A few things collided for me recently. First, there’s been an uptick in people trying to teach you their way to have a writing career that’s sustainable and will help you avoid burn out. Except, they’re all missing one key component.
Secondly, there’s a group of authors trying to teach other authors how to make money, and I’ve been catching up on newsletters sitting in my inbox to be read. And a lot of them are talking about things like “trial and error” or not knowing the outcome, or just throwing five figures at something to see what sticks. That’s all well and good, but let’s be honest, most of us don’t have four figures to just toss out and see what happens, let alone five!
Third, I’ve been working on a new course. Business coaches would call it my “signature program”. And I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not the first person to come up with this, but again, every other one I’ve looked at is missing some really damn important things. So this thing, when it’s done, is going to be comprehensive. And amazing. And a culmination of over twenty years in this industry.
But even with all of that being said there was one thing that kept running through my mind — no one knows everything. And no one system works for everyone.
Now maybe it’s just my autistic brain finding patterns and putting pieces together that no one thought of before. But I also think that’s one of the biggest ways that authors get burnt out and stressed–they buy into a system, a way of doing things that’s supposed to fix everything, and yet, that’s not how it turns out for them.
That’s why I love working with the creative nervous system. First off, it’s a concept that I’ve never heard articulated anywhere before. And secondly, it focus on and centers our lived experiences which makes it unique to us. The techniques that I use to work with my creative nervous system, I share. But only you can know how they feel inside your body, how they affect your writing, and how they help you.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn more money. It’s the currency that most of us require to care for ourselves. Let’s be honest, it either becomes very difficult or impossible to write if you don’t have food, water, shelter, and your vital bills like utilities and medical are paid. What a lot of these teachers won’t tell you is that there are a lot of variables to earning money, to markets, even within a specific genre. What worked for someone, whether it’s a Facebook ad strategy or releasing books on a certain time frame, may not work for others. Quite often, making money is more about who is in your community than what you do, and for a lot of disabled, chronically ill, queer, and neurodivergent authors, that can be the hardest part of all, and the part that affects your creative nervous system the most.
I’m going to keep working on the project I’m working on. I’m going to keep writing; I can do no less because writing is in my soul. And just for right now, the next time one of those emails crosses your inbox that talks about big promises and sure fire ways to be an author, I want you to remember, no one knows everything. No one has all the answers. And what’s most important is how you manage your creative nervous system, but if you can’t write, it becomes much more difficult to have an author career.