Are you ready to share your expertise, tell your story, or build a thriving author career? Do you want to write a non-fiction book but don’t know where to start? My latest book might help!
How to Write Non-Fiction: Turn Your Knowledge Into Words, Second Edition is out now!
It can help you share your unique knowledge and experience with the world, build authority in your field, and even generate multiple streams of income.
But writing a book can also be hard.
You might get paralyzed by writer’s block or self-doubt. You could get stuck because you don’t know the next step to take. You may be bewildered by everything there is to learn about getting to a finished manuscript.
In this book, award-winning author and creative entrepreneur Joanna Penn takes you step-by-step through the process of writing, publishing, and marketing a successful non-fiction book. You’ll get the guidance you need to turn your knowledge into a valuable resource.
Inside this updated and expanded second edition, you’ll discover:
The mindset shift you need to start and finish your book—even if self-doubt is holding you back.
How to structure and organise your ideas into a compelling manuscript that delivers value to readers.
Proven techniques for writing, editing and refining your book, whether you’re writing general non-fiction, memoir, or a combination of both
Marketing strategies tailored to non-fiction, so your book reaches the right audience and drives sales.
How to monetise your book, from licensing and bulk sales to speaking opportunities, and more.
This comprehensive guide combines practical advice with mindset support to help you navigate every stage of the writing journey. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your author career, How to Write Non-Fiction gives you the tools and confidence to write the book you’re meant to write.
Don’t let fear and uncertainty hold you back. Start your non-fiction author journey today.
In this Library of Congress National Book Festival event, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), and Tiya Miles, author of Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press, 2024), discuss their books in a conversation moderated by Martha S. Jones.
In the documentary No Other Land, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four directors over the course of five years, a group of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank is overrun by the Israeli military as they raid and bulldoze homes while families are forced to witness the destruction. At a recent screening in New York, the filmmakers shared their thoughts in a written statement: “We as young activists offer this film to the world, which is both a document of a war crime happening now in the occupied West Bank, and a plea for a different future.” Write a personal essay that begins with recounting a recent significant event that you witnessed, noting as much granular detail as possible. If available, you might refer to photos or a paper trail to help you remember specifics. In addition to the event itself, reflect on your outlook after the event, documenting both for posterity’s sake.
The dreaded rejection letter, whether from a job application or a beloved literary journal, is often met with mixed feelings of inadequacy and disappointment. Something you worked hard on, had high hopes for, or saw a future in just didn’t pan out. Instead of imagining the receiving end, take the initiative to write a rejection letter to one of your characters. Consider the circumstance for the letter, if it’s professional or personal, and how well the writer knows the addressee. Is there room to infuse some humor or will you use this as an opportunity to write the letter you’ve always wished was sent to you? Write with truth and intent.
I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it’s arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I also measure it in years.
At the beginning of each year, I publish an article (and podcast episode) here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below.
2024 was a year of consolidationas I got my creative house in order and began to shift my creative and business processes. 2025 is going to be a year of personal and business changes as I turn 50 and focus on expanding the J.F. Penn side of things using Leverage as an over-arching theme. More details below.
Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of memoir, thrillers, dark fantasy, and horror as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.
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
Leverage: Make more of what I have
Launch of How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
My 50th year
J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,’ ‘ the tallship book,’ ‘the gothic cathedral book.’
J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter
Joanna Penn — The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community
Leverage: Make more of what I have
My over-arching theme for 2025 is Leverage, which can be defined as utilising available resources, assets, tools, and relationships to achieve more.
The famous quote by Greek mathematician Archimedes goes: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.” The idea is that you can achieve a lot as an individual — if you use leverage.
Here’s an overview of some aspects and I go into more detail in the following sections.
(a) Leverage the books I’ve written but not made the most of yet.
(b) Leverage my existing available assets to bring in more income
Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners. I have been pretty scatter-gun at this recently, so I just need to get organised, and AI tools are good at helping with this!
Organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy.
Reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn — make more of BooksAndTravel.page with links back to my stores, and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as generative search expands.
(c) Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business
I already use a lot of AI tools as part of my creative and business processes, but everything is quite disjointed as I create in different places and bring it all together myself.
2025 brings the promise of AI agents — where you give the AI agent a goal and it will plan a multi-step process and then execute that plan on your behalf after your approval, with as much interaction as you like along the way.
AI tools helping author achieve leverage. image by joanna penn on midjourney
I’ve glimpsed this step by step planning process as part of Google Gemini Deep Research, which I’ve started using as part of my book research and marketing processes. The potential launch of OpenAI’s Operator in early 2025 is also interesting.
I’m primarily interested in using these tools for book marketing, which let’s face it, is the part we all want to outsource! There are tools which already have AI embedded within them, which will hopefully become easier to use in 2025. I would love Meta Ads and Amazon Ads to have specialised agents we can use for book marketing. Fingers crossed on that!
I’ll do more visual media — using Midjourney for images since that’s still my favourite, but also RunwayML or Sora for video. I loved making my Blood Vintage book trailer, and intend to make similar trailers this year for my first in series books, and also the ones I am pitching for film/TV.
While I still intend to self-narrate my non-fiction and my short stories, I’m interested in using ElevenLabs for Catacomb, which has a male main character. In order to maximise potential distribution and sales, I’m waiting for FindawayVoices by Spotify to allow ElevenLabs files, which I think will happen in 2025.
OK, let’s get into some more specific details.
How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
January is all about the launch of this completely rewritten new edition. I’ll be on lots of different podcasts talking about the book, and also doing lots more social media as well as paid ads to get the book moving.
In March 2025, I’ll be 50, and as we all know, it’s a big birthday! I’ve had a goal on my wall for many years — “Create a body of work I’m proud of. 50 books by 50!”
I’ll let you know in March whether or not I have achieved that goal, but regardless, I am still in the middle of creating a body of work I’m proud of! I’m not intending to stop any time soon. I will be doing some trips and celebrating, and as ever, I’ll share on Instagram @jfpennauthor (also Facebook @jfpennauthor).
J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,’ ‘the tallship book,’ ‘the gothic cathedral book.’
I have three main bucket list things that I’d like to achieve (at some point) but are essentially out of my control. These are not 2025 ‘goals,’ but I’m sharing them as context as they shape some of my business decisions.
Get a traditional book deal (in English). I have had deals in foreign languages before.
See one of my books/stories as a film or on TV.
Win an award for my fiction as J.F. Penn (I’m an award-winning author as J.F. Penn for my memoir, Pilgrimage, and I’ve been a finalist for the ITW awards for best ebook original for Destroyer of Worlds).
I can’t guarantee that any of these things will ever happen. The only thing I can do is create the conditions by which they are most likely to occur and keep putting myself and my books in the path of possible success.
Since 2009, while I have written some stand-alones, I’ve been primarily writing fiction in series — my ARKANE action adventure thrillers (13 books), Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers (3 books), and Mapwalker dark fantasy thrillers (3 books).
the first books in my 3 main series as J.F. Penn
Writing in series is a key pillar of the indie author business model.
Essentially, write books in a series and promote the first in series with free or cheap ebooks and price promotions, plus bundle deals and upsells.
But series books are not so well positioned for my three bucket list items above. Stand-alones are easier to pitch for all three of those goals, which is why I’m changing my strategy in terms of what I’m writing and how I publish. I’ll certainly be writing more books in series as well, but for now I am focusing on the following:
Blood Vintagewill either get a deal in which case it will likely come out in 2026, or I will self-publish it myself sometime in 2025. If I self-publish it, I will also narrate the audiobook, since the main character is a woman from my area of England.
I will write ‘the desert book’ and give it to my agent, Renee, to submit to publishers for a potential deal. Again, depending on timing, if everyone passes, I will self-publish that, too. I’ve already started the draft so it is underway.
I have another stand-alone idea which I might get to — working title, the tallship book. It’s based on a trip I did back in 1999 when I sailed on the tallship Soren Larsen from Fiji to Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
I still have all the research for the gothic cathedral book and a stonemason character who needs a story so that may turn into a crime series, or a fantasy book, or something else. I’m still noodling on what to do with it all …
I’ll be pitching at London Screenwriters Festival again, and also continuing to network in the film/TV world. In many cases, it’s about connections and serendipity so it’s about being out there.
As an over-arching practice, I will keep reading different kinds of fiction, and keep working with my editor, Kristen Tate, on improving my craft, and keep experimenting with short stories as well as longer works. I’ll also keep filling my creative well in order to keep creating sustainably for the long term.
J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter
I’m super excited about this, and it will probably be my next Kickstarter campaign. My fifth campaign in a fifth genre — why the hell not?!
some of my short stories as J.F. Penn
I currently have 8 short stories that are not in print, and if I write 2 more exclusive for the collection, I could do a special hardback beautiful print edition, as well as the usual ebook, (self-narrated) audiobook, and paperback.
I love writing short stories, and I love reading them. I’ve backed a number of collections and anthologies on Kickstarter, and I think they’re awesome as a way to experiment with different ideas. Mine span crime, horror, dark fantasy, archaeology, science fiction, and elements of literary fiction.
One of my new stories is inspired by The Hardy Tree. It’s a real tree, or at least it was until it fell down in a storm a few years back. It was in St Pancras Old Church near Kings Cross Station in London. Here’s a picture I took in 2017 and then revisiting the pile of gravestones in 2024.
the hardy tree, st pancras, london
The story goes that Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the D’Urbevilles and many other classics, worked at the station in his early years, and his job was to move some graves which were in the way of the lines. He arranged them around a tree, but it’s unclear what happened to the bones, or whatever else he might have found, or buried, there.
I studied Tess at school, as well as Far From the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure was one of the reasons I wanted to go to the University of Oxford (Jude’s Christminster). I’m pretty obsessed with Hardy and I’ve had an idea noodling about the tree for years — so that will be one of the exclusive stories in the collection, plus another one yet to arrive in my brain.
The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community
Every year I consider if the show is useful enough to make it worthwhile continuing, but in 2025, I am sure it’s still useful. There is so much change coming in the year ahead and I want to keep paddling as we surf the wave rather than drown in it!
I also love the interaction we have in my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn, so I’ll continue with my demos and office hours, extra training and articles over there. (You can join us for less than the price of a coffee per month!)
Double down on being human. In-person events, speaking, and travel
I’m going to do more in-person stuff, with a variety of things planned. We’ve kept a lot of space for various family things that are happening, so there will be more trips, but I’ll talk about them later. (You can always find pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor)
I’m doing a Library event in Bath on 22 Feb, then I’ll be away for my 50th in March, doing a retreat with Orna Ross just outside Dublin, Ireland in April, and I’ll be back in Las Vegas for Author Nation in November.
Health & fitness
I’ll continue to lift weights twice a week and improve my dead lift, squat, and bench press. I will likely enter the same powerlifting competition that I did last year and improve my weights on every lift. But the main goal is to get stronger and not get injured!
weightlifting author, made by joanna penn on midjourney
I’ll also continue calisthenics, with the goal of being able to do a freestanding handstand, a ‘skin the cat’ movement on the rings, a one minute dead-hang, and a pull-up by the end of 2025. I can do variations of all those right now, but it would be a hell of a progression to get to the full movements.
If you’d like to share your goals for 2025, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I’m a full-time author entrepreneur so my goals are substantial. Don’t worry if yours are as simple as ‘Finish the first draft of my book,’ as that still takes a lot of work and commitment!
Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton curate this collection of lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island, including Billy-Ray Belcourt, Stephen Graham Jones, Terese Marie Mailhot, Deborah Miranda, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Organized into basket-weaving themes such as “coiling” and “plaiting,” the essays challenge form and offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that affect the study and practice of Native literary traditions in North America. “For Native writers, who have long operated within a literary sphere in which most depictions of Native lives are created by non-Natives, nonfiction allows for a revision of the dominant cultural narratives that romanticize Native lives and immobilize Native emotional responses: the essay is the work of feeling and thinking,” write the editors in the introduction. “It is the flux of a character, not a frozen image of one.”
In her 2022 New York Times essay “The Shape of the Void: Toward a Definition of Poetry,” Elisa Gabbert writes about what makes language poetic. “I think poetry leaves something out,” she writes. “The missingness of poetry slows readers down, making them search for what can’t be found.” Write a poem that revolves around this idea of missingness and leaving something out. To facilitate a mindset of absence, you might choose a subject—a childhood memory, a relationship dynamic, a strange occurrence—that feels inherently cryptic, incoherent, or mysterious. Consider playing with line breaks, spacing, syntax, and diction, to make what’s absent hyper-present. How do the words on the page gesture toward the shape of what can’t be found?
Patrick Rosal reads Paul Genega’s poem “Aliens” in this short film directed by Williams Rossa Cole and produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, for their Read By poetry film series.
What a year this has been! For me, it was a year utterly defined by the major life change of buying and moving into a new house. (I’ll talk more about that in my annual New Year retrospective, for those interested in my personal adventures.) On the writing front, this meant I tackled the (possibly crazy) feat of cramming a year’s worth of work (including a course, two books, and 40+ blog posts and podcasts) into four months, freeing me up for the incredible adventure of making a new home.
This year, I was very pleased to release the eight-week email course Shadow Archetypes: Writing Complex Fictional Characters. I’m super-proud of this course and had so much fun creating it. It builds on the eight primary life archetypes I talk about in my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs and goes even deeper in exploring how each archetype’s passive and aggressive shadows create the crucial inner conflict that allows for ultimate transformation.
I was also so humbled and honored to get to release a revised and expanded 10-year-anniversary 2nd edition of one of my flagship books Structuring Your Novel. After ten years (or actually eleven—I was a year late!) and 80,000 copies sold, this book has become such an important part of my life. I am so proud it has played such an important role in helping so many people write their best stories. Ten years later, I felt it was time to revisit this work and update it with some of the things I’ve learned along the way, including full chapters on the Inciting Event, Midpoint, and Third Plot Point.
In prepping the second edition of Structuring Your Novel, I realized I had collected so many new ideas and information that I really had a second book’s worth! I didn’t want to change Structuring Your Novel *too* much, so I released a brand new book, Next Level Plot Structure. This book goes much deeper into story theory to explore the idea of chiastic, or ring, structure, in which the beats in each half of the story mirror each other, as well as how every plot beat consists of two crucial halves.
I was also able to release the long-awaited audiobook version of Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. (And, yes, for those wondering, the audio version of the second edition of Structuring Your Novel should be out very soon—just after the first of the year—and Next Level Plot Structure will follow.)
Helping Writers Become Authors was also granted its 11th mention on Writer’s Digest‘s list of 101 Best Websites for Writers, which is always a tremendous honor.
On the personal front, the year was pretty much all house-themed all the time. I didn’t get to do much traveling, and I put my fiction on the shelf for the summer and fall months, while I focused my creative energy elsewhere.
Moving into 2025, I am excited to see what the new year brings. Aside from my own personal growth stretches, 2024 was also a year of changes on the business front. Google’s AI updates are changing the Internet landscape, and I will definitely need to sit down and see what I can do to adjust and make sure HWBA stays up to date and as relevant as possible. Thank you all for your recent suggestions about how I can best serve you in the coming year. I will be reviewing all your ideas and posting about as many of them as possible.
For those wondering, I am planning to release a similarly updated second edition of the Structuring Your Novel Workbook, which will mirror the changes made in the main book this year.
I also have a brand new idea up my sleeve. Building on the success of the Archetypal Character Guided Meditations I released last year, I’m wanting to see if I can figure out a way to bring these dreamzoning tools to some live sessions where we can all dream our stories together. Stay tuned for more on that!
And, of course, I hope to pick up my fiction WIP once more. I continue my adventure with learning how to honor and nurture the creative spirit, something I’m sure I will be sharing with all of you.
See you around the corner!
My Top 10 Posts of 2024
And now, just in case you missed them (or want to revisit them):
Another year ends, and once more, it’s time to reflect on our creative goals.
I hope you can take the time to review your goals and you’re welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments.
It’s always interesting looking back at my goals from a year ago, because I don’t even look at them in the months between, so sometimes it’s a real surprise how much they’ve changed! You can read my 2024 goals here, and I go through how things went below.
Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.
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
Spear of Destiny, the Gothic cathedral project, and short stories
Award-winning memoir, Pilgrimage
Blood Vintage, and working with a US agent
The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community
Streamline TheCreativePenn website and redo Author Blueprint
How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
Travel, speaking, and in-person events
Financials, health and fitness, and happy cats!
J.F. Penn — Spear of Destiny, the Gothic Cathedral project, and short stories
I researched, wrote and then did a Kickstarter for Spear of Destiny, ARKANE Thriller #13, before publishing it wide a few months later.
I went to Vienna, Nuremberg, and Cologne in January, which was a chilly trip but inspired much of the story.
The Kickstarter ran in June 2024 and raised £12,536 from 313 Backers. I made a limited edition hardback with silver foil and a ribbon, and a specific cover for the campaign, which I love!
These kinds of bundles and Add-Ons really help a Kickstarter fund at a higher level, and they are also only possible if you sell direct as you can still make a profit, even with discounts.
I also had a goal in 2024 to produce a non-fiction photo book with essays about English Gothic Cathedrals. I did lots of research trips and read books on stone masonry, which was great fun.
But then I discovered the pain of photography permissions, even for your own photos.
Essentially, if you take photos on private property, you cannot just use those photos in commercial projects. You need photography permissions, which can take time and energy, as well as potential payment for every single one, plus the text that goes with it, and potentially even the layout.
I hate the idea of asking permission in general. It goes against my independent spirit, and when I researched it in more detail, I hated even more how long it would take, and how much to-ing and fro-ing there would probably be.
I am the kind of creative who enjoys wrangling chaos and I can be a whirlwind of creative energy. It doesn’t fit well with the structured permissions process.
I still have a lot of research around gothic cathedrals and ideas for what else that could turn into. More to come on that in 2025.
I had a goal to write “at least one or two” short stories, and I managed two, De-Extinction of the Nephilim, and Seahenge, both of which I narrated in audio, and are available on my store, and in all the usual places.
I did the art for all my fiction covers this year, primarily with Midjourney, but also DALLE through ChatGPT. My cover designer, Jane at JD Smith Design, used the images to put the finished covers together.
I also had a goal to get everything in audio, but I am still deciding what to do with Catacomb, so that is outstanding. I did change the cover on it and make a gorgeous sprayed edge hardback.
J.F. Penn — Award-winning memoir author, London Book Fair, 2024
I also loved designing the special edition cover with Midjourney.
The process also led to a connection with a US agent, who suggested we take it out for submission, so I went ahead with the Kickstarter for the Limited Edition hardback only, and retained the other editions for licensing.
The Kickstarter for Blood Vintage back in October 2024 was fantastic and I love having the gorgeous limited edition hardback out in the world. But it was a truly limited edition. There were only 200 hardback copies printed and I didn’t sell it in any other formats. It’s not for sale at all right now.
My US agent took it out on submission in September and we are still waiting for the final batch of responses. Apparently Frankfurt Book Fair, the US Election, and then Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year etc all tend to get in the way of business.
I am finally experiencing what I’ve heard about for many years in terms of the slow pace of traditional publishing, but I’m committed to the process now. We will see what 2025 brings for that book …
I changed the podcast logo and the theme tune, and thanks to corporate sponsors, Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, ProWritingAid, FindawayVoices by Spotify, Publisher Rocket and Atticus, Ingram Spark, and Written Word Media — all companies I continue to use and recommend.
One big change was how much more I am doing inside of my community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. I’ve done tutorials on using aspects of AI tools and general topics around author business, as well as the monthly solo Q&A audio, and occasional live office hours. Thanks to all the Patrons who support the show! We now have over 1200 in the Community.
Joanna Penn — Streamline The Creative Penn website, redo my Author Blueprint
I needed to do a bit of clean up in order to move forward. I started out the year by entirely rewriting my Author Blueprint, which is a free ebook if you sign up for my email list, and you can also get the paperback on my store.
I archived a lot of posts and pages on TheCreativePenn.com and did a bulk cleanup of categories and tags. When you have a site as old as mine (started 2008), there’s always backlist content to update or archive. Not a fun job, but necessary!
How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
I also had a goal to update my backlist books for Joanna Penn, and How to Write Non-Fictionwas the one that needed doing the most.
The first edition was from 2018, and since then my writing craft has improved a great deal, and I wanted to include aspects of memoir, as well as updating the business side of things, affiliate links, plus I wanted to narrate the audiobook.
It’s all finished and on pre-order as I write this.
One of my goals when I became an author entrepreneur was to travel more, and while it’s not been a bumper year (since my husband Jonathan has been busy with his MBA), I’ve still managed some trips for speaking and book research.
the nuremberg art bunker, corfu, ely cathedral, and death valley california, 2024
Vienna, Austria plus Nuremberg and Cologne in Germany. Book research trip for Spear of Destiny
Speaking in Seville for 20Books, Spain (the last 20Books conference)
London Book Fair panels
Corfu, Greek Islands, for beach holiday
English gothic cathedrals trips — Salisbury, Winchester, Wells, Ely,
Author Nation, Las Vegas, USA. Fantastic conference and a great way for an inspiring (almost) end to the year.
Other goals
“Learn how to make beautiful books.”
I’m taking this goal as a win because I love both the special editions of Spear of Destiny and Blood Vintage, and now we can do sprayed edges with BookVault, we can do premium products more easily. Some indies are doing print runs with all kinds of special add-ons, so it really is possible to do anything now — if you have the time and the budget.
“Optimise my Shopify stores and Meta ads.”
I didn’t do this, so it’s a fail on this goal. My Shopify stores — CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com — continue to tick along just fine and I sell books direct in different formats every day. I did outsource Meta ads for the first few months of 2024 but once that ended, I just never picked it up again. I much prefer creating new things that optimising the old!
“Experiment more with AI tools.”
I certainly did this, and as ever, I consider myself an AI-assisted artisan author. As noted above, I’ve been using Midjourney for book cover images and social media, as well as a book trailer for Blood Vintage, where I also used RunwayML. I use Descript and Otter.ai for my podcast. I use ChatGPT and Claude for brainstorming, help with organising ideas, and also for writing sales descriptions. I am also now using GoogleNotebookLM for surfacing new ideas from my own content, and Google Gemini Advanced with Deep Research to help with book research, both are new use cases in the last few months. If you’d like more detail on how I use all these tools, I do tutorials and demos within my community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Financials
While I won’t be giving specifics, The Creative Penn Limited is still a multi-six-figure (GBP), one person business, but income was down by about 20% this year — which is pretty significant. There are a few reasons why.
I spent several months on things that needed doing but didn’t earn any money — redoing the Author Blueprint, and updating the site and the podcast
I wrote two books which haven’t launched or earned much as the year finishes — How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition, and also Blood Vintage. The Blood Vintage Kickstarter was only for the limited edition hardback, which is the least selling format, so most of the money is still to be earned for that book, whether I license it to a publisher or release it myself.
I didn’t do any significant paid live events or paid webinars or affiliate partnerships
I also didn’t do as much paid marketing, and I really slowed down on social media, so my book marketing in general was reduced. This is partly because I have felt pretty jaded by the grind of both paid ads and social, so taking time away from both helped me create more and continue at a sustainable pace.
I’m also at a point in my career and my life where I have met a lot of my financial goals, and so I’m making creative decisions for different reasons.
For example, there is no doubt that I could have made more money from Blood Vintage in 2024 if I had released it myself in all editions. But I have a goal to get a book deal at some point, so it’s with my agent, and even writing stand-alones over series books (generally) means less income for indie authors.
I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, but I also intend to have more releases in 2025, and reinvigorate my paid marketing, with the intention of making up that revenue.
It will also be interesting to review this at my tax year end after April 2025, as I will have made up at least the income on How to Write Non-Fiction by then.
Health and fitness
While writing and podcasting are my job, health and fitness is pretty much now my major hobby, and I spend time on it every day. Remember, we are not just brains! We need a healthy, happy body in order to keep creating in a sustainable manner. This is also part of my ‘more digital, more physical’ mentality where I combine my use of technology with aspects of ‘doubling down on being human.’
I’ve been powerlifting consistently twice a week pretty much all year, as well as walking most days, and while I had decided to do my first competition in 2025, I went ahead and did one anyway!
my first powerlifting medal, 2024
I chose not to push myself that day but selected weights where I could achieve every lift, so I had a perfect 9 of 9 lifts. Squat 50 kgs, bench press, 40 kgs, dead lift 100 kgs. Here’s me with my medal! (and no, I won’t be sharing the action shots as no one needs to see me in a powerlifting singlet and long socks! The required kit for British Powerlifting is not flattering!)
I ended the year with PBs of squat 70kgs, bench press 42.5kg, dead lift 105kg, which I’m really pleased with.
I also started calisthenics mid-year, which has been a very different kind of movement — handstands, ring work and going upside down a lot, as well as hanging from the bar and various other things that I am only now starting to get used to. It’s a fun challenge and certainly pushes my comfort zone and gives me a new perspective!
Happy + cats!
cashew (brown one) and noisette (black one) — british short hair cats!
Most importantly, I’m still happily married to Jonathan, living in Bath, England, with our two lovely British shorthair cats, Cashew (brown one) and Noisette (black one). My baseline happiness is sorted, so everything else is a bonus!
How did your 2024 go?
I hope your 2024 had some wonderful times as well as no doubt some challenges — and that you have time for reflection as the year turns once more.
Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you’d like to share.
In this virtual reading from the Well Versed series hosted by StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and Open Book, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads from his collection Feed the Beast (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and discusses the themes of place and nature within his poems. Ó Tuama’s fourth poetry collection, Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this 2022 Louisiana Channel interview, Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata talks about the imaginary worlds of her childhoood, her writing process involving character sketches, and the origin of her otherworldly stories. “My world of daydreams or the power of stories saved me, so I was able to survive. And this same strength is in my protagonists,” says Murata.
What a year this has been! For me, it was a year utterly defined by the major life change of buying and moving into a new house. (I’ll talk more about that in my annual New Year retrospective, for those interested in my personal adventures.) On the writing front, this meant I tackled the (
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