Feeling like your writing time keeps getting chipped away by the holiday chaos? This post explores how to reclaim your creative space with a personalized mid-holiday writing retreat. Between Christmas and New Year is the perfect window to refocus, recharge, and write your heart out—without leaving home.
If you’re serious about writing — I mean serious-serious — then at some point you’re going to have to give things up. And not just a Netflix show or two. I mean real, soul-wrenching, this-or-that decisions.
I’ve made them. I gave up socializing. I gave up making clothes and jewelry. I took lower-paid jobs so I’d have the energy to write.
Writing takes time. And if your life is already full, then something else has to go. That’s the reality. You can’t wedge a writing career into the margins of a life that’s already packed.
In the early days of indie publishing, simply hitting “publish” could bring in income. Now? Discoverability is a battle, the market is saturated, and writing fiction full-time is a dream that more and more authors are having to compromise. This post digs into why multiple income streams aren’t a failure—they’re the new normal—and how indie authors can adapt without giving up.
Juggling multiple pen names, a production pipeline, and the occasional bout of procrastination takes more than just caffeine and stubbornness—though those help. In this post, I break down exactly how I manage my writing and publishing schedule, from rotating pen names to keeping six+ books in postproduction at once. I also explain why I never write more than one book at a time and how I use a 300-step checklist to keep my head (mostly) attached.
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.
