Spell checkers, autocorrect, predictive text, voice commands, Siri, Alexa, Google search, it’s all AI.

But the AI we’re really talking about now is the large language model AI like ChatGPT, the AI that many a writer fears is coming to take over the industry.

Consider the following:

In navigating the evolving landscape of writing and AI, authors can seamlessly integrate artificial intelligence into their creative process while retaining the essential human touch. One approach is to view AI as a valuable assistant rather than a replacement. Authors can leverage AI tools to enhance efficiency, streamline research, and generate ideas, ultimately facilitating the writing process. By using AI to complement their skills, writers can maintain creative control while benefiting from the speed and data processing capabilities of these tools.

Furthermore, AI can serve as a collaborative partner, aiding authors in brainstorming and refining concepts. Embracing AI as a co-creator allows writers to blend their unique perspectives with the analytical capabilities of the technology, resulting in a harmonious synergy. Additionally, AI-powered editing tools can assist in refining language and style, ensuring a polished final product that reflects the author’s voice.

While integrating AI, it is crucial for writers to remain mindful of ethical considerations and maintain transparency with readers about the use of technology in their creative process. By embracing AI as a supportive tool, authors can harness its potential to elevate their craft, enriching their writing experience without sacrificing the authenticity and humanity inherent in their work. Ultimately, the harmonious integration of AI and human creativity opens new avenues for innovation, enabling writers to explore the full spectrum of their imaginative capabilities.

The above article (text in italics) was written by ChatGPT. It’s unedited, pasted directly from the app.

I fed the robot articles I have already written on the topic of AI writing, and asked it to produce a piece of text in the same style on the topic “How To Use AI In Your Writing And Stay Human.”

Everything it produced above is my opinion and encapsulates the way I use AI in my writing. It’s not 100% in my voice – at least not the way I write on this site – but close.

I use AI for my writing and I am still a 100% human writer, writing from my own world views, experiences, stylistic choices, and everything else I have ever used in my life long dedication to writing as an art and a craft.

I use ChatGPT and Claude for brainstorming ideas. I use them for assistance in coming up with character names, titles, concepts, descriptive details. I use them for research (although I always double check those results with other sources because even it knows its limitations in that area). I use it for writing drafts of blurbs and book descriptions, and I used it to write this article about using AI. I use generative art AI tools to put an image on this post, and another AI tool to post it to Pinterest. I use AI to narrate audiobooks, and in all kinds of other ways in my writing career.

I’m still a human writer, struggling with ideas and craft, productivity constraints and mindset limitations.

For me, writing with AI is not about speed and productivity. I don’t want to use it to write an article or even an entire novel in a few seconds or minutes. I’m a writer, not an AI prompt engineer.

I use AI because it makes me think of different things.

If creativity is finding innovation in the spaces between existing ideas, then I look at AI as a way to provide more ideas, more spaces. Spaces I would never have been able to come up with on my own.

AI doesn’t detract from my creative process. AI enhances and enlivens and enriches my creative process.

I will use it in different ways as the technology continues to advance and I will still call myself a human writer.

You also have the choice NOT to use AI in your writing. How you use it is, like everything else in your writing life, totally up to you.

The post How To Use AI In Your Writing And Stay Human appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

A few years ago, I devised a solution to this problem.

There’s a large ring binder on my desk. It’s light blue, and has a cover decorated with rainbow marker, scribbles and splashes of exuberant colour around the big words in bubble writing, Play Projects.

Inside are pages and pages of handwritten notes that free me from the drudgery of the word after word, writing to algorithm type of writing that many indie authors get caught up in (and I have too, too many times). These notes excite me, thrill me, inspire me, and keep my creativity burning bright.

These are my Play Projects.

I am a multi-passionate, multi-minded creative. Some call it a multipotentialite. We are the writers who don’t and can’t focus on one thing at a time, who have many diverse interests, and want to make All The Things.

I maintain a focus project, a book I keep working on in the majority of my writing time until its done. But when the Shiny Object Syndrome comes knocking at my door, I’ll show it to the Play Projects space.

On days when I’m not working on the focus project, or after I’ve finished with it for the day, I let myself explore Play Projects.

What Is A Play Project?

Sometimes I make notes on ideas, expanding what’s in my head onto paper. Sometimes I research and make notes on different topics that have snagged my attention. Sometimes I play at outlining stories that may or may not get written. Or I might explore plans of things I might do for the intention of writing about later.

There are no rules in the Play Projects, except that everything must be approached with the spirit of play and the purpose of creative fulfillment above all else.

When I finish a focus project and am unsure what will next fill that space, I turn to the Play Projects folder.

What excites me the most?

What has the most potential to become something vast and fulfilling?

What is the most developed?

What interests me the most?

This project then becomes my focus project, and I take those notes out of the binder and slot them into my focus project folder.

My novel Night Shift At The Shadow Bay Hotel was born this way. As was my website and associated books, Tarot Writers.

It can also work the opposite way.

I don’t always finish my focus projects. Or sometimes file them away for later completion. There are many reasons why I might quit, but the work is never lost or abandoned. It is relegated to the Play Projects folder and might one day return to the focus space.

How Might Play Projects Benefit You?

Try it and see.

Get yourself a folder and a stack of holed blank paper. Create a cover for your binder, as playful as you like.

If you’re more digitally minded this can also be done with a computer file folder (give it a custom icon to mark it as special).

And then take time to play.

Play with your ideas, play with different forms on how those ideas might become something more.

Forget productivity, forget algorithms and markets, and right and wrong and all the writing so called rules, and just see what comes out.

Get purely creative, express yourself. This is what the writing life is meant to be about.

The post How To Inspire More Play In Your Writing Practice appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

“I should write more.”

“I should write in a series.”

“I should market my books more.”

“I should meditate?”

“I should read more.”

“I should eat more vegetables.”

“I should exercise more.”

Creatives are particularly prone to shoulding because we see so many options, so much potential in so many things.  

When we’re trying to introduce more creative practices in our lives, the Shoulds come in heavy.

We want to do new things, expand our horizons, and broaden our minds, explore our creative potential. But we get stuck, always running, always looking out the window at everything else there is in the world, making notes to go back and grab those things when the wheel stops or slows or changes direction. Life seldom does any of those things, but we still remember what we saw out the window, and now we have guilt that we haven’t yet gone and grabbed it.

What Are Should Statements?

Shoulds can manifest as Oughts, Musts, Have Tos, and also extends to Should Nots. 

Should is a weird state. We know we want something, we know something would be good for us, we see all the benefits of it, and yet…… we don’t do it.

Should statements are misaligned pressure and unfocused obligations that hinder our creative minds.

Need To is different.

You need to do the work that pays the bills. You need to eat, sleep, drink, play, connect, rest. You need to take care of your kids. You don’t actually need to do anything outside of the basic survival and civil operations. I suppose you could argue that civil actions aren’t a need at all, but for the scope of this article, let’s assume that we all want to live in a modern civilized society; thus, we need to obey the laws and follow the conventions.

Should often operates subconsciously, based on our ideas of what a successful life looks like. Should pressure connects to emotion, perceived satisfaction, and a fear of missing out on the benefits we see at the other end. 

We should eat more vegetables or exercise regularly because we believe it would be good to have a healthy body and increased energy. We should turn off the TV and go to bed earlier because we believe more sleep will improve our energy and mood.

We should write more because we imagine finishing that novel will be satisfying and potentially earn money. We should make time for XYZ creative pursuits we’ve said we wanted to do for years because we believe these things will enrich our lives and make us happy.

Perhaps this is all based on experience, a pressure to “get back into” something we used to do. Or some things seem like they might be a nice new thing to try. Either way, we imagine there’s a reward at the end, and in creative pursuits, this is foremost an emotional benefit.

Cognitive Distortion

According to the experts, should statements are a type of cognitive distortion.

“Cognitive distortions are biased perspectives we take on ourselves and the world around us. They are irrational thoughts and beliefs that we unknowingly reinforce over time.”

Courtney E. Ackerman

Should statements create an inaccurate picture of our lives because they force us to cling to something that doesn’t exist but could exist if only we did the thing.

When we don’t follow through with it, and the should remains a null state, it can lead to anger, resentment, disappointment in ourselves, guilt, anxiety, depression. Do these sound like fertile states for creative living?

Does Should Have Any Benefit?

While should statements running rife around your brain have the potential to breed into negative thought spirals, even anxiety and depression, they could also have the potential to bring a positive spin in that they can guide us toward our desires. 

But only if we know how to tame them…

Swap Should for Could

Should is an external pressure, even though we often put it on ourselves. It’s chasing something on the outside. 

What happens if we swap Should for Could?

“I could write more.”

“I could try this different marketing practice.”

“I could exercise more.”

We can improve that even further by adding a process to the could to make it more doable. 

“I could get up before the kids and write for twenty minutes.”

“I could assign one week to learning how to use these ad campaigns and market my books differently.”

“I could go for a walk after lunch.”

Instead of the guilt-laden vagaries of should, we now have an actual possibility and a plan to execute it.

Could is empowering and gives us a choice of whether or not we would like to pursue something.

Could statements are expansive. Could statements are creative.

Weigh Up the Desire. Then Act or Let Go.

So now, instead of a pressure, we’ve got an option.

How much do you desire a writing practice? Is it enough to sacrifice some sleep or something else to get?

I Should…

I Could…

Do I Want to?

Do it.

Let it go.

Resources

Ackerman, Courtney E. Cognitive Distortions: When Your Brain Lies to You. Positive Psychology. 15 April 2020.

The post Are Should Statements Ruining Your Creativity? appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

For starters, time isn’t real. But, in more practical terms, while clocks might be real and dictate our lives, things change. Constantly.

Even those of us who have strict schedules see those schedules derailed. When you’re a writer trying to fit your writing in around the rest of life – kids, other family, day jobs, social life, exercise, rest, low energy days, etc. – that means our writing plans are also thrown around at the whims of life.

I thrive on routine and habit and work best when I know what’s happening next. But I also live in the reality of a modern world (with kids!), so that routine needs flexibility in order for us all to stay sane and healthy.

I used to have a militaristic schedule where I would force the most out of every minute. Yeah, I also ended up with anxiety taking over my life, burned out and laid out by a host of psychosomatic syndromes related to an over-stressed nervous system.

These days, my days have time points. They revolve around my kids – school start and finish, dinner, bedtime. In between those times, I make it up as I go. I call it Creative Scheduling.

Creative scheduling doesn’t necessarily involve actually being creative. It means working whenever you can on whatever you can, however you can with a basic structure of time, and working in a way that aligns with your goals and values.

I know what I want from my writing life, and so long as I’m making some kind of progress on most days in some area of writing and creativity that will get me to my career goals, I call it a win.

Principles Of Creative Scheduling

• Life is never static.
• Define your time points (and let them change on days when they do).
• Define your values and goals.
• Go with what feels right in any moment that will get you to your goals in a way that matches your values.
• Think long term about your writing goals. Know what needs to happen to get your project finished. When you have the time and energy, do the Big Tasks. When you don’t, do the Little Tasks.

Life is an ocean of calm and storms. Creative scheduling lets you surf that sea, still getting you where you want to go but not drowning when a wave takes you into an unexpected direction.

The post The Art of Creative Scheduling appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

Many writers, especially true of writers who are also mothers, are also juggling writing with family life and all of the distractions that working from home can bring. There’s writer’s block. There’s creative anxiety. There’s isolation. There’s the physical demands of the job, mental exhaustion and creative burnout. There’s socio-cultural pressure, pressure to keep up with algorithms, demands from editors or publishers, and masses of self-pressure we put on ourselves.

And that’s just professional stresses being a writer can bring. We’re also swamped with the usual life challenges that stress most people out – money, family, house stuff, you name it.

When I’m stressed, my writing suffers. I lack the energy and motivation to even start writing and when I do start a writing session, I can’t focus. I tire easily. Sometimes stress makes me feel physically unwell. I’ve been living with a host of mindbody syndromes for over a decade, all of them stress induced. Often, I feel like the world is on top of me and I’ll never be able to claw my way back out and breathe properly again. But I always do find my way back on top, the stress subsides and I get on with life and work until something else sparks a stress cycle.

Dealing with stress is a personal experience. We all have our own methods and ways to escape.

Even though my work is suffering through these stressful times, I am still a writer. I get up and I put words down and I move forward. If I stop writing or creating when stress hits, it makes it all worse. Creativity is part of my stress management.

Tips To Keep Writing Through Stress

Accept It’s a Low Time

Life comes in ebbs and flows. Sometimes we’ll have high energy periods where the words flow like magic, sometimes we won’t. The high point will return on the other side of this slump.

Take Smaller Sessions

Keep writing, keep moving forward. Just two minutes a day if that’s all you can manage. If you can’t manage any writing for a while, then that’s okay too.

Have an Indulgence

Not as a reward for writing, but as a reward for just being. Treat yourself for being yourself.

Celebrate Past Success

Look at how far you’ve come as a writer, think about all of the things you’ve achieved and learned and remember that more good things are coming.

Take A Pause

There’s no point trying to force yourself to write if life just won’t let it happen. You can stop writing for a while if it feels good and right to do so.

Do Something Else Creative

Paint, draw, make music, dance, knit, cook, anything else you find taps and resources your creative spirit. These are not only incredibly rewarding activities in themselves, they’re also excellent stress management tools.

Writing might seem like it’s your entire life, but it’s just one part like anything else. It’s okay to let it slow or pause while the rest of life takes the focus. You’re a writer. That’s not going anywhere even if stress makes your writing life look a bit different for a while.

The post Writing Though Stress appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

A quick lesson for the rare writer who hasn’t encountered The War of Art yet.

Resistance is a feeling, a situation, a thought, a mindset that plagues every creator.

Resistance is saying you always felt you’d write a novel but just haven’t yet.

Resistance is that time you told yourself you’ll get back to writing your novel when life gets a bit more simple.

It’s that notion you had when you decided you’d be able to think more clearly and write more effectively when you did all the laundry, vacuumed the floors, mowed the lawn, baked a cake, took a nap, etc.

Resistance is just a quick look at Instagram after you’ve written 100 words when you’d promised yourself 1000.

Resistance is thinking that you’ve already wasted too much time on X today so your writing session is a bust and you’ll start fresh tomorrow.

Resistance is procrastination. On first reading The War of Art, I assumed that was the bulk of what Resistance meant.

I’m not much of a procrastinator. I get some words on the page on most days, even if I’d rather be doing anything but.  I barely use social media. I’m decent at time management.

Resistance, I thought as far as my work was concerned, was futile.

I was wrong.

The first time I fully experienced Resistance in its full fanged, destructive and ever so seductive power, it almost destroyed my writing career.

Several years ago I started writing a new mystery trilogy.

I wrote the first book in about 3 weeks – a rubbishy first draft, but it was done. I put it aside, wrote and published some other stuff with the full intention of finishing that first book and writing the next two in the trilogy.

Six months after,  with my other series not selling so well, I decided to refocus on the new trilogy. Nanowrimo came along, and it brought about 30k words of the sequel. It was terrible, unstructured, superficial nonsense. I gave up and spent the rest of Nanowrimo writing crappy short stories that I can’t even recall. And then I moved across the country, and life changed dramatically.

When the opportunity came again to draw a breath and get back to writing, I still had the fear of that awful, awful Nanowrimo mess. So I decided to write another book in my old series – yeah, the one that doesn’t sell much that I’d already decided to move on from.

Flash forward to half a new novel written and a sudden urge to get back to my mystery series.

I reworked and finished that second book, and it wasn’t so bad. It had some problems, but I decided fixing them would take up too much time, so I moved onto book three. Everything was feeling good, not great though. The end of the trilogy was in sight. I was starting to budget for the editor and covers. It was happening. It was real. Still, an unease niggled.

One day, after a particularly gruelling writing session on the Alpha Draft of Book 3, I went for a run.  As I ran past the 2 kilometers mark, a voice came out of nowhere and said “It’s terrible. Worthless. Doomed.” by the end of my run, I’d decided to find an entirely new idea and work on something fresh.

This meant that I was throwing away about 120K words in the pursuit of something that seemed better, easier.

I threw myself into the new project, feeling good about it until the end of each work session. Every night I had this weird feeling. A dark feeling. An upsetting feeling.

I changed stories again. Keeping the core premises of those original 2.5 books but changing a lot.  I changed them again. I struggled to find something that felt right, something that would rekindle the joy of writing I’d been missing for months.

You know the story of the Ship of Theseus, modernized as Grandfather’s Axe? That’s what was happening to my story.

I struggled. That dark feeling festered.

I started talking to my non-writer husband about it, not expecting him to really understand, but I just needed someone to listen to me talk while I tried to figure out what was wrong and why I felt so depressed about my writing.

The conversation didn’t go as planned.

He couldn’t believe I was throwing away two and a half more or less finished books that I thought were okay. He was shocked, annoyed at me. I was angry.

“What are you resisting?” he fumed.

I left the argument feeling resentful, indignant. What would a non-writer know about it? But I kept on thinking.

“What are you resisting?”

Resisting?

Resistance.

Resistance had its fangs in me, and I didn’t even realise.

The following day, I read that first book in my unfinished trilogy. It wasn’t too bad. The next day I read the second book. It was okay too–flawed but totally workable.

I reread The War of Art. What I had initially read as a half interesting treatise on how not to procrastinate, was suddenly a direct personal address targeting precisely what I was experiencing.

Resistance isn’t only procrastination.

Resistance is so much more complex, so much more nefarious and dangerous than I could ever have imagined. I knew it properly then. I felt it.

And so, I was back to work on that mystery trilogy. And guess what. That dark, anxious feeling vanished in the instant that I re-committed to the work.

So what do I know of Resistance now?

Resistance is abandoning a work in progress and embracing the shiny new idea that struck you in the shower this morning.

Resistance is the hard drive full of half-finished ideas.

Resistance is giving into that fear that your work isn’t good enough, believing you’re actually getting some message of profound truth from yourself when you’re really just listening to your fear.

Resistance is a demon with the voice of an angel, convincing you not to work.

Ten days after that conversation with my husband, I got back into writing the first draft of that final book. Three weeks after that, I finished it. I had won. That battle at least.

“On the field of the self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.” Steven Pressfield

The war of art continues every day we sit down to write, but at least that was one battle hard won.

p.s. That mystery trilogy was the first three books in WITCH AGAINST WICKED, a seven book supernatural mystery and suspense series.

The post What Does Writer’s Resistance Really Look Like? appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

We’re writing along on a novel, or some other project, and it comes to a stop.

It’s not writer’s block.

It’s not resistance.

It’s not running out of ideas, and it’s not getting bogged down in that common middle slump.

We want to quit the project entirely and start working on something else.

There are a lot of reasons you might consider quitting your work in progress.

It’s boring.

It’s too hard.

It’s not what you thought it would be when you started.

It’s not commercially viable enough.

It’s been rejected too many times.

Some other idea has come along that’s too hard to resist.

Insert any number of variables here.

And these are all okay.

You can quit a writing project. And you can do it anytime you like for whatever reason feels right.

But….

Sometimes persisting is the best right thing to do. 

But what about those other times? When is it really the right time to quit?

Dealing With Shiny New Idea Syndrome

If you’re being pulled away from your WIP by a new and shiny idea, it might be time to quit. But it’s usually not.

That new and shiny idea hasn’t had a chance to get all confused and sticky, like writing projects do. After all, that WIP was once a new shiny idea that you ran with.

So, try working on both.

Prioritize your WIP and also give yourself a little time to play in your new and shiny idea, developing it as a Play Project.

If you’re still making progress on the first WIP and still being drawn into the developing new thing, but still feel like the WIP isn’t for you, then quit.

If the new and shiny is losing some of its gloss, then keep going with the original WIP. 

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Many a writer has toiled away for far too long on a project simply because they’ve toiled away for far too long on a project and don’t want to quit.

The time and energy already spent is seen as a waste and they’re determined to see it through, even though the whole thing feels awful and heavy and they don’t want to even think about it.

This is the sunk cost fallacy.

It’s a feeling that we must continue because of the investments we’ve already made.

It’s a false economy.

The value of the time already invested is already lost if the project isn’t serving you, so why bother wasting more time and energy on something you’ve either outgrown or hasn’t turned out to be as valuable as you had originally hoped?

It’s time to quit.

What’s the most valuable thing to you in your writing life?

Income?

Creative fulfillment?

Economy of time and energy?

Something else?

Consider your answer. This is what should guide your decision on whether to quit a project.

If you’re chasing royalties above all else and a project is turning out to be something less than marketable (it happens when those plot bunnies run rampant sometimes), then quit.

Or at least quit your trajectory and rework the project to regain some control over it.

If you’re chasing creative freedom and a more spiritual type of fulfillment, writing for the sake of the creative process itself, and something isn’t filling that well, then quit. Sometimes taking a break from something is the best thing for it. Even if it feels like a total quit and don’t look back move at first, there’s nothing stopping you from returning to that project at another time.

If something is taking far too long and your author life is stagnating or not even starting because of that, then quit.

Keep tinkering on it in the background as a Play Project if you have to, but stop giving it your focus.

You don’t have to listen to all those voices out there telling you to muscle through, persevere, and push yourself (and in our capitalist, productivity obsessed culture, there’s too many of those!). Wherever the urge that is telling you to quit writing is coming from, listen to it. Find out what’s at its core. Explore the feeling and the options that are available to you.

Quit when you know it’s right for you and your work, and do so with a light heart, knowing that you’re making an informed and deliberate decision.

If you’re grappling with the decision whether to quit a writing project, or something else in your life, I recommend reading Quit: The Power Of Knowing When To Walk Away by Annie Duke.

The post When To Quit A Writing Project appeared first on The Creative Writing Life.

Many writers already have a few dozen ideas front of mind ready to become complete stories or fit into a larger works.

This is especially true of multi-passionate creatives who typically carry a staggering number of wildly variable ideas. 

This should be a good thing, right?

Our currency is ideas, so how could having so many of them be a negative thing?

Because most of us will never live long enough to turn all those ideas into stories.

We may be overwhelmed by the weight of so many worlds running rampant between our ears.

If you’re a multi-minded writer like me, you’ll understand how this state, while intoxicating in its fascination and excitement, can be exhausting.

Or some might feel fine with the amount of zygotic stories waiting to grow, yet simply don’t know which idea to work on.

How does one handle this overabundance of ideas?

Everything At The Same Time

Some work on all the things all the time. 

With this approach, completion is typically a longer journey, but in my experience, it also means that lots of projects come to fruition simultaneously.

Some writers work on multiple ideas at once, but have some on a back burner, dabbling now and then, and give focus to a primary idea. 

This is typically how I work, having one or two focus projects and then a folder of dabbling ideas I call Play Projects. When a focus project is complete, I bring a Play Project into focus.

I typically find this works best when combining different types of ideas. Fiction with nonfiction, or two very different fiction works at different stages of creative development. 

One Project At A Time

Some writers work more methodically, one idea after the other, keeping each within a single focus at any time. But which idea do you choose to run with first? 

If you’re writing primarily for money, your decision might come down to which project has the best earning potential.

Which of your ideas will likely advance your author business most effectively?

If you’re writing solely for passion, which idea lights you up the most? 

For those of us writing for money and passion equally, the answer is in the overlap of these feelings. A potentially profitable project that fills you with a heavy dread or boredom should not get your spotlight. Life’s too short!

Look for that project that will lift your career and your soul at the same time.

Fear Of Missing Out

Much of the overwhelm from too many ideas comes from fear. Fear of Missing Out.

What if you never get to turn all of your ideas into stories?

For most of us, this is reality. 

Accept it, and turn toward those light, exciting ideas with the opposite mind. The Joy of Missing Out.

What’s better? A life spent worrying about never getting around to making all the things you want to make, and making nothing because you’re too paralysed by the overwhelm of choice? 

Or choosing one idea, reveling in it, and bringing it to life with the best of your abilities and the totality of your creative spirit.

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Many writers struggle with the idea that their author life is a business.

It’s the word “business” itself that brings the problems, bringing up images of suits and offices and marketing scams, and capitalist pursuit above all else.

But that’s not the reality.

If we change the way we think about business, then running an author business becomes just as fun and creative as the rest of the writing life.

Use A Different Word

Business doesn’t have to be “business.”

Nonprofit Creative Enterprise.

Book Royalty System.

Author Living Fund.

Self Patronage.

It’s all the same thing – putting out books for money – but described in more creative, playful, and perhaps more applicable phrase than the stifling “business.”

Consider Why Do You Avoid “Business”?

A person opening a store or some other entrepreneurial operation rarely shies away from the word “business”, so why do authors have such a problem with it?

Do you believe you are not “business minded”?

Do you not understand business subjects like taxes, profit-and-loss statements, income and expenditure tracking, ROI?

Business terms are just another language to learn. We don’t have to be fluent in a foreign language to explore a different country. And we don’t need to know all the ins and outs of business talk to do business. You understand making something. You understand money coming in from that. And you understand spending money. 

Forget Branding

The entrepreneurial space loves to talk about branding. And author-preneurs are no different.

Branding turns a lot of writers off. We’re not Coca Cola or Apple, or any of “those” brands.

We’re just people writing stories and telling other people about them.

It only gets complicated when we believe “branding” is some serious business practice.

The Essence of An Author Business

Write your books, be yourself, track your income and spending, and tell other people about your books. That’s all an author business is. When the more detailed nuances of how that plays out arise, figure it out in the way that makes sense to you and keep on writing.

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But being a writer is not the only aspect of your life. Writing is not the only thing you do. You are so much more than a person who makes worlds out of words.

Stop writing from time to time. Daily. Do other things. Live. Work, move, connect, explore, eat, teach, learn, read, watch, talk, shop, climb, dig, plant, run, hug, scream, drink, kiss, sing, give, dance, drive, pursue, cry, laugh, play, sleep, create in different ways.

We need to live in order to have something to write about.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

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