The New Phase

The whole point is progress... right?

Dear Writer,

Okay, yes.

I know.

It’s been a while.

You probably thought I’d quit Substack because, as we all know, I am a quitter. Or it’s possible that as a Substack reader with a certainly full inbox, you may not have even noticed I was gone, and that’s okay, too. I’m not quitting, but I am starting to think differently about Dear Writer.

When I started Dear Writer, it was before I was able to write again. I was trying to fix my broken relationship with writing and… well… I did. It’s all good now. I’m writing my second novel in as many years while I wait to hear back from my agent on the first one and I did the thing, y’all.

Now, I’m heading into a new era, and you know how it goes… luggage shifts in transit. I have to figure out what I want to do, and how I want to do it, and that means taking time and reflecting.

The last time I wrote to y’all, I talked about Kara Swisher and how fucking awesome she is and during that gleeful love-fest, I got off topic for a second about the people in the writing coach industry who bug me, like the ones who promise that they can make everyone who takes their course a New York Times bestseller, a published author, a produced screenwriter, etc.

Things over which they have absolutely no control, but they prey on people who want that outcome without realizing that these coaches are selling something they absolutely cannot deliver.

Which is the truth. The coaches cannot make your dreams come true; things like financial success, becoming a bestseller, even getting published… that’s all up to the whims of fate. Great novels languish unread, and terrible ones make everyone associated with them ducats in the gazillions. You have no control over that outcome. What you can do is write the book, and have as much fun as possible while doing it, then throw it out to the whims of fate while you giggle and clap your way into the new one.

If you want to do that, apply to join me in the 2025 Year of Writing Magically cohort.

But anyway… I realize as I’m talking about this thing in which I have expertise that I’m also listening to marketing gurus who have a different expertise telling me how to carve my path to online community success by writing every week, no matter what, same time, same place.

Or by doing 3-5 TikToks a day.

Tweeting/Threading/Gramming/Skeeting so many times a day, every day, every week of the year, yadda yadda yadda.

And what I’ve discovered is that it just shuts me down.

Maybe that works for other people, but it doesn’t work for me.

Personally, I like to write a Dear Writer when I have something to say. During highly prolific thought periods—like when I’m neither drafting nor revising—I can write a decent post at least once a week. I’ve had times when I’ve had four in the bag just waiting to drip out every week.

But lately? I revised one novel (woot!) and then hopped into Discovery on another one as the 2024 Year of Writing Magically cohort launched, and now I’m in Drafting already.

Already.

Throw in family visits to Arizona, a wonderful 4-hour workshop at Chicago Spring Fling, and my current writing retreat near Seattle where I am drafting the new book and socializing with old friends, and things have been… well, overwhelming.

You get it. I know you do. Because if there’s one thing I hear from writers more than anything else, it’s, “I’m overwhelmed.”

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Because of this overwhelm factor, I start every Year of Writing Magically cohort off with mindset work, and I don’t mind telling you… it’s kind of brilliant. It starts with the most important thing; the energy audit. Because the fact is, time is not our problem when we’re trying to do things… energy is. As soon as you run out of energy, you’re cooked. You can’t do anything else. If that’s at 2:30 in the afternoon, then it doesn’t matter that you’ve got “free” time from 7-9… you’re gonna spend that time playing Roblox or watching “Fallout,” because your energy battery tapped out hours ago.

My answer is the energy audit; you take a week and write down everything you do, and take note of what/who drains your energy, what/who gives you energy, and when your battery hits 0% during the day, take note of that time.

It’s 2:30 p.m. for me. Always 2:30. Probably because I’m generally up and running by 6 a.m., but it’s really good to know that at 2:30, I can be done for the day without wondering why I’m so tired when the people who started at 9 a.m. are still going, forgetting that other people are not relevant. Regular schedules are not relevant. My life and my body and my energy work like this, and knowing what that is opens up all manner of truly vital insight.

So I think I need to start taking my own advice. That means that Dear Writer, from here on, will show up in your Substack inbox whenever I’ve got something to say that I think might be fun to write about for me, or valuable for you.

God willing, it’ll be both, but expectations are the death of joy so let’s keep those low.

For those of you who enjoy surprise and whimsy, this should work out just fine. For those of you who are trying to figure out your own creative patterns, I’ll be setting a good example. For those of you who like a Substack to arrive at the same promised time every week… you might be disappointed.

But this is Dear Writer, Phase Two; it’s no longer about how to fix my broken relationship with writing and creativity, it’s about how to nurture it.

Everything,

L