I use AI.

There. I said it. And apparently, in some corners of the writing community, those three words are enough to make people reach for the pitchforks. But here’s the thing: ethical AI use is not the same thing as handing your creative work over to a machine. AI doesn’t write my books. I do.

Every character, every relationship, every plot twist, every bit of dialogue, and every terrible thing I do to my readers in Chapter 37? That’s me. I dreamed up the world of The Veilshard Chronicles. I created Aisling, J.T., Eric, and Sabina. I decide what happens to them, what they say, whom they love, what they fear, and what waits for them on the other side of the veil.

Those stories are mine.

But writing the story is only one part of being an indie author.

Apparently, I Have 4,782 Other Jobs

When I decided to independently publish Consanguinity, I knew I’d have to do more than write a book. I’m not entirely sure I understood exactly how much more.

An indie author is also a publisher, marketer, social media manager, website administrator, SEO specialist, advertising department, event planner, publicist, newsletter writer, salesperson, and occasionally a person staring at WordPress at 10:30 at night wondering why something moved three pixels to the left for absolutely no reason. If you’ve ever wondered why supporting indie authors matters, I wrote more about that in Why You Should Support Indie Authors.

And today, apparently, I became a bookmark manufacturer.

I have neither the time nor the money to hire a professional for every single one of those jobs. So yes. I use AI.

I use it to brainstorm marketing ideas. I use it to help me understand SEO. I use it when WordPress decides to test the limits of my emotional stability. I use it to plan social media posts, organize projects, think through advertising options, work on promotional materials, and figure out what I need for author events. I’ve even used it while developing projects like my Traveling Consanguinity project, where copies of my book are being released into the wild for readers to find.

Sometimes I use AI to help create graphics for a blog post because, while I happily paid a professional artist to create my book cover, I cannot afford to commission an artist every time I want to post something on my website or Instagram.

Today I used AI to help figure out how to make bookmarks for an upcoming author signing. My original plan involved printing the designs on stickers, attaching those stickers to bookmark-shaped cardstock, laminating everything, cutting them out, punching holes in them, and adding tassels.

AI helped me realize that this was an absolutely ridiculous way to manufacture one hundred bookmarks. It did not write a novel. It potentially saved me from spending an entire weekend swearing at a laminator.

There is a difference.

I’m Also a Teacher Who Uses AI

I’m not only an author. I’m also a high school teacher. And yes, I use AI there, too.

I might use it to help refine a lesson plan. I might use it to create or revise a rubric. I can use it to help me think about how to modify an activity for students with different learning needs, brainstorm a new approach when a lesson isn’t working, or take something I’ve already created and make it clearer.

But AI isn’t teaching my students. I am.

AI doesn’t know the kids sitting in front of me. It doesn’t see the student whose face tells me I’ve lost them even though they haven’t raised their hand. It doesn’t know when my carefully planned lesson needs to be thrown out because this particular class needs something completely different today. It doesn’t build relationships with my students, challenge them, encourage them, redirect them, or celebrate with them when something finally clicks.

That’s my job.

More importantly, I’m teaching my students how to use AI, too. Because pretending AI doesn’t exist isn’t going to prepare them for the world they’re entering.

They need to learn that asking AI to do their assignment for them is not the same thing as using AI to help them understand something. They need to know the difference between asking for feedback and asking for an answer. They need to learn to question what AI gives them, verify information, recognize when it’s wrong, and understand that a confident answer isn’t necessarily a correct one. They also need to understand when using AI crosses the line from assistance into academic dishonesty.

Simply telling students, “AI is bad. Don’t use it,” doesn’t teach any of that.

This isn’t just my personal approach to the issue. UNESCO’s guidance on generative AI in education and research advocates a human-centered approach that protects human agency while exploring meaningful uses of AI in teaching and learning. The U.S. Department of Education has also examined AI’s role in the future of teaching and learning, including both its potential benefits and the risks educators need to consider.

The technology is already here. My students are going to encounter it in college, in the workplace, and in their everyday lives. I’d rather teach them how to use it critically, responsibly, and ethically than send them into that world believing there are only two choices: never touch AI or let it do their thinking for them.

There is an enormous amount of territory between those two extremes. That’s where education belongs.

“Uses AI” Doesn’t Tell You Very Much

That’s the part of this conversation I think we’re losing. When someone says an author “uses AI,” what does that actually mean?

Did they type a prompt into a chatbot and publish whatever came out as a novel? Did they ask it for ten ideas for an Instagram post? Did they use an AI-powered grammar checker? Did they ask for help understanding their Amazon advertising dashboard? Did they create a promotional image? Did they brainstorm newsletter subject lines? Did they use it to organize research? Did they ask why their website suddenly looks possessed?

Those are wildly different activities, but increasingly they’re being treated as though they’re interchangeable.

They’re not.

Even the U.S. Copyright Office’s work on copyright and artificial intelligence recognizes that distinction. Its report on AI and copyrightability specifically distinguishes using AI tools to assist human creativity from allowing AI to stand in for human creativity. Human authorship matters. So does what the technology is actually being used to do.

I have boundaries around how I use AI. Other authors will have different boundaries. Some won’t use it at all. That’s okay.

We should be talking about those boundaries. We should be talking about copyright. We should be talking about how AI models are trained. We should be talking about compensation for artists and writers. We should be talking about environmental impact, disclosure, job displacement, and what happens when marketplaces become flooded with machine-generated books.

Those are real conversations.

“AI is evil and anyone who touches it is evil” isn’t much of a conversation.

And Can We Please Stop the Witch Hunts?

This is the part that bothers me most. We need to stop doing this to each other.

If an author openly says they generated an entire novel with AI, then by all means, have a conversation about AI-generated books. If a publisher replaces paid artists with generated images, talk about it. If you don’t want to buy a book that contains AI-generated material, that’s your choice. If you don’t want to use AI in your own creative work—or anywhere else—that’s your choice too.

But suspicion is not evidence.

An image that “looks like AI” is not proof that an author’s novel was written by AI. Someone using ChatGPT to help write a Facebook caption doesn’t mean ChatGPT wrote Chapter Twelve. An author using an AI-generated image for a blog post doesn’t tell you anything about how that author created the book they’re selling.

And before we get out the pitchforks because someone may have used AI, maybe we should ask what they actually used it for.

Did they ask it to write their novel? Or did they ask it to brainstorm keywords, troubleshoot their website, organize a marketing plan, understand an advertising dashboard, create a checklist for an author event, or save them from an ill-conceived plan involving one hundred stickers, pieces of cardstock, and a laminator?

Context matters.

We Are Writers. Words Matter.

There is something particularly strange about watching writers make accusations based on assumptions. We’re supposed to understand the power of words. We know how easily a story can change depending on who is telling it. We know what happens when information is repeated without context. We know the difference between what we know, what we suspect, and what we can actually prove.

At least, we should.

Calling another author a fraud is not a small thing. Questioning whether someone actually wrote their own book is not a small thing. Sending a mob toward another writer because an image “looks AI-generated” is not protecting the writing community. It’s attacking someone based on an assumption.

And perhaps we should be especially careful about that now, because AI detection isn’t some magical superpower. Humans can make mistakes when deciding whether something was AI-generated, too. The more convinced we become that we can always “spot AI,” the easier it becomes to accuse innocent people.

Nobody should have to prove their humanity to an internet mob.

You Don’t Have to Like AI

You don’t have to like AI. You don’t have to use it. You don’t have to approve of the way I use it. You can decide that your personal boundary is no generative AI whatsoever. I can respect that.

What I would like in return is enough room for nuance.

Using AI doesn’t automatically mean someone used it to write a book. Creating an AI image doesn’t erase the hundreds or thousands of hours an author spent writing, revising, editing, formatting, publishing, and promoting their novel. And using a new tool to handle some of the enormous workload surrounding creative work doesn’t automatically make someone less creative.

For me, the boundary is pretty simple: AI can help me with the work surrounding my creative work. It doesn’t get to be the creative work.

My stories are mine. My characters are mine. My words are mine.

And the same principle applies in my classroom. AI can help me refine the lesson. It doesn’t teach the lesson. I do. My students can learn to use AI as a tool. It doesn’t get to do their thinking for them.

If we can understand those distinctions in education, perhaps we can make room for them in the writing community, too.

And if AI can help me understand Rank Math, troubleshoot WordPress, come up with a ridiculous eight-second marketing video, plan an author signing, or point out that I absolutely do not need to operate a small bookmark manufacturing facility out of my house? I’m going to use the tool.

We can talk about AI. We should talk about AI. We can question it, criticize it, establish boundaries around it, and keep having difficult conversations about where it belongs in creative spaces.

But we can do all of that without treating every author who may have touched AI like a witch who needs to be burned at the stake.

Put down the pitchforks. Let’s have the conversation instead.

Want to see what I’m creating when I’m not arguing with the internet about AI? Explore The Veilshard Chronicles and my other fiction, or read more about finding your way back into writing.

The post I Use AI. It Doesn’t Write My Books. first appeared on Tracie Joy.

If you want to support indie authors, I have some very good news: you don’t have to buy a single book.

Don’t get me wrong. We love it when you buy our books. We may even stare lovingly at the sales report when one appears. Not that I have ever done such a thing. (Quickly hides sales reports).

But buying a book isn’t the only way to help an independent author. In fact, some of the most valuable things you can do for an indie author cost absolutely nothing—and take only a few minutes.

Since publishing Consanguinity, the first book in my Veilshard Chronicles series, I’ve discovered just how much those little things matter. A review appears. Someone shares a post. A reader tells a friend about the book. A library expresses interest. Three mysterious copies wander off into the world through IngramSpark.

None of those things feels enormous on its own. Together? They start building something.

And if you’ve ever wondered how you can help your favorite indie authors build that something, here are a few very easy places to start.

Because Every Story Is a Piece of Someone

Here’s the biggest reason I think you should support indie authors: when an indie author puts a story out into the world, they’re putting a piece of themselves out there with it.

It’s something they’ve dreamed about. Something they’ve worked on, worried over, rewritten, deleted, rewritten again, and honestly poured themselves into. By the time that book lands in your hands, it isn’t just a collection of words and pages anymore. It’s a piece of them.

It’s a piece of us.

And a little bit of acknowledgment from the people who read those words can mean more than you probably realize.

Back when I wrote fanfiction, we used to ask readers to “please feed the feedback monster.” I loved looking at the comments people left on my stories. I wanted to know what made someone laugh, what surprised them, which character they loved, which moment made them want to yell at me, and whether something I’d written actually made them feel something.

That feeling doesn’t disappear when you become a published author.

We’ve given you this little piece of ourselves. We’ve sent it out into the world and hoped it finds someone on the other side.

So tell us.

Tell us you liked it. Tell us which character you fell in love with. Tell us which one drove you crazy. Tell us you stayed up too late because you needed one more chapter. Tell us a scene made you laugh or cry or want to throw the book across the room.

Tell us how our story made you feel.

Because yes, reviews help sell books. Likes and shares help with algorithms. Library requests help books reach new readers. All of those practical things matter.

But underneath all of that is a writer sitting somewhere wondering whether this thing they dreamed about and worked so hard to create meant something to somebody else.

Sometimes one little comment is enough to tell them that it did.

Leave a Review—even a Tiny One

Let’s start with the big one: reviews matter. They do and it’s one of the best ways to support an indie author.

They give potential readers something besides the author’s own enthusiastic insistence that, no really, the book is good. Reviews provide social proof. They tell someone browsing a book page that actual human beings have read this thing and had thoughts about it.

And here’s something I wish more readers knew: your review does not have to be long.

You don’t need to write a book report. You don’t need a clever opening paragraph, textual evidence, or a concluding statement. I am a teacher, and I promise I am not grading you. A few sentences about what you enjoyed are enough. Loved the characters? Say that. Couldn’t put it down? Perfect. Still thinking about one particular scene three days later? Tell people.

Even something as simple as, “I really enjoyed this book, and Eric needs adult supervision,” would frankly delight me.

If you’ve read Consanguinity and enjoyed it, leaving an honest review on Amazon—or wherever you track and review your books—is one of the loveliest things you can do for me.

Like, Comment, and Share an Indie Author’s Posts

Another great way to support indie authors, takes seconds and costs exactly zero dollars is to like, comment and share their posts on social media. When an indie author posts about a new release, shares a ridiculous character meme, celebrates a review, reveals a cover, or makes a video that took considerably longer to create than they would like to admit, interact with it.

Like it. Even better, leave a comment. And if you think someone else might enjoy it, share it.

Social platforms use engagement as one of the signals that helps determine whether content gets shown to more people. Your interaction can help a post travel beyond the author’s existing followers and reach someone who has never heard of that author—or their book—before.

You don’t even need to compose something profound. A heart works. An emoji works. “Eric is my favorite and I will not be taking questions” works.

Every little interaction tells the internet, Hey, people are interested in this. And for an indie author trying to be discovered in a very, very crowded online world, that matters.

Tell One Person About the Book

Word of mouth is powerful and a super simple way to support indie authors. Think about how many books you’ve read because someone you trusted said, “You HAVE to read this.”

You don’t need to become an author’s unpaid marketing department. Just think of the person in your life who would genuinely enjoy the book and tell them about it. Send them the link. Loan them your copy. Tag them in a post. Mention it the next time you’re talking about books. However if you want to support indie authors by becoming their unpaid marketing department, few if any will turn you down!

One recommendation can create another reader. That reader might recommend the book to somebody else. That’s how books begin traveling beyond the author’s immediate circle.

That’s actually the idea behind my Traveling Copies of Consanguinity experiment. I released copies of the book into the wild with one simple request: read it, log where you found it, and pass it along. I have no idea where they’ll eventually end up—and that’s half the fun.

Because sometimes supporting a book really is as simple as helping it find its next reader, and it’s a great way to support indie authors.

Request the Book at Your Library

This one is particularly close to my heart. Libraries are wonderful places for readers to discover authors they might never have taken a chance on otherwise. If your library doesn’t carry an indie book you’ve enjoyed, consider requesting it.

Libraries have their own purchasing policies and can’t acquire every title requested, of course. But reader requests can put a book on a librarian’s radar. And if the library does add it? One copy can potentially introduce that author to dozens of new readers.

You can also search WorldCat to see whether a book is already held by libraries near you.

As someone who has been reaching out to libraries about Consanguinity, I can tell you that seeing my book make its way into library collections feels pretty darn wonderful.

Add the Book to Your Reading Sites

Another super simple way to support indie authors if you use Goodreads, StoryGraph, or another book-tracking community, add the book to your shelves. Mark it as “Want to Read.” Rate it when you’ve finished. Review it there, too, if you’re feeling particularly generous.

Those little bits of activity make an indie book more visible in places where readers are specifically looking for their next read. Again: tiny action. Potentially much bigger ripple.

Follow the Author

If you enjoy someone’s work, follow them wherever you actually like spending time. You don’t have to hunt them down on seventeen different platforms. Nobody needs that kind of commitment.

But following an author on your favorite social platform means you’re more likely to see their next release, cover reveal, event, sale, or bit of character-related nonsense. And if they have a newsletter, consider joining it.

Social media algorithms are unpredictable. An email list gives authors a way to communicate directly with readers who actually want to hear from them, and again, it’s a great way to support indie authors.

Celebrate the Little Wins With Us

Here’s something I didn’t fully understand until I became an indie author myself: there are a lot of little milestones. The first sale. The first review. The first stranger who buys the book. The first library that says yes. The first bookstore that reaches out. The first time you discover that three copies sold somewhere through your distributor and you have absolutely no idea where they went.

None of those moments means you’ve suddenly become a bestselling author. But every one of them means the book traveled a little farther than it did yesterday.

When you like the celebratory post, leave a “Congratulations!” or get excited with us, you’re not just being nice. You’re reminding us that someone is paying attention. That matters more than you might think

Supporting Indie Authors Is About Helping Stories Travel

Of course, buying an indie author’s book is wonderful. But support isn’t measured only in dollars. It’s the review you took three minutes to write. It’s the post you shared. It’s the friend you told. It’s the library request you submitted. It’s the comment that gave a social post just a little more life.

Indie publishing is built on thousands of tiny connections between writers and readers. Most of those connections don’t look dramatic when they happen, but they accumulate. One reader becomes two. Two become five. Someone discovers Book One just as Book Two arrives. A person who found an author through a random shared post becomes the person waiting impatiently for the next release.

That’s how the snowball grows.

So if you’ve ever liked an indie author’s book and wondered what you could do to support indie authors, pick one tiny thing. It counts. I promise.

And if the indie book you happened to read was Consanguinity? Well…

If you haven’t left a review yet, consider this your very low-pressure nudge. Two sentences will do.

And I still maintain that “I liked it and Eric needs adult supervision” is a perfectly respectable literary critique.

The post How to Support Indie Authors Without Spending a Dime first appeared on Tracie Joy.

Not metaphorically. I actually left one behind.

Today I launched Traveling Copy #001 of Consanguinity, leaving it in a Little Free Library here in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The idea is simple: find the book, read it, log where you found it, and then pass it along for someone else to discover.

Hopefully, that person does the same.

And maybe—if I’m ridiculously lucky—someday I’ll get to watch this little purple book make its way far beyond New Hampshire.

Why a Traveling Copy?

I’ve talked a lot about the strange reality of becoming a published author. You spend months—or years—writing a book. Then you edit it, format it, design it, publish it, market it, talk about it incessantly on social media, and generally do everything short of standing on the side of the road waving copies at passing cars.

Although, give me time.

But books are meant to be read.

So I started wondering: What if I just gave a few copies permission to wander?

That’s how the Traveling Copies of Consanguinity were born.

Each traveling book is numbered and has information inside directing its finder back to my website. There’s a guestbook where readers can tell me where they found the book, what they thought of it, and—most importantly—where they’re sending it next.

You can follow the journey of the traveling copies of Consanguinity here.

Today, I made the very first entry myself.

Traveling Copy #001: Londonderry (Nutfield), New Hampshire.

And then I left it behind.

Which, incidentally, is much harder than you would think when you’ve spent the last year obsessing over this particular book.

But Today Was the Perfect Day

Here’s the part that makes me ridiculously happy.

It’s Mack Plaque Weekend in Londonderry and Derry.

If you’re from around here, you know exactly what that means. If you’re not, Mack Plaque is an annual competition between Londonderry High School and Pinkerton Academy, a local tradition dating back to 1983. The two schools compete across fall sports, with the winner earning possession of the plaque—and, perhaps more importantly, a year’s worth of bragging rights.

And if you’ve read Consanguinity, you might recognize it. Because Mack Plaque Weekend exists in Aisling’s world, too.

Consanguinity takes place in Nutfield, my fictionalized version of Londonderry. I borrowed pieces of the real town—its history, its landscape, its traditions—and then added portals, magic, strange dreams, supernatural powers, and four teenagers whose lives become considerably more complicated than they expected.

So naturally, Nutfield has its own Mack Plaque rivalry.

When Aisling encounters it, she’s the newcomer trying to figure out why everyone around her has suddenly lost their minds over a school rivalry that apparently requires decorations, temporary tattoos, signs, bragging rights, and an enormous amount of town pride.

Today, while the real Londonderry and Derry were doing exactly that, I put a copy of the book containing my fictional version of it into a Little Free Library in the real town that inspired Nutfield.

There was something wonderfully full-circle about that.

And Now…I Have to Leave It Alone

This may actually be the hardest part of the experiment. I took my pictures. I took some video. I made the first guestbook entry. Then I walked away. I am absolutely not going back to check whether someone has taken it.

For one thing, it’s Mack Plaque Weekend and getting anywhere around here is an adventure all by itself. For another, that would probably defeat the entire purpose of releasing a book into the wild. So Traveling Copy #001 is officially on its own.

Maybe someone will pick it up tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe it will sit there for a week before the right person notices the purple cover among all the other books.

I don’t know.

And that’s actually what makes this so much fun.

Somewhere out there, a person I don’t know may stumble across Aisling, J.T., Eric, and Sabina simply because they opened the door of a Little Free Library and thought, Huh. This looks interesting.

And if they take it home, I hope they enjoy it.

But even more than that?

I hope they pass it on.

Because Copy #001 has officially begun its journey.

Now let’s see where it goes.

If you’ve found one of my traveling copies, visit the Found Consanguinity page and add your stop to its journey. I can’t wait to see where these books end up.

The post Traveling Copy #001 of Consanguinity Begins Its Journey first appeared on Tracie Joy.

How do you get back into writing when you missed a day. Then maybe another one. Then somehow it’s been a week, or three weeks, or three months, and the thing you were absolutely, positively going to do consistently has quietly fallen off the calendar.

This is usually the point when we make everything worse. Instead of simply starting again, we start calculating everything we should have done. The blog posts we didn’t write. The words we didn’t add to the manuscript. The emails we didn’t send. The social media posts we didn’t create. The project we haven’t touched since sometime around the invention of indoor plumbing.

And before we know it, we’ve built an elaborate guilt shrine to our own inconsistency. Here’s a thought: Knock it down.

You Don’t Have to Catch Up

One of the biggest mistakes we make after a break is deciding that before we can move forward, we have to make up for everything we missed. You don’t. If you planned to write five blog posts and wrote two, you don’t owe the universe three blog posts. If your writing goal was 500 words a day and you haven’t written in a week, you don’t need to sit down and pound out 3,500 words as penance.

You don’t need to earn your way back into your creative life. You just need to come back. That’s the reset.

I’m Learning This One in Real Time

I have a blog posting schedule. Actually, I have a rather lovely blog posting schedule. There are topics. There are plans. There are series. There is organization.

And right now? It’s untenable.

I teach full time. I’m working on a master’s degree. I’m writing the second book in The Veilshard Chronicles. I’m marketing Consanguinity. I’m creating other things. I have a family. I have a house. I have approximately seventeen thousand ideas bouncing around in my head at any given moment.

And somewhere in there, I decided I should also publish a blog post every single day. Because apparently I occasionally forget that I am one human being.

The funny thing is that I’ve been writing this entire series about building a creative life that actually works. I’ve written about seasons of creativity, sustainable writing routines, gentle productivity, and protecting your creative energy. And now my own life is tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Hey. You know all that stuff you’ve been telling everyone else?”

Yeah. That.

The World Will Continue Spinning

I’m starting to realize something that should probably have been obvious: the world isn’t going to end if I don’t publish a blog post every day. Google isn’t going to send someone to confiscate my website. My readers aren’t going to gather outside my house carrying tiny pitchforks. My entire writing career isn’t going to collapse because Tuesday came and went without a new post.

And, perhaps most importantly, missing a day doesn’t mean I’ve failed at blogging. It means I didn’t publish a blog post that day. That’s it.

We attach so much meaning to these little breaks. We turn I didn’t do the thing into I’m terrible at doing the thing. Those are not the same statement.

And there’s actually research behind the idea that beating ourselves up isn’t the motivational powerhouse we sometimes imagine it to be. Researcher Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion and motivation suggests that responding to setbacks with encouragement rather than harsh self-criticism can help us learn, adapt, and keep trying. In other words, apparently science also thinks the guilt shrine is unnecessary.

Resetting Is Not Starting Over

This may be my favorite part of the reset ritual: you aren’t starting over. Everything you did before the break still counts. The words are still written. The blog posts still exist. The progress still happened. The habits you built aren’t erased because life interrupted them.

You’re simply beginning again from where you are now. That’s a very different thing.

Make the Next Step Ridiculously Small

When you’ve been away from something, don’t make your return enormous. Don’t announce that you’re going to write 2,000 words every morning, post to six social media platforms, publish five blog posts a week, start a newsletter, reorganize your website, launch a podcast, and finally figure out Pinterest before Thursday.

Pick one thing. Write 200 words. Open the manuscript and reread the last chapter. Draft one blog post. Send one email. Create one graphic. Spend fifteen minutes on the project you’ve been avoiding.

Small actions have a wonderful way of reminding us that we can still do this. That’s really the heart of gentle productivity: progress doesn’t have to be enormous to count.

Maybe the Old Plan Doesn’t Fit Anymore

This is the part I’m currently sitting with. Sometimes getting back on track doesn’t mean returning to the exact same track.

Maybe the schedule that worked three months ago doesn’t work now. Maybe the goal you created when life was quieter isn’t realistic during a busier season. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe your priorities have changed. Maybe you’re simply tired.

Adjusting the plan isn’t quitting.

I’m looking at my own daily blogging schedule and realizing that perhaps the answer isn’t figuring out how to force myself to keep up with it. Maybe the answer is admitting that it doesn’t fit my life right now.

I can blog consistently without blogging daily. I can be serious about my writing without turning every available moment into a productivity opportunity. I can change the plan. So can you.

The Reset Ritual

So here’s my new ritual for the moments when everything has gone slightly sideways:

Notice where you are. Let go of where you think you should be. Decide what matters now. Choose one small next step. Begin again.

No punishment. No frantic catching up. No elaborate guilt shrine. Just a reset.

Because a sustainable creative life isn’t one where you never fall out of your routine. It’s one where you know how to find your way back.

And sometimes finding your way back means realizing you don’t actually want to return to exactly where you were. Maybe you need a different path. Maybe you need a slower pace. Maybe you need Tuesday off.

The important thing is that you’re still moving. And tomorrow—or whenever you’re ready—you can begin again.

Getting Back into Writing

Not quite sure how to get back into writing? That’s okay. It’s more than okay. It’s okay to start small. Every journey begins with that first step.

If you want a gentle place to start, I put together a free Creative Mini Spark. It’s small, no-pressure, and designed to help you reset and make something again.

You can grab it here.

No spam. No guilt. Just a quiet nudge back toward yourself.

The post How to Get Back Into Writing After a Break: The Reset Ritual first appeared on Tracie Joy.

There are days when I sit down to write and the words are right there waiting for me. And then there are days when I finally have time to write, open my laptop, stare at the screen, and realize I have absolutely nothing left.

Not because I don’t have ideas. Not because I don’t want to write. I’m simply drained.

That’s something I’ve had to learn about building a sustainable writing life: having time to create and having the energy to create are two very different things. It’s also why I’ve been thinking so much lately about the seasons of creativity and learning to work with the energy I actually have instead of the energy I wish I had.

Creative energy is a resource. And if we want to keep writing, making, dreaming, and building things we care about, we have to learn how to protect it.

Pay Attention to What Drains You

Some drains are obvious: a stressful day at work, an argument, too little sleep, or a packed schedule.

Others are sneakier. Scrolling social media for twenty minutes and somehow emerging convinced that everyone else is more successful than you. Answering messages the second they arrive. Making dozens of tiny decisions all day long. Saying yes to something you didn’t really want to do because saying no felt uncomfortable. Spending an hour worrying about something you can’t actually control.

None of these things necessarily feels enormous on its own. But creative energy often disappears a teaspoon at a time. By the time you finally reach the part of the day you planned to spend writing, the cup is empty.

The first step isn’t fixing everything. It’s simply noticing. What consistently leaves you depleted? And just as importantly, what replenishes you?

Reduce the Decisions That Don’t Matter

Decision fatigue is real. What should I make for dinner? Should I answer this email now? What should I post today? Which project should I work on?

Should I write, edit, market, blog, make a graphic, update my website, or stare dramatically into the middle distance?

By the hundredth decision of the day, choosing between two fonts can feel like an existential crisis. And there’s actually research behind that feeling. The American Psychological Association has reported that repeatedly making choices can be mentally taxing, affecting our ability to stay focused on the tasks that come afterward.

Creating simple routines removes some of those decisions. Maybe Monday is your blog day. Maybe you write for twenty minutes before checking social media. Maybe you keep a running list of small creative tasks for days when you don’t have enough energy for deep work.

You don’t need to schedule every minute of your life. You just want to save some of your decision-making power for the things that actually deserve it.

Be Careful With Social Media

For writers and creators, social media is complicated. It can connect us with readers, other writers, opportunities, inspiration, and community. It can also chew through creative energy like a Labrador who found an unattended couch cushion.

You post something you’re proud of. Then you check the views. Then you check again. Then you wonder why someone else’s post has 20,000 views while yours has 213. Yes, I do wonder this. All. The. Time!

Suddenly you’re not thinking about your story anymore. You’re thinking about algorithms.

Use social media. Enjoy social media. Build community there. But recognize when you’re using it as a tool and when it’s using you. Sometimes protecting your creative energy means closing the app.

Stop Using Someone Else’s Timeline as Your Measuring Stick

Comparison is particularly dangerous because there will always be someone doing more. Someone writes 3,000 words before breakfast. Someone published six books this year. Someone’s debut went viral. Someone has 100,000 followers.

Someone apparently has a spotless house, a thriving career, twelve published novels, homemade sourdough, perfect children, and enough free time to document all of it beautifully on Instagram.

Good for them.

Their life isn’t your life. Your creative life has to fit inside the life you actually have—not the imaginary one you think you’re supposed to have.

Progress still counts when it’s slow. Two hundred words count. One edited page counts. A fifteen-minute brainstorming session counts. Rest counts too. That’s really the whole idea behind my Gentle Productivity Method for Writers: small, sustainable actions are still progress.

That was me, yesterday. I sat down, opened the computer and was like NOPE. I played solitaire instead. Part of me felt bad, and another part of me felt really bad because I couldn’t seem to win a game, but that’s a blog post for another day!

Learn to Say No

This one is hard, especially if you’re accustomed to being the person who helps. But every yes costs something. Sometimes the cost is only an hour. Sometimes it’s the mental energy you needed for something that mattered more to you.

Protecting your creative energy occasionally means saying: Not tonight. I can’t take that on right now. Maybe another time. No.

You don’t need to justify every boundary with a twelve-paragraph explanation and three supporting documents. You are allowed to decide that you don’t have the capacity. Remember, “NO.” is a complete sentence.

Protect the Part of You That Makes Things

Creativity doesn’t require perfect conditions. I’ve written when I was tired. I’ve written when life was chaotic. I’ve written in tiny pockets of time between everything else I needed to do.

But sustainable creativity does require some protection. That might mean setting boundaries. It might mean putting your phone in another room. It might mean choosing one project instead of trying to advance six of them simultaneously. It might mean taking a night off without feeling guilty about it.

And sometimes it means recognizing that you’ve already given enough of yourself to the day.

Your creative energy isn’t something you have to squeeze every possible drop from. It’s something you want to replenish.

Because you’re not trying to create for one perfect productive week. You’re trying to build a creative life that lasts.

And sometimes the most productive thing you can do for tomorrow’s creativity is protect a little of yourself today.

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The post Protecting Your Creative Energy first appeared on Tracie Joy.

Every once in a while, I pick up a book expecting a fun, cozy read and end up becoming completely and utterly invested in people who do not exist.

Christine Pope’s Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun did exactly that.

It has an old house, a clairvoyant heroine, a teenage ghost who insists his accidental death wasn’t actually an accident, a charming local historian, a coffeehouse-owning new best friend, and a wellness guru who is entirely too fond of beige.

Really, what more could I ask for?

Meet Phoebe Finch

Phoebe Finch restores old and historic homes for a living, which is already enough to make me want to follow her around and look at houses with her. But Phoebe also happens to be clairvoyant.

For most of her life, those two parts of herself have managed to coexist fairly peacefully. Phoebe knows she can sense things other people can’t, but she also knows that telling people their expensive historic home comes with an unexpected supernatural tenant isn’t necessarily great for business.

Unfortunately, she makes exactly that mistake.

After telling a pair of well-to-do Southern California clients that their home has a presence, Phoebe is unceremoniously fired. Worse, word gets around, and suddenly her professional reputation is in tatters.

So she does what any perfectly rational person might do when her life implodes.

She buys an old house sight unseen on Whidbey Island and leaves Southern California behind.

Obviously.

And because this is a paranormal cozy mystery, we all know there’s absolutely no chance that old house is simply going to be an old house.

This House Comes With Lanny

Phoebe’s new home has its very own ghost: Lanny, a teenage boy who died there years earlier.

The official story is that eighteen-year-old Lanny had been drinking, fell, hit his head, and died in 1988.

Lanny has a slightly different version.

He is convinced someone whacked him over the head.

There’s just one teensy problem.

He can’t remember who did it—or much of what happened that night.

That immediately gives Phoebe a mystery to solve, but what I loved even more was the relationship that develops between Phoebe and Lanny. This isn’t a ghost who occasionally appears, delivers an ominous clue, and disappears through a wall.

Phoebe essentially has a roommate.

A roommate who is perpetually eighteen.

Living with a teenage boy who is never going to grow up leads to some genuinely funny interactions, and their relationship gives the story a warmth I wasn’t necessarily expecting when I started it. Lanny becomes much more than the mystery Phoebe needs to solve. I cared about him, and I wanted Phoebe to find out what happened to him because he deserved to know.

And Then There’s the Rest of Whidbey Island

One of the things Pope does particularly well here is surround Phoebe with characters who make her new home begin to feel like an actual community.

Talia, who owns the local coffeehouse, quickly becomes a friend, and I loved that Phoebe gets a genuine female friendship as she starts rebuilding her life.

Then there’s Theo, who runs the local Heritage Center.

Historic-home restorer meets guy who runs the Heritage Center?

Christine Pope knew exactly what she was doing.

Theo becomes both an important part of Phoebe’s investigation and her love interest, and their relationship develops alongside the mystery rather than swallowing it whole. The romance is sweet, believable, and decidedly low-spice, which fits the cozy tone of the story perfectly.

And then we have Amaranth Hawthorne.

Amaranth owns a wellness spa.

Amaranth has opinions.

Amaranth is also far, far too fond of beige.

I don’t know why that particular detail delighted me as much as it did, but it did.

Unfortunately for Phoebe, Amaranth also decides that the newcomer is bringing some sort of negative energy to the community and manages to convince a surprisingly large percentage of the town that Phoebe might be a problem.

Because nothing says positive energy quite like organizing the neighbors against the new woman in town.

There’s More Going On Here Than a Ghost Story

This was one of my favorite aspects of the book.

Phoebe arrives on Whidbey Island because her reputation was damaged when she told the truth about something other people couldn’t—or wouldn’t—believe.

Now she has Lanny, whose own story has essentially been decided for him.

He was drinking.

He was depressed.

He fell.

End of story.

Things become even more interesting when old journal pages supposedly written by Lanny surface and appear to confirm that he had been depressed before his death.

Except Lanny insists he wasn’t.

Suddenly, Phoebe isn’t simply investigating how a teenage boy died. She’s trying to figure out why the story everyone believes about him doesn’t match the person standing—or, technically, haunting—right in front of her.

I loved that parallel.

Both Phoebe and Lanny are dealing, in very different ways, with other people deciding who they are and what their stories should be.

And because revealing anything more would take us directly into Spoiler Land, I’m stopping right there.

This Is Exactly What I Want From a Cozy Paranormal Mystery

The story moves.

There wasn’t a point where I found myself wondering when we were going to get back to the mystery. I wanted to know what happened to Lanny, I wanted to know what Phoebe would uncover next, and I wanted to see what happened with Theo.

At the same time, Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun never loses that comfortable cozy feeling. There’s humor, friendship, a developing romance, a quirky community, an old house, and just enough paranormal weirdness to make the whole thing fun.

It isn’t scary.

It isn’t gruesome.

The romance doesn’t suddenly turn into an entirely different book.

It’s simply a fast-moving, funny, thoroughly enjoyable paranormal cozy mystery that kept me invested from beginning to end.

Which brings me to my one complaint.

Christine Pope, We Need to Talk

This is a standalone.

A standalone.

Christine, you cannot introduce me to Phoebe, give her a teenage ghost roommate, introduce Talia and the coffeehouse, put Theo in charge of the Heritage Center, let me become invested in Phoebe and Theo’s budding relationship, give me an entire island community—

—and then expect me to just leave.

I would happily read another book about these characters. I want to watch Phoebe and Theo’s relationship continue to develop. I want more of Phoebe and Lanny’s interactions. I want Talia. I want the Heritage Center. Hell, at this point I’ll even take more beige.

But apparently I must remain disappointed.

Rude.

Final Thoughts

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun was exactly the kind of book I needed: clever without trying too hard to be clever, funny without turning its characters into caricatures, romantic without letting the romance overpower the mystery, and cozy while still giving me a mystery I genuinely wanted solved.

Most importantly, I cared about these people.

I cared about Phoebe finding a place where she could stop hiding part of herself. I cared about Lanny discovering what really happened to him. I cared about the friendships Phoebe was beginning to build, and I absolutely cared about where things were going with Theo.

That’s ultimately what turned this from a fun paranormal mystery into a five-star read for me.

I didn’t just want the mystery solved.

I wanted more time with the people solving it.

5 out of 5 stars

Recommended for: readers who love paranormal cozy mysteries, haunted houses, amateur sleuths, small-town communities, ghosts with personality, low-spice romance, historic homes, and heroines starting over.

And readers who can apparently handle the emotional hardship of discovering that the characters they’ve become attached to live in a standalone.

I’m still working on that last one. If like me you’re struggling, why not check out another one of Christine’s books like Killing Time. You can read my review here and quickly realize that The Witches of Mingus Mountain will be your next series on your TBR bile.

The post Book Review: Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun by Christine Pope first appeared on Tracie Joy.

You wake up early. You make the aesthetically pleasing coffee. You sit at your perfectly organized desk while morning sunlight streams through the window. Then you casually write 2,000 words before the rest of the world wakes up.

Lovely.

There is also the version where you work all day, somebody needs something from you approximately every seven minutes, the fire alarm goes off during the first bite of your lunch, and by the time you finally have an hour to write, your brain has packed a suitcase and left the building.

Welcome to my Wednesday. True story, bite one of my sandwich and the fire alarm went off and we were outside while the fire trucks converged.

For a long time, I thought productive writing days were measured almost entirely in words. A thousand words was productive. Two thousand words was really productive. Anything less felt suspiciously like I hadn’t done enough.

I’ve changed my mind.

Productivity Doesn’t Have to Be Dramatic

Writing a book is a big thing made from hundreds—probably thousands—of very small things.

Yes, eventually we need to write the words. There is unfortunately no productivity hack that will cause 70,000 of them to materialize in a Word document while we sleep.

But writing 2,000 words isn’t the only action that moves a writing life forward. Two hundred words count. Fixing the scene that’s been bothering you counts. Spending twenty minutes researching something you need for Chapter Twelve counts. Jotting down the conversation your characters suddenly decided to have while you were driving home counts.

Reading counts. Updating your author website counts. Writing a blog post counts. Sending one email you’ve been avoiding counts. Sometimes even deciding what you’re going to work on tomorrow counts.

The Gentle Productivity Method starts with one simple idea: Do something small enough that you can actually do it.

Stop Waiting for the Perfect Writing Day

I love a long, uninterrupted writing session. Give me several hours, something good to drink, and characters who are cooperating, and I am a happy woman.

I also have a full-time job, a family, a house, graduate-school work, a blog, books to market, and all the ordinary nonsense involved in being a functioning adult.

If I waited until I had three uninterrupted hours to write, I’d finish my next novel sometime around 2047.

So I’ve stopped making uninterrupted time a requirement for creativity. This is part of what I talked about in The Seasons of Creativity Model: our creative lives aren’t supposed to look exactly the same every day. Sometimes we’re in a season where the words pour out. Sometimes we’re working with twenty minutes and a tired brain.

Instead, I look for the next small thing.

Maybe I have twenty minutes. What can I do with twenty minutes? Maybe I’m exhausted. What’s something I can accomplish without requiring my brain to perform Olympic-level gymnastics? Maybe I’m creatively on fire. Great. That’s when I ride the wave and write until the words stop coming.

Gentle productivity isn’t about doing less because we’re lowering our standards. It’s about creating a system that still works when life isn’t cooperating.

Choose a Minimum That Feels Almost Ridiculous

One of the reasons productivity systems fail is that we build them for our best days.

I’ll write 1,500 words every day.

Sure.

Until parent-teacher conferences. Or somebody gets sick. Or the car needs something. Or you’re exhausted. Or you simply have a terrible day.

Then you miss the goal, feel like you’ve failed, miss it again, and suddenly the writing routine you designed to help you has become another thing making you feel guilty.

Try setting a minimum so small it almost feels silly instead. Write 100 words. Work for ten minutes. Edit one page. Research one question. Open the manuscript and read the last scene you wrote.

That’s the minimum, not the maximum.

If those 100 words turn into 1,500, fantastic. If ten minutes turns into two glorious hours because you found your groove, even better. But if you write 100 words and close the laptop?

You still showed up.

And tomorrow you’re not starting from zero.

Keep a Menu of Small Wins

This may be my favorite part of gentle productivity.

Make yourself a list of writing-related things that take different amounts of energy. On a high-energy day, maybe you draft a chapter. On a medium-energy day, you revise a scene, outline the next chapter, write a blog post, or work on your book description. On a my-brain-is-mashed-potatoes day, you might organize research notes, schedule a social post, add an idea to your story notes, or read ten pages of a book.

They’re all part of the work.

This matters because creativity requires different kinds of energy. Drafting fiction takes a different part of my brain than updating my website. Editing takes something different than brainstorming. Marketing certainly takes something different than disappearing into the world of my characters.

When one part of your brain has put up an OUT OF OFFICE sign, sometimes another part is still perfectly capable of doing something useful.

Protect the Streak, Not the Number

I’m not talking about a literal streak where you must write every single day or the Duolingo owl comes to your house and threatens your family.

I’m talking about maintaining your relationship with your creative work.

The goal isn’t: I wrote 2,000 words today.

The bigger goal is: I’m still building this.

That’s a much harder thing to lose.

A 50-word note about tomorrow’s scene keeps you connected to the story. Ten minutes rereading yesterday’s work keeps the characters in your head. Scribbling an idea in your phone keeps the creative conversation going.

Those tiny contacts with your work make it much easier to return when you finally do have time.

Rest Is Part of the Method, Too

And here’s the part productivity culture really doesn’t like:

Sometimes the productive thing is stopping.

Not fake stopping where you’re technically watching television but mentally berating yourself because you should be writing. Actually stopping. Reading because you want to. Going for a walk. Taking a nap. Watching something ridiculous. Playing a game. Spending time with people you love. Going to bed early.

Creative energy isn’t infinite. Research into psychological recovery from work and stress supports something many of us learn the hard way: our brains need opportunities to detach and recover. We cannot continuously withdraw from an account we never deposit into.

Rest isn’t something you earn after you’ve been productive enough. It’s one of the things that makes continued creativity possible.

What Counts Today?

This is the question I’ve started asking myself.

Not: Did I do enough? Not: Why didn’t I write more? Not: How is that author on Instagram apparently publishing twelve books this year while maintaining perfect hair and making sourdough from scratch?

Just:

What would count today?

Some days, the answer might be 2,000 words. Some days it’s 200. Some days it’s finally fixing the paragraph you’ve hated for three weeks. And some days it’s opening the document, writing one sentence, and deciding that tomorrow’s version of you can take it from there. Today, thinking about what’s happening in chapter 11 counts, and I’m more than okay with that!

The writing life isn’t built from occasional heroic bursts of productivity.

It’s built from returning.

Again and again and again.

Even when all you have to give it today is something small.

Especially then.

Tomorrow: Gentle productivity helps us work with the energy we have—but what about all the things constantly stealing that energy in the first place? Tomorrow we’re talking about how to protect your creative energy, including boundaries, attention, comparison, and knowing when something simply doesn’t deserve access to your creative brain.

The post The Gentle Productivity Method for Writers first appeared on Tracie Joy.

There is a version of my life in which I wake up at five every morning, make a perfect cup of tea, settle into a beautiful writing space, and spend two uninterrupted hours working on my novel before the rest of the world wakes up.

I have never met this woman. She sounds lovely. She also apparently doesn’t have a full-time job, a family, laundry, a kitchen that needs cleaning, a blog, approximately seventeen other projects, or a brain capable of abandoning everything because it just spotted a particularly interesting shiny squirrel. Plus, she’s crazy because she likes to get up early.

And yet, when we talk about building a writing routine, that imaginary woman is often the person we’re designing it for. We decide we’re going to write every morning. Or write 1,000 words every day. Or dedicate two hours every evening to our manuscript. We create the perfect schedule, buy the notebook, download the app, announce that this time we’re serious—and then actual life happens.

The routine falls apart, and somehow we decide we’re the problem.

We’re not.

The routine was.

Your Writing Routine Has to Fit the Life You Actually Have

A sustainable writing routine starts with an honest look at your life—not the life you wish you had. When do you genuinely have time? When do you have energy? What responsibilities aren’t going anywhere? What parts of your schedule change from day to day or season to season?

There is also a huge difference between having an hour available and having an hour of usable creative energy available. You may technically have time to write at nine o’clock at night, but if you’ve spent the day teaching, working, parenting, answering emails, making dinner, running errands, and generally being a functioning human being, your brain may be done producing coherent sentences.

That doesn’t mean you lack discipline. It means you’re tired.

Build from there.

This is also why I think of creativity in seasons rather than expecting myself to create at exactly the same pace all year. Sometimes life gives us room for a creative summer. Sometimes we’re very clearly in winter. A writing routine needs to be flexible enough to survive both.

Stop Measuring Your Writing Life in Perfect Days

One of the easiest ways to destroy a perfectly good writing habit is to make it dependent on everything going according to plan. Instead, build a routine with different-sized doors into your writing life.

On a great day, maybe you write 1,500 words. On a normal day, perhaps you spend thirty minutes working on a scene. On a completely bananas day, you open the manuscript, fix one paragraph, jot down an idea for tomorrow, and call it good.

All three days count.

The goal isn’t to create a streak impressive enough to screenshot and post on social media. The goal is to keep returning to the work.

Give Yourself a Minimum That Is Almost Ridiculously Small

Try creating a minimum writing goal that you can accomplish even when life is being particularly life-ish. Write 100 words. Work for ten minutes. Revise one paragraph. Brainstorm one scene. Open the damn document.

That last one counts more than you might think.

Small goals eliminate the enormous psychological hurdle created by I need to write tonight. Sometimes opening the manuscript leads to ten minutes. Ten minutes becomes thirty. One sentence becomes 500 words. And sometimes you open the document, write 43 words, and close it again.

Still counts.

Build Anchors, Not Chains

A writing routine works better when it’s connected to something that already happens in your life. Maybe you write while drinking your Saturday morning coffee. Maybe you spend twenty minutes with your manuscript after dinner. Maybe you dictate ideas during your commute and turn them into actual prose later.

Those are anchors.

“I must write from 6:00–7:00 every single night or I have failed” is a chain.

Your routine should make it easier to return to your creative work, not create another obligation you feel guilty about avoiding. If you’re looking for more ideas about developing your craft and finding approaches that work for you, the National Centre for Writing also has a collection of resources, courses, podcasts, and advice for writers at different stages of their creative lives.

Plan for the Shiny Squirrels

Distraction isn’t always the enemy of creativity. Sometimes the random idea that pulls you away from your manuscript becomes a blog post. Sometimes researching one tiny historical detail gives you an entirely new scene. Sometimes a secondary character you barely planned decides he has opinions about his role in the story and suddenly you’re rearranging an entire series. I’m looking at you, Eric Wallace!

Creative brains wander. Mine wanders so far and so much that it’s a wonder I ever accomplish anything!

The trick isn’t eliminating that wandering. It’s giving it somewhere to go. Keep a notebook, notes app, whiteboard, document, or whatever works for you nearby. Capture the squirrel. Then decide whether you’re following it now or saving it for later.

Because occasionally the squirrel is onto something.

Your Routine Is Allowed to Change

This may be the most important part. The writing routine that works beautifully in July may be completely impossible in September. A routine that carried you through drafting might not work during revisions. A quiet period in your life might let you write every day, while a demanding season means weekends become your primary creative time.

That’s not inconsistency. That’s adaptation.

Your writing life exists inside your actual life, and actual lives change. So instead of asking, What is the perfect writing routine?, try asking:

What kind of writing routine would support the life I’m living right now?

That answer might change next month.

Let it.

The Routine Is There to Serve the Writing

You don’t get bonus points for suffering. You don’t become more legitimate because you wake up at 4:30 a.m., maintain a 700-day writing streak, or force yourself to produce words when you’re completely depleted.

A good writing routine does something much simpler: it helps you come back. Again and again, imperfectly and sometimes unpredictably, you return to the page.

That’s how books get written. Not because somebody finally discovered the perfect routine, but because somebody built one flexible enough to survive a real life.

And yes, occasionally, a shiny squirrel.

Coming Tomorrow: The Gentle Productivity Method for Writers

Once you stop trying to force your writing life into a perfect routine, there’s another creative myth waiting for us: the idea that accomplishing more requires pushing yourself harder. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about gentle productivity—how to keep moving your creative work forward without treating yourself like an employee who is perpetually behind on quota.

Because there has to be something between grind until you burn out and give up and watch Netflix forever. Let’s find it.

The post How to Build a Writing Routine That Doesn’t Burn You Out first appeared on Tracie Joy.

There are weeks when the words just come. You sit down to write, and suddenly you’ve written 1,500 words. You know exactly where the story is going. Your characters cooperate. Your coffee stays hot. You begin to suspect that maybe—just maybe—you’ve finally figured this whole writing thing out.

And then there are weeks when writing three sentences feels like dragging a sofa up a flight of stairs. Naturally, this is when we decide something is wrong.

We’ve lost our creativity. We’ve lost our discipline. We’re procrastinating. We’re lazy. We need a new planner, a new writing app, a new morning routine, or possibly one of those people on Instagram who wakes up at 4:37 a.m., drinks lemon water, journals for twenty minutes, and has somehow written 3,000 words before sunrise.

Or maybe we’re just in a different season.

Creativity Has Seasons

I’ve started thinking about creativity less like a machine and more like a garden. A machine should produce the same thing every time you turn it on. People don’t work that way. Neither do gardens.

There are times for planting, times for growing, times for harvesting, and times when the ground looks like it’s doing absolutely nothing. But even then, something is happening.

The same is true of a creative life.

The Planting Season

This is the season of ideas. You’re reading. Researching. Wandering through bookstores. Watching documentaries. Going somewhere you’ve never been. Falling down ridiculous internet rabbit holes because you looked up one tiny historical detail and resurfaced two hours later knowing everything there is to know about nineteenth-century buttons.

You’re scribbling things on scraps of paper. You’re putting random notes in your phone. You’re driving to work when a character suddenly says something brilliant and you’re desperately trying to remember it until you can safely write it down.

From the outside, this might not look much like writing. It is.

You’re filling the well. You’re planting seeds. And you don’t necessarily know which ones will grow.

The Growing Season

Then something catches. An idea starts demanding more attention. Characters develop personalities. Scenes appear. One question leads to another. You start writing, and gradually the thing that existed only inside your head becomes something real.

This is probably the season we most commonly identify as being productive. Words are appearing on the page. Progress is measurable. We can say, I wrote 800 words today.

And because we can measure it, we tend to value this season more than all the others. That’s a mistake.

You can’t grow something you never planted. And eventually, growing has to lead somewhere.

The Harvesting Season

At some point, the creative work changes. Now you’re finishing. Editing. Revising. Formatting. Publishing. Submitting. Creating the cover, writing the description, making the website, sending the emails, figuring out distribution, promoting the thing you spent months—or years—creating.

For writers, harvesting can be especially strange because suddenly you’re doing an awful lot of work that doesn’t involve writing. You can spend an entire afternoon working on your writing career without adding a single word to your manuscript.

That still counts.

I’ve had to remind myself of this one. Publishing Consanguinity required an entirely different kind of creative energy than writing it did. There were files and formatting and covers and ISBNs and distribution and sell sheets and bookstores and libraries and marketing and approximately seven thousand tiny decisions I hadn’t realized existed when I typed Chapter One.

I’ve written before about some of those not-exactly-writing parts of the process, including what I’ve learned trying to get a self-published book into bookstores and libraries. None of that adds words to the next manuscript, but it’s still part of building a writing life.

If I judged those weeks solely by how many words I wrote on the next book, they wouldn’t look terribly productive. They were.

I was harvesting.

The Fallow Season

And then we come to the season writers are absolutely terrible at accepting: the quiet one.

The season when you’re tired. When ideas aren’t arriving as quickly. When you would rather read somebody else’s book than write your own. When life gets busy. When your brain says, Nope.

We panic because somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that serious writers write every day. That successful people are constantly productive. That if we’re not moving forward, we’re falling behind.

But farmland isn’t failing when it’s left fallow. It’s recovering. And sometimes creativity needs exactly the same thing.

There’s even research behind the idea that creative rest matters. The American Psychological Association discusses creative rest as a way to restore the mental resources used for brainstorming and problem-solving. In other words, stepping away from creative work isn’t necessarily wasted time. Sometimes it’s part of the work.

Maybe you need to read. Maybe you need to binge-watch something ridiculous. Maybe you need to take a walk, bake brownies, play solitaire, spend time with people you love, or stare out a window without turning the experience into content.

Maybe you need to live for a while.

Because eventually, living gives you something new to write about.

The Seasons Aren’t Equal

Here’s another thing I’ve realized: creative seasons don’t arrive according to a convenient quarterly schedule. You don’t get three months of planting followed by three months of growing.

Sometimes a season lasts six months. Sometimes it lasts three days. Sometimes you’re harvesting one project while planting another.

I’m marketing one book while writing the next one. I’m teaching while working on a master’s degree while maintaining a blog while occasionally discovering another project that apparently I absolutely must do immediately.

My creative seasons overlap. Yours probably will too.

The point isn’t to create another system you have to follow perfectly. God knows we don’t need another one of those.

The point is simply to recognize where you are.

Because once you know what season you’re in, you can stop demanding that you behave as though you’re in another one.

Stop Asking, “Why Am I Not Writing?”

Try asking a different question.

What does my creativity need from me right now?

Maybe it needs discipline. Sometimes we really are procrastinating, and the answer is to sit our butt in the chair and write the damn thing.

But sometimes it needs curiosity. Sometimes it needs finishing. Sometimes it needs rest.

Learning the difference may be one of the most important skills we develop as writers.

Because building a writing life that actually works isn’t about squeezing maximum productivity out of every available minute. It’s about building something sustainable enough that you’re still creating years from now.

Plant. Grow. Harvest. Rest.

Then plant again.

That’s not falling behind.

That’s a creative life.

This post is part of my Building a Writing Life That Actually Works series. Next up: How to Build a Writing Routine That Doesn’t Burn You Out—because knowing what creative season you’re in is one thing. Figuring out how to make writing fit into a life that already has a job, a family, responsibilities, and approximately 47 other things demanding your attention is another.

The post The Seasons of Creativity: Why You Can’t Be Productive All the Time first appeared on Tracie Joy.

ENTERING EDEN

Entering Eden grabbed me from the opening pages and refused to let go. Mel De Pablos has created a post-apocalyptic world that is dangerous, unsettling, sometimes heartbreaking—and somehow still filled with humor, friendship, complicated loyalties, and characters you genuinely want to survive.

Here’s the thing, when Mel wrote The Last Girl on Earth, I was totally sucked in. I was fully committed to getting Eve to her dad if I had to crawl into the book and drag her across Europe myself, to help her find him. I loved the characters she created – okay there is one I’m not a fan of, but that’s a me problem, it’s not in Mel’s character building. I was committed to this world. I was anxious for the next book, but with caution. I didn’t think there was any way Mel could get me more invested. I was wrong. I was so very, very, wrong. Like dead wrong. If anything this book is stronger than book one.

At the center of it all is Eve, and she is exactly the kind of heroine I love. She’s smart, sarcastic, stubborn, observant, and remarkably good at facing horrifying situations with an internal commentary that made me laugh when I probably shouldn’t have been laughing. But underneath the sarcasm is a young woman carrying an enormous amount of trauma. Eve spent years surviving as Elias, and one of the things I appreciated most about this book is that it doesn’t treat Elias as simply a disguise she can discard. He was part of her. He was how she survived. Watching Eve figure out who she is when she no longer has to hide is every bit as compelling as the external danger surrounding her.

And then there’s Leo.

Leo. Leo. Leo.

He’s impulsive, loyal, funny, infuriating, and frequently lets his fists make decisions before his brain has finished reviewing the proposal. But there is so much more going on underneath him. His complicated feelings about Eve/Elias, his relationship with Erik, his memories of his mother, and his feelings about the family that raised—or failed to raise—him give him far more depth than the standard romantic lead. The chemistry is absolutely there, but I found myself caring just as much about Leo as an individual as I did about where his relationships might go.

Audrey was another standout for me. She is fierce, capable, brave, and unapologetically herself, but what makes her memorable is the heart underneath all of that strength. Her friendship with Eve is especially beautiful because Audrey loved Elias as her best friend and is able to recognize Eve without treating the person she knew before as somehow false. And her relationship with Alex is one of the quieter emotional anchors of the story.

Speaking of Alex—I loved him. He is brilliant, literal, awkward, and far more emotional than he would probably ever admit. He’s the guy building the things that keep everyone alive while everyone else is busy getting shot at, breaking into places, escaping places, or making catastrophically questionable decisions. His connection with Audrey has years behind it, and that history makes even their smaller interactions matter.

Sophia surprised me. I started out really not liking her. In fact, hate might not be a strong enough word to describe my feelings. It would have been very easy to define her entirely through Magnus and the choices he made, but the book refuses to do that. She has to live with the consequences of decisions she never made, and yet when she finally does have choices, those choices tell us exactly who she is. Her relationship with Leo is complicated, but so is her relationship with herself, her father, and everything she has learned about the world she came from. By the end, I understood her in a way I hadn’t expected to when she first appeared. The hate was strong, but the hate is gone!

And Nate may be one of the most intriguing characters in the book.

He begins as part of Eden’s machinery—Eve’s mentor, someone who understands the classifications, rules, surveillance, and expectations because Eden has shaped him too. But slowly, you realize that Nate isn’t simply helping Eve navigate the system. He’s beginning to question the system himself. His relationship with his sister Lily, the truth about his own origins, and the choices he makes when following the rules would be much easier all give him an arc that I found fascinating. There is a restrained quality to Nate that makes every little crack in that restraint matter.

Even characters who occupy less page space feel like they belong to this world. Horst is the kind of character I immediately wanted more of—the smuggler/mechanic/hacker/technical magician you absolutely want on your side when everything goes to hell. Magnus is far more complicated than simply “good” or “bad”; some of his choices are horrifying, but they come tangled up with love, fear, and the belief that he was protecting his daughter. And Ralf brings another layer of history and family to Eve’s story that makes her past feel bigger than what happened after the Blast.

That complexity is one of the book’s greatest strengths: people are not neatly divided into heroes and villains. Parents protect their children in ways that hurt other people. Good people make terrible choices. People raised inside corrupt systems can still choose to defy them. Loyalty doesn’t always mean agreement, and love doesn’t magically erase betrayal.

And then there is Eden itself.

What initially appears controlled, pristine, and safe becomes increasingly disturbing as Eve begins to understand what all that perfection actually requires. The tattoo classifications, behavioral expectations, surveillance, testing, and the Elysium Initiative create a society that is frightening precisely because so much of it is presented as reasonable. Eden doesn’t need to look like a prison when it can convince people that the cage is for their own good.

The multiple points of view work beautifully because this is no longer only Eve’s story. Audrey, Leo, Magnus, and the others allow us to see what is happening outside Eden while Eve and Nate show us what is happening within it. Eventually those separate threads begin pulling toward one another, and that’s when the book becomes extremely difficult to put down.

By the final stretch, I wasn’t casually reading anymore. I was READING. You know the kind: “I’ll stop after this chapter” becomes another chapter, and another, because apparently sleep is less important than finding out whether fictional people survive. Entering Eden is that kind of book. Set aside a large block of time to read it, because once you start, you’re not putting it down.

What impressed me most is that Entering Eden never loses its humanity underneath all the dystopian technology, resistance networks, conspiracies, disguises, drones, trackers, and escapes. At its heart, this is a story about identity: who you are when the identity that kept you alive isn’t the whole truth anymore, who you become when you discover the people you trusted lied to you, and whether the circumstances that created you get to determine the person you choose to be.

It’s about survival, but it’s also about friendship, family, trust, betrayal, sacrifice, and choice.

And Eden?

Let’s just say paradise is complicated.

If you like post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction with sharp dialogue, found family, morally complicated characters, mystery, danger, slow-burn romance, and a cast that actually feels like a group of real people rather than pieces being moved around a plot, read this book.

Just don’t start it when you have somewhere to be in the morning.

A little piece of advice – you can read Entering Eden without reading The Last Girl on Earth. Mel does a great job of giving you enough back story that you’re not lost. You can do it, but why would you want to? Pick up a copy of The Last Girl on Earth and plan a weekend of avoiding the real world and living in this world.

Five very enthusiastic stars.

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