How can you use short stories to improve your writing craft across different genres? How can you make money from licensing your short stories in different ways? How do you structure a short story collection? Douglas Smith shares his tips.

In the intro, S&S imprint says that authors no longer need to get blurbs for their books [The Guardian]; James Patterson will be headlining Author Nation 2025; How to sell books from a table [Novel Marketing Podcast]; My lessons learned about screenwriting; Death Valley, a Thriller.

Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction, with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He’s also the author of Playing the Short Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How beginner writers can use short fiction to improve their writing craft
• Overview of the different short story markets
• First rights and second rights for selling short stories
• Financial expectations for traditionally published short stories
• Tips for self-publishing a collection
• Benefits of exclusive short stories
• Using Spotify playlists as a discoverability mechanism – here’s a playlist of my short stories on Spotify
• How to market a second edition

You can find Doug at SmithWriter.com.

Transcript of Interview with Douglas Smith

Joanna: Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction, with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He’s also the author of Playing the Short Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition. So welcome back to the show, Doug.

Douglas: Oh, thank you, Joanna. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up­—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and short stories, in particular.

Douglas: Well, I guess I did a fair bit of writing in high school and a bit in university. Then I just drifted away from it, pursuing a business career and raising a family, etc. I always told myself I would go back and chase the writing dream someday.

I remember, I was in my early 40s, and I came back from a family vacation, and one of the first things I read was the obituary for one of my all-time favorite writers, Roger Zelazny. He was the American science fiction fantasy writer, and he had died far too early at, I think, 56 from cancer.

That just drove home the fact that none of us are guaranteed of a someday. So I started writing that summer and turned out about eight short stories. I joined a writing group to get feedback on my writing.

Then about a year and a half later, it was actually on New Year’s Eve of the following year, I got my first acceptance letter. So that was a great way to end a year and start a new one. So that’s how I started. I started with short fiction. I started because one of my favorite writers died far too young.

Joanna: What was your previous career?

Douglas: I was an IT executive. Just in case people are wondering, I remained an IT executive. I did not give up the day job, so writing was done in spare time. Especially when I started with short fiction, it’s very hard to live and raise a family on the proceeds of short stories.

Joanna: I think that’s a really important thing to say. I suspected you were going to say that. Then just with perspective—

So what year was it that you did that first sale?

Douglas: That story came out in ’97, so a long time ago. That story actually ended up winning an award. So, yes, it was a good start, but I stayed with writing short fiction for about 10 years.

Part of that was inertia, and part of it was just writing a novel at that time seemed kind of daunting. I finally did decide that I needed, for the same someday issue, that I wanted to move into novels, and I better not wait any longer.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, obviously the publishing industry is quite different from 1997, and we’ll come back to some of the other markets. What have you noticed with short fiction in particular, or in general with the indie author community, and things changing? I mean—

This book, Playing the Short Game, you self-published this, right?

Douglas: Yes, I did, and my novels as well. My collections, which were the first things I put out, they came out from traditional publishers that are small press publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada.

When it came to the point where I was ready to publish my first novel, for me, I saw no upside in trying to go a traditional publishing route.

Ironically, my advice is quite different for short fiction. One, I think writers should start with short fiction and that they should pursue the traditional short story markets that are, if anything, far more numerous now than when I started.

Thanks to the option of a lot of these short fiction magazines or anthologies, they put out ebook editions, so it’s a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about the physical distribution, physical production of the magazines.

There’s still a lot of print magazines around, still a lot of print anthologies, but you’ll find there’s a lot of options for selling short fiction. Much more than when I started.

Joanna: So let’s get to some of the pros and cons, I guess. So you said there you do think fiction authors should start with short stories. Why do you recommend that?

Why write short stories? What is fun about it? What are the good craft reasons?

Douglas: Yes, it is fun. I mean, if you do not like short fiction as a reader, it’s going to be difficult for you to be successful as a writer. So that would be the first thing. The standard advice for any writer is you’ve got to be a reader.

If you don’t read, you’re not going to be a writer.

Why short fiction to start with? My main, strongest argument is that it helps you learn your craft. It teaches you how to be a writer.

There are far too many indie novels out there that are, quite frankly, terrible.

The good thing with short fiction is that it gives you a method where you can try out a lot of different types of stories, types of story structure. You can basically build your toolbox as a writer, and many of those tools are the same ones you’re going to need if you move onto novels.

The other thing is it gives you a benchmark. If you’re writing short stories and sending them out to professional markets—and I assume we’ll get into that—you get a wonderful little measuring stick for when you’ve become a professional writer.

Or in other words, when your writing has become good enough that someone out there wants to pay you money to publish it, in the hopes that they will make money from what they publish.

So if you don’t do that, if you just jump into indie and send your stories out into the world, put them up on retail sites, quite frankly, it’s probably not going to be a very good piece of writing. It’s hard to develop a craft.

One of the complaints I have with a lot of the indie writers out there is, and you see it if you go to convention, all they focus on is, “I’ve written a book. Now, how can I market it? Please tell me the secret to beating an algorithm.”

There are good marketing approaches. The problem is, if you come up with a good marketing approach for your novel, your first novel, it’s probably going to do you more harm than good. Because if you get a lot of people to read it, and they read it and say, this is not very good, they’re never going to come back to your writing.

As opposed to if you’ve taught yourself the craft of writing, and you become a competent writer, and you get to the point where professional publishers are willing to give you money for your short stories, your writing has reached that point.

So when you move to a novel, it’s going to be a different beast than short stories, but you’re going to have a lot of the skills already in place that you’ve honed over the time you’ve been writing short fiction.

So that’s my main argument for writing short stories, is that it teaches you how to be a writer.

One more thing is, the example I love to give is, you can try a lot more points of view: first person, third person. Different story structures, things you want to try. Genres: horror, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream.

You can try more of those over 25,000-word short stories than you can in one 100,000-word novel.

You’ve written the same number of words, but you’re going to come out at the end of those 20 short stories being much more knowledgeable and a better writer than writing that first 100,000 word novel.

Joanna: I mean, I totally agree with you there in terms of the potential for doing shorter stories. I mean, you said 5000 words.

What is a short story range, in terms of word count?

Because people often get obsessed with this.

Douglas: Yes, and the definitions I’ll give are from the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers Association. So a short story is anything up to, I think it’s 7500 words. Then a novelette is above that, up to 17,750 or 17,500, I can’t remember which.

Then a novella is above that, up to 40,000 words. Then flash, it varies. Anything typically up to 1000 words is called flash.

Your typical short story, if you look at markets out there, they will want something in the range of 3000 to 5000 words. If you write above that, the other tip I’ll give is, the longer the story is, the harder it will be to sell.

If you’ve got a 10,000-word story, and an editor loves your story, but they also love two 5000-word stories from two other writers, they’re probably going to buy those two stories as opposed to your one big one. They’re taking a bigger chance on your single story.

Joanna: Okay, well, let’s talk about those markets then, because you mentioned the traditional short story markets, but that there are a lot more of them these days.

Give us an overview of what you mean by short story markets.

Obviously, just so everyone knows, in the book you go through this extensively. So I highly recommend people get the book for more detail, but just give us an overview.

Douglas: Well, generally speaking, your markets for any story that you write—and we’re going to have to get into the rights that you’ll be dealing with when you’re trying to market a short story—but simply, it’s a magazine.

There are lots of magazine markets out there, and those are ones that come up with a different issue—not too many do it monthly anymore—but four times a year, three times a year. They are either in print format and/or electronic edition. So they’re called serial publications.

Then the other main market is an anthology, the anthology markets. Those are books that contain stories from different authors. So those are your two main options.

Anthologies typically are themed, so they have the advantage of, if you’ve got a very strange story, you may luck out and find that there is an anthology coming out of radioactive chickens from space or something. You haven’t been able to sell that story of yours, and now you probably have a higher probability.

So anthologies and magazines. The other major market would be audio markets.

Again, there can be audio anthologies or audio zines as well, and they will be producing essentially a podcast version of your story. They will have a narrator that will read your story and dramatize it. That’s the third type.

Joanna: Let’s talk about the different rights.

Because it is quite different, isn’t it, to long form fiction and nonfiction.

Douglas: In many ways, it’s very similar. The main thing that if you’re going to start writing at all is understand that you have rights.

As soon as you finished a story or a novel, you have rights associated with that creation.

So for short stories, when a publisher that you’ve submitted to comes back to you and says, “Hey, I love this story, I want to publish it,” we typically say, “Hey, I sold a short story.” You actually haven’t sold anything. What you’re going to be doing is licensing a very particular set of rights to that publisher.

They’re going to have a number of dimensions. The first dimension I deal with in the book is, I call it the Media Dimension, and we just talked about the three different types of markets.

So if you’re selling to a print magazine, they’re going to want to license print rights. If they’re only in electronic format, then they’ll want electronic rights. If they’re an audiobook publisher, they’ll want audio rights.

So there’s that, there’s the three dimensions of types of media, and that’s combined with whether they’re an anthologist or a magazine. So for example, if I sold a story to a magazine that only has print editions, they would want to license serial print rights.

Serial means they’re a magazine, and they need print rights to legally publish my story, because that’s the format they’re in. If they also have an ebook edition, then they’d ask for print and electronic serial rights.

The other dimension is language. So, I mean, most of your listeners are going to be writing in English.

Then the other dimension is geography. Some publishers, short fiction publishers, are still restricted to a particular geography, and that is usually only for print publishers. So if a magazine publishes in Canada only, and distributes in Canada only, for example, they would ask for first Canadian print serial rights.

So all these things in English, all these things, as you see, get combined into a collection of rights that they’ll be licensing from you.

Joanna: You mentioned first serial rights there, and this is what’s quite different.

With short stories, you might have first rights and then reprint rights.

Douglas: I call them old currents rights. The very first time you sell a story, they will be licensing first rights from you. It’ll be first—whatever those other rights were—first print rights, first audio rights, etc.

After that, there’s a time period associated with rights, and it’s called the reversion period. After your story has been published, the rights will revert to you. Meaning that the publisher will say, “Hey, the story is yours again. You can do whatever you want with it.”

Typically, if it’s a magazine, they will ask for a reversion period that will be somewhere around where the following issue comes out. So if they publish four times a year, they’ll probably ask for about a six-month reversion period, and that’s very fair.

Anthologists will ask for anything from a year to two years after the publication date.

So let’s say that reversion period has passed, the rights come back to you. Those rights come back as second rights, not first rights. You only get to sell license first rights once.

When you do have those rights come back to you though, you can now, what we call, sell a reprint. In other words, you can market to another publication that accepts reprints and sell the story over and over and over again. No matter how many times you sell a reprint, you’re always licensing second right.

So there’s no such thing as third rights or fourth rights or anything. It’s one time for first rights, and after that, you can license second rights as many times as you can find a market who wants to publish your reprint.

Joanna: I feel like that is one of the big differences with rights for a novel. I mean, I see a lot of authors getting term of copyright contracts, or really, really long time limits. Whereas, as you say with shorts, they’re maybe six months or up to two years, but then you can keep selling it over and over again. I’m sure you have sold some of your shorts multiple times over decades.

Douglas: Yes, for sure. I’ve got stories that I’ve sold 30-plus times.

Joanna: Wow. So, well, then for people listening, 30-plus times—

How much money can writers expect to get for a short story for the premium traditional markets?

Douglas: So that’s a good question, and it leads into what my strategy is for short fiction that I recommend to writers. It’s that you’re only going to get the top rates from a short fiction market if it’s a pro market.

Pro markets only license first rights, they don’t take reprints.

So I’ll eventually answer your question, but the main point I want to make is my strong recommendation is that when you’re sending your stories out, when you try to sell them for the first time, you only submit to the top professional markets.

That’s the only time you’ll ever get a chance to get into an Asimov, or a Fantasy and Science Fiction, or a Lightspeed, etc, because once you’ve sold that story, they’re never going to be interested in it.

So you need to, as I say in the book, start at the top. Start at your most desired markets, the ones that have the most cachet. Those are also the ones that pay the top pro rates, and also the ones that get the most awards, press, and nods, etc.

After you get the rights back from that, you can market it to any market that takes a reprint. You’ll find anything. You’ll find markets that will simply publish your story and not give you any money.

You can find markets that will pay you up to five, six cents a word for a reprint. Whereas pro rates, I think, they’re still at eight cents a word for SFWA. So it really ranges. So how much money you can make from a story kind of depends on what you want to sell your reprint at.

I personally warn authors that if you sell a story anytime, it’s going to involve work and time on your part. So you should set sort of a minimum dollar amount that you’re willing to accept to pay you for your time to work with the editor, go over the print copy before it’s published, etc.

Joanna: So on that, eight cents a word, it’d be around $400 then for a 5000-word story at premium market.

Douglas: Yes. At US dollar rates, yes.

Joanna: US dollar rates. Then, let’s say, in six months, you get that story back, and then you can do what you like with it. As you said, you can license it over and over again.

It’s so interesting. I’ve written now a few short stories and have been in a few anthologies, but basically, I’ve never submitted to any traditional markets. Mainly because of my lack of patience and the fact that, I guess, I know that if I publish it myself and put it out right now, then I’m going to get some money.

Especially if I’m selling direct, I’m going to make more than that $400 from my own audience. So it’s a very different definition of success, I guess, in terms of cachet and awards versus money in your pocket now.

I noticed that you also sell direct. How do you balance that side as well?

Douglas: Sure, so one comment on that. I mean, you have a name, and you have a huge audience and platform, so it’s more conceivable that you’re going to be able to indie publish a piece of short fiction and get more money than a beginner.

So my comments are focused at the beginning writer, and if you want to get the most mileage out of your short story that comes from selling it to a top pro market. It helps you build your resume. You can also build up a backlist.

You can attract fans and subscribers to a newsletter, using some of your short stories as reader magnets, etc.

So it helps you build up your own network. So, you know, you’re in a position where you already have that. If I’m a beginning writer, my advice to them is I would still start with short fiction.

So, yes, probably about two dozen of my early short stories are available in ebook format. So those are all stories that I sold first rights for to a traditional market. So in other words, when I did an ebook for those stories, the rights had already reverted back to me. The story had been out.

A lot of them were award winners or award finalists. I did it at the time because I was sort of just getting into looking at indie publishing. I didn’t have any novels, so I thought I’d try just putting out some of my short stories as individual ebooks, use them as reader magnets, etc.

I got a great artist who gave me a great deal on producing covers for them, so they all have the same cover. It was a price that made it sensible to try that experiment.

So, yes, if you go to Amazon, any of the retailers, if you go to the bookstore on my website, you’ll be able to buy my short stories individually. That’s not how I started, and I would never put out a new short story that way. I’d still go to a traditional market for it.

Joanna: Okay, I think that’s really interesting. I do want to point out to everyone that I grew my audience, and that everyone has to grow their own audience over a long, long time.

You’ve obviously done the same thing, I think starting at different times. I started a decade after you, so 2007 was my first book that I self-published. So it’s kind of interesting how things change over time.

I do want to just ask about collections because, obviously, you have collections. Here I’m saying a collection as a single author, as opposed to an anthology with multiple authors with shorts.

What are your tips around doing a collection, since I am thinking of doing this myself?

Douglas: The first step is to make sure that you have enough quality stories. So enough means, you know, minimum 80,000 words. I think a dozen stories that is at least that length would be reasonable.

The main point is that those stories all have to be good. A collection, it’s like a chain is strong as the weakest length. It’s going to be judged on the worst story in the book. So as soon as the reader hits a weak one, sadly, they’re probably going to remember that one.

So you really need your 12, whatever, best stories. So you need to have written more than 12 stories because probably the 12 that you’ve written aren’t the best. They all should have appeared in a top market because that is one of the ways you can tell it’s a good story. Someone paid you pro rates for it.

If you have any award winners or award finalists or stories that appeared in annual best of anthologies, they go in as well. So that’s the main thing. They have to be quality stories because this collection is going to be a calling card for you.

After that, it depends. The next piece, let’s say you’ve picked your great stories that you want to put in the collection, he next thing is, what order do you put them in? The rule for doing collections or anthologies pretty much has stayed the same since I started writing, anyway.

Figure out what your best three or four stories are. You put the best one first, and another really good one last, and you put another strong one second.

So the idea is you want to pull the reader in with two really good stories and then leave them with a positive memory the collection when they read the last one.

If you have another really good one, you should put it in the middle as sort of a tent pole in case things are flagging. So that’s the quality criteria for sorting through what order you want to put your stories in.

After that, it comes down to, as I say in the book, trying to craft a reader experience. You have to sit down and think, “Okay, they just finished this story. What should come next?” There’s so many ways to do that.

I write in science fiction, and fantasy, and horror, and some Slipstream, etc. So do I mix all those? Do I put one section for all my science fiction? Do I put one section for my fantasy, etc.? The questions I put out, I alternate, but I also look at the tone. You have to look at the length too.

By tone, I mean, if you have a really, really downer story, you might want to follow that with something more upbeat. The reverse is true too.

If you have a couple that are like novel at length, you probably don’t want to put them back to back. You want to have a shorter story following a long story.

It’s crafting the reader experience.

Joanna: I read a lot of short story collections and anthologies, and it’s more that I dip in, and I never, ever read them in order. I usually only read like one story at a time. It’s something I do before I go to sleep, like just before bed.

So it’s very weird because I feel like different readers have different experiences. So we can try our best, but readers might just decide to do what the hell they want. I do have two other points on this.

What about including exclusive short stories?

So I’m going to do a Kickstarter for my collection, and I’m thinking of including a couple of short stories that have not been seen anywhere else, so they’re real exclusives.

Then also, I was wondering about extra material. So I always do an author’s note as to what inspired the story. I was thinking of expanding those sort of into interstitial pieces. So any thoughts on those two things?

Douglas: Yes, both good points. One is if you have a story that has not been published anywhere else, you should include one of those.

One, it’s a bit of a teaser. If you have a fan who’s a completist and they just want to read everything that you write, the only way they’re going to be able to read that story is if they buy the collection. So it is a good policy to include one previously unpublished short story in a collection.

The additional material, the author notes around stories, I personally love, and I’d recommend it. I mentioned Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite writers, and he had a lot of collections.

What I enjoyed about his collections were his either forwards or afterwards where he talks about the story and how the idea arrived, and maybe how it ties into other stories he’d written, etc. I love that.

I know I had a couple of comments on my collections where people were saying they didn’t like it. They just want to read the short stories. So, I mean, you can’t please everybody.

I would say, in general, most of the feedback I’ve received on my short stories, my collections, has been that the reader enjoys learning more about the story. Either how you wrote it, or why you wrote it, or whatever. So I’d recommend putting that in.

Sometimes I’ve done it as forwards, sometimes afterwards. Depends if there’s any spoilers. Sometimes both.

Joanna: Yes, I think that’s really good. I mean, I’m thinking in my special edition for the Kickstarter, I’ll include photos if I can, as to some of the things that sparked the idea or a thing to make it a special, special collection. Which I feel is possible now with the print possibilities we can do.

I also wondered just on the audio, so at the moment, I narrate my own short stories and just release them as individuals. With a collection, again, I will narrate the whole thing and release that separately.

I wondered if you had any thoughts on audiobook collections for short stories?

Douglas: Interesting. I’m not sure I have the patience to do my own narration, so I think it’s a personal thing. I certainly don’t have the expertise to talk about producing audiobooks. I’ve had a lot of my short stories produced as audio plays, but that’s because I’ve submitted them to audio markets.

There are good productions and bad productions. I’ve sort of found the ones that I absolutely love and who will actually cast a story, and they’ll have different voice actors for the different characters. I find that just so awesome.

I think if you’re an indie writer and you’re thinking of doing your audiobooks, I know I would say, first of all, am I willing to invest in the necessary audio setup? Do I have the patience to do the narration and do the editing, etc.? I think it’s a personal choice. Audio is a growing market.

Joanna: Yes, and it’s really interesting because I talked to Spotify at Author Nation last year, and they said what they’re often now doing is audio that’s under an hour.

Generally, an hour of audio is about 9000 words, so pretty much all short stories are going to be under their range of an hour. So they’re kind of serving those in their discovery thing for people’s commute because that’s the average commute.

So just a tip for people listening, creating playlists on Spotify of short story collections or anthologies, just with other people. You don’t have to publish them. You can just link to them in a playlist.

[Here’s a playlist of my short stories on Spotify, most narrated by me.]

I think that’s actually a really good discoverability mechanism for things like Spotify, which is now trying to get more and more people into audio fiction and audio nonfiction.

Douglas: Yes, especially if it leads listeners to your other work.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. You can do cross promotion that way. So I can link one of my horror short stories, to one of yours, to one of Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s. So we can make these playlists mixing stories that we like, just as a more discoverability mechanism, as I mentioned.

So I think that’s something new that’s really only emerged in the last couple of years. Anything else on short stories? Because I do have one other question before we finish.

Douglas: I’m making notes here because that’s going to go into the next edition, in terms of audio versions and Spotify.

I mean, there’s so much to talk about. One of the reasons I put out the second edition is, well, one, it had been 10 years since the first one. Then, two, when I looked at my notes, there had been so many things that had changed over the past decade.

Joanna: Well, that is my last question. I’ve also just done a second edition of my How To Write Non-Fiction, which now includes memoir and all of this. I know a second edition can be a right pain.

So I wondered if you had any thoughts for nonfiction authors who are listening—

When do you do another edition? When is it worth it for you? Also, what is the difference in marketing it?

Since many people, including me, also have your first edition.

Douglas: What I did when I put out the first one, my email is in the back, and people would get in touch with me via the website. I encouraged writers to reach out to me because it was sort of my way of paying forward to new writers to write that book.

If they had any questions interpreting what I’d written, or something I didn’t cover, I encouraged them to please reach out to me, and a lot of writers did. Sometimes it was just clarifying what I had in the book.

Other times it was, “Wow, that’s a really good question. I didn’t think of that scenario,” and I would just start to keep a file of things to add to the second edition.

So when I realized it had been a decade, and I started coming across things like Ralland.com, which was my go to market list, and he stopped updating his website. So I realized that there’s probably a lot of other changes. I looked at that file and said, yup, there’s ever so much I can put into a new edition. So it was that.

When is the right time? I think when you start to look at the first version and say, “Wow, no, that’s actually not right anymore,” or, “I should say more about that particular topic.”

Joanna: What about the challenges marketing a second edition?

Douglas: I’m not big on marketing, I guess. I don’t do a lot around that, and probably should do more. For this one, I told my newsletter subscribers. Most of them are readers, not writers, but there is some overlap.

The retailer sites help because the first edition sold pretty, pretty consistently. So, now if you go to Amazon and look for this, you’re only going to find the second edition. So linking the first edition to, “Hey, there’s a new edition,” things like that, but honestly, that was it.

Joanna: Well, I must say, you didn’t pitch me for this. I pitched you because I saw it in, I think it was a StoryBundle last year.

Douglas: Yes, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She will do these wonderful reader bundles. She does at least one a year, etc.

I communicate with Kris and Dean fairly regularly, and she reached out to me and said, “I see you’re putting out a second edition. I’ve got a StoryBundle that’s coming out in two months. Would you have an ebook edition ready for that time frame?”

I said, “Yes, sure. Can you write a new introduction for it?”

Joanna: So I think that’s important because —

People think marketing is just like paying for Facebook ads, but it’s also your network, and you’ve been growing your network for a really long time.

Obviously, Kris is an amazing writer. She was also an editor in short story markets and all that.

So that’s part of your network giving you opportunities, which is just as important.

Douglas: Yes, for sure. I know Jason, who runs StoryBundle, so it all helps. There’s different ways to market.

I know Kris and Dean because I went to their workshop a couple of decades ago. The first one I went to was How to Write Short Fiction.

Joanna: Amazing.

Douglas: Led by Kris and Gardner Dozois, the late Gardner Dozois. I think Kris is the only person who beat Gardner for a Hugo for Best Editor.

Joanna: Wow. I’ve been on Dean and Kris’s workshops and things like that, and that’s kind of how I’ve ended up discovering your work. So just for people listening, again, sometimes these things take decades to come around, but that’s okay.

Where can people find you, and your books, and your stories online?

Douglas: Sure. The best starting point is my website, which is SmithWriter.com. You can find links to my own bookstore or to all the retailer sites.

I just completed an urban fantasy trilogy called The Dream Rider Saga, and the books are The Hollow Boys, The Crystal Key and The Lost Expedition. The Hollow Boys won two awards when it came out. The third book, The Lost Expedition, just came out last year, and I had an earlier novel as well.

You can find links to those and all my collections on the website.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Doug. That was great.

Douglas: Okay, thanks for having me on again, Joanna.

The post Writing And Selling Short Stories With Douglas Smith first appeared on The Creative Penn.

While non-fiction books don’t have to be related to a business, if you have an existing client base, or speaking platform, or you want to build one, a book can be a great way to build authority, bring in new work, and even generate income.

I was interviewed by Liz Scully on The Biz Book Broadcast about How to Write Non-Fiction and you can listen below or on your favourite podcast player. The show notes and transcript are below.

The Second Edition of How to Write Non-Fiction: Turn Your Knowledge Into Words is out now.

Show notes:

• If you’re struggling to start writing, use your existing assets and expertise, such as slide decks, talks, or podcasts, as a foundation for your first book.
• You can also use dictation or ask ChatGPT or Claude to generate questions or prompts about your topic and build from transcripts or notes as you answer each question
• Focus on serving your target audience, solving their problems
• Consider multiple shorter, focused books rather than trying to include everything.
• Books can establish authority, serve as a marketing tool, and generate significant revenue, especially in print and audio formats
• Non-fiction books can be priced higher and sell well over time, benefiting from a long-tail income model
• Readers value personal stories and unique perspectives—elements AI cannot replicate effectively so your book will stand out
• The long game of publishing: Think beyond the first month’s sales and consider how a book can continually bring in income and opportunities over years.
• Reader engagement: Use compelling calls to action in your book, such as offering valuable, updated content to grow your email list and audience.

Transcript:

Liz: Hello and welcome to The Biz Book Broadcast. If you’ve got a business and you love books, then you, my lovely book nerd chum, are in exactly the right place. And have we got a show for you today? Woo hoo. It’s gonna be great. I’m Liz Scully, I’m a business strategist, and today I have Joanna Penn with me. Hello. Please say hello to the lovely listener.

Jo: Hello, Liz. Hello everyone. I’m excited to be here.

Liz: Exactly. Now for you, lovely listener. This is part of our December daily sessions. I know doing this without a net, my friends. It is also part of our Biz Book series, meaning that you should really write a book for your business.

It’ll do it the world of good. Now, if you have been listening carefully and why would you not be? Then you’ll know that this whole series is really a thinly veiled attempt for me to get extra coaching about my book, Think Like a Film Crew, out soon. That’s all I’m willing to commit to at this point.

Let me tell you a bit more about Joanna Penn because she is something of a phenomena. She is a prolific author of many genres of fiction [as J.F. Penn]. She has written many, many helpful nonfiction books, mostly advice for authors. She’s a successful podcaster. She’s a speaker, she’s a futurist, and she’s a delight.

How lovely is that? I’m so glad you’re here, Joanna.

Jo: Thanks, this is a great topic as well. I love talking about books. I am total book nerd as you are!

Liz: Superb. Now you may have heard Joanna Penn’s name before on this show where we did a show about her book Audio for Authors with the lovely Kathryn Goldman. Do go back and check that that was mostly about the legal side of things, but you’ll want to listen to that.

Today we are discussing her book, How to Write Nonfiction, Turn Your Knowledge into Words, and we all want that. We all want that. It covers all the bases from first principles all the way to launch.

It’s super clear. It’s a really solid handbook. Truly, if you only read one book on the topic, this could do you very well — 

and it’s a really good first place to start.

And if you’ve been thinking, you know, maybe 2025 is the year I write that book. This could be a fabulous starting place. And the holidays, most of us are on holiday. This is quite a good time to really dig on that. We’ve even got an episode coming during this daily series on writer’s blog.

So if you read Joanna’s book and then you get started and you get stuck. Look for that. Joanna, you must speak to thousands of authors and they are presumably by the time they’re speaking to you, they’re interested in writing a book.

Where do people start if they want to write a book?

Jo: I think the biggest thing is actually starting, and when we’re talking about writing a book, we are actually talking about writing words on a page.

But I think what is wonderful about these days of technology, and I know a lot of business people, for example, might be speakers. They might have loads of slide decks, or they might have talks they’ve done, they might have podcast interviews like this. They might have just lots of things that they might have recorded in audio or video. You can start with a transcript.

In fact, the [first edition of the] book, How to Write Non-Fiction, started with transcripts of a course I taught.

This is a big tip for nonfiction writers because especially if you’ve never written a book before, ’cause it can be so daunting to think, how do I get everything into a final form? Well, you don’t. That’s not the step you take.

You don’t go from brain to finished product immediately. You have to start somewhere.

I’m a discovery writer. Some people are plotters or planners. You don’t have to design the book from the bottom up or the top down. You can just as I do — have a kind of chaotic process of material, which you then shape into a book over time.

But in terms of starting, it really is just write something or record something. One of the tips I have now —

With AI, with ChatGPT, you can say, ask me 30 questions on this topic.

For example, I’m thinking of a book about money for creative people. So give me 30 questions about money for creative people, and then I can take those questions, I can then record myself talking about them.

I can get those transcribed, start there. So I think that that would probably be the easiest way. Just get something down and go from there.

Liz: I love that idea of going to ChatGPT for questions, not for your content, listener. No, not for the content. Please don’t do that. I think we’ll be reading a lot of, or avoiding a lot of books that are written like that.

But the questions, I think that’s a really solid place to start. Maybe we need to actually move back a step before the starting writing.

So you are an expert, you’ve got a business, you know you want to write a book of some sort.

How do you choose your exact subject?

Because I think a lot of first time writers sort of put everything into that first book and, and please don’t do that. How do you choose which bit?

Jo: Yes, I think you’re right. And I mean, you can write your magnum opus, but it’ll take a long time and it might not find a market.

For me, I think the main thing is —

Focus on who are you trying to serve in terms of your target market.

And this doesn’t have to be hard because if you have a business already, you already have a target market.

They are your clients and your customers and, and for me, writing my first books around helping authors was because I’m an author and it was like, ‘oh, this is what I’ve learned.’

So the first book you write could be something you’ve learned that you know your audience need. And most people are running a business based on their own experience.

I would say, for example, my money book. It’s just an idea, it would be, okay, what are the struggles I’ve had around money? How can I turn that into something that will help others? So that would be the, the first thing is like —

What do my existing clients have problems with?

And then can you then kind of chunk that down into different things.

Because you can have a series of shorter books, which can help.

For example, I have How to Write Non-Fiction, How to Write a Novel, Audio for Authors, I have lots of these different things about the job of being an author. And again, that can be a way for people to look at the different aspects and their different clients and aim towards serving them.

Liz: I like that. I’m a great believer in very short books as well. I would encourage everyone to keep things short.

And I think I’ve been reading for, for this show, I’ve been reading books that are even just maybe 10 years old, and there’s a definite drift from those longer nine or 10 hours in the audio book to books that are about five hours long.

I think more of us want a quick read that is going to upload a whole stack of information for us.

And that’s where your books really do well because you have a book for every problem. I like that.

Jo: That although you say that the, this book, How to Write Non-Fiction is 60,000 words.

You can change up how long it feels by having short, well organized chapters.

Each, chapter answers a specific question.

And then people, and especially I’m an audio listener, I know you are as well, on Spotify particularly, you can just go in and you can just listen to a chapter on something. You don’t even have to get the whole audio book anymore.

I kind of think that way. And also when I get an audiobook, I might delve into the table of contents and go find the answer to that problem. So I think that’s the way to think about it. Even if, ’cause I wanted to serve the entire market with this book, so it is longer. I do have shorter books.

Sometimes a book does need to be a bit longer, so I wouldn’t constrain yourself at least at the beginning.

Then obviously if it’s over-filled with stuff, then maybe you don’t need it. But I do think there’s room for books of different lengths.

Liz: Absolutely. I’m slightly resistant to very long books, but yes, you are right.

So we’ve talked about starting now, obviously as you know —

I think of a book as a tool, as a strategy, as a way to fill the constellation of information around you and your business and to draw more people to you.

I’m writing my book specifically as a strategy, but just before we started recording, you pointed out that the book itself could actually be a decent source of revenue.

I’m only currently just beginning to get to grips with this. ’cause it sort of never occurred to me. Not that people would read it, but like, oh yeah, a lot of people might buy it. It’s a new thought.

Jo: And I think this is really important because I do think —

You should design a book to make money, and that will mean that you get revenue from it as well as the revenue from the other things.

And personally, most of my revenue does come from books. So that is something I think you have to decide.

You are never going have significant revenue really with one book. But if you’re someone who writes that book and you’re like, oh, actually I got the writing bug, and that’s what happened to me.

I wrote my first one called Career Change, and I was like ‘oh, I think I might just write books for a living.’

But I think with nonfiction books in particular, firstly —

People pay more money for nonfiction books, so you can price a nonfiction book at the highest rate —

Like 9.99 on amazon.com if you’re self-publishing to get 70% royalty.

Nonfiction, self-help audio books are huge. I make most of my audiobook revenue from nonfiction.

As you said, they’re shorter, so they’re cheaper to produce because each audio hour is about 9,000 words so you can make money from Audible and Spotify and all these places from people who want to listen to your audio, that of course they might go on and buy other things. But I do think people should consider that.

Also as a speaker, you can do back of the room sales. You can do print runs, you can make good money on print books and doing them as part of those talks.

Or for example, I have a Shopify store, CreativePennBooks.com, I make good money selling print books, bundles. You can do workbooks, you can do all kinds of things that are book related that are not passive for sure, but they might be a lot more passive income than doing client facing work.

Liz: Interesting because I know in my mind that most people only sell, what, a couple hundred books at most. That’s your average mid-list. Sales are very low, and I’m making the book as readable and delightful as possible, but I’m just becoming aware that it could be more than just a calling card.

It could be more than just to get me on the big stages. So this is really inspiring.

Jo: And also this is really important too. Maybe you sell 200 in the first week or month, but I’ve been doing this since 2008. I put my first book out and there are some of my books that may have only sold 200 copies a month for like 15 years and therefore you end up making a lot more money.

The most important thing with book income is you are not thinking about it as revenue only in month one. You are thinking about it on that long, long tail.

And of course, as we’ve discussed, non-fiction books in January, woohoo. The new new start, new January nonfiction books sell a ton.

Over the summer it might drop off and fiction rises, but this is where, what you’ve gotta think is the book, once it’s done, once you’ve done the very best job, you can pay for an editor, pay for cover design, get it out there.

Publishing is not difficult. Marketing is, but —

Once it’s out there, then you can keep selling that book for a very, very long time.

Liz: That’s a really good point. How many books have you written?

Jo: I have over 40 books now across fiction and nonfiction, plus short stories. Some of those are short, some of those are longer, some of those are series.

But I love writing and like I said, I’ve been doing this since 2008, was my first book that I put out there and also I run my own publishing company. So as a business person, as everyone listening is —

When I looked at the publishing industry and saw the margins and where the money went, I was like, oh, I guess I’ll just start another company.

’cause I ran my own company at the time. So I have my own publishing house, which is why I make more money with my book sales than someone who might use a publisher.

Obviously there’s pros and cons. We’re not talking necessarily talking about publishing, but I think that is part of the money angle, and what you want to achieve with the book. What is your definition of success? But please don’t write off the money!

Liz: No, no, I feel rather foolish now. One of the big things that is important to me is that people will read the book and will hopefully enter my world in some manner.

The most obvious way I would love lovely readers to do is to give me their email so that we can start a conversation. Obviously what is much more likely is they might seek out this radio show and then hopefully do it that way.

But I think you must have seen this too, people, we all are much less keen to hand over an email for the most interesting opt-in. I mean, I still think, do I really want that though?

You must have seen this shift. ’cause it used to be, oh, slap any old PDF together and people will want it. How do you entice people now?

Jo: From day one, I’ve had the same call to action, which is what I call my Author Blueprint, which is about mindset, self-publishing, marketing, writing.

It’s like everything, bits of my entire knowledge, and I update that every six months.

That’s the call to action in the back of every single nonfiction book, every episode of my podcast. It’s on my social media. It’s on everything.

And so I actually haven’t seen a drop off. I’ve seen that pretty much consistently for all the years, and as I said, I rewrite it every six months and then I send it out because the publishing industry changes, I change, but then I’ll send it out to my existing list and they’ll be like, oh yeah, I haven’t read that for a couple of years, and they’ll read it again.

It’s like a 50 page book. It’s a short book. It actually is in paperback because some people wanted it in paperback, but it’s a free ebook. So that is what I do.

What I would say is you can give away the farm in your freebie and in your books and people still want more.

I think what’s interesting for your business and your book, Think Like a Film Crew is what ties the book to the clients that you want to attract into your ecosystem that links the two. For me it was quite obvious.

And so that would be my advice for people is —

When you’re thinking about an email list growth strategy, what is the thing that those people do want?

Mine is obvious. After you write a nonfiction book, you want know more about publishing, marketing, that kind of thing, but as you say, listening to a podcast is also good. But many people listening won’t want to start their own podcast like you and I.

Liz: True. So actually what I’ve been planning, and I’d love your thoughts on this.

What I’ve been planning is I know that audio books are really helpful. I would love to have an audiobook of my own, because I know how valuable it is. Trouble is, I’m dyslexic and I read like a somewhat stilted 12-year-old.

I go from this perfectly normal flowing adult to this rather stilted reading. So the way I thought to get rounds that was to, there’s lots of very short chapters in my book, was to pick 10 of the more interesting and also short chapters that I would read and to create a show like this.

I would read a tiny part of it, the first chapter, and then we would discuss it with an expert and I would make maybe 10 of those. Five of them I would broadcast, but you could only get the other five if you opted in.

Jo: I quite like that. But, first of all —

I do think you should record your own audio book because you are an audio person. You are the voice brand.

It doesn’t matter because when we write nonfiction books, they should be written in our ‘voice.’

I believe in editing for audio. So I often, when I’m reading my books, narrating them and I have an audio thing in my house right next to me here so that I can mess up as much as I like because it is hard to read one.

But if you are a voice talent, then people want your voice. It doesn’t matter what you think.

It’s not about you, it’s about your audience. What do they want?

So that is my challenge to you.

But also in terms of your reader magnet being audio, then yes, but you want people to buy your book. So, if people are reading in ebook or print —

Print is huge for nonfiction. It is massive. Most people are going to buy it in print or they’re going to get the audiobook, or they do both.

I quite listen quite often, will listen to an audio book and buy the hard copy.

Liz: Me too.

Jo: So I think you want something else. I would consider doing something like even just a 20 lessons learned from … for you because there must be some gossip in here. Keep some gossip behind the scenes.

People want the personal stuff or some real juicy thing that people want to know more about you behind the scenes.

This is another tip for nonfiction authors —

You have to get personal. We cannot have emotionless person-less books that do just lists of how to because AI can do that.

And that to me now reads like an AI book. It can do self-help. What it can’t do is you, it can’t do your experience — 

and well, it can do your voice actually. But I do think that like you’ll giggle and you know my laugh and I mean, I say to my audience, look, I will tell you when it’s AI Jo. And it isn’t AI Joe at the moment, this is me.

Think about what the audience might want the most rather than what you would prefer to create. Is that too much of a challenge?

Liz: No, that’s fair. To be fair, I have a whole strategy. Obviously I’m a strategist. I have a whole strategy for where I wish to funnel people afterwards.

You’ve got me thinking, I have to say. You’ve got me thinking. It’s good. It’s my job and my plan for my book is that people will read it, want more in my world, and eventually they will join a mastermind. So I have a whole structure to move people towards that.

I hear you about the dyslexia. Okay. Okay. You’ve convinced me.

Now I know that one of the things that we, that may well be top of mind for our lovely listener is that yes, they want to write a book. Yes, they’ve got a business. Yes, they can see how it all fits together. But a lot of people, including you, they’ve written a lot of books, which is fine. Lovely for you. But what about the rest of us?

Is it okay to just write one book and leave it at that?

Jo: Yes, absolutely. And this is where it comes down to what’s your definition of success.

If it is purely to drive business into other parts of your business, then often those people do only write one book. Sometimes one book really does take off, you know, James Clear with Atomic Habits. I think he has another book now, but I mean, that just went stratospheric.

So one book can do incredibly well. It can give you keynote talks. It can do a lot.

But as I said earlier, this kind of bug of ‘I really enjoy writing and I want to do more.’ I think everyone has a default mode of trying to help, and some people might feel like this is it for them, basically. And then I would encourage you to do more because, I think it’s wonderfully fulfilling to help people through your books.

You can help a lot of people through a podcast, but there’s a whole different audience out there for your books.

Liz: That’s very true. So when you wrote your first book, did you have any idea it was going be your thing?

Jo: No. My first book was called Career Change, and it was because I was so miserable in my day job.

I was an IT consultant, I was crying at work. I hated it. I needed to get out. And I was like, how do I do this? I know, I’ll try and figure it out by writing a self-help book, get a book deal, and be famous and make millions — and that didn’t happen surprisingly but —

The book you write can change your life. It may not be in the way you think

— and it wasn’t for me because that book didn’t do very well. It never did very well. You know, it sells a little bit all the time. But I discovered I didn’t want to talk about career change. I didn’t want to be that consultant person. I didn’t want to speak on that topic.

I did want to write more books. I did want to write fiction and it’s completely changed my life.

That’s another thing I would say to people. If you start writing something and it turns into something else, trust your intuition.

Because yes, you can aim for it to grow your business or whatever, but in the process of writing, you might actually be transformed and you may discover something about your new direction that you didn’t know before, and that might be the thing that changes your life.

Liz: Interesting, interesting. How long did your first book take you to write?

Jo: Probably about 18 months, but I’ll give you another one. My book Pilgrimage took around four years. That’s a kind of memoir/solo walking book.

And my book Writing The Shadow, which is about the Jungian shadow side, the writing took decades.

Liz: I feel better about that.

Jo: I mean, I’ve written books in six weeks, but it really depends on how deep you go, how much meaning there is to you.

Is it a ‘this is what you need to do’ type of book and that is fine. That is all good. Those books are great. But if it’s a book where you are sharing a lot more personal stories, mining your subconscious and your memories and you’re trying to do a transformational journey — like my book, Pilgrimage is a transformational journey — It can take a lot longer if you have to do research. Again, let it be what it is.

Liz: Right. Oh, I like that. Do you have a favorite book? Of all of them. With so many, is there one that stands out?

Jo: That’s really hard. In terms of my nonfiction, I do think Writing the Shadow feels like almost my last word on the craft. The subtitle is Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words. It’s all about the darker side of us. And I know your other business understands a lot about that.

Some of the things we repress are the things that can actually change our lives.

I feel like that book helped transform me, and helps my fiction so much. So I really think that it’s an interesting thing to consider these longer works. Also, I didn’t feel ready, so this is another tip.

If you don’t feel ready to write this massive thing that you want to maybe try and write that short 20,000 word tips book, like 20 tips can be very valuable. And then think about those deeper works maybe over the longer term.

Liz: I. That is great. And actually, interestingly enough, I do have other books planned, hopefully, if I could ever get this word outta the system. But I think of as a thinker, these are my ideas, this is how it helps.

But I am planning two books afterwards, which are on How to Run Masterminds, and exactly as you’re saying, to keep them short, I’m thinking How to Sell a Mastermind as one book and How to Run a Mastermind is the other.

Jo: Oh, great. That’s fantastic.

Liz: I would like them to be as short as possible ’cause I dunno about you. Maybe you have a higher tolerance, but for me, if I’m listening to an audio book and they’re just rambling on, I’d just like to throttle the author. I,

Jo: I put it on 1.5 speed.

Liz: I listen at 2.3 as my standard and I still find myself thinking, oh, this has been going on forever.

Jo: Well, this is another tip around the chapters.

On an audio book player, the chapters should have a decent title, so I know where to skip on to.

I think that’s actually really important.

Liz: Yes, that is true, and I find it slightly shameful that not everything is published like that at the moment because really, oh, I know, we’re in the modern world. People, give it a proper name.

Now we are nearly at the end of our time together, but Joanna has set us up beautifully for two things. First of all, that her favorite book is the book that we are going to talk about next time. I’m very excited about that. Thank you so much.

But also, I want to leave you listener with a big idea.

The big thing that I think I have taken away from this conversation is that use ChatGPT to find those questions about your topic.

Such a good idea. So I suggest that if you’re thinking of writing a book, do what Joanna said. In fact, actually I’ll just suggest that anyway.

Do what Joanna says is a fairly good plan for life, I suspect. In the meantime, where can people find out more about you and your world?

Jo: Yeah, come on over to The Creative Penn Podcast since you are listening to this and you can find everything I do at TheCreativePenn.com.

Liz: Excellent and all that will of course be in the show notes and while you’re getting things you know listener, if somehow you still haven’t got my reading list, go and get it. It’s best in Class books. My little mission in life with this show is to save you from reading awful books. All of those long, tedious ones, they’re not on the list. It’s about 12. They’re fabulous. Go and get it. Once again, thank you so much for being here, Joanna.

Jo: Oh, thanks for having me, Liz.

Liz: It’s been a delight and thank you listener.

The post Crafting Non-Fiction Books That Build Your Brand and Income. Joanna Penn On The Biz Book Broadcast with Liz Scully first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Creative burnout can feel like a wall between you and your writing goals. Whether it’s the result of stress, distractions, or feeling creatively drained, creative fatigue and even injury is something many modern writers experience. Because writers are generally a solution-forward bunch, we often think we can ten-step our way out of the problem. However, when creativity itself is the problem, the resources to heal can often be counter-intuitive. Creative burnout recovery isn’t about forcing your way back to the page; it’s about holistically creating space in the rest of your life for your creativity to breathe and rebuild.

Last fall when I asked you all what you’d like me to write about this year, quite a few of you brought up challenges you were having in accessing, restoring, or implementing your creativity:

So sorry I have not really had the time to read your blog these days. I have not even had the chance to write either which…for me…is a tragedy. And to be perfectly honest, it is difficult for me to use my inner creativity muscle anymore. But that does not mean I can’t. I would like you to write more about finding the joy of writing and ways to battle against writer’s “disinterest.” I will not call it a block.–MC Furgal

Having experienced deep creative burnout myself, these are topics about which I am extremely passionate. In my own experience and from what I hear from the writing community, creative burnout is becoming an increasingly common challenge for many modern writers. Although the pandemic crisis in 2020 launched many people’s creative aspirations, it was also a shatterpoint for many long-time creatives. There are many possible reasons for this, but to me this points to the reality that creative burnout is often the result of what may seem at first to be “supra-creative” causes. Although writer’s block may often appear to be specifically related to the act of writing (as in some cases of what I call “plot block”), it is more often a symptom of deeper obstacles blocking the flow and force of our deepest creative selves—which is to say, our very lives.

Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration (affiliate link)

To risk creative burnout is, truly, to risk the burnout of our deepest life force and vitality. Likewise, to heal any injuries or exhaustion in our relationship to creativity, we must be willing to look beyond the page to examine those things that may be blocking, not just our writing, but our lives.

That said, today I want to respond to MC’s question by looking at the practical steps I’ve learned over the years in my own creative burnout recovery and in daily building the kind of life that supports this vital energy.

What Creative Burnout Really Means

What is creative burnout? Put simply, it’s when you reach that point when there’s nothing left in the tank.

Although lack of creative desire is often the first symptom that something might be going awry, the resistance felt is different from the usual—and quite normal—pushback most writers feel when confronted with the empty page. In creative burnout, the will might still be present, but the passion is gone. The desire for desire might be present, but the old spark just isn’t there. The motivation has run dry. Writing, even at its best, requires a difficult and even painful stretching of oneself, but there is always a purpose, a reason, a motivation to keep going. With creative burnout, there just isn’t.

MC wrote that it is “difficult for me to use my inner creativity muscle anymore.” I like this metaphor of a “muscle,” since it extends to include the idea of an injury. Creative burnout is really creative injury. Understanding this helps resolve the shame, confusion, and self-recrimination that often complicates this experience. Treating burnout as an injury allows us to turn doctor and explore the root causes of what can otherwise seem a mysterious hex.

Although every experience of creative burnout will be as deeply unique as creative expression itself, most instances can be traced or at least related to one simple factor: stress.

The most important thing to understand about stress—and therefore about creative burnout—is that stress is a physiological experience. It happens to the body. This can have wide-ranging effects—from muscle tension and inflammation to nervous system dysregulation to rewired brain patterns (e.g., anxiety triggers, attention deficits)—and all the host of further snowballing conditions and illnesses (e.g., high blood pressure, etc.) It’s not something to be taken lightly. Although creative burnout by itself can seem comparatively minor (!), it is often an early caution against further lifestyle dangers.

Recognizing this is one thing. Dealing it with in a modern technological world that seems to become more complex and stressful by the day is another challenge altogether. Few of us live simple or streamlined lives. Between relationships, jobs, finances, home and auto maintenance, and a host of other calls upon our attention, we are busier than ever. On top of that, our sleep is increasingly dysregulated, thanks in part to our near-constant exposure to blue light. Even our downtime isn’t really downtime. Instead of creating space for routines that allow our systems to actually empty, reset, and refill, we’re usually either chasing dopamine highs (i.e,. checking off fun stuff like it’s a to-do list) or numbing out (probably with more screentime).

This is just the norm now. Speaking for myself, I can draw a direct correlation between the increasing busyness of my mind throughout my adult decades and the corresponding decrease in my ability to “dream” and therefore to access creation from the deepest well of myself rather than simply my overworked head center. Breaking away from these unhealthy and ultimately creativity-destroying lifestyles requires the conscious awareness and effort to create days that are filled with high-quality habits (but not too full, if you know what I mean).

Seeking Emptiness: The Problem of “Filling the Well’ in Creative Burnout Recovery

The first step in creative burnout recovery is creating space in your life where you can invite creativity back in.

In the past, discussions of writer’s block have often focused on the seemingly generative idea of “filling the well.” However, the very term writer’s block tells us the problem isn’t necessarily a lack but perhaps a superfluence. The longer I have experienced, researched, and responded to my own creative blocks, the clearer it has become to me that the real problem is not that my creative well is empty of ideas or information, but rather that my system in general is too full. When an overloaded brain and nervous system run too hot for too long the result is, of course, burnout.

Because burnout is physiological, it is not a state that can always be easily reversed. Just as with a car engine that has been run into the ground, some pieces may be beyond salvaging and may need to be replaced. In the case of a living organism, this replication is miraculously possible, but it takes time, patience, and the discipline to create the ease and space that creative energy craves.

Here are a few practical tips for creating space into which you can re-invite your creativity:

1. Do What’s in Front of You

This has become one of the mantras of my life. Basically, it means “clear the table” (or the desk, as the case may be). Clear the clutter by starting with what’s right in front of you. Although this might indicate actual clutter, more generally it recommends against procrastination. The more stuff that piles up (literally or metaphorically), the fuller our brains get. Even when we may not actively remember everything (like that unanswered email or the leftovers in the fridge), some part of your brain does remember. It puts a pin it, and when you never get back to it and a hundred others like it, the mental real estate it requires takes up more and more space that could otherwise be used for creativity.

2. Go Slow Enough to Process

In some respects, this is another variation of “do what’s in front of you”—except here what’s “in front of you” are the thousand little mental and emotional responses that arise throughout the day to one prompt after another. We interact with infinitely more bits of information and stimuli than have previous generations. Although our amazing brains quickly filter, sort, and process most of these occurrences, some take a little more time. When we are unable to pause in the moment to fully acknowledge or process our responses, they still get backed up in the body. In the constant flow of information, that particular catalyst may be mentally forgotten, but not physically.

Get into the practice of noticing your responses as they arise. When something feels triggering or like it requires an extra moment to process, take a break, step back, and fully digest it before moving on—all of which can take as little as a few seconds of awareness. Particularly in our scroll culture, in which we may encounter dozens, if not hundreds, of possible triggers within a short timespan, slowing down enough to learn this practice offers untold benefits.

3. Write Down or Look Up Questions ASAP

You know those random thoughts and curiosities that filter through your brain throughout the day? How tall is Elizabeth Debicki? How may Super Bowls did Tom Brady win? Which brand of crackers is cheaper? To the degree you intend to “look that up later,” do it now. This is yet another form of “doing what’s in front of you.” Don’t let trivia backlog in your brain. Use your phone to look it up right now. If you intend to text someone, do it now. If you need to add something to your grocery list, put in your online cart or write it down now. Not only does this reverse procrastination habits, it is also one of the simplest ways to remove unneeded complexity from your daily brain and your probably already overtaxed short-term memory. Wouldn’t you much rather think about your story rather than crackers? (Or not. I mean I love crackers.)

Minimizing Unnecessary (and Sometimes Necessary) Noise, So You Can Hear the Muse

One of the biggest brain clutterers is noise. And there is so. much. noise right now. If you spend any significant amount of your life online (and who doesn’t?), then you hear the noise. Some of that noise is from your own life. Some of it is literal noise. And some of it is just the general clutter and chatter of the Internet—emails, ads, news, to-do lists, even entertainment. We all know how easy it is for our hours and our good intentions to run down the drain after getting sucked into what started out seeming like an inconsequential browse through suggested YouTube shorts.

Here’s the thing: the Internet is not going to help you take control of your brain back. Our modern world is not going to help you. If you want your brain back—if you want your creativity back—you have to do it yourself. And I’ll be honest: this is a Sisyphean battle. Short of pulling the plug on the Internet and/or having superpower-level self-discipline, I envision this as one of Dwight Eisenhower’s battle plans—where basically you have to keep throwing it out and creating new ones on the go.

Here’s what I’m doing this year to take care of my brain.

1. Browse One Tab at a Time

The hyper-multitasking of the Internet has literally rewired our brains into shorter attention spans and memories. One of the only ways to combat this is to force yourself to go slower. (I know, I know, it feels like pulling teeth to me too.) In the past, my daily Internet routine was to open every single tab I would need for the day (email, blog comments, socials, financial institutions, etc.), then go through them as fast as I could. If one page was loading (I have slow Internet), I’d skip back and forth between tabs. I think I could literally feel my brain dying.

This year, I made the commitment to only open one working tab at a time. I am shocked by how much calmer my brain feels. I will never go back.

2. Use a Pomodoro Timer to Take Breaks

A Pomodoro timer is a time-management tool that breaks your work into focused intervals, typically 25 minutes long, followed by a short 5-minute break, helping boost productivity and prevent burnout. I also started using this tool more faithfully this year. I will work sitting for 25 minutes, use an eye massager during the 5-minute break, then raise my desk to standing for 15 minutes, before repeating. Not only does it help me reorient, give me time to process anything that’s come up during the 25 minutes, and slow my roll on any time-suckers, it also gives me the chance to address my body’s needs.

3. Limit Social Media

I know, I know. This one is almost a cliche at this point. But it’s the truth. Social media can be fun and useful, and for those of us who use it for marketing, it can even be obligatory. But there’s no question it is, at best, a necessary evil. Aside from always being a potential black hole for our time and attention, it is also designed to bombard us with a host of small stimuli that fill up our brains with empty calories and encourage low-quality wiring in our memories and nervous systems. I gotta be honest: the less time spent on short-form content, the better. If you love it or need it, set a timer—then give yourself at least a few minutes afterward to let everything you saw and heard process through.

4. Commit to No-Buy Months

This one might not seem immediately obvious, but aside from bringing less actual stuff into your life (and saving money), it can also free up more of your attention. One way or another, most of us spend a lot of time shopping—whether necessarily or recreationally. Especially if you shop predominately online, creating structure around not just how much you can buy but, in this instance, particularly how much time you spend looking can not only free up time and space, it can also help cut down on the unavoidable noisiness of everything that happens out here in Internet-land.

5. Set Realistic Schedules and Goals for Your Life

We have to manage so much complexity in our modern lives. The better we organize our lives, the more structures and resources we can utilize to help us quiet everything down enough to create an inviting space for our creativity. One important way of doing this is making sure the structures and tools we bring in to help are, in fact, realistic. Trying to cram in too much (guilty!) won’t help your creative burnout recovery, no matter how well-organized it is. Get real about what’s important and what you have time for. If creativity is important, then prioritize that—even just in making space so your brain can quiet down.

>>Click here to read Creativity vs. Distraction: 13 Tips for Writers in the Age of the Internet

Listening for Your Yes: The Path to Creative Burnout Recovery and Rediscovering Your Writing Flow

Once you’ve cleared space in your life and brought healing to your stress injuries, how can you proactively welcome creativity back into your life?

This will require new habits. After all, if the old ones hurt you, you know you have to stop. You can’t go back to doing the same things that led to creative burnout the first time around.

This can be a tough pill to swallow. Just recently (after many years of creative burnout recovery), I finally found myself consciously realizing that part of me was trying to heal just so I could return to the same level of productivity I managed before my burnout. That’s the definition of insanity.

You have to be willing to examine whether you might have to let go of some the ways things used to be. There can be an ego death and a grieving process involved with that.

You can also ask yourself whether you might, in fact, be able to return to some good things as well. One of the best ways to cultivate good creative habits is to think back to times when creativity overflowed. Think back to the perfect ease of daydreaming and play-acting when in childhood. Creativity seemed effortless then because it was allowed to arise, rather then being recruited as a soldier in the army of productivity.

Although creativity ultimately uses and requires all aspects of the self, including the intellect and the will, it begins as an inherently intuitive and even emotional process. When we talk about “making space” for creativity, what we are talking about is the space where the creativity begins. We are making space for creativity to arrive. Although we may often think of “the act of creation” as something we do, it is a deeply receptive act. True creativity is not so much when we think of something as when that thought thinks us. There’s no forcing that. There is only waiting, listening, and cultivating a physiology that is habituated to experience the creative act as pleasurable rather than stressful.

>>Click here to read How Meditation Can Inspire Your Next Story

Even before taking the steps mentioned above, you must have a willingness and ability to go through what is often a literal detox from “go mode.” If creative burnout results from our brains rewiring in unpleasant ways (albeit to protect and/or serve us), then creative burnout recovery is about rewiring our miraculously plastic brains and systems back into generativity. Go mode is highly addictive, which is, again, another physical experience. It’s not just in our heads; it’s not just a “habit”; after a while, it becomes part of our physical reality. Changing that reality requires changing certain fundamental things about the way we interact with all parts of our lives.

Not every writer is committed enough to their writing to make those changes. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with deciding to move on after burning out on one expression of creativity. But we cannot move on from creativity itself. It is our very life force. It is the best and truest part of our existence, no matter how it expresses. Although the modern world and its technologies offers a plethora of unthought-of tools and environments that can help creativity thrive, there are also many aspects absolutely antithetical to the maintenance of a healthy creative life. Without awareness and discipline, more and more writers are likely to suffer creative burnout—not because there is anything inherently wrong with their “creative muscle,” but because the potentially endless distractions and stresses we face every day are, in fact, creative death by a thousand cuts.

Although creative burnout is a challenge many writers face, it is also an unprecedented opportunity to reconnect with the essence of creativity itself. By stepping away from the constant demands of modern life and creating space for rest, reflection, and renewal, we can rediscover the joy and vitality that fuels our writing. The process of recovery requires patience and the willingness to let go of old habits, but it also offers the chance to build a more sustainable and fulfilling creative practice for the future. Remember, creativity thrives in moments of stillness and openness. By nurturing those moments, we not only heal our creative selves, but also open the door to the deep, rich stories that resonate with our true selves.

>>Click here to read How to Rediscover the Joy of Writing

In Summary:

Creative burnout isn’t just a temporary slump; it’s often a deep-seated physiological and emotional response to overwork and stress. It’s not about the absence of ideas but about a system that’s too full to allow creativity to flow. To recover, we need to create space in our lives to heal and rejuvenate, both mentally and physically. A critical first step is slowing down, clearing mental clutter, and consciously addressing stress that’s been building in our lives. Real recovery requires not only rest but also adjustments to our habits and schedules to maintain balance.

Key Takeaways:

1. Creative Burnout Is a Physiological Injury: It’s not just a lack of motivation but a deeper, systemic issue rooted in stress and mental overload.
2. Create Space for Recovery: To heal from burnout, it’s important to clear physical and mental clutter. Slow down, process emotions, and avoid procrastination.
3. Minimize External Noise: Limit distractions, especially online, to allow your mind the space to reset.
4. Practical Strategies: Implement tools like Pomodoro timers, limit social media, and commit to no-buy months to reduce external pressure and regain control over your time and attention.
5. Set Realistic Expectations: Overloading your schedule exacerbates burnout. Set achievable goals and leave room for recovery.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What strategies have you found most helpful in your own creative burnout recovery journey? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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The post The Writer’s Road to Creative Burnout Recovery appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Why is ‘story’ more important than ‘writing’? How can you write characters that engage the reader? And how can you sell more books by connecting authentically? Douglas Vigliotti shares his tips.

In the intro, Bookshop.org will start selling ebooks [TechCrunch]; LinkedIn for Book Promotion [ALLi]; The Money Making Expert, branding and marketing [DOAC]; 24 Assets – Daniel Priestley; My J.F. Penn books by location; Death Valley, A Thriller; Copyright and Artificial Intelligence [US Copyright Office]; Superagency: What could possibly go right with our AI Future – Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Douglas Vigliotti is the author of four books, a poet, and podcaster. His latest book is Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why Aristotle?
• Creating characters that resonate with our readers — and the four important elements to keep in mind
• Why story is more important than writing
• Creating complications that make readers want to read on
• The intersection of commerce and art
• Tips for pitching podcast interviews

You can find Douglas at DouglasVigliotti.com and his latest book at AristotleForNovelists.com.

Transcript of Interview with Douglas Vigliotti

Joanna: Douglas Vigliotti is the author of four books, a poet, and podcaster. His latest book is Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story. So welcome to the show, Doug.

Douglas: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Joanna: It’s great to have you on the show. So first up, just—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.

Douglas: My journey is long and winding, but that’s probably similar to most writers. I grew up as a pretty, I would say, average or normal American childhood. Youngest of five boys, played hockey, played sports.

Believe it or not, writing and books and all of that was not even a thought in my mind until I reached probably my 20s, early 20s, mid 20s. Then kind of a light switch turned on. The first book that I ever wrote, and the first writing that I ever did publicly, was actually a derivative of my business career.

It took me following my interest, and growing as a writer and as an artist, to start exploring that more creative side of writing. Then that’s how I ended up writing novels and poetry and all that good stuff.

Joanna: What was that business?

Douglas: My professional career, I started, let’s see, 20 years ago. It was sales, selling.

I’ve sold everything from financial services, to medical devices, to payroll and tax filing, to myself.

Then I wrote a business book called The Salesperson Paradox, and it was in conjunction with my sales consulting company at the time, and that was how I started into my creative career. So it was totally, totally orthogonal to where I ended up.

Joanna: Well, or not. We’re going to come back to that because I love this. I love that you have a sales person background.

Just so you know, I’m actually the eldest of five children. Obviously, not all boys. So being of five siblings, I completely get, which is very cool.

Let’s get into the book itself. In case people don’t know—

Who was Aristotle? Why write a book based on his work?

Douglas: So I think in modern day, we throw around the name Aristotle quite a bit because it’s referenced a lot in pop culture. I think it’s one of those things where you hear the name and you assume—I don’t know what you assume. You assume smart, you assume historic, you assume legendary.

People probably don’t know who he is, and that’s always an interesting thing. The fact that he’s lasted over 2300 years is something of a testament to itself. So he was a philosopher and a polymath, really. I think his life, it was 384 BC to 322 BC. He studied under Plato, and Plato studied under Socrates before him.

When I said he was a polymath, that’s really essential to understanding who he is, because he wrote over 200 works that spanned across a plethora of topics.

From politics, to economics, to poetics, and all of these different subject matters that ended up becoming, in some cases, the foundational material for many of these disciplines in universities across the world.

So the fact that his ideas and his philosophies and concepts have stood the test of time is sort of a testament in itself, as I alluded to. One of the interesting things about those 200 works is that many of them, call it 80%, so I think we’ve only recovered 30-something of his works.

I mean, the number is kind of debated. I don’t know how they quantify this, because if they’re lost, how do we know how many we recovered? But they’ve only recovered 30-something of his works.

One of those is Poetics. So that is actually the nature of tragedies, but more broadly, storytelling. It’s one of the major reasons why I ended up writing this book, obviously.

Joanna: You didn’t say there that we’re talking about Ancient Greece. So we’re in Europe. I often think Americans forget that it all started over here in Europe.

Douglas: Sorry, I tend to skip over things sometimes, but you are correct. Ancient Greece.

Joanna: It’s funny because we seem to be at this period in history, in literature, when people just refer a lot to, obviously, the Stoic Movement and a lot about Marcus Aurelius. Obviously, Roman emperor, but the empire that came after the Greeks. A lot of this is resurfacing, isn’t it, in culture?

Do you think there’s some kind of zeitgeist where this is all coming back?

Douglas: So in a general sense, or in a broad sense, I think it’s more comfortable for people to reference people who are already gone, so to speak. I don’t think it’s as easy for people to credit living legends or living thinkers as it is to credit people who are gone. So I think there’s something to that.

I also think that there’s something to the idea of grabbing onto something that gives people a framework to think that they know, even though they might not really know. Like foundational philosophical thinkers, they were at some of these topics first, so they have some really strong ideas around a plethora of things.

So I think when we bring them to life, to this day and age, we realize, wow, there’s really—and I’m going to use a biblical quote here, not to be religious—but it’s nothing new under the sun.

We are living these same issues over and over and over again, and I just think that there’s a lot of resonance for that.

Look, I think there’s a certain thing to nostalgia that we have as a society. It’s a saleable commodity.

I didn’t write this book because I was trying to fill a void with Aristotle and his ideas and storytelling. To me, when I started to research story as a concept, everything started funneling back to Aristotle. Then I realized, wow, everything is there. You know, it was how I learned about story.

So the fact that Aristotle, his ideas in this book came to fruition, was more of a function of me realizing that all the theorists in modern day, or practitioners for that matter—so people in the dramatic world, like Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet or a lot of these people, they’ll often reference Aristotle.

Or if you read theorists like Robert McKee, they’ll often reference Aristotle. So for me, it was only natural to then double down on Aristotle, and read Poetics, and read multiple translations of Poetics, and really understand the text.

Then what I quickly realized was how resonant these ideas were in modern storytelling, on both the screen, the page, and in our lives. I think that that’s one of the big things that drew Aristotle to storytelling in general was how intrinsically linked it is to living, because we live stories.

So I think that the principles that we’ll talk about, or some of these ideas that we’ll talk about, they are applicable to our life, as well as they are applicable on the page and on the screen.

Joanna: Yes, and of course that quote you mentioned is from the book of Ecclesiastes. I quote that in a number of my novels, actually. It’s probably my favorite book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes.

I think part of that is what you’re talking about, is that —

There are principles in human nature, as well as principles in story, that don’t change, regardless of how many millennia go past.

I was thinking as you were talking, like maybe part of the reason we’re re-latching onto this now is because there’s so much change in the world. With AI, and technology, and social media, and all this constant stream of stuff that there is—

Maybe we’re sort of harking back to things that don’t change, and that perhaps helps a little.

Douglas: I totally agree with you. I think when we’re talking about stories specifically, there are a couple fundamental elements that are there in almost every story that we tell, at least in Western society.

In Western society, the stories we tell, almost all of them, even in sprawling epics or multiple storyline plots and all this stuff, they have three characteristics that are always there.

That’s a protagonist who wants something, and there’s obstacles standing in their way. Those obstacles come both externally and internally.

I think if we zoom out and we look at our lives, Joanna Penn’s life, Douglas Vigliotti’s life, I’m a protagonist who wants something, and I have obstacles standing in my way that are both internal and external.

Do I overcome those obstacles?

Well, then we end up with an Aristotelian comedy. I end up better off at the end, even if it’s only temporarily.

Do I succumb to those obstacles, both internal and external? Well, then we have an Aristotelian tragedy because I end up worse off.

So these ideas are baked right into our lives. You can see the framework for story everywhere as you walk through life if you understand these core components of what makes up a story. Again, like I said, at least in a Western sense.

Joanna: Yes, well, since we’re on characters then. A quote from the book, you say —

“Novels should contain true characters.”

Now, I find this word ‘true’ extremely difficult because fiction, you know, it’s fiction. True, in general, is very hard. So what do you mean by this?

How can we create characters that resonate?

Douglas: I think that you hit the nail on the head. True has multiple meanings to multiple people. I’m speaking specifically in the sense of what would Aristotle say would be true.

To Aristotle, there’s four elements to characters, in general. They are goodness, so it’s your characters are good if their choices are good. Appropriateness would be, are they acting appropriately? Not right or wrong, but based on who they are, are they acting truly to who they are? So are they acting appropriately?

So that directly links to this trueness of character in, are you writing characters that are true to who that character is? Not true to real life, true to who that character is. There’s a big difference there. It’s not about fact and fiction.

The third element is relatability. That has more to do with, are you making the character relatable? So are you giving them characteristics that embody human characteristics? The best way to do that is through imperfection.

Despite what our world wants to try to convince us every day —

We are relatable because of our imperfections —

not because of our perfections. So there’s this big chasm between what we see every day and what we should be depicting in our stories or on the page, and what we actually relate to.

If we sat down and had a conversation, we’re probably going to relate based on some of our struggles more than we’re going to relate on some of our successes.

Then the fourth piece is consistency. Even if you were to write a character, a true character, who is inconsistent, Aristotle would say, by nature, they should be consistently inconsistent.

We see this all the time in storytelling with unreliable narrators. They are consistently inconsistent. What ends up happening with those unreliable narrators is this ties into something else that Aristotle talks about or that you can observe in stories, but eventually what they say doesn’t line up with what they do.

It’s always what a character does, it’s always what we show, it’s always about action. That is the more important piece. So we can get into trouble in life or in stories if we’re only listening to what characters are saying. I could say one thing and do another, and doing is more important than saying.

So to answer that question and peel back to it, those are the four characteristics that would make up a true character in an Aristotelian sense.

Joanna: Yes, I think it’s an interesting way forward. I like the relatability because if you’re writing, let’s say sci fi, and you have aliens there, or you’re writing something literary and writing from the perspective of like a plant or an animal or something—

You still have to have relatability to the human who is reading the book.

That kind of comes across whatever type of character you’re writing, essentially.

Douglas: 100%. Aristotle is very specific in Poetic, saying that he believes that the two reasons why storytelling began for us humans, one is because of imitation. So we learn how to imitate to live. So as young kids, we imitate the world around us, the people around us, our parents, and that’s how we learn how to actually live.

So storytelling is a derivative of that. So we should be imitating what is happening in the real world. Not writing realist fiction or realist work, but we should be embracing all of human nature has to offer, because that is why, according to Aristotle, storytelling actually began.

It’s what’s relatable to humans, so we should be reflecting all of those qualities in our work.

For anyone who’s interested, the second reason is rhythm. So he thinks we have a natural rhythm, and I tend to agree with him because even if you are writing, all writers know voice, they know pacing, they know tone.

Rhythm to your prose, just like rhythm in music, is really, really important.

I think this is one of the big reasons why, as a writer, you don’t even need to know grammar to be able to write. If you have rhythm, it’s going to work on the page. You have editors for that stuff.

I think musicians are great examples of this because so many of them don’t learn how to—you know, top level musicians, I mean, people who are iconic. In the book I talk about some examples of Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen, and American musicians who didn’t know how to read music, and things turned out pretty well for them.

Not to say that that’s the benchmark, but it’s countless, the amount of “I don’t know how to read music, I learned how to play the guitar.” All of that’s based off of rhythm. Writing and voice on the page is no different, really. Aristotle would call that your meter, your poetic meter.

Joanna: Yes, that’s interesting. Actually, you do say this in the introduction,

“Writing is not story.”

I guess there you mentioned you don’t have to know grammar to write story, and this is a tension. Of course, you’re a poet as well, and writers often prioritize the intricacies of language before the story.

Especially in this sort of age of AI, when word generation, however you generate words, whether you’re writing them by hand or you’re generating them with AI, that doesn’t matter so much.

How can we prioritize story over the intricacies of writing?

Douglas: So, for me, this is a really important distinction. I think oftentimes writers, at least through conversations that I have with them, we confuse writing and story.

To me, there’s a very, very clear distinction, in that story is governed by what I would call principles, whereas writing is governed by style.

I really have no interest in telling someone how I think they should write their story. I don’t even believe that you can. Even the best prose—and I’m using air quotes because best is so subjective—it could take me 15, 20 pages to get used to that writing or I could never get used to that writing.

Writing is that different from person to person, writer to writer. I have this funny saying, where it’s, “Story is why they come, writing is why they stay.”

Writing is the tool that writers utilize to tell their story. Story is the foundational component of what you are trying to achieve.

That’s why you can watch movies, you can listen to audiobooks, you can engage with all these other forms of media and learn how to tell story. That doesn’t mean you’re going to learn how to write because writing is a different thing.

Aristotle does have some ideas on what he thinks around style, of course, and I have my own opinions on that as well.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to achieve with Aristotle for Novelists, let’s say, is more of a foundational education on the principles of what makes up a story. So there is a difference between the two, at least in my view.

Joanna: So I guess one of the other things, we talked a bit about character there, but we should also talk about plot. You say,

“Novels have a complication and a resolution.”

What are complications, and how can we create those that fascinate readers and make them want to read on?

Even though they may, or sometimes we feel like, maybe they’ve heard this before or read this before?

Douglas: So my favorite Aristotle quote is, “Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill.” What he’s talking about there—and when he says poets, he’s talking about something much wider in scope than literally poets. The same could be said, by the way, for poetics in general.

What he meant by poetics is something much larger in scope than poetry, so for anybody who’s wondering that.

What he’s talking about there is the difference between a complication and a resolution. So we all know that when we come to our stories, we come because we have an idea for the complication of that story. We have a character who is put in a situation and we wind that up.

What he’s saying is that it takes the truly great writers the ability to unwind that, to unravel that knot. There’s so many ways that we could go wrong when we’re doing that. Whether it’s lack of believability, lack of cohesion, illogical, impossibility, irrationality.

There’s so many different ways that we could falter as we try to resolve the complication that we depicted in the early part of our story. I find it helpful when I read books and when I watch movies—I’m a bit of a story junkie, so I do both quite a bit.

I look particularly for, when does that writer or when does that story begin to unravel the knot? Some would say, in a traditional three-act structure sense, you begin to unravel the knot—and Aristotle would say this—when that change of fortune actually happens.

So if it’s at a tragedy, it would be when that character is at the ultimate high before they fall. Or if it was in a comedy, it would be at that ultimate low before they rise. You start to unravel that knot a little bit.

I find it helpful to start thinking about and answering little questions that you propose earlier in your novels, somewhere around the midway point. Never actually answering that big question, right?

You want to keep that tension for as long as possible.

Then there’s other people who would suggest you keep that tension as taut as possible all the way through until you get to the very, very end. So what you’ll find is there’s a lot of differences in how people achieve this.

I think one of the things that you will see consistently is there is a complication and there is a resolution. One of the things that Aristotle is really, really insistent about is he calls it avoiding Deus Ex Machina. So things coming from outside of your plot to solve plot problems.

I see this all the time, I’m going to be honest, in stories where it’s like, solve the plot problems within the existing world that you depicted. Now, obviously you can introduce new characters and all of that stuff, but when stuff comes out of left field to solve a plot problem, you’re not unraveling the knot well, so to speak.

He has a great quote, and he says,

“The solution to a plot problem should come from the story itself.”

I find that to be a really informative quote, and also a benchmark to try to hit every time you write a story. Whether that story is short as a poem in five sentences, or whether it’s extrapolated out to an 80,000 word novel.

Joanna: That’s actually great. People are like, oh, but how do I do that? Then I’m like, well, that’s why we do self-editing, because if you get to a point in your book and you finish your book, you just go back and edit in something earlier on in the process.

So I don’t understand how people can’t figure that out later on. As you say, you can just put in things earlier on that will help you resolve it later. That’s why we edit. So I think that’s quite cool.

I want to come back to something you said earlier about your previous career and your book, The Salesperson Paradox. I feel like this is a problem for most authors. So if you’re a poet, you’ve got this book, Aristotle for Novelists, you’ve got other books, and you also come from sales.

So how are you marketing your books? How are you selling your books?

How can authors who care about the craft also care about sales and marketing?

Douglas: I do think that they are driven by two completely different motors. I have this conversation since I have my toe in both worlds, and I have for a long time now. The creative side is run by a different engine than the business side is, at least for me.

I do think one informs the other when you start thinking about what it’s like when your actual work hits the real world and becomes a commercial entity. Just because you’re near and dear to it, and it’s so close to you. Believe me, I write super personal stuff, so I totally, totally get it.

For anybody who’s out there saying, “I’m an artist, and I write from the heart,” — 

The intersection of commerce still exists if you want to sell your work to people, if you want your work to be seen.

For sales, there’s one thing that The Salesperson Paradox hits on, and that has been the bedrock for my success in that world. It’s simply helping people get what they already want. We lose sight that there’s people out there that already want what you have. You have to find them and give it to them. That’s it.

It’s that simple. You’re never going to force somebody to want something that they don’t want, but if you find the people who want the thing that you provide, you will be able to sell much more of whatever you’re selling.

It’s a matter of helping, not selling.

You’re helping somebody get what they want, not selling them a good or a service. It’s face to face, over the phone, on a zoom, anywhere. That distinction is critical.

If we look at books in general, I often say that there’s four elements to value, and that value framework is time, status, ease and money. So we all want things that save us time or increase the speed of things.

Apps do that, you mentioned AI before. All of that hits on time value. Time, it’s a value driver, innate value driver for humans.

Ease. Am I making it easy for the person to say yes, or am I making it hard? The easier I make it for someone to say yes, the more likely they’re going to say yes. You can infuse that into when you’re doing outreach via email or outreach via phone.

How easy are you making it for people to say yes? Come have this conversation with me about your book or whatever. There’s multiple ways that you could go about something. Are you making it easy for someone to say yes? That’s a big driver for us. It’s a big driver for me, and it’s a big driver for most people.

Status is another huge innate human driver. We all have people we want to look good toward, and can I help that person look good towards those people? That is a huge, huge value driver.

It happens in a micro-sense when you’re dealing with people on a one-off level, like a one-on-one level. So it’s like, I don’t know, maybe that person wants to look good to their mother. Maybe this person wants to look good to an audience. Maybe this person wants to look good to their boss.

Can you help that person look good to that individual? That’s a huge innate value driver because we are all status creatures, whether we want to admit it or not.

The fourth piece is money. If you can make someone money or save them money, that’s a huge value driver. So I always look at when I’m trying to sell things on a commercial aspect, how could I fit it into that value equation, whether it’s on a micro sense or a macro sense.

I know that if I’m able to create some kind of value proposition around that, at least I’m going to have a story that I’m going to be able to communicate. So that’s going to put me in a better position to actually sell things. I hope that’s helpful.

Joanna: It’s helpful as a framework. So like if someone has a thriller novel or a sci-fi novel—

How does that fit into that framework when there are lots of other thriller novels and sci-fi novels out there?

Douglas: 100% agree with you. It becomes really hard when you’re talking about fiction.

I have a podcast, it’s called Books for Men, and when I have conversations with other men about books—because the podcast is designed to inspire men to read—the number one thing is that most of them aren’t reading fiction, and they’re reading nonfiction.

The reason why they’re reading nonfiction is because it has a higher value proposition. So when we’re looking at the bigger picture, fiction struggles to sell consistently for a lot of people because it doesn’t fit into the value framework.

The only way that you’re going to be able to get people to consistently buy your products is by developing your own relationship with them and creating things.

Like creating a podcast, having a blog, you have to do that.

If you don’t do that, you’re never going to sell the thing consistently, unless you just want to roll the dice and look hope for luck. I think that in a world of AI, that personal connection as creators, writers, filmmakers, is going to be even more important.

People are going to want to buy from people that they know, like, and trust. So the more you can build that personal connection with people, the better off I think you’re going to be in the long term.

So while people are all concerned about the craft element of writing a thriller novel—believe me, I’m a craft junkie, and I totally empathize with that—but —

You should also be thinking about, how am I going to create a personal connection with my readers?

Do they know what Joanna Penn is about? Do they know what Douglas Vigliiotti is about? If they do, they’re going to be more likely to buy from you. In an art sense, it’s really the only strategy that you have moving forward.

Unless you’re lucky enough where you’re that one in a million shot, where your work just shoots up the charts and everything you become after that becomes saleable.

You hit on something very, very important. Fiction in art doesn’t necessarily fit into that framework, and that’s what makes it such a challenge to sell it.

Joanna: Yes, or you pay a ton for Amazon and Facebook ads. That’s another way.

Douglas: For me, that’s a tactic. It’s not a strategy. Like, so that’s a great tactic, but to me, tactics are endless. Like they’re endless. What works for some people, might not work for somebody else.

Strategically, I think the better bet is to try to create something where people can find you being you.

It goes back to that whole help people get what they already want. Do your best to create the thing and draw people that would like that thing into it. Not try to create the thing for people.

Just create the art, create the thing, and then try to build the framework around your creative career that people come in and they engage with you because they’re interested in you. To me, that’s like the only selling point that we’re going to have as we move forward into this new world, 10, 20, 30 years.

I mean, people have a really myopic view about what is happening with AI right now. It’s not meant to scare people. It’s just how crowded and how cloudy the content and art and creation aspect already is, it’s going to get 10 times worse.

So the only thing that I think is worth investing in, from a sales standpoint, is individuality and building something that is personally who you are, and so people can engage with that.

I know that’s scary for a lot of writers, but to me, it’s inevitable. It’s the only thing that we have, the only selling point we have moving forward.

Joanna: Yes, I often say —

Double down on being human.

Your voice, and your face, and I’d say an author’s note in the back of fiction grounds your story and why you care as a person.

On this, you have a podcast, Books for Men, as you mentioned. Obviously, I have this podcast, I’ve had other podcasts. I think voice is a big thing. As you say, people can get to know you, like you, and trust you. So I’d say podcasting is a great way to do book marketing. Obviously, you think the same thing.

Just as tips for people listening, if people listening want to pitch a podcast, not you or me, obviously, but other podcasts—because I get terrible pitches every single day. Your pitch was very good.

What are your tips for people who want to pitch for podcast interviews around their books?

Douglas: Get to the point. Not you. That’s the tip.

Get to the point. The briefer you can make it, and the more pointed that you could make it, the better off you are. If I could do the email in three sentences, I would do it. If it has to be five, then I’ll do it in five. If it has to be 10, then I’ll do it in 10.

I want to make the email as short as I possibly need to make it so you understand why I’m emailing you, where the benefit is, and what I’m asking you to do.

Even when I had my own podcast where I was doing a lot of interviewing, I was reaching out to a lot of really big names in the space and trying to get them to come onto the show because that’s how I thought I was going to be able to drive audience. Even in that sense, I was doing extremely short emails.

So most people when they email somebody, they think that telling them everything they need to know because they don’t want to miss a little possible thing that could spark Joanna, or Doug, or somebody, to say, “Oh, I like that.”

The reality is, is if as soon as you get an email from somebody that is a chunk of text, you don’t read any of it.

The shorter that you can make the email, the more prone that person is to actually reading it and being super, super pointed.

The other rule is, if you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t say it in an email. I think emails live forever, and we forget that when you press send, that email is going to sit there.

I’ve sent a lot of bad emails over the years to learn this lesson, and me thinking to myself, wow, how did I say that in an email?

Now one of the biggest things that I focus on, aside from brevity, is would I say this to this person face to face? If I wouldn’t say it face to face, then I wouldn’t put it in an email.

It turns out that those two things go hand in hand. How often do you go up to somebody and read them three pages of material about who you are, what you’re doing, what your books are about? Never. What you do is you get right to the point. “Hey, I’m Doug. I’m a writer. X, Y and Z,” blah, blah, blah, whatever.

I mean, that’s not what I would say in an email, but you do it short and brief, and then let the person respond.

Joanna: Just to come back there, you said, “what the benefit is,” and you said that quite quickly.

Just to be clear, it’s the benefit to the podcaster, not the benefit to the author.

I get so many pitches that say, “I’m blah, blah, blah author. I’ve written this book. When can I schedule myself onto your show for my book tour?”

Douglas: Well, here’s the thing, with books specifically—you know this better than anybody, you probably get tons and tons—podcasts have almost become an adjunct of the publishing industry. A new book comes out, and now this is the best way to sell this.

It’s the same method that was utilized forever, where you’d go on radio talk shows, you’d go on Johnny Carson, I don’t know, like all these talk shows.

Now that there’s podcasts, and because of technology there’s so many of them, what the publishing industry realized is the best way to sell books is the same way it’s always been to sell books, which is get people on shows and get people in front of audiences that they don’t already have.

So now, people like yourself and all of these podcast hosts are getting hundreds and hundreds of pitches, especially if the show is popular, getting so many of these. So what could you do to stand out from that? Get it so someone would actually read it.

So how do people read things?

If it’s short and to the point at why it would be beneficial for that person to have you on the show, then in my world, you’re more prone to get through.

Again, this is not something that I’ve just utilized in outreach with podcast pitching. I have 20 years of sales experience where I’ve utilized this in other aspects too, to get in front of prospective buyers and whatnot.

It’s short, and it goes back to what I was saying before. You want good guests. I don’t have guests on my show anymore, but I would want good guests on my show. What I don’t want is a long, extended email about all these different things.

What I do want is a short, polite, direct email of telling me why you’re emailing me and why it would benefit me to have you on the show, in as short as possible. I found that people, in general, they respond well to that strategy over the span of life, not just in the podcast world.

It’s because you’re putting it in their world. I’m having respect for you. I’m having empathy for you.

You’re reading a million emails, so how could I make it easy for you to say yes to me?

Something that I was talking about before, am I saving you time? And status, am I making that person look good if they have me on the show? These are all things that a human would innately consider, even if they’re not consciously considering them.

So you could sell something, yourself in this situation, via email by utilizing that value framework that I was referencing before.

Joanna: Fantastic. So lots of tips there.

Where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online?

Douglas: So it’s very, very easy. For me, just go to my website, DouglasVigliotti.com. If you want to know more about the podcast, BooksForMen.org is the best place to check that out. Again, that’s a podcast to inspire more men to read. Then for the book, it’s AristotleForNovelists.com.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Doug. That was great.

Douglas: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

The post Aristotle for Novelists, And A Strategy For Selling More Books With Douglas Vigliotti first appeared on The Creative Penn.