Writers in the Storm

When Jenny Hansen suggested we do these showcase posts, I was excited. And if I’m honest, a little terrified. The doubts crept in like they always do. What do I really have to offer? But, I pulled my big girl panties up, took a deep look at who I truly was, and realized I had more to offer than I thought.

So, while this post might not be what Jenny expected, it is one million percent me in every way.

Who am I?

I’m Jenn Windrow. Author. Editor. Illustrator.
Professionally, I write vampire urban fantasy and romantasy. I'm a developmental editor. And when I need a break from those two, I am a hand-lettering artist. Personally, I’m a mom, a wife, and a lover of all things fuzzy.

I’m not a shout-it-from-the-rooftops kind of person. I’m the "sit quietly at my desk and disappear into a world of fantasy" kind. Writing has always been my passion. At times, my obsession.

Until it wasn’t.

My Journey to Editing

A few years ago, something shifted, and the words that had always come easily suddenly didn’t. I still showed up to the page, but something was missing. And I felt that loss deeply, profoundly. It gutted me. It was like I lost an important part of myself, and in all honesty, I thought about quitting writing more times than I could count.

But, I read this quote once that has stuck with me during the toughest of times...

Even though the very thought of putting pretty words on the page frustrated and angered me, I never stopped thinking about it. I may have had doubts, but I knew that I wasn't ready to throw in the towel. So I pivoted, turned to another love that allowed me to stay in the author world, but also allowed me to take the pressure off my own writing.

I started helping other writers shape their stories.

How editing showed me how I could make a difference.

What began as a way to stay connected to storytelling became something more. I dug into structure. Into character arcs. Into pacing and plot and that elusive saggy middle. I discovered I love the puzzle of a novel. The way a story can almost work, but not quite. And how a few structural shifts can transform everything.

At first, I undercharged for my services because I underestimated myself. That changed quickly.

Authors started coming back. They referred their friends. They thanked me for helping them see the blind spots in their manuscripts. I joined a small press as a developmental editor. I listed my services on Margie Lawson's site. I even started teaching some classes.

My client list grew, and it never really slowed down.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped questioning whether I was “playing” editor and realized I am one. I will admit, I still have imposter syndrome to this day, but it happens less often now.

What my writing/editing world looks like today.

In 2025 I found a way to balance my own personal writing and developmental editing for clients. I have split my day into two parts:

• The first half is all about me, my writing, my words, my worlds.
• The second half is fully devoted to my clients.

Lately, I have found my way back to writing. Not with the same obsession I had before, not yet at least. But I am making great strides on my latest manuscript, and digging deep into editing. I still struggle with the words from time to time, but it is getting easier, and I find myself being less frustrated.

I also ended up creating my own editing company, Redline Editing.

I work with four to five clients a month, and I haven’t had a quiet season in over a year. I specialize in developmental editing because that’s where transformation happens.

• Big picture.
• Structural integrity.
• Emotional payoff.
• The bones of the story.

The stuff that makes me excited to dig into a story.

But what I’ve come to love most is collaboration. I love getting on a call with an author, screen sharing a manuscript, and working through the problem in real time. Brainstorming. Pulling threads. Finding the fix together.

One-hour Strategy Sessions.

I created one-hour strategy sessions for authors who don’t necessarily need a full edit but do need clarity.

Whether it’s a tangled plot, a character who won’t behave, or a middle that refuses to hold tension, we solve it together. I have even found myself on a call with clients early in the morning working through plot holes on the fly.

Because at the end of the day, stories matter. And it turns out I’m really good at helping them become the version they’re meant to be.

Authors don’t just need feedback. They need clear direction on how to make their story stronger. My developmental critiques focus on story structure, character arcs, pacing, and the elements that turn a good manuscript into a book readers can’t put down.

“Working with Jennifer Windrow was an absolute game-changer. She spotted structural issues even previous editors missed, and thanks to her insights my latest book is receiving incredible feedback from readers.”

I charge 150.00 per hour for an on the fly developmental edit. And in that time you get one-on-one time, where we work through whatever part of the book you think you need help with. In the end, you will get a fully marked up manuscript, a brainstorming session to help you move forward, and the insight into what an editor thinks your weak spots are and how to fix them.

You can email me at jennifer.windrow@gmail.com if you are interested in scheduling your session here.

But today, I do have a special offer...

My offer to the loyal WITS readers.

And since I love helping authors straighten out their crooked plots or make that first paragraph dazzle, I decided to open up 3 - 1-hour slots, exclusive to you, the loyal readers of Writers In The Storm. I'll pick three readers from the comment section at random on Monday morning to work one-on-one with.

From Lost to Found

That's it. That's my journey from writer to editor. From losing myself to finding myself again. And stepping out of my comfort zone (something I hate doing), to expanding my small business into something sustainable, while I find my path back to my words and worlds.

I hope this shows that sometimes stepping out of your comfort zone, is exactly what you need to move foward.

Write "I want to edit" in the comment section for a chance to work with me one-on-one. And let's have some fun!

About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kick-butt heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Why Creative Discipline Requires Structured Exploration

by Susan Watts

Many writers sometimes hesitate when they hear the word play.

It sounds light. It sounds loose. It sounds like the opposite of everything required to finish a book. If you pride yourself on showing up when you do not feel inspired, working through resistance instead of waiting for it to disappear, and finishing what you start, the idea of play can feel like a retreat from seriousness.

But play is not the opposite of discipline.

Rigidity is.

There is a subtle but important distinction between the two, especially for writers trying to overcome writer’s block or fix a stalled draft.

When Discipline Becomes Rigidity

In martial arts training, students who tighten the most are often the most committed. They want precision and control. When they step into sparring, they want to execute each technique exactly as the instructor taught them. And something shifts. Their movements become rigid as they try to control the exchange instead of responding to it. Their discipline has hardened into tension.

Tension reduces adaptability, slows reaction time, and restricts perception. The solution is not to abandon training but to loosen within it. When students understand that practice is a place to experiment rather than prove themselves, their movements become cleaner. They stop forcing their techniques and begin to adapt and react automatically. The discipline remains, but the rigidity dissolves.

The writing process follows the same pattern. Writing discipline brings you back to the desk when motivation fades. It carries you through the middle of a manuscript when novelty disappears. It keeps you revising when the draft resists. Without discipline, most creative work never reaches completion. But discipline alone does not build creative flexibility.

When every writing session feels like a performance review, the imagination contracts. The mind monitors instead of exploring. The mind judges sentences before it allows them to develop. Risk feels unsafe. Over time, this tightening can resemble writer’s block. The issue is rarely a lack of effort. It is misapplied pressure.

Why Pressure Can Stall the Writing Process

Pressure narrows perspective. When perspective narrows, structural problems feel personal. A scene that refuses to move forward can feel like evidence of inadequacy. A chapter that drags becomes proof that you lack control of your story. This is how normal drafting friction escalates into self-doubt.

Many writers try to overcome writer’s block by increasing intensity. They push longer and demand more output. Sometimes this works temporarily. Often it creates exhaustion and reinforces the feeling of being stuck. The problem is not that they lack discipline. The problem is that discipline has lost flexibility.

Creative work requires both steadiness and adaptability. When you approach every page as a test of worth, the nervous system braces. Braced writing becomes tight writing. Tight writing becomes fragile writing. Fragile writing collapses under revision.

Structured play interrupts that spiral.

How Structured Play Strengthens Creative Discipline

Play, when used strategically, does not weaken writing discipline. It strengthens it.

This does not mean abandoning standards or indulging in distractions. It means creating a defined space for exploration inside structure and shifting briefly from performance mode to assessment mode. Play helps with externalizing the problem so you can evaluate it instead of internalizing it.

Think about shadowboxing in martial arts training. To an outsider, it may appear casual. Yet within that movement, the martial artist refines timing, understands distance, and rehearses reactions. The body is learning to adapt under pressure before full contact occurs.

Writers need that same rehearsal. If every writing session carries the weight of judgment, creativity tightens. When you introduce structured exploration, you widen perception. Patterns emerge in your draft. You recognize where your story is resisting structural alignment rather than sentence-level polish.

Practical Ways to Apply Strategic Play

If a scene refuses to move forward, instead of rewriting it again, you might rewrite it as if it were happening in a completely different setting. Move it outdoors. Move it into a confined space. Change the physical environment and see what new tensions emerge. You may never keep that version, but the shift might reveal what the original scene lacked.

If dialogue feels flat, you might temporarily remove every line of speech and write only what the characters are thinking but not saying. This quiet exercise often exposes the emotional current beneath the conversation and gives you sharper subtext when you return to the spoken lines.

If your plot feels tangled, you might sketch the story as a path across a page, marking where momentum rises and where it dips. When you see the arc visually, you may notice that two major conflicts are competing for attention or that a turning point arrives too late to sustain tension.

If a character feels distant, you might write a brief monologue in their voice about something unrelated to the current plot. Let them describe a childhood memory or a private fear. This is not for publication. It is for understanding. Often, a character who seemed flat gains dimension once you allow yourself to explore without pressure.

Even small exercises can have a significant impact. Set a timer for ten minutes and give yourself permission to write the most exaggerated version of a scene, pushing the stakes far beyond what you would normally allow. Shift the point of view temporarily to see how events look through another character’s lens. Outline the chapter backward, starting from the end and tracing what must logically precede it.

The Balance Between Discipline and Flexibility

None of these practices replace discipline. They strengthen it. Play builds creative flexibility. Flexibility builds resilience. Resilience builds completion. That progression matters because many serious writers believe finishing requires constant intensity. They assume that any deviation from strict forward motion is weakness. In reality, flexibility keeps long projects alive.

Discipline without flexibility becomes brittle, and flexibility without discipline becomes unfocused. The strength of your writing process lies in the balance between the two.

If you find yourself tightening at the desk, pause before pushing harder. Ask if what you need is not more intensity but more range. Give yourself a contained space to explore the structure of your draft without demanding immediate perfection. Notice what becomes visible when you stop forcing the sentence and start assessing the direction.

Play is not the opposite of writing discipline.

Play is how disciplined writers regain clarity when craft knowledge alone is not enough. And when you combine structure with experimentation, you do not simply fix a stalled scene. You build a writing process that can carry you through the entire manuscript.

Serious writers do not become stronger by eliminating play. They become stronger by integrating it into their creative discipline.

If you are interested in learning more about using play in your writing process, consider joining a two‑day, fantasy‑themed creativity seminar where writers bond with a dragon, navigate a mythic journey, and learn self‑care tools that ignite imagination and protect creative well‑being.

Creating Creativity: Dragon Edition is an immersive, game‑based seminar for writers who want to reconnect with their imagination. Through dragon personas, courtroom roleplay, story disruption, creative mapping, and self‑care rituals, participants explore their inner world with play, courage, and curiosity. They leave with a personalized card deck, an animated affirmation movie, a Creativity Passport, and a renewed sense of creative fire.

Before your next writing session, consider this question:

What kind of structured play might unlock your next breakthrough?

About Susan

Under the pen name Michelle Allums, Susan Watts has authored a young adult urban fantasy titled, The Jade Amulet and is currently writing the sequel. Her short stories are also included in the anthologies Christmas Roses and Forever and Always.

Susan has dedicated over four decades to training in multiple martial arts styles and holds the impressive title of a five-time US Karate Alliance world black belt fighting grand champion. Through her karate school, she is able to impart martial arts and life skills. Susan also incorporates her martial arts knowledge into her writing.

An avid triathlete, she keeps in shape by running, biking, and swimming. She lives in the country with her husband, where they raise animals and enjoy being outdoors. Susan also has three grown children and numerous grandchildren. In addition, she is a CPA and VP of finance for a company in her hometown. 

You can connect with Susan on social media or her website.

Featured image from Pixabay.

by Ann Kimbrough

Writing the book is only half the job. The other half is getting strangers to care.

It’s kind of a Field of Dreams moment where “if you write it, they will come.”

I’m all for the Hollywood hoopla, but the facts aren’t as cinematic. It’s math. It’s visibility. For me, it was also trial and error. The first time I self-published, I heard that it’s better to sell a series than one book. The thinking is that if you write a series, all the hard work you do to promote one book will sell all the books in your series. So, sell smarter.

I heeded the advice, wrote a series, self-published it, and sat back waiting for readers to come. And waited. They didn’t come. No one cared. Actually, to be fair, no one knew I wanted them to care.

I tried all the common things they say to try, like Facebook and Amazon ads. My budgets were pretty small, so my sales were small too. The best service I found was Freebooksy. At the time, it cost $169 to blast the first book in my cozy mystery series to their email list. It worked! Best sales I’ve ever had, even with the promo book being given away for free.

Of course, Amazon also pays by read-through rate, so the free ebooks earned money, as well. I also sold all the other three books in the series at full price. It was enough money to earn back what I’d spent and take my husband out to dinner. If you’re like me, that’s not enough.

The Goal

Let me be honest. I don’t publish books to sit on my office shelf or give as gifts to friends and family. I love writing, even when it gets hard. Writing is oxygen. I want to sell my writing to strangers. One day, I want to be sitting on a plane and notice that the passenger next to me is reading my book.

For that future to happen, I must sell books. A lot of them. Not just for the money—though let’s not pretend that doesn’t matter. I want sales because sales mean success. They mean impact. They mean this thing I spend hours, days, years building actually connects. And yes, sales silence the naysayers. We all have them. Sometimes they’re other people. Sometimes they’re the voice in our own head, but we didn’t choose the easy money. We chose fiction.

Believe me, I’ll read anything about selling fiction. Not that there’s a lot out there, it’s usually: “Make $5K/month with 5 Easy Tips!” The problem is… they aren’t talking about fiction writing. They aren’t really talking about non-fiction writing. The tips cover all the side hustles writers can do to earn money. Spoilers: The number one piece of advice is to teach other writers how to write. Hmm… that doesn’t work for me, but I believe in a good side hustle.

Changing the Approach

Never thought I had anything in common with Simon & Schuster, but I do. We all do. We have to convince strangers to care.

How does that look? It means finding a new way to show off your fictional world—for free—so readers become invested in your writing journey. One way to do that is through a side hustle. The goal is to show readers what you write and invite them into your world, where all the information is available for them to pick and choose, and hopefully become super fans and read all your books.

The best tool for this is YouTube, because users actually go to it for entertainment.

Best Side-Hustle I’ve Found for Fiction Writers

YouTube

When it comes to fiction books, you might not think it’s a big part of YouTube. I usually call it YouTube University, and it is widely considered the second biggest search engine. However, it’s so much more than that, and with success comes expansion. YouTube has definitely embraced entertainment in all its forms, becoming a hub for all creatives. And it’s not just my observation. In January 2026, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said, “YouTube is the epicenter of culture. Our creators are reinventing entertainment and building the media companies of the future, and we continue to be the best place for them to grow a business.”

Genre matters, so test out YouTube by searching for your book genre and seeing which channels cover what you write. At some point, all genres will be represented, but currently, children’s, romance, and mystery have followings. Fiction channels use a couple of standard formats. One is the author reading their book, or some variation. It can be with the author on camera or just reading over a static shot.

The future, however, is something more dynamic. Right now, you can find channels with AI images and AI narrators. I’ve seen romance sites that do this, and they are very simple, which means there’s a huge opportunity to create better content—especially in the writing, which is our Superpower. I find most of these videos are clickbait. They tell a story, but it’s clearly AI-generated with no human help when it comes to grammar, pacing or storytelling.

Check Out the Competition

These videos run about an hour, so there are plenty of opportunities for ad breaks. The ones in the romance genre can get over 250,000 views, but they vary. As a channel grows, the views grow, too, and that means the creator is making money, and possibly affiliate marketing money.

Pros & Cons

The Pros: These kinds of videos are ripe for an upgrade. Create ones with better images and stories, and they could find a loyal audience.

The Cons: Creating high-quality AI images comes with a learning curve and a cost.

Another Con: You must monetize your YouTube channel before you can make any money, and there are several hoops you’ll jump through. You have to join the YouTube Partner Program, have a thousand subscribers and either 4,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days. Yes, you’ll work for it, but you already know how to build something from nothing. You wrote a book.

The BEST PRO is that YouTube is exploding in this space—and creating this kind of channel doubles down on your writing skills. What better way to sell your books than with something you’ve written? It exposes your work to an audience immediately, subtly inviting viewers to follow links and discover everything you create. That turns a stranger into someone who cares.

A YouTube channel also maximizes your storytelling. You can adapt your existing self-published books, present them visually, and expand your fictional world beyond the page. Instead of waiting for readers to find your work, you invite them in.

Writing the book is only half the job. Showing up where readers already spend their free time is the other half.

Have you tried turning your stories into video? Does this spark any ideas for you?

About Ann

Ann Kimbrough is an optioned/produced screenwriter, SAG/AFTRA member, and Tell Me a Mystery on Substack weekly releasing installments, including historical mystery The Harvey Girl, FBI/dark magic thriller Darkly, and The Time Witch time travel adventure, as well as Conversations w/Coffee.

Find Ann at:

• www.annkimbrough.com
• On Substack: https://tellmeamystery.substack.com/
• Harvey Girl books Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/HGbooks
• Fit Girls books Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/FitGirlsAmazon
• Ann's books on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/AnnOnAmazon
• On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EverythingAnnKimbrough

Featured image from Pixabay.