Prioritizing Creative Expression in January is Hard (But We're Still Doing It)
Newsletter for January 2025
Hey, you!
Was your December wild AF, too?
From working on my novel, supporting other authors writing their novels, all the holiday-everything, and trying like hell to get my home back in order, December was chaotic. I often felt pressed for time and lamented the loss of precious weekend hours for planning and working. And I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to get done, though I did some different things than I’d planned, too.
If you’ve been feeling the leftover holiday strain as you work to get back into healthy habits and processes that work for you, I get it: It’s not easy to prioritize creative expression and dutifully put the tuchus in the chair for writing when the energy has been all but sapped.
Don’t beat yourself up for falling out of good writing habits; cut yourself some slack.
This newsletter includes none of that “new year, new you” ego-fluffing toxic positivity peddled by gym owners and personal fitness gurus this time of year.. It’s the end of January, and we’re in the mid-winter slump. Yes, I know: New Year’s resolutions! and all that hot garbage, but honestly? We’re human beings first. (And frankly, the Gregorian calendar’s insistence that the New Year starts in January is wildly inappropriate for human seasonal rhythms). January and February are rest months for those of us in the northern hemisphere, thank you very much. Mother Nature is asleep, and so it’s time for us to dream.
And if you’re here, reading, you already know how to dream big, and you know why those big dreams matter.
The best lives are not prescribed by systems and institutions; they’re designed by real people fighting to present their best selves to the world, to make great change, to start movements!
Creativity, in life as in stories, is the path to good design. Need a nudge? Give yourself permission to make bad art. Doing it poorly is the only way to get the practice and experience needed to do it well, whatever it happens to be.
And if “it” happens to be your dream novel, well I’ve some treats for you.
Writing Craft Articles & Videos
4 Magical Must-Haves for Fantasy Stories
Writing Fiction Scenes that Work
Winter Is For Writing
Add a Writing Ritual to Your Routine
Keeping Yourself Safe From Publishing Predators
No matter which path you choose through the publishing forest, predators lurk. While it may not be on your radar yet, at some point your novel will be written, revised, edited, and polished, and it’ll be time to submit your work for consideration or forge ahead and publish for yourself. Keep yourself safe from publishing predators with these tips:
There is no such thing as a “self-publishing company”
Self-publishing is exactly what it sounds like: You, publishing for yourself.
While self-publishing doesn’t mean you need to do all the things, it does mean you’ll need to find your people to help you do all the things: Exterior and interior design, platform building, marketing campaigns, and creating advertisements are just a few of the things you may a team to help you pull off.
Many self-proclaimed self-publishing companies are all too happy to take your money, promise your book will become a bestseller, and move on. But what they don’t tell you is that your bestseller status is the result of super niche keywording on Amazon (niche keywords nobody is searching for btw) and won’t actual result in tangible book sales that will elevate your career.
This is vanity publishing, and services like Spines, though they claim to be not a vanity publisher, sell your own work back to you and take their cut of your profits while doing it. It’s easy to see how it happens, too, because the Spines team includes no book coaches, no editors, no proofreaders, and no graphic designers. Instead, this company takes your money, runs your manuscript through a series of AI tools, and calls it close enough.
While I don’t want to pick on Spines unduly simply because they’re new to the game and top of mind, your money will be better spent pulling together your own team.
And if you need help knowing where to start, send me a message!
Being a bestseller is not what it’s cracked up to be
Bestseller status is something every author wants to achieve, right? If your instinct was to say, “Yes!” I ask you to reconsider.
Remember those niche Amazon keywords I mentioned earlier, the ones nobody really is searching for? Those crafty keyword choices have elevated many books to bestseller status, even books that sold only a handful of copies.
Booklaunchers put together a great article on this topic, so rather than re-creating the wheel . . . read their take here.
Staying Creative Means Getting Creative
Sometimes, writing takes a backseat. It just does. There are no hard feelings, no self-deprecation, no anxiety, but the writing slows down or ceases altogether.
I find that, consistently, when I’m having trouble getting into the writing mood, when my characters go quiet, or when the settings don’t reveal themselves, or when I’ve just lost that thread of what comes next, something is off in other parts of my creative life.
I mentioned earlier that I’ve started to learn drums, and it’s been a lot of fun. I suck at it, but I can already feel and hear myself improving. And the coolest part of drumming is that, while I’m perched atop that throne, my novel runs in the background. I get a lot of thinking done while whacking away at the skins, and it’s been such a cool and unexpected experience.
Which got me thinking . . .
Creativity begets creativity. We know that. When we enter the flow state, the words come and don’t stop coming. We want to keep creating, to keep making, doing, learning, practicing, achieving. But if what you want to be doing is writing and you just can’t, for whatever reason — no judgment here! — be creative in another way.
Sing
Dance
Play an instrument
Build with Legos or Lincoln logs
Make bread (or my family’s fave, bagels)
Color a picture in that old Lisa Frank coloring book still kicking around
Find a way to be creative, and creativity will come back to you.
Housekeeping and Other Stuff
2024 was a strange year to be in business. For many folks, including many freelancers, 2024 was a fantastic year, one of their best. For me, though, it was a practice in patience, persistence, and resilience necessitating some deep introspecting and soul-searching.
I want to help millennial moms and other cool people write and revise the novels of their dreams, but helping enough authors to sustain my family’s needs hasn’t been easy. Some folks are increasing their rates to account for low volume and inflation, but I’ve decided to do the opposite.
When I switched my website from Wix to Substack, I lowered my fees for Revision Roadmaps, and I’ve added a Formal Developmental Edit to the mix. I’ve also lowered my prices for private coaching across the board. And, if you’re a paid member of the The Novel Nest community and you need other services, I scoop extra off the top just because I appreciate the heck outta your support.
Writing your novel is tough enough, and nobody needs to go broke pulling together their team. So if there’s something you’d like from me, something you don’t see, send me a message, and I’ll craft you a custom service with your needs and budget in mind.
See you in The Nest!
Until next month . . .
