After my fourth serious trial, I’m calling it: for me, dictation is dead—at least for now. The modest bump in words per hour just doesn’t outweigh the tech friction, location lock-in, and editing overhead. If dictation plus clean-up time gets you more net words than typing, go for it. But if you’re already a clean, fast typist, the numbers might tell you to stick with your keyboard.
A half-used task manager is worse than none at all. It lulls you into thinking you’re organized while your real workload smolders quietly in the background. As indie authors, we can’t afford that. There are just too many moving parts. The right system—used properly—turns chaos into calm, lets you stop reacting to fires, and helps you finally make space for the deep, strategic work that actually grows your career. Like, you know…writing.
“At its heart, this book offers a liberating proposal: don’t play the game as it’s currently defined. Walk away from algorithm worship, punishing release schedules, and the grind of selling at 99 cents to churn-hungry subscription readers. Instead, write what you want to write, at the pace that suits you, and charge a fair price for your work.”
Creative inertia is real. Whether you’ve stepped away from your novel for five minutes or five months, restarting always feels harder than continuing. It’s not a personal failing—it’s physics. Here’s how to beat the resistance and get back into flow, one “Just Start” at a time.
Most writers think they’re breaking down their tasks—but if you’re still staring at “Revise novel” on your to-do list and feeling stuck, you’ve got a project, not a task. Here’s how to break your work down into do-able chunks that actually get done.
What if, instead of waiting for those rare marathon writing sessions, you fit your writing into the cracks of your day—one or two hours at a time? Puzzle-Piece Scheduling is about breaking your writing into smaller chunks that still add up to real progress. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about being consistent. Even short sprints can keep your story warm and moving forward.
Mark Manson recently released a 4.5-hour video on how to stop procrastinating—which sounds like a great way to procrastinate for 4.5 hours. At The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, we’ve tackled this beast from every angle. This post pulls together some greatest hits, a few uncomfortably true quotes, and a flexible mindset to help you find your way around the monster.
There’s a question that haunts a lot of indie fiction writers, particularly after the third burned-out book in a series they don’t even want to read anymore:
Am I selling out if I quit this genre and write what I actually want to write?
Short answer: No, you’re not selling out. You’re probably saving your sanity.
Longer answer? Let’s get into it.
I haven’t posted here in a couple of weeks, and there’s a good reason for that. Actually, there are several.
Ah yes, that question. “Why do you write?”
It’s one of those that gets asked a lot—especially in writing forums, interviews, and on the back covers of literary memoirs, usually printed in italics for some reason. It can feel a bit… woo-woo. As if the answer should be sacred and profound. (“Because the Muse demands it, obviously.”)
But the truth? Your “why” is probably a lot more practical, changeable, and occasionally downright grubby than the question makes it sound.
