Writers in the Storm

by RJ Redden

I once tried to be a one-person band.

Not metaphorically. Actually, literally. I had a guitar strapped to my front, a kick drum pedal under my right foot, a tambourine somehow duct-taped to my left knee, and a harmonica in one of those wire holder things around my neck. I looked like a yard sale that had achieved sentience and was desperately trying to entertain a crowd.

Spoiler: I was eight. The crowd was my living room. The audience was my cat. I knew things were falling apart when… he left.

The cat left.

But I kept going! Because I was COMMITTED. I was going to play every part, handle every sound, be the entire show. I'd also appointed myself publicist, booking agent, and sound engineer for this one-person catastrophe.

You know what the music sounded like? Like someone falling down a very musical staircase. Lots of noise. Zero harmony. Every instrument technically present, none of them getting what they actually needed, which was someone who could focus on them.

I think about that disaster every time a writer tells me they're handling everything in their business alone.

Let's get real.

Because honey? Some of you are out there right now with a guitar strapped to your chest, a tambourine on your knee, and a look in your eyes that says "I'm fine, this is fine, everything is FINE" while the cat is actively leaving the building.

Here's what I hear from storytellers constantly, and I need you to be honest about how many of these land. 

"I love the writing. I hate everything else."

"I spent six hours reformatting my reader magnet and forgot to actually write."

"I know I should have a website/email list/social presence/merch store/Patreon/newsletter/carrier pigeon network, but I'm JUST ONE PERSON."

(Three for three? Don't worry. I won't tell anyone.)

Because here's the uncomfortable math of being a modern writer: the actual storytelling — the part that made you fall in love with this whole gig in the first place — is maybe 30% of the job. The other 70% is admin, tech wrangling, formatting, scheduling, platform management, analytics, and trying to figure out why your email service suddenly decided you're a robot.

Nobody lay awake at age twelve thinking, "Someday I'm going to write beautiful stories AND ALSO troubleshoot a Mailchimp integration at 11 PM on a Tuesday."

And yet. Here we are. Playing every instrument. Wondering why we're exhausted and the music still sounds like someone falling down stairs.

Then. My brain rearranged itself. 

Systems to the rescue!

Last December, I was on a video call with a potential client. Sharing my screen. Walking them through the systems I'd built for my business — chatbot ecosystems, automated workflows, content tools, dashboards that talk to each other, the whole interconnected backstage operation.

There was a pause. The kind of pause where you can practically hear someone's worldview recalculating.

"How many programmers do you have?"

Just me. And I don't code.

(I need you to understand: I genuinely, truly, absolutely do not code. I once described a database as "a fancy spreadsheet with trust issues" and three actual developers left the Zoom call.)

My client didn't believe me. I get that reaction a lot, but it's true. Every bit of it was built through partnership — a genuine, ongoing creative partnership with AI.

Not by asking AI to do my creative work. Not by handing over my voice or my ideas or the weird, wonderful world I've spent years building. But by letting AI handle the scaffolding — the admin, the tech plumbing, the mechanical stuff that was slowly eating my creative life from the inside out.

It's the difference between trying to play every instrument in the band and finally having a collaborator walk through the door, pick up a guitar, and say, "I got this part. You go sing."

Speaking of guitars.

There's a guitarist named Nancy Wilson. You might know her — she's one half of the band Heart. Her sister Ann is the voice. The power. The one whose name most people remember first.

But Nancy? Nancy built the cathedral that Ann's voice filled with light.

That opening riff of "Barracuda"? That's Nancy, cutting through a pitch-black arena before a single word is sung. The audience doesn't think about who's doing what. They just feel the music. They feel it in their teeth.

The best partnerships work like that. Not two people awkwardly splitting the spotlight, but two forces that fit together so seamlessly the audience never even questions it.

That's what AI can be for writers. Not Ann. Never Ann. YOUR voice is the whole point — your stories, your characters, your weird and wonderful creative brain that does things no algorithm on earth can replicate.

But the architecture underneath? The systems that keep your world running while you create? That's Nancy. And Nancy is ready to play whenever you are.

You might be thinking: Okay, RJ, that's a lovely metaphor. But what does this actually look like in my writing life? Where I have a manuscript due and a newsletter to send and a cat to convince to come back into the room?

Fair question, Grasshopper. Let me get specific about what this looks like — and notice that none of these involve AI writing your book for you. That's YOUR job, and I would never.

The admin graveyard:

You know that spreadsheet where you track submissions? The one you started with great intentions and abandoned somewhere around entry number seven? An AI partner can help you build a tracking system that actually works — one that reminds you of deadlines, flags when you haven't heard back, and organizes everything without you having to manually enter data like it's 2004.

The formatting pit of despair:

You've finished a gorgeous manuscript. Now you need it in three different formats for three different platforms, each with their own special little requirements that exist purely to test your will to live. An AI partner can help you set up templates and workflows so the formatting happens systematically instead of eating your entire weekend.

The marketing machine you wish you had:

You're not going to build a reader engagement ecosystem by hand. You're just not. There aren't enough hours. But what if you could build a chatbot that lets readers actually interact with your fictional world? Or automate your reader magnet delivery so you're not manually emailing PDFs? Or create a system that organizes your reader feedback into something you can actually use? All without writing a single line of code?

The "I should really get organized" pile:

Contact lists. Event tracking. Content calendars. Reader data. Review tracking. All those admin tasks that aren't writing but somehow consume 70% of your creative energy. An AI partner can help you build systems that handle the mechanical parts so you can go back to the part where you make humans feel things with words.

That's not replacing your creativity. That's rescuing it from the admin avalanche that's been slowly burying it alive.

Face the fear.

I know there's fear in the writing community around AI. I'd be a lousy fairy godmother if I pretended otherwise. Some of it's earned — the early days of AI-generated content produced a flood of soulless, generic slop that made all of us want to throw our laptops into the sea.

After spending more hours building with AI than my wife would prefer, here’s what I know:

AI doesn't steal your voice. Working yourself into creative exhaustion — THAT steals your voice.

The writer who's so buried in admin that they haven't touched their manuscript in three weeks? That's the real loss. The author who killed their newsletter because the tech was eating them alive? Nothing less than tragedy. The storyteller who has a gorgeous, immersive world in their head but no time or energy to build it out because they're too busy playing publicist, webmaster, and accountant?

That's the thing that should scare us. I know it scares the hell out of me. 

AI isn't here to write your stories, my friends. AI is here so you actually can.

You're a storyteller.

That's your superpower. That's the thing that no tool, no algorithm, no amount of processing power can touch — the deeply human act of pulling something from your imagination and making other humans feel it in their bones.

And. You were never meant to be your own IT department, marketing team, booking agent, sound engineer, and tambourine player all at the same time.

Ain’t nobody built for that. And the guilt you feel about not being able to do it all?

That guilt is a liar. A well-dressed, very convincing liar — but a liar nonetheless.

So. Let the one-person show be over. Not because you failed. Because you were never supposed to be doing it in the first place.

And now you don't have to.

Here’s how to start with AI:

Start small. Embarrassingly small. Pick the ONE task in your writing business that makes you want to fake your own death every time it shows up on your to-do list. The formatting nightmare. The spreadsheet you've been avoiding. The email system that haunts your dreams.

Take that one thing to an AI tool and say: "Help me build a better way to do this."

Not "do this for me." BUILD a better way. Together. Like a partnership.

See how it feels to have someone else finally pick up a guitar so you can do what you were always meant to do.

Because here's what I know from experience: once you feel that shift — from drowning solo to creating with a partner — you don't go back.

The music's just too good.

Have you experimented with AI in your writing business? What's the ONE part of the one-person show you're most ready to hand off? Tell me in the comments — I read em all.

If you're ready to build your own AI partnership from scratch, I'm running a 12-week workshop called No BS AI — no coding, no hype, just real building for creative entrepreneurs who are done playing every instrument. Details at nobsai.now. Come curious. Leave with something that actually works.

About RJ

RJ Redden is your digital fairy godmother for audience engagement. Her wand wields AI, chatbots, and augmented reality to create experiences so engaging, your readers will forget Netflix exists. She also speaks fluent human in a world obsessed with algorithms. Find her at The Come Write Inn.com. This article was edited with AI assistance, because this fairy godmother believes in using every tool in the workshop — ethically and transparently.

By Doug Seibold

People today are doing a lot of writing. More people all the time, apparently. The quantity of new books grows dramatically each year; even discounting the massive influx of AI slop, the zeal for publishing remains tremendous. Of course, there are better tools available today to get work in front of others than ever before. These resources are helping writers get their work into publishable form and bring it to the greater reading public.

What is publishing?

This is the most basic way to understand publishing: it connects writers to readers.

Among these resources are self-publishing service providers, digital printers, online communities and networks on a variety of different platforms, and even just the very internet itself, which comprises the ultimate self-publishing platform. Meanwhile, traditional publishing is going strong. On the spectrum between self-publishing on the internet and signing a contract with a Big 5 conglomerate publisher, there are any number of hybrid entities at different points along the way offering different business models.

What does it mean to pursue any of the different options available to writers today?

What are the various pros and cons of these different options?

At this stage, many writers falter or reach an outright standstill. It can be hard to get good information about these matters. Traditional publishers have long obscured their own workings, not least because of the industry’s focus on promoting specific writers and books rather than the publishers themselves. Self-publishing service providers have a vested commercial interest in promoting a specific vision of their work’s value to writers. They make money by charging writers for services, so they promote their services to strengthen their business interests. That’s basic business—caveat emptor.

As a publisher, I always find it discouraging to encounter writers unwilling or unable to learn more about publishing. For some writers, this can be a key expression of their identities as creative artists. They don’t wish to sully or preoccupy themselves with business matters. But even the most self-proclaimed business-averse writers often hope for their work to reach the largest possible audience. And in doing so they hope to realize the greatest possible financial gain. (If you truly don’t care about these things, you can always just post your work for free on the web.)

How can learning help writers?

Writers share a lot of information and opinions among themselves. But it’s a rare writer that has a true 360-degree perspective on the industry in its manifold forms. In my experience, much of what writers share among themselves can be at best limited. At worst, it can be badly distorted misinformation. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, in this case.

I think every writer who wishes to participate in the publishing industry by getting their work published, however they wish to do it, would benefit by learning more about how publishing works, even if that just means learning what publishing is, at bottom, in its different forms. They otherwise risk being disappointed in the experience or worse. Many hope to build careers and livelihoods being paid for their writing. These writers, especially, need to discover everything they can about how publishing works. But even those writers who realize the value of learning more about this industry often struggle in the effort.

Here are a few basic reasons it’s important for writers to learn more about how publishing works:

1. There is an ever-widening range of different publishing options available to authors.
2. These options often entail business models that can be wildly disparate, if not completely in opposition to each other.
3. Even coming from my background as a traditional publisher, I’ve learned that certain of these very different options can work very well for some kinds of writers. But the same options can work really badly for other kinds of writers.
4. Learning more about publishing can and should help more writers understand not only how these different options work, but also more about what kind of writer they are themselves—and what that might mean in terms of which options they should try to pursue and which they might want to avoid.
5. These various options can represent very different investments upfront, whether of time or money or both.
6. These options can represent very different potential outcomes in terms of revenue from sales—whether traditional royalties or wholesale margins—and very different degrees of control.
7. These options can entail very different requirements, or obligations, for writers trying to maximize the number of copies sold of their books.
8. Last but not least, these options often entail very different connotations in terms of the validation they entail for writers, which for some writers is the most important outcome of all.

What are you looking for in publishing?

In my experience, not every writer is looking for the same thing when it comes to publishing a book. Some are looking for complete and total control over the book’s final form. Some are hoping for the greatest possible support, advice, and guidance at every stage of the publication effort. Others prioritize maximizing the financial return from their personal and commercial investment in creating their book. Some are most concerned about what publishing a book will do for their credibility or prestige in their field. Some are all about getting their book into the world as quickly as possible.

Reading this, I hope you understand that not all of these aims align in every particular. In fact, some might be entirely at odds with each other. But without learning more about why and how different kinds of publishing can and will result in certain outcomes being privileged over other outcomes, writers can be hard-pressed to make choices in their best interests.

And this can often, if not inevitably, result in writers being disappointed in some, if not all of the outcomes that result.

Whatever kind of writer you are, or whatever kind of writer you want to be, it’s worth it to learn what you can about the industry that gets writers’ work into the hands of readers.

What are some areas of the business that you wish you knew more about?

About Doug:

Doug Seibold founded Agate Publishing in 2002, after working as an editor and freelance writer for close to 20 years. Today Agate comprises four distinct trade imprints and two education and learning-related divisions, the newest of which, Agate Publishing Academy, provides focused, affordable, and accessible training and learning for people interested in publishing. He also writes the Substack newsletter “What Publishing Is,” which aims to provide writers and others with more information about the inner workings of the publishing industry.

Featured image via Depositphotos and Canva.

by Ellen Buikema

Reading the other team member’s showcases has been great fun. We are all so different, and that makes for an interesting multi-talented group!

On Writers in the Storm blog, I often write about characters as well as writing related issues that have been problematic for me. If I figure something out, I like to pass the information along.

Who I am.

I am Ellen Lucey Buikema, AKA Ellen L. Buikema, E.L. Buikema, Elle, Ellie, Mom, and soon to be Mimi as our first grandbaby is due in June!

I like to draw and paint, although I’m a tad rusty as it’s been a while, I find drawing relaxing.

Two years ago, I began guitar lessons. I play for the joy of it. For 30+ years I’ve made medicinal teas, and have been a Reiki practitioner approaching 20 years. I also enjoy experimental cooking!

Like many others, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had too many interests. After having children of my own, I went back to school for teaching. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Theater, a Master’s in Education, specialization in Early Childhood Education, and two years of post-graduate work in Special Education.

My students have varied in age from two year olds to septuagenarians. I loved teaching when I had autonomy in the classroom, especially Pre-K with whom I share a sense of wonder and humor, and students with Learning Disabilities who need to use their strengths to find a creative work-around.

I tend to use lateral thinking.

For one of our family projects, we built a deck in the back of our house. Everyone one, kids included, worked on the design. We had everything ready to go, and then discovered that one of the foundational beams, 12” x 6” x 20’ had a major curve at one end. Having no preconceived ideas, I suggested using our car jack to straighten the beam and attach it to the post. It worked! After 30 or so years the deck is still standing.

Looking at problems with an open mind is, in my opinion, the best way to approach all issues in life.

I come by storytelling naturally.

My grandfather grew up in County Cork, Ireland on a farm named Cahireen in Bawnatanaknock Townland. He was one of fifteen children.

Several family members came to the US in the 1920s. Grandpa and two of his brothers eventually moved to Chicago and joined the police force there. His brothers told stories of the Irish Banshee that were so frightening that my father, a youngster at the time and a great bully, was terrified by them. The uncles passed away by the time I was born. I would have loved to hear their tales.

Grandpa Lucey had a very wry sense of humor and loved to tease. He told wonderful stories of his school days and about growing up on the farm. He referred to a particular math teacher as “mad,” as in crazy. Grandpa instilled in me a love of poetry. Through his stories I learned how words evoke emotions.

What I’ve been doing.

With the assistance of many patient people, I designed a website. Much barter was involved. Unlike my WITS teammates, I am not technically inclined. At all. However, I have developed a sense of humor regarding this and a somewhat thicker skin, which all writers need.

The first book I published, Parenting …  A Work in Progress is basically an easy-to-understand Child Growth and Development book. I wrote this for parents and anyone interested in children and how they think. There are lots of vignettes in the book to go along with the text.

I’ve published The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon, a series of illustrated chapter books for children written to encourage empathy without being heavy-handed. It became abundantly clear working in the classroom that children who have compassion for others were happier overall and played well with others. That is an important life skill.

I wrote to amuse the adults and siblings who might be reading to younger children too! My personal favorite character in the series is Frankie, the world’s most full-of-himself goldfish. He feels that he is fin-tastic in all ways. Definitely the Id component of personality in accordance with Dr. Sigmund Freud. These books are a combination of edutainment and bibliotherapy.

Upcoming adventures.

We recently moved from Texas to Missouri, so I haven’t connected with local writers yet. I know they are lurking about the KCMO area though. I’m confident that I’ll find them. In the meantime, I’m thinking about setting up an online classroom covering topics like writing for children, working with children, the writing process, teaching young children to write, how to help a child love reading, and the like. These are in pre-production phase.

An offer for the WITS Community

I’ve retired from teaching, but am discovering that the desire to share an understanding with others doesn’t go away just because you’re not in a classroom.

Just for you, I’m having a free 30-minute class on discovering your strong intelligences and how that relates to creating stories, on Zoom. If you are interested let me know in the comments stating “Show me the ways I am smart.”

Cheers!

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written Parenting ... A Work in Progress non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.