel like they themselves have a particular perspective that they want to share with people.
Not that they’re sort of educating people, they’re like connecting with people through those platforms.
Jo: And in that sense, if it’s personal, then that’s great. And I do read a few of them. I guess. I also come from the old school of —
Don’t build your platform on rented land.
And so when I saw Medium that’s just blogging on someone else’s platform, and Substack is building an email newsletter on someone else’s platform.
And so why would I do that when I already have my own website and I already have my own email list? So I think that’s the other thing. And I know that’s, people have changed their minds a lot on that, but I certainly haven’t, I’ve been paying for hosting since day one for the podcast and for the website.
And I mean, when I came into this, it was when there was still, friends reunited and you know, there was still these really early social media things, MySpace. People forget that these things disappear.
Let’s say you build and build and build on one of these platforms and then it goes away, how does that affect your backlist?
I guess so, yeah. I mean, it is, it’s very, it is an interesting situation. Some people will say, oh yeah, but you can download your list from Substack or whatever. So you still own it. To me, I guess I have this old school view that if you are not paying for something, then you are the product .
Matty: Yeah, I guess it would depend, and this is totally a question ’cause I have no opinion to the extent that people go on those kinds of platforms saying, oh, I’m going to, I’m gonna use this as a discovery method for finding everybody who’s writing about authoring nonfiction, or everybody who’s writing poetry or everybody who’s whatever.
If they’re doing that, then that could be a benefit to going to a platform rather than on your own website. But the comparable thing I’m thinking of is that —
I wouldn’t ever have thought of Kickstarter as being a book discovery platform, but it’s clearly becoming that.
And so, I always just thought of Kickstarter as being, it’s a way of tapping into your existing pool of, uh, fans in a different, more direct way.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who say, no. People go on Kickstarter and they’re just like looking for a book to read, and that’s how they’re finding their books now. I was like, well, that’s pretty cool. I would’ve never seen that coming.
Jo: Oh, yeah. I buy a lot of things on Kickstarter. I mean, you and I both write short stories.
I buy a lot of short story anthologies on Kickstarter. I think it’s actually a great discovery platform for these kind of weird end of the niches. And let’s face it, short story anthologies and collections. They’re not super, super mainstream in in anybody’s book, but just just on the kind of subset. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m kind of saying it’s a bad idea.
I think in, in a way, it’s similar to social media in that you are putting stuff out on someone else’s platform.
The most important thing is that you’re bringing people back to somewhere. Whether that is to sign up for your email newsletter, or to buy a book.
At the end of the day, we’re authors, we want people to buy a book.
So Kickstarter people discover you, and they buy a book. So it is a very short journey from being interested. Are you interested? Yes or no? And then there’s a button to press and you spend some money.
And, TikTok, for example, is done this very well. It’s very much a shopping channel, basically. A shopping channel, which is why people do so well.
They’re selling books. Selling all kinds of things. Whereas some of the other platforms haven’t got a real direct link between chatting and social and selling. It’s like that wasn’t the culture. And I feel like Substack and, Medium and some of those platforms, they’re not really designed to sell books.
They do have this subscription model where you can, you know, subscribe to someone’s SubStack. But I think like many of these things like books in general, or we said the 80:20 rule, most people in most areas are not gonna make a ton of money from subscriptions on these email platforms. So I think the main thing for authors to feel is —
You can’t do everything.
You and I have chosen not to do Medium or Substack. We have chosen to podcast, and both of us know that this is, this takes time, this takes investment. This is our chosen platform that we spend time on and effort on. I have stuck with X.
I don’t do TikTok, I rarely do any other social media, but —
We’ve got this splintering.
It used to be that there was a pathway to being an author and doing marketing, and now there’s so many options that authors have to decide —
okay, what am I going to do? You have to do something. But it could be Substack, it could be TikTok. It could be podcasting, but probably not all three.
Matty: Oh, yes. Yeah, for sure. I always like the, for everything you pick, you choose to do, you’re defacto choosing something you’re not going to do.
And also the idea that don’t do things that you, you don’t like as a consumer. So when TikTok came out, I spent like 35 seconds on TikTok just looking at it, and I was like, I, I just can’t even stand looking at this as a user. So never gonna be good at providing content to this as a creator.
Jo: That’s exactly right. And hence both of us listen to podcasts, listen to audio books. We’re kind of audio, almost audio first.
And again, I guess with this book. For my book for book marketing, you know, I said, can I come on people’s podcasts?
Hence I’m on your show and yeah, so I’m doing maybe —
In the old days people did a blog tour and now those of us who like doing podcasts to do more like a podcast tour
— or not so much a tour, but just try and talk about books and podcasts certainly sell books. So for people listening, you don’t have to have your own podcast, but you can certainly pitch to be on podcasts and you can buy Matty and Mark’s new book when it comes out.
Matty: And another idea specific to podcasts that I actually didn’t think about until I was co-presenting a presentation at International Thriller Writers Craft Fest with Jerry Williams, who’s the host of the FBI Retired Case File Review podcast.
We were doing a presentation on podcasting as content marketing, and we were working on the slides and we were talking about the pros and cons.
Like if people were thinking of starting a podcast, you know what, what would be a sign that they should, what might be a sign that they shouldn’t? Uh, jury said, well, of course it doesn’t have to be forever. Like maybe you just go out there with a six episode podcast around the topic of your book, for example, your nonfiction book.
You know, another alternative would be you just decide to do a six episode thing on writing nonfiction. And for people who are writing nonfiction, I think that would be a pretty cool, uh, way to sell some books and make a short-term commitment.
Jo: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I keep thinking of ideas for other podcasts, but I’m just like, oh, how, like you said about the number of words we have and how much energy you have in a week.
I do sometimes think about that, about how could I do a short podcast series. I did have another podcast called Books and Travel, which is still there. It’s about 90 episodes. I love that show and I think about it all the time and I’m like, oh, I would love to pick that up again.
Books and Travel is coming back!
I think there’s a lot to weigh up, but as we said, definitely go with what you enjoy consuming as as a person rather than kind of faking it.
Matty: Well, I had one quick question, and this was specific to the second edition of How to Write Non-Fiction.
And I think it’s a good tie into that idea of you only have so many hours in the day, what are you gonna spend them on? And can you just talk a little bit about —
What are the pros and cons of putting out a second edition of a book versus just continuing to update the book you already have out there?
Jo: To me, it has to be that under 10% thing.
So for example, back matter is something that people update. I have gone back in and removed. You know, in their long career as an author, things happen and you think, oh, I’m not sure I want that quote by that person anymore. So you go back in and you might remove something small like that. So updating.
I am thinking, so for example, Audio for Authors, part of me knows that it could, it could use a new edition, but I’m not going to do that. I will. Uh, but what I definitely want to add is Hindenburg narrator. Here’s a tip for everyone listening. The software,
Hindenburg Narrator has a one click button to master the files for ACX. It’s going to save you hundreds of dollars per book.
Just the one button for mastering for ACX, and it’s like, okay, that has to go in there. But that’s an update. That’s like a paragraph that I need to put in the book and it’s on my list. But to, so it’s really, in terms of updating it, updating versus a whole new edition, it really has to be how much is going to change.
And sometimes you might not know, ’cause you might remember things in a certain way. I do think also if people have got their rights back from a traditional publisher, this is happening quite a lot. You know, people are like, they’ve got a book back and people, people say, I get these emails.
People are like, oh, I wrote it 15 years ago. It was published 10 years ago. And I’m like, you need to reread that. So for example, gender is something that in 15 years, the terms around gender have changed a lot. Right. If you read a book from 15 years ago, it’s something that can really date the the book.
So I think that’s an interesting, and I’m not saying that’s everything, I’m just saying that’s one example of things that change and you might find whatever your topic, that your examples are dated or that kind of thing. And also, of course, as I mentioned, you have changed. So I think the main thing is how much needs to change.
How can you market it in a way that people are going to be interested in the next edition?
So like I’ve said, for me the big edition is memoir, which I didn’t, I don’t think I even mentioned it in the first edition, or I might have mentioned it as a type of nonfiction. But until you write, sometimes, until you write something, you don’t really know what you don’t know.
I suppose so those would be a few tips. Also, I feel like just sometimes you just get this overwhelming sense that it needs to be done. And in that case, have a listen, listen to that intuition.
Matty: And it is like putting out a new book. I mean, the, the pro is that you can, you know, do a, do a podcast tour. Talk about it in the same way you would talk about a first edition book.
I guess that the downsides to me have always felt like having to change, ISBNs, having to lose your reviews, and I guess in some cases you can sort of appeal and have them brought forward if you work with the platform manually. I don’t think so.
Jo: No. Okay. Not, not for a new edition. In my mind, the new edition is a completely new book. Yeah. So it must have new ISBNs, a new Kindle page, no reviews because it is a new book. It can’t be both. It’s either one or the other, and so a second edition, or I’ve got third editions of some of my books. This is a new, completely new book.
So yeah, with updates, as you say, you don’t need to change anything. You can upload a new file and there’s not even a problem. The keeping your reviews, I just think is not necessary. And also on the podcast tour type thing. I think it is harder to get press on a second edition, so that would probably be a challenge.
This is an evergreen book in my business and it gets marketed all the time.
I do Amazon auto ads on it, so I know that it’s not about a launch, it’s about the kind of maybe the next 6, 8, 10 years before I might decide it needs another go.
Matty: Well, I also think, especially after having this conversation about the importance of how important mindset was, this was not just an update of factoids.
In fact in, in the books I’m working on with Michael and Mark, the things that seem really time bound, we usually put in a publicly available appendix, which is kind of a nice giveaway too.
You know, we’ll have the page up on our websites for the book. And then we’ll have a downloadable attachment saying, you know, these are the, these, this is the podcast technology we would recommend today.
And it might not be the podcast technology that we would recommend tomorrow, but what I like about that mindset thing is that, it’s beyond just the facts. It is a new look. And then I think ultimately it’s, would people who got the first edition benefit from getting the second edition? And based on all the things that we’ve talked about.
I own the first edition. I will be happy to sign up for the second edition too, because I recognize that the changes that have been made make it a valid addition to my library.
Jo: Thank you. Well, on that and on that, I obviously agree, I think it is useful, but what I am doing, and I certainly, this doesn’t have to be done, but for people who have bought direct from me in the last six months, the old edition, I am happy to, you know, I’m gonna email them and say, would you like a free ebook or audiobook of the new edition?
Because I feel slightly guilty. But we all know that people put out new editions and the timing of the day that you withdraw the old edition is really hard, so you obviously have to unpublish the old editions and that, that you can do that quite quickly with eBooks. Well, for some platforms, with audiobooks, with print, but with print books never go away.
Right? There’s always secondhand editions out there. What I have done is change the color of the, the title, so it’s above me there on the video. It’s, it is now a teal. Color as opposed to a red color. So I’ve tried, you know, and it’s got second edition on, so I’ve tried to make it really obvious, but I think communicating with people is important.
Like you say, you want people to want another edition. You don’t want them to feel like, oh, well, you know, I thought I could get everything from the first. So yeah, this is one of the challenges I think, of doing second editions. But again, I feel like it’s been a real worthwhile thing. And yeah, I hope it’s useful for people.
Matty: Great. Well Joe, it was always lovely to talk to you. Let’s not let four years go by until our next conversation. But thank you so much for coming back to the podcast and please let everyone know where you, they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
Jo: Yeah, sure. So TheCreativePenn.com with the double n.com and my podcast is The Creative Penn Podcast and you can get books everywhere.
And my store is CreativePennBooks.com. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Matty.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we do just about everything these days, and the impact of AI on fiction writing is no exception. As a writer who cherishes the creative process, I have spent the last few years grappling with both the possibilities and pitfalls this new technology brings. On the one hand, AI offers tools that can make our lives easier—such as helping with research, marketing, and even ideation. On the other hand, it raises questions about originality, authenticity, and the integrity of human storytelling.
Almost as soon as ChatGPT and its brethren were unveiled in November 2022, writers started emailing me for my opinions—most with an (at least) subtextual request for reassurance that AI wasn’t as potentially disruptive as it seemed to be. I have been cautious in sharing my opinions, since my own contextual understanding of the functionality of AI and its big-picture ramifications weren’t yet formed. More than two years later, it has become clear that AI is simultaneously not as apocalyptic as some may have originally thought while also being, in some ways, even more disruptive, particularly in the long term, to the systems that undergird nearly every part of our modern lives. This includes the impact of AI on fiction writing, which continues to evolve as new tools and capabilities emerge.
I need to be clear that my own experience with and opinions of AI are ever-evolving. In contemplating this article in the weeks leading up to writing it, the ideas I thought I might be sharing have already changed multiple times—sometimes daily. The utility and causality of AI is vast and, in itself, constantly evolving. In truth, I don’t think most of us will truly understand our relationship to AI until many years, perhaps even decades, down the road. My own opinion in this moment is that the best approach is one of cautious practicality.
The writers I have talked to about AI have largely fallen into two camps—those who find it terrifying in its capacity to change comfortable, time-honored, and beloved systems and structures (both in and out of the creative pursuits) and those who find it giddyingly delightful in its potential for play, innovation, and convenience.
Concerns about the ethics of AI’s origins in training, without permission, off the works of untold authors (myself included) have been thoroughly discussed by this point. Lawsuits and regulations are still unfolding, all of which will be crucial to navigating this brave new world in which we find ourselves.
My own first reactions to AI were sober. I wasn’t someone who jumped in with both feet like I have with past technologies. However, I’m also not one to cry over spilt milk. At the very least, I feel the presence of AI in our world is now irreversible. I’m not sure yet if the proper analogy is that of a wish-granting genie having been let out of the bottle or of Pandora having opened a box of shadow-horrors. Either way, it’s here, and there’s no getting it back into the bottle or the box. Certainly, there is the argument that even if we could, that might not be the best choice anyway.
Therefore, I believe it is important for writers, just like everyone else, to embrace the new future in which we find ourselves. Resistance born of denial ultimately harms no one more than ourselves. Just as the Internet was a shatterpoint that forever altered the world in my early teens, AI will certainly unfold in ways both good and bad. The point is: the world has changed. How can we best respond so that we both survive and thrive, not just collectively but as individuals and, particularly in this context, as writers?
To do so, we must use AI. As it becomes more integrated into everyday functionality (such as Google searches), this will become more and more intuitive and less and less optional. More than that, experimenting with AI—ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.—is important not just in understanding this new world and forming educated opinions about it, but in gaining entry-level skills that will likely become increasingly important to our ability to succeed as technology evolves.
Think about writers who did not or would not adapt to the opportunities the Internet brought 20+ years ago. Those who did are currently thriving thanks to their ability to navigate related software, retail sites, and social media. AI represents a similar seachange, and the truth is we don’t yet know which AI-related skills will be not just optional, but crucial, in future years. Resisting the urge to stagnate in a comfortable status quo is the essence of character arc and therefore story. We’re in the midst of quite a story right now. It’s best to be an active protagonist, rather than a passive sidekick.
Concerns About the Impact of AI on Fiction Writing: What Writers Should Know
That said, of course, AI must be embraced with awareness and caution, since its full impact is constantly unfolding and therefore not entirely knowable. Many writers are already seeing the impact of AI on fiction writing in the ways books are discovered, marketed, and even created.
Some concerns include:
Ethics of AI Training
The ethics surrounding how AI learns, etc., and what it produces will continue to be a topic of interest for writers. My own take (again, as someone whose books were used for training the original models) is that although it would have been preferable to have had a conversation before rather than after, the way AI learns and creates isn’t really any different from how any one of us learns and creates—just on an unlimited scale. I’m not going to put any more effort into resisting AI’s extrapolation of my work than I am the thousands of human writers who learn from me and then go on to write about their own integrations of “my” theories.
Resource Consumption of AI
One of my greatest concerns about AI—which is spoken about regrettably seldom—is its tremendous resource consumption. The energy and computational costs of of AI systems, especially during training, is staggering. For example:
Water Usage: Training large AI models can consume significant amounts of water. Training GPT-3 in Microsoft’s U.S. data centers required approximately 700,000 liters (185,000 gallons) of water for cooling purposes.
Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions: The energy demands of training AI models are considerable. A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that training a single large AI model can emit over 626,000 pounds (approximately 284 metric tons) of CO₂, which is nearly five times the lifetime emissions of an average American car.
Although usage for individual tasks (such as you or I using ChatGPT or a Google search) seems insignificant in comparison (i.e., each query or interaction may consume a few kilowatt-seconds of energy, roughly comparable to the energy used to power a light bulb for a few seconds), the cumulative effect of billions of queries worldwide adds to the toll.
Discoverability Challenges
AI has already—and will continue to—evolve how books are discovered. Although, in itself, this is not a problem, as search discoverability is always evolving, there are legitimate fears that as AI search begins to dominate, opportunities for discoverability will narrow. Obviously, this affects not just writers wanting to be discovered, but also all of us who, as consumers, are trying to discover new and interesting books (among other products) that may exist beyond the obvious top tier.
Two-Dimensional and Sometimes Erroneous Info
Much has also been written about AI’s fallibility. From notorious Google searches that recommended running with scissors to obvious programming biases, AI’s ability to control how we see the world is cause for unequivocal concern. As we become more and more familiar with large language models (LLMs) and companionable chatbots, the challenge to remain vigilant about the validity of information and our own perceptions of it will become more and more crucial.
The Single Greatest Threat AI Poses to Fiction Writing (Hint: It’s Not What You Think)
Most of the above applies to anyone interacting with AI. What about writers?
We are only at the cusp of the possibilities for how AI may integrate into fiction writing. Already many writers are embracing its capabilities to help them learn, research, outline, plot, edit, and publish. AI has already proven its ability to be of tremendous help in the creative process. To the degree AI legitimately makes us more creative (which is not necessarily to be conflated with more productive), it will ultimately prove to be a positive and expansive tool. But in this process, it is important for each artist to consciously and consistently perform the personal gut check of acknowledging the line where AI becomes the creator rather than the creative tool.
As we explore a future in which we will increasingly collaborate with AI, I would encourage all humans to question whether or not we are choosing to interact with AI in ways that makes us less human or more. This is particularly important for writers, artists, and creatives of all types, as it is our act of creation that most defines our humanity, first individually and then collectively.
AI is a decidedly “mental” tool. It is designed to think. As such, it is uniquely positioned to help us with all mental tasks. (Perhaps someday it will dream and emote, but even then, do we want it to dream and emote for us?)
For instance, some of the ways AI can be most useful to writers is by:
Relieving the mental stress of busy to-do lists.
Helping with administrative duties, copywriting, ads, social media, etc.
It can be tempting sometimes (especially for plot-oriented or outline-forward writers) to think storytelling is a mental process. However, the mental aspects of writing are just a small part of the overall experience and, often, the last aspect to fully emerge. Story is not just a mental game; it is a deeply felt creative embodied process. As such, I am cautious about advocating the use AI for story creation without significant caveats.
How each writer chooses to use AI (whether in brainstorming, outlining, co-writing, etc.) is ultimately as individual and personal as each person’s writing process was before AI popped out of the box. That said, I encourage every creative to carefully consider how you implement AI into your creative process.
Ask Yourself: Why Are You Using AI?
What are your specific goals and reasons for bringing AI on board?
Perhaps you enjoy it.
Perhaps you feel the necessity of the changing times.
Perhaps you recognize obvious ways AI can simplify the always difficult process of creating a story.
Perhaps you seek greater productivity.
All of these are valid responses as long as the results are not inhibiting or distracting from the deeper experience of creation. Stories are a conversation first with our own subconscious and eventually with the greater shared subconscious of the collective. It is not too great a stretch to say that our interaction with the deep archetypes of story itself and the characters who populate it is what shapes our very existence. Story is not just communication; it is communion—with ourselves, with each other, and with the infinitude that lies beyond immediate understanding.
The Sacredness of Stories
Stories are sacred. This does mean we can’t (or shouldn’t) bring in AI tools to aid us. Indeed, insofar as AI is an extension of ourselves or an aid to our own deep subconscious creativity, then it can only be a positive. But honoring the sacredness of story does mean we must be careful not to allow AI’s easy answers to bypass the depth of our creative processes. For me, the storytelling process has always been a conversation with my deep subconscious—my dreaming self, if you will. I’m not interested in what AI comes up with; I’m interested in what I come up with; I’m interested in what you come up with.
More than that, although AI may enhance creativity, productivity, and efficiency, it also risks diminishing our own skills. For instance, can AI help you learn how to write a book? Can it teach you story theory? The short answer is: yes. But only as an aid.
Why? Because, again, story is not simply a mental skill or the ability to recite certain storytelling formulae. It is an embodiment. Indeed, some of our best authors couldn’t recite a formula or articulate story theory to save their lives—and yet they have written deeply embodied works of art that have not only connected with the collective subconscious but evolved it.
In many ways, the purpose of AI is to offer shortcuts. Obviously, there are both good and bad aspects of this. Just as the Internet has rewired our brains, AI will undoubtedly change the way we think. As creators, we are the life force of society. As writers, we are its voices. The choices each one of us makes in how we use AI to, first, live our lives and, second, to write our stories will ripple far beyond ourselves. What each of us does at this epochal moment in history and how we choose to interact with technology matters.
The specifics of how we make these choices are extremely personal—not least because there is no clear “right” path. What is most important—and what I challenge every writer—is to remember we are the sovereigns of our own lives. We are responsible for our choices. Therefore it is incumbent upon each of us to remain aware of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how our choices and actions are impacting our relationships with our deepest selves and therefore with our storytelling.
***
Someone once asked me if it was even worth becoming a writer in this rapidly changing age of AI.
First, let me comment on the pitfalls of pinning too much despair (or, equally, hope) on the impact AI has on fiction writing. Writers have always been anxious about publishing (really, getting published and not getting published are equally scary). These days, it can be easy to project our anxieties or fears onto AI and use it as a convenient scapegoat for throwing up our hands, saying “what’s the point?”, and not doing the thing that scares us (whether that’s writing or publishing). Often, new technologies like AI can become bogeymen that conveniently distract from more personal fears.
Now, as for the specific question of whether AI will render novelists and other creatives obsolete—who knows? But my personal opinion is absolutely not. Although AI and other tech will inevitably change the way we create, the single most important dynamic in art is the artist who wants to say something and the audience who wants to experience communication in this way from a fellow human. The impact of AI on fiction writing will not change the fundamental human need to create and to experience human creation. So keep creating! We’re all in the midst of a tremendous story right now, and, as it should be, that is both terrifying and exciting!
In Summary:
AI is revolutionizing fiction writing, offering both exciting possibilities and daunting challenges. While its integration into creative processes can enhance productivity, it also raises concerns about originality, ethics, and the sustainability of resource use. Writers must strike a balance—embracing AI as a tool for efficiency and exploration, while remaining conscious of its potential impact on their creativity and humanity. The future of writing lies in navigating this technological shift with care, ensuring AI serves to enrich rather than overshadow our deeply personal and emotional journey of storytelling.
Key Takeaways:
AI tools are changing the landscape of fiction writing, offering both opportunities and challenges for authors.
While AI can assist with brainstorming, editing, and productivity, it lacks true creativity and emotional depth.
Ethical concerns arise regarding AI-generated content, originality, and the potential impact on human writers.
Writers can benefit from AI by using it as a supplement rather than a replacement for their creative process.
The role of AI in publishing and discoverability is still evolving, requiring authors to stay informed and adaptable.
In a world where AI is reshaping the landscape of storytelling, it’s more important than ever for writers to tap into the deep, timeless forces that make our stories resonate on a profound level. If you’d like to move deeper into that, you might enjoy my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. I wrote it to help you understand and harness the power of archetypes to create characters that not only drive your plots but also connect with the universal themes that speak to our shared human experience.
While AI can be a valuable tool in the writing process, the true heart of storytelling lies in our ability to explore and express these archetypal depths. If you seek to create stories that stand the test of time, Writing Archetypal Character Arcs is a guide to crafting characters who speak to the most important human transformations. You can check it out at retailers like Amazon or via the store on my site.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you think the impact of AI on fiction writing will shape the future of storytelling? Tell me in the comments!
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).
How can you use short stories to improve your writing craft across different genres? How can you make money from licensing your short stories in different ways? How do you structure a short story collection? Douglas Smith shares his tips.
Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction, with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He’s also the author of Playing the Short Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
How beginner writers can use short fiction to improve their writing craft
Overview of the different short story markets
First rights and second rights for selling short stories
Financial expectations for traditionally published short stories
Joanna: Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction, with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He’s also the author of Playing the Short Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition. So welcome back to the show, Doug.
Douglas: Oh, thank you, Joanna. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me back.
Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and short stories, in particular.
Douglas: Well, I guess I did a fair bit of writing in high school and a bit in university. Then I just drifted away from it, pursuing a business career and raising a family, etc. I always told myself I would go back and chase the writing dream someday.
I remember, I was in my early 40s, and I came back from a family vacation, and one of the first things I read was the obituary for one of my all-time favorite writers, Roger Zelazny. He was the American science fiction fantasy writer, and he had died far too early at, I think, 56 from cancer.
That just drove home the fact that none of us are guaranteed of a someday. So I started writing that summer and turned out about eight short stories. I joined a writing group to get feedback on my writing.
Then about a year and a half later, it was actually on New Year’s Eve of the following year, I got my first acceptance letter. So that was a great way to end a year and start a new one. So that’s how I started. I started with short fiction. I started because one of my favorite writers died far too young.
Joanna: What was your previous career?
Douglas: I was an IT executive. Just in case people are wondering, I remained an IT executive. I did not give up the day job, so writing was done in spare time. Especially when I started with short fiction, it’s very hard to live and raise a family on the proceeds of short stories.
Joanna: I think that’s a really important thing to say. I suspected you were going to say that. Then just with perspective—
So what year was it that you did that first sale?
Douglas: That story came out in ’97, so a long time ago. That story actually ended up winning an award. So, yes, it was a good start, but I stayed with writing short fiction for about 10 years.
Part of that was inertia, and part of it was just writing a novel at that time seemed kind of daunting. I finally did decide that I needed, for the same someday issue, that I wanted to move into novels, and I better not wait any longer.
Joanna: Yes. I mean, obviously the publishing industry is quite different from 1997, and we’ll come back to some of the other markets. What have you noticed with short fiction in particular, or in general with the indie author community, and things changing? I mean—
This book, Playing the Short Game, you self-published this, right?
Douglas: Yes, I did, and my novels as well. My collections, which were the first things I put out, they came out from traditional publishers that are small press publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada.
When it came to the point where I was ready to publish my first novel, for me, I saw no upside in trying to go a traditional publishing route.
Ironically, my advice is quite different for short fiction. One, I think writers should start with short fiction and that they should pursue the traditional short story markets that are, if anything, far more numerous now than when I started.
Thanks to the option of a lot of these short fiction magazines or anthologies, they put out ebook editions, so it’s a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about the physical distribution, physical production of the magazines.
There’s still a lot of print magazines around, still a lot of print anthologies, but you’ll find there’s a lot of options for selling short fiction. Much more than when I started.
Joanna: So let’s get to some of the pros and cons, I guess. So you said there you do think fiction authors should start with short stories. Why do you recommend that?
Why write short stories? What is fun about it? What are the good craft reasons?
Douglas: Yes, it is fun. I mean, if you do not like short fiction as a reader, it’s going to be difficult for you to be successful as a writer. So that would be the first thing. The standard advice for any writer is you’ve got to be a reader.
If you don’t read, you’re not going to be a writer.
Why short fiction to start with? My main, strongest argument is that it helps you learn your craft. It teaches you how to be a writer.
There are far too many indie novels out there that are, quite frankly, terrible.
The good thing with short fiction is that it gives you a method where you can try out a lot of different types of stories, types of story structure. You can basically build your toolbox as a writer, and many of those tools are the same ones you’re going to need if you move onto novels.
The other thing is it gives you a benchmark. If you’re writing short stories and sending them out to professional markets—and I assume we’ll get into that—you get a wonderful little measuring stick for when you’ve become a professional writer.
Or in other words, when your writing has become good enough that someone out there wants to pay you money to publish it, in the hopes that they will make money from what they publish.
So if you don’t do that, if you just jump into indie and send your stories out into the world, put them up on retail sites, quite frankly, it’s probably not going to be a very good piece of writing. It’s hard to develop a craft.
One of the complaints I have with a lot of the indie writers out there is, and you see it if you go to convention, all they focus on is, “I’ve written a book. Now, how can I market it? Please tell me the secret to beating an algorithm.”
There are good marketing approaches. The problem is, if you come up with a good marketing approach for your novel, your first novel, it’s probably going to do you more harm than good. Because if you get a lot of people to read it, and they read it and say, this is not very good, they’re never going to come back to your writing.
As opposed to if you’ve taught yourself the craft of writing, and you become a competent writer, and you get to the point where professional publishers are willing to give you money for your short stories, your writing has reached that point.
So when you move to a novel, it’s going to be a different beast than short stories, but you’re going to have a lot of the skills already in place that you’ve honed over the time you’ve been writing short fiction.
So that’s my main argument for writing short stories, is that it teaches you how to be a writer.
One more thing is, the example I love to give is, you can try a lot more points of view: first person, third person. Different story structures, things you want to try. Genres: horror, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream.
You can try more of those over 25,000-word short stories than you can in one 100,000-word novel.
You’ve written the same number of words, but you’re going to come out at the end of those 20 short stories being much more knowledgeable and a better writer than writing that first 100,000 word novel.
Joanna: I mean, I totally agree with you there in terms of the potential for doing shorter stories. I mean, you said 5000 words.
What is a short story range, in terms of word count?
Because people often get obsessed with this.
Douglas: Yes, and the definitions I’ll give are from the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers Association. So a short story is anything up to, I think it’s 7500 words. Then a novelette is above that, up to 17,750 or 17,500, I can’t remember which.
Then a novella is above that, up to 40,000 words. Then flash, it varies. Anything typically up to 1000 words is called flash.
Your typical short story, if you look at markets out there, they will want something in the range of 3000 to 5000 words. If you write above that, the other tip I’ll give is, the longer the story is, the harder it will be to sell.
If you’ve got a 10,000-word story, and an editor loves your story, but they also love two 5000-word stories from two other writers, they’re probably going to buy those two stories as opposed to your one big one. They’re taking a bigger chance on your single story.
Joanna: Okay, well, let’s talk about those markets then, because you mentioned the traditional short story markets, but that there are a lot more of them these days.
Give us an overview of what you mean by short story markets.
Obviously, just so everyone knows, in the book you go through this extensively. So I highly recommend people get the book for more detail, but just give us an overview.
Douglas: Well, generally speaking, your markets for any story that you write—and we’re going to have to get into the rights that you’ll be dealing with when you’re trying to market a short story—but simply, it’s a magazine.
There are lots of magazine markets out there, and those are ones that come up with a different issue—not too many do it monthly anymore—but four times a year, three times a year. They are either in print format and/or electronic edition. So they’re called serial publications.
Then the other main market is an anthology, the anthology markets. Those are books that contain stories from different authors. So those are your two main options.
Anthologies typically are themed, so they have the advantage of, if you’ve got a very strange story, you may luck out and find that there is an anthology coming out of radioactive chickens from space or something. You haven’t been able to sell that story of yours, and now you probably have a higher probability.
So anthologies and magazines. The other major market would be audio markets.
Again, there can be audio anthologies or audio zines as well, and they will be producing essentially a podcast version of your story. They will have a narrator that will read your story and dramatize it. That’s the third type.
Joanna: Let’s talk about the different rights.
Because it is quite different, isn’t it, to long form fiction and nonfiction.
Douglas: In many ways, it’s very similar. The main thing that if you’re going to start writing at all is understand that you have rights.
As soon as you finished a story or a novel, you have rights associated with that creation.
So for short stories, when a publisher that you’ve submitted to comes back to you and says, “Hey, I love this story, I want to publish it,” we typically say, “Hey, I sold a short story.” You actually haven’t sold anything. What you’re going to be doing is licensing a very particular set of rights to that publisher.
They’re going to have a number of dimensions. The first dimension I deal with in the book is, I call it the Media Dimension, and we just talked about the three different types of markets.
So if you’re selling to a print magazine, they’re going to want to license print rights. If they’re only in electronic format, then they’ll want electronic rights. If they’re an audiobook publisher, they’ll want audio rights.
So there’s that, there’s the three dimensions of types of media, and that’s combined with whether they’re an anthologist or a magazine. So for example, if I sold a story to a magazine that only has print editions, they would want to license serial print rights.
Serial means they’re a magazine, and they need print rights to legally publish my story, because that’s the format they’re in. If they also have an ebook edition, then they’d ask for print and electronic serial rights.
The other dimension is language. So, I mean, most of your listeners are going to be writing in English.
Then the other dimension is geography. Some publishers, short fiction publishers, are still restricted to a particular geography, and that is usually only for print publishers. So if a magazine publishes in Canada only, and distributes in Canada only, for example, they would ask for first Canadian print serial rights.
So all these things in English, all these things, as you see, get combined into a collection of rights that they’ll be licensing from you.
Joanna: You mentioned first serial rights there, and this is what’s quite different.
With short stories, you might have first rights and then reprint rights.
Douglas: I call them old currents rights. The very first time you sell a story, they will be licensing first rights from you. It’ll be first—whatever those other rights were—first print rights, first audio rights, etc.
After that, there’s a time period associated with rights, and it’s called the reversion period. After your story has been published, the rights will revert to you. Meaning that the publisher will say, “Hey, the story is yours again. You can do whatever you want with it.”
Typically, if it’s a magazine, they will ask for a reversion period that will be somewhere around where the following issue comes out. So if they publish four times a year, they’ll probably ask for about a six-month reversion period, and that’s very fair.
Anthologists will ask for anything from a year to two years after the publication date.
So let’s say that reversion period has passed, the rights come back to you. Those rights come back as second rights, not first rights. You only get to sell license first rights once.
When you do have those rights come back to you though, you can now, what we call, sell a reprint. In other words, you can market to another publication that accepts reprints and sell the story over and over and over again. No matter how many times you sell a reprint, you’re always licensing second right.
So there’s no such thing as third rights or fourth rights or anything. It’s one time for first rights, and after that, you can license second rights as many times as you can find a market who wants to publish your reprint.
Joanna: I feel like that is one of the big differences with rights for a novel. I mean, I see a lot of authors getting term of copyright contracts, or really, really long time limits. Whereas, as you say with shorts, they’re maybe six months or up to two years, but then you can keep selling it over and over again. I’m sure you have sold some of your shorts multiple times over decades.
Douglas: Yes, for sure. I’ve got stories that I’ve sold 30-plus times.
Joanna: Wow. So, well, then for people listening, 30-plus times—
How much money can writers expect to get for a short story for the premium traditional markets?
Douglas: So that’s a good question, and it leads into what my strategy is for short fiction that I recommend to writers. It’s that you’re only going to get the top rates from a short fiction market if it’s a pro market.
Pro markets only license first rights, they don’t take reprints.
So I’ll eventually answer your question, but the main point I want to make is my strong recommendation is that when you’re sending your stories out, when you try to sell them for the first time, you only submit to the top professional markets.
That’s the only time you’ll ever get a chance to get into an Asimov, or a Fantasy and Science Fiction, or a Lightspeed, etc, because once you’ve sold that story, they’re never going to be interested in it.
So you need to, as I say in the book, start at the top. Start at your most desired markets, the ones that have the most cachet. Those are also the ones that pay the top pro rates, and also the ones that get the most awards, press, and nods, etc.
After you get the rights back from that, you can market it to any market that takes a reprint. You’ll find anything. You’ll find markets that will simply publish your story and not give you any money.
You can find markets that will pay you up to five, six cents a word for a reprint. Whereas pro rates, I think, they’re still at eight cents a word for SFWA. So it really ranges. So how much money you can make from a story kind of depends on what you want to sell your reprint at.
I personally warn authors that if you sell a story anytime, it’s going to involve work and time on your part. So you should set sort of a minimum dollar amount that you’re willing to accept to pay you for your time to work with the editor, go over the print copy before it’s published, etc.
Joanna: So on that, eight cents a word, it’d be around $400 then for a 5000-word story at premium market.
Douglas: Yes. At US dollar rates, yes.
Joanna: US dollar rates. Then, let’s say, in six months, you get that story back, and then you can do what you like with it. As you said, you can license it over and over again.
It’s so interesting. I’ve written now a few short stories and have been in a few anthologies, but basically, I’ve never submitted to any traditional markets. Mainly because of my lack of patience and the fact that, I guess, I know that if I publish it myself and put it out right now, then I’m going to get some money.
Especially if I’m selling direct, I’m going to make more than that $400 from my own audience. So it’s a very different definition of success, I guess, in terms of cachet and awards versus money in your pocket now.
I noticed that you also sell direct. How do you balance that side as well?
Douglas: Sure, so one comment on that. I mean, you have a name, and you have a huge audience and platform, so it’s more conceivable that you’re going to be able to indie publish a piece of short fiction and get more money than a beginner.
So my comments are focused at the beginning writer, and if you want to get the most mileage out of your short story that comes from selling it to a top pro market. It helps you build your resume. You can also build up a backlist.
You can attract fans and subscribers to a newsletter, using some of your short stories as reader magnets, etc.
So it helps you build up your own network. So, you know, you’re in a position where you already have that. If I’m a beginning writer, my advice to them is I would still start with short fiction.
So, yes, probably about two dozen of my early short stories are available in ebook format. So those are all stories that I sold first rights for to a traditional market. So in other words, when I did an ebook for those stories, the rights had already reverted back to me. The story had been out.
A lot of them were award winners or award finalists. I did it at the time because I was sort of just getting into looking at indie publishing. I didn’t have any novels, so I thought I’d try just putting out some of my short stories as individual ebooks, use them as reader magnets, etc.
I got a great artist who gave me a great deal on producing covers for them, so they all have the same cover. It was a price that made it sensible to try that experiment.
So, yes, if you go to Amazon, any of the retailers, if you go to the bookstore on my website, you’ll be able to buy my short stories individually. That’s not how I started, and I would never put out a new short story that way. I’d still go to a traditional market for it.
Joanna: Okay, I think that’s really interesting. I do want to point out to everyone that I grew my audience, and that everyone has to grow their own audience over a long, long time.
You’ve obviously done the same thing, I think starting at different times. I started a decade after you, so 2007 was my first book that I self-published. So it’s kind of interesting how things change over time.
I do want to just ask about collections because, obviously, you have collections. Here I’m saying a collection as a single author, as opposed to an anthology with multiple authors with shorts.
What are your tips around doing a collection, since I am thinking of doing this myself?
Douglas: The first step is to make sure that you have enough quality stories. So enough means, you know, minimum 80,000 words. I think a dozen stories that is at least that length would be reasonable.
The main point is that those stories all have to be good. A collection, it’s like a chain is strong as the weakest length. It’s going to be judged on the worst story in the book. So as soon as the reader hits a weak one, sadly, they’re probably going to remember that one.
So you really need your 12, whatever, best stories. So you need to have written more than 12 stories because probably the 12 that you’ve written aren’t the best. They all should have appeared in a top market because that is one of the ways you can tell it’s a good story. Someone paid you pro rates for it.
If you have any award winners or award finalists or stories that appeared in annual best of anthologies, they go in as well. So that’s the main thing. They have to be quality stories because this collection is going to be a calling card for you.
After that, it depends. The next piece, let’s say you’ve picked your great stories that you want to put in the collection, he next thing is, what order do you put them in? The rule for doing collections or anthologies pretty much has stayed the same since I started writing, anyway.
Figure out what your best three or four stories are. You put the best one first, and another really good one last, and you put another strong one second.
So the idea is you want to pull the reader in with two really good stories and then leave them with a positive memory the collection when they read the last one.
If you have another really good one, you should put it in the middle as sort of a tent pole in case things are flagging. So that’s the quality criteria for sorting through what order you want to put your stories in.
After that, it comes down to, as I say in the book, trying to craft a reader experience. You have to sit down and think, “Okay, they just finished this story. What should come next?” There’s so many ways to do that.
I write in science fiction, and fantasy, and horror, and some Slipstream, etc. So do I mix all those? Do I put one section for all my science fiction? Do I put one section for my fantasy, etc.? The questions I put out, I alternate, but I also look at the tone. You have to look at the length too.
By tone, I mean, if you have a really, really downer story, you might want to follow that with something more upbeat. The reverse is true too.
If you have a couple that are like novel at length, you probably don’t want to put them back to back. You want to have a shorter story following a long story.
It’s crafting the reader experience.
Joanna: I read a lot of short story collections and anthologies, and it’s more that I dip in, and I never, ever read them in order. I usually only read like one story at a time. It’s something I do before I go to sleep, like just before bed.
So it’s very weird because I feel like different readers have different experiences. So we can try our best, but readers might just decide to do what the hell they want. I do have two other points on this.
What about including exclusive short stories?
So I’m going to do a Kickstarter for my collection, and I’m thinking of including a couple of short stories that have not been seen anywhere else, so they’re real exclusives.
Then also, I was wondering about extra material. So I always do an author’s note as to what inspired the story. I was thinking of expanding those sort of into interstitial pieces. So any thoughts on those two things?
Douglas: Yes, both good points. One is if you have a story that has not been published anywhere else, you should include one of those.
One, it’s a bit of a teaser. If you have a fan who’s a completist and they just want to read everything that you write, the only way they’re going to be able to read that story is if they buy the collection. So it is a good policy to include one previously unpublished short story in a collection.
The additional material, the author notes around stories, I personally love, and I’d recommend it. I mentioned Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite writers, and he had a lot of collections.
What I enjoyed about his collections were his either forwards or afterwards where he talks about the story and how the idea arrived, and maybe how it ties into other stories he’d written, etc. I love that.
I know I had a couple of comments on my collections where people were saying they didn’t like it. They just want to read the short stories. So, I mean, you can’t please everybody.
I would say, in general, most of the feedback I’ve received on my short stories, my collections, has been that the reader enjoys learning more about the story. Either how you wrote it, or why you wrote it, or whatever. So I’d recommend putting that in.
Sometimes I’ve done it as forwards, sometimes afterwards. Depends if there’s any spoilers. Sometimes both.
Joanna: Yes, I think that’s really good. I mean, I’m thinking in my special edition for the Kickstarter, I’ll include photos if I can, as to some of the things that sparked the idea or a thing to make it a special, special collection. Which I feel is possible now with the print possibilities we can do.
I also wondered just on the audio, so at the moment, I narrate my own short stories and just release them as individuals. With a collection, again, I will narrate the whole thing and release that separately.
I wondered if you had any thoughts on audiobook collections for short stories?
Douglas: Interesting. I’m not sure I have the patience to do my own narration, so I think it’s a personal thing. I certainly don’t have the expertise to talk about producing audiobooks. I’ve had a lot of my short stories produced as audio plays, but that’s because I’ve submitted them to audio markets.
There are good productions and bad productions. I’ve sort of found the ones that I absolutely love and who will actually cast a story, and they’ll have different voice actors for the different characters. I find that just so awesome.
I think if you’re an indie writer and you’re thinking of doing your audiobooks, I know I would say, first of all, am I willing to invest in the necessary audio setup? Do I have the patience to do the narration and do the editing, etc.? I think it’s a personal choice. Audio is a growing market.
Joanna: Yes, and it’s really interesting because I talked to Spotify at Author Nation last year, and they said what they’re often now doing is audio that’s under an hour.
Generally, an hour of audio is about 9000 words, so pretty much all short stories are going to be under their range of an hour. So they’re kind of serving those in their discovery thing for people’s commute because that’s the average commute.
So just a tip for people listening, creating playlists on Spotify of short story collections or anthologies, just with other people. You don’t have to publish them. You can just link to them in a playlist.
I think that’s actually a really good discoverability mechanism for things like Spotify, which is now trying to get more and more people into audio fiction and audio nonfiction.
Douglas: Yes, especially if it leads listeners to your other work.
Joanna: Yes, exactly. You can do cross promotion that way. So I can link one of my horror short stories, to one of yours, to one of Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s. So we can make these playlists mixing stories that we like, just as a more discoverability mechanism, as I mentioned.
So I think that’s something new that’s really only emerged in the last couple of years. Anything else on short stories? Because I do have one other question before we finish.
Douglas: I’m making notes here because that’s going to go into the next edition, in terms of audio versions and Spotify.
I mean, there’s so much to talk about. One of the reasons I put out the second edition is, well, one, it had been 10 years since the first one. Then, two, when I looked at my notes, there had been so many things that had changed over the past decade.
Joanna: Well, that is my last question. I’ve also just done a second edition of my How To Write Non-Fiction, which now includes memoir and all of this. I know a second edition can be a right pain.
So I wondered if you had any thoughts for nonfiction authors who are listening—
When do you do another edition? When is it worth it for you? Also, what is the difference in marketing it?
Since many people, including me, also have your first edition.
Douglas: What I did when I put out the first one, my email is in the back, and people would get in touch with me via the website. I encouraged writers to reach out to me because it was sort of my way of paying forward to new writers to write that book.
If they had any questions interpreting what I’d written, or something I didn’t cover, I encouraged them to please reach out to me, and a lot of writers did. Sometimes it was just clarifying what I had in the book.
Other times it was, “Wow, that’s a really good question. I didn’t think of that scenario,” and I would just start to keep a file of things to add to the second edition.
So when I realized it had been a decade, and I started coming across things like Ralland.com, which was my go to market list, and he stopped updating his website. So I realized that there’s probably a lot of other changes. I looked at that file and said, yup, there’s ever so much I can put into a new edition. So it was that.
When is the right time? I think when you start to look at the first version and say, “Wow, no, that’s actually not right anymore,” or, “I should say more about that particular topic.”
Joanna: What about the challenges marketing a second edition?
Douglas: I’m not big on marketing, I guess. I don’t do a lot around that, and probably should do more. For this one, I told my newsletter subscribers. Most of them are readers, not writers, but there is some overlap.
The retailer sites help because the first edition sold pretty, pretty consistently. So, now if you go to Amazon and look for this, you’re only going to find the second edition. So linking the first edition to, “Hey, there’s a new edition,” things like that, but honestly, that was it.
Joanna: Well, I must say, you didn’t pitch me for this. I pitched you because I saw it in, I think it was a StoryBundle last year.
Douglas: Yes, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She will do these wonderful reader bundles. She does at least one a year, etc.
I communicate with Kris and Dean fairly regularly, and she reached out to me and said, “I see you’re putting out a second edition. I’ve got a StoryBundle that’s coming out in two months. Would you have an ebook edition ready for that time frame?”
I said, “Yes, sure. Can you write a new introduction for it?”
Joanna: So I think that’s important because —
People think marketing is just like paying for Facebook ads, but it’s also your network, and you’ve been growing your network for a really long time.
Obviously, Kris is an amazing writer. She was also an editor in short story markets and all that.
So that’s part of your network giving you opportunities, which is just as important.
Douglas: Yes, for sure. I know Jason, who runs StoryBundle, so it all helps. There’s different ways to market.
I know Kris and Dean because I went to their workshop a couple of decades ago. The first one I went to was How to Write Short Fiction.
Joanna: Amazing.
Douglas: Led by Kris and Gardner Dozois, the late Gardner Dozois. I think Kris is the only person who beat Gardner for a Hugo for Best Editor.
Joanna: Wow. I’ve been on Dean and Kris’s workshops and things like that, and that’s kind of how I’ve ended up discovering your work. So just for people listening, again, sometimes these things take decades to come around, but that’s okay.
Where can people find you, and your books, and your stories online?
Douglas: Sure. The best starting point is my website, which is SmithWriter.com. You can find links to my own bookstore or to all the retailer sites.
I just completed an urban fantasy trilogy called The Dream Rider Saga, and the books are The Hollow Boys, The Crystal Key and The Lost Expedition. The Hollow Boys won two awards when it came out. The third book, The Lost Expedition, just came out last year, and I had an earlier novel as well.
You can find links to those and all my collections on the website.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Doug. That was great.
Douglas: Okay, thanks for having me on again, Joanna.
Poets & Writers Magazine features editor India Lena González hosts this two-part event celebrating the ten debut poets featured in “The Luminous Life: Our Twentieth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from our January/February 2025 issue. The virtual event includes readings from the poets, as well as conversations about their debut books, their influences and inspirations, and their individual paths to publication.
While non-fiction books don’t have to be related to a business, if you have an existing client base, or speaking platform, or you want to build one, a book can be a great way to build authority, bring in new work, and even generate income.
If you’re struggling to start writing, use your existing assets and expertise, such as slide decks, talks, or podcasts, as a foundation for your first book.
You can also use dictation or ask ChatGPT or Claude to generate questions or prompts about your topic and build from transcripts or notes as you answer each question
Focus on serving your target audience, solving their problems
Consider multiple shorter, focused books rather than trying to include everything.
Books can establish authority, serve as a marketing tool, and generate significant revenue, especially in print and audio formats
Non-fiction books can be priced higher and sell well over time, benefiting from a long-tail income model
Readers value personal stories and unique perspectives—elements AI cannot replicate effectively so your book will stand out
The long game of publishing: Think beyond the first month’s sales and consider how a book can continually bring in income and opportunities over years.
Reader engagement: Use compelling calls to action in your book, such as offering valuable, updated content to grow your email list and audience.
Transcript:
Liz: Hello and welcome to The Biz Book Broadcast. If you’ve got a business and you love books, then you, my lovely book nerd chum, are in exactly the right place. And have we got a show for you today? Woo hoo. It’s gonna be great. I’m Liz Scully, I’m a business strategist, and today I have Joanna Penn with me. Hello. Please say hello to the lovely listener.
Jo: Hello, Liz. Hello everyone. I’m excited to be here.
Liz: Exactly. Now for you, lovely listener. This is part of our December daily sessions. I know doing this without a net, my friends. It is also part of our Biz Book series, meaning that you should really write a book for your business.
It’ll do it the world of good. Now, if you have been listening carefully and why would you not be? Then you’ll know that this whole series is really a thinly veiled attempt for me to get extra coaching about my book, Think Like a Film Crew, out soon. That’s all I’m willing to commit to at this point.
Let me tell you a bit more about Joanna Penn because she is something of a phenomena. She is a prolific author of many genres of fiction [as J.F. Penn]. She has written many, many helpful nonfiction books, mostly advice for authors. She’s a successful podcaster. She’s a speaker, she’s a futurist, and she’s a delight.
How lovely is that? I’m so glad you’re here, Joanna.
Jo: Thanks, this is a great topic as well. I love talking about books. I am total book nerd as you are!
It’s super clear. It’s a really solid handbook. Truly, if you only read one book on the topic, this could do you very well —
and it’s a really good first place to start.
And if you’ve been thinking, you know, maybe 2025 is the year I write that book. This could be a fabulous starting place. And the holidays, most of us are on holiday. This is quite a good time to really dig on that. We’ve even got an episode coming during this daily series on writer’s blog.
So if you read Joanna’s book and then you get started and you get stuck. Look for that. Joanna, you must speak to thousands of authors and they are presumably by the time they’re speaking to you, they’re interested in writing a book.
Where do people start if they want to write a book?
Jo: I think the biggest thing is actually starting, and when we’re talking about writing a book, we are actually talking about writing words on a page.
But I think what is wonderful about these days of technology, and I know a lot of business people, for example, might be speakers. They might have loads of slide decks, or they might have talks they’ve done, they might have podcast interviews like this. They might have just lots of things that they might have recorded in audio or video. You can start with a transcript.
In fact, the [first edition of the] book, How to Write Non-Fiction, started with transcripts of a course I taught.
This is a big tip for nonfiction writers because especially if you’ve never written a book before, ’cause it can be so daunting to think, how do I get everything into a final form? Well, you don’t. That’s not the step you take.
You don’t go from brain to finished product immediately. You have to start somewhere.
I’m a discovery writer. Some people are plotters or planners. You don’t have to design the book from the bottom up or the top down. You can just as I do — have a kind of chaotic process of material, which you then shape into a book over time.
But in terms of starting, it really is just write something or record something. One of the tips I have now —
With AI, with ChatGPT, you can say, ask me 30 questions on this topic.
For example, I’m thinking of a book about money for creative people. So give me 30 questions about money for creative people, and then I can take those questions, I can then record myself talking about them.
I can get those transcribed, start there. So I think that that would probably be the easiest way. Just get something down and go from there.
Liz: I love that idea of going to ChatGPT for questions, not for your content, listener. No, not for the content. Please don’t do that. I think we’ll be reading a lot of, or avoiding a lot of books that are written like that.
But the questions, I think that’s a really solid place to start. Maybe we need to actually move back a step before the starting writing.
So you are an expert, you’ve got a business, you know you want to write a book of some sort.
How do you choose your exact subject?
Because I think a lot of first time writers sort of put everything into that first book and, and please don’t do that. How do you choose which bit?
Jo: Yes, I think you’re right. And I mean, you can write your magnum opus, but it’ll take a long time and it might not find a market.
For me, I think the main thing is —
Focus on who are you trying to serve in terms of your target market.
And this doesn’t have to be hard because if you have a business already, you already have a target market.
They are your clients and your customers and, and for me, writing my first books around helping authors was because I’m an author and it was like, ‘oh, this is what I’ve learned.’
So the first book you write could be something you’ve learned that you know your audience need. And most people are running a business based on their own experience.
I would say, for example, my money book. It’s just an idea, it would be, okay, what are the struggles I’ve had around money? How can I turn that into something that will help others? So that would be the, the first thing is like —
What do my existing clients have problems with?
And then can you then kind of chunk that down into different things.
Because you can have a series of shorter books, which can help.
For example, I have How to Write Non-Fiction, How to Write a Novel, Audio for Authors, I have lots of these different things about the job of being an author. And again, that can be a way for people to look at the different aspects and their different clients and aim towards serving them.
Liz: I like that. I’m a great believer in very short books as well. I would encourage everyone to keep things short.
And I think I’ve been reading for, for this show, I’ve been reading books that are even just maybe 10 years old, and there’s a definite drift from those longer nine or 10 hours in the audio book to books that are about five hours long.
I think more of us want a quick read that is going to upload a whole stack of information for us.
And that’s where your books really do well because you have a book for every problem. I like that.
You can change up how long it feels by having short, well organized chapters.
Each, chapter answers a specific question.
And then people, and especially I’m an audio listener, I know you are as well, on Spotify particularly, you can just go in and you can just listen to a chapter on something. You don’t even have to get the whole audio book anymore.
I kind of think that way. And also when I get an audiobook, I might delve into the table of contents and go find the answer to that problem. So I think that’s the way to think about it. Even if, ’cause I wanted to serve the entire market with this book, so it is longer. I do have shorter books.
Sometimes a book does need to be a bit longer, so I wouldn’t constrain yourself at least at the beginning.
Then obviously if it’s over-filled with stuff, then maybe you don’t need it. But I do think there’s room for books of different lengths.
Liz: Absolutely. I’m slightly resistant to very long books, but yes, you are right.
So we’ve talked about starting now, obviously as you know —
I think of a book as a tool, as a strategy, as a way to fill the constellation of information around you and your business and to draw more people to you.
I’m writing my book specifically as a strategy, but just before we started recording, you pointed out that the book itself could actually be a decent source of revenue.
I’m only currently just beginning to get to grips with this. ’cause it sort of never occurred to me. Not that people would read it, but like, oh yeah, a lot of people might buy it. It’s a new thought.
Jo: And I think this is really important because I do think —
You should design a book to make money, and that will mean that you get revenue from it as well as the revenue from the other things.
And personally, most of my revenue does come from books. So that is something I think you have to decide.
You are never going have significant revenue really with one book. But if you’re someone who writes that book and you’re like, oh, actually I got the writing bug, and that’s what happened to me.
I wrote my first one called Career Change, and I was like ‘oh, I think I might just write books for a living.’
But I think with nonfiction books in particular, firstly —
People pay more money for nonfiction books, so you can price a nonfiction book at the highest rate —
Like 9.99 on amazon.com if you’re self-publishing to get 70% royalty.
Nonfiction, self-help audio books are huge. I make most of my audiobook revenue from nonfiction.
As you said, they’re shorter, so they’re cheaper to produce because each audio hour is about 9,000 words so you can make money from Audible and Spotify and all these places from people who want to listen to your audio, that of course they might go on and buy other things. But I do think people should consider that.
Also as a speaker, you can do back of the room sales. You can do print runs, you can make good money on print books and doing them as part of those talks.
Or for example, I have a Shopify store, CreativePennBooks.com, I make good money selling print books, bundles. You can do workbooks, you can do all kinds of things that are book related that are not passive for sure, but they might be a lot more passive income than doing client facing work.
Liz: Interesting because I know in my mind that most people only sell, what, a couple hundred books at most. That’s your average mid-list. Sales are very low, and I’m making the book as readable and delightful as possible, but I’m just becoming aware that it could be more than just a calling card.
It could be more than just to get me on the big stages. So this is really inspiring.
Jo: And also this is really important too. Maybe you sell 200 in the first week or month, but I’ve been doing this since 2008. I put my first book out and there are some of my books that may have only sold 200 copies a month for like 15 years and therefore you end up making a lot more money.
The most important thing with book income is you are not thinking about it as revenue only in month one. You are thinking about it on that long, long tail.
And of course, as we’ve discussed, non-fiction books in January, woohoo. The new new start, new January nonfiction books sell a ton.
Over the summer it might drop off and fiction rises, but this is where, what you’ve gotta think is the book, once it’s done, once you’ve done the very best job, you can pay for an editor, pay for cover design, get it out there.
Publishing is not difficult. Marketing is, but —
Once it’s out there, then you can keep selling that book for a very, very long time.
Liz: That’s a really good point. How many books have you written?
But I love writing and like I said, I’ve been doing this since 2008, was my first book that I put out there and also I run my own publishing company. So as a business person, as everyone listening is —
When I looked at the publishing industry and saw the margins and where the money went, I was like, oh, I guess I’ll just start another company.
’cause I ran my own company at the time. So I have my own publishing house, which is why I make more money with my book sales than someone who might use a publisher.
Obviously there’s pros and cons. We’re not talking necessarily talking about publishing, but I think that is part of the money angle, and what you want to achieve with the book. What is your definition of success? But please don’t write off the money!
Liz: No, no, I feel rather foolish now. One of the big things that is important to me is that people will read the book and will hopefully enter my world in some manner.
The most obvious way I would love lovely readers to do is to give me their email so that we can start a conversation. Obviously what is much more likely is they might seek out this radio show and then hopefully do it that way.
But I think you must have seen this too, people, we all are much less keen to hand over an email for the most interesting opt-in. I mean, I still think, do I really want that though?
You must have seen this shift. ’cause it used to be, oh, slap any old PDF together and people will want it. How do you entice people now?
Jo: From day one, I’ve had the same call to action, which is what I call my Author Blueprint, which is about mindset, self-publishing, marketing, writing.
It’s like everything, bits of my entire knowledge, and I update that every six months.
That’s the call to action in the back of every single nonfiction book, every episode of my podcast. It’s on my social media. It’s on everything.
And so I actually haven’t seen a drop off. I’ve seen that pretty much consistently for all the years, and as I said, I rewrite it every six months and then I send it out because the publishing industry changes, I change, but then I’ll send it out to my existing list and they’ll be like, oh yeah, I haven’t read that for a couple of years, and they’ll read it again.
It’s like a 50 page book. It’s a short book. It actually is in paperback because some people wanted it in paperback, but it’s a free ebook. So that is what I do.
What I would say is you can give away the farm in your freebie and in your books and people still want more.
I think what’s interesting for your business and your book, Think Like a Film Crew is what ties the book to the clients that you want to attract into your ecosystem that links the two. For me it was quite obvious.
And so that would be my advice for people is —
When you’re thinking about an email list growth strategy, what is the thing that those people do want?
Mine is obvious. After you write a nonfiction book, you want know more about publishing, marketing, that kind of thing, but as you say, listening to a podcast is also good. But many people listening won’t want to start their own podcast like you and I.
Liz: True. So actually what I’ve been planning, and I’d love your thoughts on this.
What I’ve been planning is I know that audio books are really helpful. I would love to have an audiobook of my own, because I know how valuable it is. Trouble is, I’m dyslexic and I read like a somewhat stilted 12-year-old.
I go from this perfectly normal flowing adult to this rather stilted reading. So the way I thought to get rounds that was to, there’s lots of very short chapters in my book, was to pick 10 of the more interesting and also short chapters that I would read and to create a show like this.
I would read a tiny part of it, the first chapter, and then we would discuss it with an expert and I would make maybe 10 of those. Five of them I would broadcast, but you could only get the other five if you opted in.
Jo: I quite like that. But, first of all —
I do think you should record your own audio book because you are an audio person. You are the voice brand.
It doesn’t matter because when we write nonfiction books, they should be written in our ‘voice.’
I believe in editing for audio. So I often, when I’m reading my books, narrating them and I have an audio thing in my house right next to me here so that I can mess up as much as I like because it is hard to read one.
But if you are a voice talent, then people want your voice. It doesn’t matter what you think.
It’s not about you, it’s about your audience. What do they want?
So that is my challenge to you.
But also in terms of your reader magnet being audio, then yes, but you want people to buy your book. So, if people are reading in ebook or print —
Print is huge for nonfiction. It is massive. Most people are going to buy it in print or they’re going to get the audiobook, or they do both.
I quite listen quite often, will listen to an audio book and buy the hard copy.
Liz: Me too.
Jo: So I think you want something else. I would consider doing something like even just a 20 lessons learned from … for you because there must be some gossip in here. Keep some gossip behind the scenes.
People want the personal stuff or some real juicy thing that people want to know more about you behind the scenes.
This is another tip for nonfiction authors —
You have to get personal. We cannot have emotionless person-less books that do just lists of how to because AI can do that.
And that to me now reads like an AI book. It can do self-help. What it can’t do is you, it can’t do your experience —
and well, it can do your voice actually. But I do think that like you’ll giggle and you know my laugh and I mean, I say to my audience, look, I will tell you when it’s AI Jo. And it isn’t AI Joe at the moment, this is me.
Think about what the audience might want the most rather than what you would prefer to create. Is that too much of a challenge?
Liz: No, that’s fair. To be fair, I have a whole strategy. Obviously I’m a strategist. I have a whole strategy for where I wish to funnel people afterwards.
You’ve got me thinking, I have to say. You’ve got me thinking. It’s good. It’s my job and my plan for my book is that people will read it, want more in my world, and eventually they will join a mastermind. So I have a whole structure to move people towards that.
I hear you about the dyslexia. Okay. Okay. You’ve convinced me.
Now I know that one of the things that we, that may well be top of mind for our lovely listener is that yes, they want to write a book. Yes, they’ve got a business. Yes, they can see how it all fits together. But a lot of people, including you, they’ve written a lot of books, which is fine. Lovely for you. But what about the rest of us?
Is it okay to just write one book and leave it at that?
If it is purely to drive business into other parts of your business, then often those people do only write one book. Sometimes one book really does take off, you know, James Clear with Atomic Habits. I think he has another book now, but I mean, that just went stratospheric.
So one book can do incredibly well. It can give you keynote talks. It can do a lot.
But as I said earlier, this kind of bug of ‘I really enjoy writing and I want to do more.’ I think everyone has a default mode of trying to help, and some people might feel like this is it for them, basically. And then I would encourage you to do more because, I think it’s wonderfully fulfilling to help people through your books.
You can help a lot of people through a podcast, but there’s a whole different audience out there for your books.
Liz: That’s very true. So when you wrote your first book, did you have any idea it was going be your thing?
Jo: No. My first book was called Career Change, and it was because I was so miserable in my day job.
I was an IT consultant, I was crying at work. I hated it. I needed to get out. And I was like, how do I do this? I know, I’ll try and figure it out by writing a self-help book, get a book deal, and be famous and make millions — and that didn’t happen surprisingly but —
The book you write can change your life. It may not be in the way you think
— and it wasn’t for me because that book didn’t do very well. It never did very well. You know, it sells a little bit all the time. But I discovered I didn’t want to talk about career change. I didn’t want to be that consultant person. I didn’t want to speak on that topic.
I did want to write more books. I did want to write fiction and it’s completely changed my life.
That’s another thing I would say to people. If you start writing something and it turns into something else, trust your intuition.
Because yes, you can aim for it to grow your business or whatever, but in the process of writing, you might actually be transformed and you may discover something about your new direction that you didn’t know before, and that might be the thing that changes your life.
Liz: Interesting, interesting. How long did your first book take you to write?
Jo: Probably about 18 months, but I’ll give you another one. My book Pilgrimage took around four years. That’s a kind of memoir/solo walking book.
And my book Writing The Shadow, which is about the Jungian shadow side, the writing took decades.
Liz: I feel better about that.
Jo: I mean, I’ve written books in six weeks, but it really depends on how deep you go, how much meaning there is to you.
Is it a ‘this is what you need to do’ type of book and that is fine. That is all good. Those books are great. But if it’s a book where you are sharing a lot more personal stories, mining your subconscious and your memories and you’re trying to do a transformational journey — like my book, Pilgrimage is a transformational journey — It can take a lot longer if you have to do research. Again, let it be what it is.
Liz: Right. Oh, I like that. Do you have a favorite book? Of all of them. With so many, is there one that stands out?
Jo: That’s really hard. In terms of my nonfiction, I do think Writing the Shadow feels like almost my last word on the craft. The subtitle is Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words. It’s all about the darker side of us. And I know your other business understands a lot about that.
Some of the things we repress are the things that can actually change our lives.
I feel like that book helped transform me, and helps my fiction so much. So I really think that it’s an interesting thing to consider these longer works. Also, I didn’t feel ready, so this is another tip.
If you don’t feel ready to write this massive thing that you want to maybe try and write that short 20,000 word tips book, like 20 tips can be very valuable. And then think about those deeper works maybe over the longer term.
Liz: I. That is great. And actually, interestingly enough, I do have other books planned, hopefully, if I could ever get this word outta the system. But I think of as a thinker, these are my ideas, this is how it helps.
But I am planning two books afterwards, which are on How to Run Masterminds, and exactly as you’re saying, to keep them short, I’m thinking How to Sell a Mastermind as one book and How to Run a Mastermind is the other.
Jo: Oh, great. That’s fantastic.
Liz: I would like them to be as short as possible ’cause I dunno about you. Maybe you have a higher tolerance, but for me, if I’m listening to an audio book and they’re just rambling on, I’d just like to throttle the author. I,
Jo: I put it on 1.5 speed.
Liz: I listen at 2.3 as my standard and I still find myself thinking, oh, this has been going on forever.
Jo: Well, this is another tip around the chapters.
On an audio book player, the chapters should have a decent title, so I know where to skip on to.
I think that’s actually really important.
Liz: Yes, that is true, and I find it slightly shameful that not everything is published like that at the moment because really, oh, I know, we’re in the modern world. People, give it a proper name.
Now we are nearly at the end of our time together, but Joanna has set us up beautifully for two things. First of all, that her favorite book is the book that we are going to talk about next time. I’m very excited about that. Thank you so much.
But also, I want to leave you listener with a big idea.
The big thing that I think I have taken away from this conversation is that use ChatGPT to find those questions about your topic.
Such a good idea. So I suggest that if you’re thinking of writing a book, do what Joanna said. In fact, actually I’ll just suggest that anyway.
Do what Joanna says is a fairly good plan for life, I suspect. In the meantime, where can people find out more about you and your world?
Jo: Yeah, come on over to The Creative Penn Podcast since you are listening to this and you can find everything I do at TheCreativePenn.com.
Liz: Excellent and all that will of course be in the show notes and while you’re getting things you know listener, if somehow you still haven’t got my reading list, go and get it. It’s best in Class books. My little mission in life with this show is to save you from reading awful books. All of those long, tedious ones, they’re not on the list. It’s about 12. They’re fabulous. Go and get it. Once again, thank you so much for being here, Joanna.
Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 drama film A Bigger Splash follows a couple vacationing on an Italian island whose peace is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of an ex-lover with his daughter in tow. Marianne, a world-renowned rock star, has just had a surgical operation leaving her unable to speak throughout the film, with the exception of occasional whispers. This week write a short story that builds a sense of tension by having a typically expected mode of communication temporarily shut down. What misunderstandings occur? While one means of communication is hindered, is there another method that compensates for the loss?
In this 2024 LBC Full Disclosure podcast interview with James O’Brien, author and playwright Hanif Kureishi talks about the life-changing fall which led him to write his memoir, Shattered (Ecco, 2025), a mix of dispatches from his hospital bed and his reassembled new life.
Edges of Ailey is an immersive exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art centered around the twentieth-century choreographer, dancer, and artist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The show spotlights multimedia presentations of Ailey’s work, recorded footage, notebooks and drawings, as well as works that inspired Ailey and have been inspired by him in the forms of literature, music, and visual art. Write a poem centered on movements of the body, whether a creative motion like a dance move or the everyday, repetitive motion of carrying out a task. Allow yourself the freedom to experiment with page space—choosing different sizes or styles of script, incorporating small drawings or cutouts—to create a collage-like piece.
In this Harvard Radcliffe Institute event, Ilya Kaminsky reads a selection of poems from his collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), including “We Lived Happily During the War” and “While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses,” and discusses being an immigrant and poet in between languages in a conversation with Stephanie Sandler.
Creative burnout can feel like a wall between you and your writing goals. Whether it’s the result of stress, distractions, or feeling creatively drained, creative fatigue and even injury is something many modern writers experience. Because writers are generally a solution-forward bunch, we often think we can ten-step our way out of the problem. However, when creativity itself is the problem, the resources to heal can often be counter-intuitive. Creative burnout recovery isn’t about forcing your way back to the page; it’s about holistically creating space in the rest of your life for your creativity to breathe and rebuild.
Last fall when I asked you all what you’d like me to write about this year, quite a few of you brought up challenges you were having in accessing, restoring, or implementing your creativity:
So sorry I have not really had the time to read your blog these days. I have not even had the chance to write either which…for me…is a tragedy. And to be perfectly honest, it is difficult for me to use my inner creativity muscle anymore. But that does not mean I can’t. I would like you to write more about finding the joy of writing and ways to battle against writer’s “disinterest.” I will not call it a block.–MC Furgal
Having experienced deep creative burnout myself, these are topics about which I am extremely passionate. In my own experience and from what I hear from the writing community, creative burnout is becoming an increasingly common challenge for many modern writers. Although the pandemic crisis in 2020 launched many people’s creative aspirations, it was also a shatterpoint for many long-time creatives. There are many possible reasons for this, but to me this points to the reality that creative burnout is often the result of what may seem at first to be “supra-creative” causes. Although writer’s block may often appear to be specifically related to the act of writing (as in some cases of what I call “plot block”), it is more often a symptom of deeper obstacles blocking the flow and force of our deepest creative selves—which is to say, our very lives.
To risk creative burnout is, truly, to risk the burnout of our deepest life force and vitality. Likewise, to heal any injuries or exhaustion in our relationship to creativity, we must be willing to look beyond the page to examine those things that may be blocking, not just our writing, but our lives.
That said, today I want to respond to MC’s question by looking at the practical steps I’ve learned over the years in my own creative burnout recovery and in daily building the kind of life that supports this vital energy.
What is creative burnout? Put simply, it’s when you reach that point when there’s nothing left in the tank.
Although lack of creative desire is often the first symptom that something might be going awry, the resistance felt is different from the usual—and quite normal—pushback most writers feel when confronted with the empty page. In creative burnout, the will might still be present, but the passion is gone. The desire for desire might be present, but the old spark just isn’t there. The motivation has run dry. Writing, even at its best, requires a difficult and even painful stretching of oneself, but there is always a purpose, a reason, a motivation to keep going. With creative burnout, there just isn’t.
MC wrote that it is “difficult for me to use my inner creativity muscle anymore.” I like this metaphor of a “muscle,” since it extends to include the idea of an injury. Creative burnout is really creative injury. Understanding this helps resolve the shame, confusion, and self-recrimination that often complicates this experience. Treating burnout as an injury allows us to turn doctor and explore the root causes of what can otherwise seem a mysterious hex.
Although every experience of creative burnout will be as deeply unique as creative expression itself, most instances can be traced or at least related to one simple factor: stress.
The most important thing to understand about stress—and therefore about creative burnout—is that stress is a physiological experience. It happens to the body. This can have wide-ranging effects—from muscle tension and inflammation to nervous system dysregulation to rewired brain patterns (e.g., anxiety triggers, attention deficits)—and all the host of further snowballing conditions and illnesses (e.g., high blood pressure, etc.) It’s not something to be taken lightly. Although creative burnout by itself can seem comparatively minor (!), it is often an early caution against further lifestyle dangers.
Recognizing this is one thing. Dealing it with in a modern technological world that seems to become more complex and stressful by the day is another challenge altogether. Few of us live simple or streamlined lives. Between relationships, jobs, finances, home and auto maintenance, and a host of other calls upon our attention, we are busier than ever. On top of that, our sleep is increasingly dysregulated, thanks in part to our near-constant exposure to blue light. Even our downtime isn’t really downtime. Instead of creating space for routines that allow our systems to actually empty, reset, and refill, we’re usually either chasing dopamine highs (i.e,. checking off fun stuff like it’s a to-do list) or numbing out (probably with more screentime).
This is just the norm now. Speaking for myself, I can draw a direct correlation between the increasing busyness of my mind throughout my adult decades and the corresponding decrease in my ability to “dream” and therefore to access creation from the deepest well of myself rather than simply my overworked head center. Breaking away from these unhealthy and ultimately creativity-destroying lifestyles requires the conscious awareness and effort to create days that are filled with high-quality habits (but not too full, if you know what I mean).
Seeking Emptiness: The Problem of “Filling the Well’ in Creative Burnout Recovery
The first step in creative burnout recovery is creating space in your life where you can invite creativity back in.
In the past, discussions of writer’s block have often focused on the seemingly generative idea of “filling the well.” However, the very term writer’s block tells us the problem isn’t necessarily a lack but perhaps a superfluence. The longer I have experienced, researched, and responded to my own creative blocks, the clearer it has become to me that the real problem is not that my creative well is empty of ideas or information, but rather that my system in general is too full. When an overloaded brain and nervous system run too hot for too long the result is, of course, burnout.
Because burnout is physiological, it is not a state that can always be easily reversed. Just as with a car engine that has been run into the ground, some pieces may be beyond salvaging and may need to be replaced. In the case of a living organism, this replication is miraculously possible, but it takes time, patience, and the discipline to create the ease and space that creative energy craves.
Here are a few practical tips for creating space into which you can re-invite your creativity:
1. Do What’s in Front of You
This has become one of the mantras of my life. Basically, it means “clear the table” (or the desk, as the case may be). Clear the clutter by starting with what’s right in front of you. Although this might indicate actual clutter, more generally it recommends against procrastination. The more stuff that piles up (literally or metaphorically), the fuller our brains get. Even when we may not actively remember everything (like that unanswered email or the leftovers in the fridge), some part of your brain does remember. It puts a pin it, and when you never get back to it and a hundred others like it, the mental real estate it requires takes up more and more space that could otherwise be used for creativity.
2. Go Slow Enough to Process
In some respects, this is another variation of “do what’s in front of you”—except here what’s “in front of you” are the thousand little mental and emotional responses that arise throughout the day to one prompt after another. We interact with infinitely more bits of information and stimuli than have previous generations. Although our amazing brains quickly filter, sort, and process most of these occurrences, some take a little more time. When we are unable to pause in the moment to fully acknowledge or process our responses, they still get backed up in the body. In the constant flow of information, that particular catalyst may be mentally forgotten, but not physically.
Get into the practice of noticing your responses as they arise. When something feels triggering or like it requires an extra moment to process, take a break, step back, and fully digest it before moving on—all of which can take as little as a few seconds of awareness. Particularly in our scroll culture, in which we may encounter dozens, if not hundreds, of possible triggers within a short timespan, slowing down enough to learn this practice offers untold benefits.
3. Write Down or Look Up Questions ASAP
You know those random thoughts and curiosities that filter through your brain throughout the day? How tall is Elizabeth Debicki? How may Super Bowls did Tom Brady win? Which brand of crackers is cheaper? To the degree you intend to “look that up later,” do it now. This is yet another form of “doing what’s in front of you.” Don’t let trivia backlog in your brain. Use your phone to look it up right now. If you intend to text someone, do it now. If you need to add something to your grocery list, put in your online cart or write it down now. Not only does this reverse procrastination habits, it is also one of the simplest ways to remove unneeded complexity from your daily brain and your probably already overtaxed short-term memory. Wouldn’t you much rather think about your story rather than crackers? (Or not. I mean I love crackers.)
Minimizing Unnecessary (and Sometimes Necessary) Noise, So You Can Hear the Muse
One of the biggest brain clutterers is noise. And there is so. much. noise right now. If you spend any significant amount of your life online (and who doesn’t?), then you hear the noise. Some of that noise is from your own life. Some of it is literal noise. And some of it is just the general clutter and chatter of the Internet—emails, ads, news, to-do lists, even entertainment. We all know how easy it is for our hours and our good intentions to run down the drain after getting sucked into what started out seeming like an inconsequential browse through suggested YouTube shorts.
Here’s the thing: the Internet is not going to help you take control of your brain back. Our modern world is not going to help you. If you want your brain back—if you want your creativity back—you have to do it yourself. And I’ll be honest: this is a Sisyphean battle. Short of pulling the plug on the Internet and/or having superpower-level self-discipline, I envision this as one of Dwight Eisenhower’s battle plans—where basically you have to keep throwing it out and creating new ones on the go.
Here’s what I’m doing this year to take care of my brain.
1. Browse One Tab at a Time
The hyper-multitasking of the Internet has literally rewired our brains into shorter attention spans and memories. One of the only ways to combat this is to force yourself to go slower. (I know, I know, it feels like pulling teeth to me too.) In the past, my daily Internet routine was to open every single tab I would need for the day (email, blog comments, socials, financial institutions, etc.), then go through them as fast as I could. If one page was loading (I have slow Internet), I’d skip back and forth between tabs. I think I could literally feel my brain dying.
This year, I made the commitment to only open one working tab at a time. I am shocked by how much calmer my brain feels. I will never go back.
2. Use a Pomodoro Timer to Take Breaks
A Pomodoro timer is a time-management tool that breaks your work into focused intervals, typically 25 minutes long, followed by a short 5-minute break, helping boost productivity and prevent burnout. I also started using this tool more faithfully this year. I will work sitting for 25 minutes, use an eye massager during the 5-minute break, then raise my desk to standing for 15 minutes, before repeating. Not only does it help me reorient, give me time to process anything that’s come up during the 25 minutes, and slow my roll on any time-suckers, it also gives me the chance to address my body’s needs.
3. Limit Social Media
I know, I know. This one is almost a cliche at this point. But it’s the truth. Social media can be fun and useful, and for those of us who use it for marketing, it can even be obligatory. But there’s no question it is, at best, a necessary evil. Aside from always being a potential black hole for our time and attention, it is also designed to bombard us with a host of small stimuli that fill up our brains with empty calories and encourage low-quality wiring in our memories and nervous systems. I gotta be honest: the less time spent on short-form content, the better. If you love it or need it, set a timer—then give yourself at least a few minutes afterward to let everything you saw and heard process through.
4. Commit to No-Buy Months
This one might not seem immediately obvious, but aside from bringing less actual stuff into your life (and saving money), it can also free up more of your attention. One way or another, most of us spend a lot of time shopping—whether necessarily or recreationally. Especially if you shop predominately online, creating structure around not just how much you can buy but, in this instance, particularly how much time you spend looking can not only free up time and space, it can also help cut down on the unavoidable noisiness of everything that happens out here in Internet-land.
5. Set Realistic Schedules and Goals for Your Life
We have to manage so much complexity in our modern lives. The better we organize our lives, the more structures and resources we can utilize to help us quiet everything down enough to create an inviting space for our creativity. One important way of doing this is making sure the structures and tools we bring in to help are, in fact, realistic. Trying to cram in too much (guilty!) won’t help your creative burnout recovery, no matter how well-organized it is. Get real about what’s important and what you have time for. If creativity is important, then prioritize that—even just in making space so your brain can quiet down.
This will require new habits. After all, if the old ones hurt you, you know you have to stop. You can’t go back to doing the same things that led to creative burnout the first time around.
This can be a tough pill to swallow. Just recently (after many years of creative burnout recovery), I finally found myself consciously realizing that part of me was trying to heal just so I could return to the same level of productivity I managed before my burnout. That’s the definition of insanity.
You have to be willing to examine whether you might have to let go of some the ways things used to be. There can be an ego death and a grieving process involved with that.
You can also ask yourself whether you might, in fact, be able to return to some good things as well. One of the best ways to cultivate good creative habits is to think back to times when creativity overflowed. Think back to the perfect ease of daydreaming and play-acting when in childhood. Creativity seemed effortless then because it was allowed to arise, rather then being recruited as a soldier in the army of productivity.
Although creativity ultimately uses and requires all aspects of the self, including the intellect and the will, it begins as an inherently intuitive and even emotional process. When we talk about “making space” for creativity, what we are talking about is the space where the creativity begins. We are making space for creativity to arrive. Although we may often think of “the act of creation” as something we do, it is a deeply receptive act. True creativity is not so much when we think of something as when that thought thinks us. There’s no forcing that. There is only waiting, listening, and cultivating a physiology that is habituated to experience the creative act as pleasurable rather than stressful.
Even before taking the steps mentioned above, you must have a willingness and ability to go through what is often a literal detox from “go mode.” If creative burnout results from our brains rewiring in unpleasant ways (albeit to protect and/or serve us), then creative burnout recovery is about rewiring our miraculously plastic brains and systems back into generativity. Go mode is highly addictive, which is, again, another physical experience. It’s not just in our heads; it’s not just a “habit”; after a while, it becomes part of our physical reality. Changing that reality requires changing certain fundamental things about the way we interact with all parts of our lives.
Not every writer is committed enough to their writing to make those changes. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with deciding to move on after burning out on one expression of creativity. But we cannot move on from creativity itself. It is our very life force. It is the best and truest part of our existence, no matter how it expresses. Although the modern world and its technologies offers a plethora of unthought-of tools and environments that can help creativity thrive, there are also many aspects absolutely antithetical to the maintenance of a healthy creative life. Without awareness and discipline, more and more writers are likely to suffer creative burnout—not because there is anything inherently wrong with their “creative muscle,” but because the potentially endless distractions and stresses we face every day are, in fact, creative death by a thousand cuts.
Although creative burnout is a challenge many writers face, it is also an unprecedented opportunity to reconnect with the essence of creativity itself. By stepping away from the constant demands of modern life and creating space for rest, reflection, and renewal, we can rediscover the joy and vitality that fuels our writing. The process of recovery requires patience and the willingness to let go of old habits, but it also offers the chance to build a more sustainable and fulfilling creative practice for the future. Remember, creativity thrives in moments of stillness and openness. By nurturing those moments, we not only heal our creative selves, but also open the door to the deep, rich stories that resonate with our true selves.
Creative burnout isn’t just a temporary slump; it’s often a deep-seated physiological and emotional response to overwork and stress. It’s not about the absence of ideas but about a system that’s too full to allow creativity to flow. To recover, we need to create space in our lives to heal and rejuvenate, both mentally and physically. A critical first step is slowing down, clearing mental clutter, and consciously addressing stress that’s been building in our lives. Real recovery requires not only rest but also adjustments to our habits and schedules to maintain balance.
Key Takeaways:
Creative Burnout Is a Physiological Injury: It’s not just a lack of motivation but a deeper, systemic issue rooted in stress and mental overload.
Create Space for Recovery: To heal from burnout, it’s important to clear physical and mental clutter. Slow down, process emotions, and avoid procrastination.
Minimize External Noise: Limit distractions, especially online, to allow your mind the space to reset.
Practical Strategies: Implement tools like Pomodoro timers, limit social media, and commit to no-buy months to reduce external pressure and regain control over your time and attention.
Set Realistic Expectations: Overloading your schedule exacerbates burnout. Set achievable goals and leave room for recovery.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What strategies have you found most helpful in your own creative burnout recovery journey? Tell me in the comments!
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).
Self-doubt is one of the biggest obstacles a writer will ever face. It creeps in at the worst moments—undermining confidence, stalling progress, and making you question whether your stories are even worth telling. Conquering self-doubt in writing isn’t about eliminating it altogether; it’s about learning to work with it. The key is recognizing self-doubt for what it really is: not a stop sign, but a challenge to grow.
As you can see from what we’ve been talking about today, understanding archetypes—and their shadows—is a valuable resource that can help you break free from creative self-doubt and write with greater depth and confidence. My eight-week email course Shadow Archetypes: Writing Complex Fictional Characters explores how these deep psychological patterns shape both your characters, by extension, you as well. In recognizing and working with shadow archetypes, you can uncover new layers of complexity in your storytelling that can help you transform inner obstacles into strengths. If you’re interested in joining me in bringing your most compelling characters to life, you can find out more here.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we do just about everything these days, and the impact of AI on fiction writing is no exception. As a writer who cherishes the creative process, I have spent the last few years grappling with both the possibilities and pitfalls this new technology brings. On the one hand, AI offers tools that can make our lives easier—such as helping with research, marketing, and even ideation. On the other hand, it raises questions about originality, authenticity, and the integrity of human storytelling.
Creative burnout can feel like a wall between you and your writing goals. Whether it’s the result of stress, distractions, or feeling creatively drained, creative fatigue and even injury is something many modern writers experience. Because writers are generally a solution-forward bunch, we often think we can ten-step our way out of the problem. However, when creativity itself is the problem, the resources to heal can often be counter-intuitive. Creative burnout recovery isn’t about forcing your way back to the page; it’s about holistically creating space in the rest of your life for your creativity to breathe and rebuild.
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