Writers in the Storm

The Tech Whisperer: Bridging the Gap Between Code and Creativity

When we started these showcase posts, I watched everyone else in awe, feeling a bit like a cat hiding under the bed. I’m comfortable behind the scenes. I like the gears, the plugins, and the invisible architecture that makes an author’s digital world spin. I love the work I do, but I’m not used to having it in the spotlight.

As I watched my teammates peel back the curtain, I realized that while you all know me as the “tech person” here at WITS, that’s only the scaffolding. You might as well know the rest of what I do.

Who I Am

I’m Lisa Norman, though in the writing world I go by Deleyna Marr.

It’s rare for someone to use their college degree, much less one as weird as mine. I have a degree in Creative Writing and Medieval Literature with a minor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as another minor in Anthropology with an emphasis on Archaeology.

My parents were NOT impressed with my three-fold degree. I remember my mother saying, “Well, now you can dig ditches.” I laughed and pointed out that at least they’d be perfectly straight with 90-degree angles.

Yeah, she was not impressed.

I was one of the first students to get that Computer Science minor, the whole industry was so new. My school actually didn’t offer it until the year after I graduated, but my advisors said I’d met all the requirements and to list it on my credentials.

Professionally, I’ve continued my multi-faceted approach to life:

Owner of Heart Ally Books, LLC:

An exclusive, independent, collaborative publishing company focused on guiding selected new authors into the marketplace. Translation: I publish books I love, work with authors I adore, and have probably the best job in the world. Seriously, sometimes I have to stop everything else and read a book. That’s my job.

Founder of the No Stress Writing Academy:

A small online school for writers. The goal is for writers to bring their stress-inducing problems to us, and we give them the solution. My amazing instructors walk through the process with each student. So, for example, if a student is stressed by their web presence, they leave with a website. If you’re curious, I offer a free demo class, Marketing 101. I’ve shared a bunch of the material here on WITS. Go, take the class and design a marketing plan that fits your goals.

Recovering Web Dev:

I ran Deleyna’s Dynamic Designs for years, still do, technically, although I’ve reduced my clients by over half during the couple of years, deliberately. The website industry for writers is changing rapidly, and it makes more sense for most of my clients to enjoy the new, easier-to-use platforms than to remain with me. I’m happily transitioning them into spaces where they don’t need me all the time!

The Storyteller:

Theoretically, my number one job is to be a writer. Okay, let’s face it, I’m terrible at this. I was featured on Jaime Buckley’s podcast with the topic of “Confessions of the Nearly Done Author.”

I’ve published two novels (one fantasy, one modern-adventure/paranormal). Both are the first in a series.

I’ve got the trilogy drafted for the fantasy and the next book in the paranormal about half way drafted. In addition, I’m working on a light-hearted sci-fi series called “The Spaceport” with the first 6 books drafted. No, I’m not proud of that! One of my goals this year is to clear my plate of other work and enjoy my creative writing.

I’ve also got two non-fiction books out: Reflections from the Mirror: A Journey into Art, AI, and the Creative Soul and The Work of Joy: Dancing with Creative Fire. You can find my most recent articles on my Substack where you can watch me write. Supporters also get access to Ask Me Anything meetings.

I live on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, grown daughter, and three cats (Rocky, Trapeze, and Ember). I’ve got three kids and three grandkids as well. Apparently, three is some sort of magic number with me.

I’m a woman who believes that the right tool—whether it’s an electric screwdriver, a piece of software, or a well-placed plot point—can change everything.

The Tech-to-Text Pipeline

For a long time, I kept my tech brain and my writer brain in separate rooms. Tech was about software versions, manuscript formatting, and making sure the “buy” button actually worked. Writing was about the Spaceport series and the quiet, internal journey of The Work of Joy.

But recently, the walls between those rooms have crumbled.

I’ve realized that tech isn’t the enemy of creativity; it’s a multiplier, an extension of my own ideas. When an author is terrified of their website or baffled by some publishing platform, their creativity shuts down. It curls up in a corner. My job—my joy—is to handle the “how” so they can get back to the “why.”

How “No Stress” Became My Mission

I’ve seen too many brilliant writers stalled by the mechanics of the industry. That’s why I shifted from just “building sites” to “teaching systems.”

To understand my no-stress journey, you need to understand that I have an autoimmune condition. Me + stress = waking up in a hospital, trying to figure out where I am and how I got there. I once woke up with a stuffed Ewok sitting on my chest. (My friend’s attempt to help me wake up without the terror that often came in those moments. Yes, it worked.)

What’s funny is that I actually love stress-laden situations. I thrive on tech challenges… emotionally. But physically, that path will always end in disaster for me. Quickly. I’ve had to impose a strict no-stress rule on my businesses and my life, simply to survive.

Through the No Stress Writing Academy and Heart Ally Books, I focus on the author's journey. Whether I’m helping a client update a website or helping a writer find the emotional core of their non-fiction, the goal is the same: success without stress.

What I’ve found is that while others may not collapse from stress, it affects their creativity and their success. I love helping stressed-out authors find joyful solutions.

What My Creative Life Looks Like Today

My days are a mix of code and characters. I might spend the morning troubleshooting a client’s website or branding and the afternoon deep in formatting. I once had an intern sit next to me during an average workday. He was stunned at the variety of the challenges that came across my desk: part tech-support, part creative muse, part cheerleader.

The Work of Joy is my most recent book. It came from the heart of my experiences spending years working in the trenches with authors and creatives. Stress and depression can stifle a writer’s spark. Joy can fuel them and give them the power to change the world, not just for themselves, but for all the people their work touches.

A Special Offer for the WITS Community

Because I believe the world needs your stories more than it needs you to be frustrated by your tech, I want to help you clear the digital cobwebs.

I’m giving away 3 classes to people who answer in the comments. You’ll be able to choose from my most popular course: “Awesome Author Website Basics” or my recently updated “It’s a Wonderful Writer’s Life”. The three winners will also receive an ePub copy of The Work of Joy.

To enter, comment below with: “I’m ready for a No-Stress moment” and let me know what the biggest stress in your writing life is.
I’ll pick three winners on Monday morning.

About Lisa Norman

Lisa Norman (writing as Deleyna Marr) is the owner of Heart Ally Books and the No Stress Writing Academy. A veteran of the web development world, she now focuses on helping indie authors navigate the technical and professional hurdles of the publishing industry. When she isn’t fixing broken plugins or writing sci-fi, she can be found in her garden on Camano Island or arguing with her three cats about who actually owns the office chair. Find her at Deleyna.com or on Substack.

by Jenny Hansen

In a recent post, I mentioned a moment that shifted how I see goals. I had a productivity instructor say, “When you don’t keep an agreement with yourself, it erodes your self-confidence and the ability to trust yourself and your own word.”

In other words, it's highly expensive to your confidence (including your writing confidence) to break your word to yourself.

What else happens when you don’t complete your goals?

On the surface, nothing happens. The danger to your psyche doesn’t happen on the surface. And it doesn’t happen right away.

But over time, there’s a subtle shift that happens when things repeatedly DON’T get finished.

At first, it’s just descriptive information. It’s you talking to yourself:

• I didn’t get that project done.
• I stopped partway through [fill in the blank].
• I didn’t follow [fill in the blank] all the way to the end.

But over time, something else happens…

That initial description often turns into something negative that you say to yourself. It turns into a conclusion. It often turns into a value judgment and a criticism.

• This always happens.
• I can’t seem to follow through on my own work.
• I don’t trust myself to see things to the end.

What actually changed?

The project itself didn’t change at all. What did change was the meaning attached to it.

“I didn’t finish” describes an experience. But all that self-criticism and value judgements we heap on ourselves? That’s what turns the subconscious into forming an identity.

And once that identity settles in, it quietly starts running the show.

What happens when a missed goal becomes an identity?

I’d like to really examine this, because I’ve been there and watched writing friends go there, and the subconscious is aptly named. It can sneak things into our behavior that we don’t always catch right away.

(Do please let me know in the comments if any of these have happened to you.)

• You hesitate to begin things that matter because you don’t trust yourself with the ending.
• You lower expectations so the disappointment won’t sting as much.
• You walk away early, not because the project is wrong, but because staying feels risky when past attempts didn’t turn out the way you hoped.
• You second-guess your talent or your value as a writer.
• At the first sign of writer's block or story problem, you jump ship to a whole new project.

This type of problem is easy to misdiagnose.

Most writers who experience the problems I listed above will chalk it up to a motivation problem. A time management problem. An inspiration problem.

But when a momentary setback becomes negative self-talk and then an identity. . .that isn’t a motivation problem.

It’s a trust problem. A SELF-trust problem.

If you look closely, most people who think they “can’t follow through” actually do so every day: for other people. They finish things for work, for clients, for obligations that come with external expectations. The struggle I’m describing usually shows up in projects where no one is watching.

When no one is waiting for the work, the motivation has to come from inside.

Reframing it all

Do you see how “I didn’t finish” is a very different story than “I’m bad at finishing things?”

When you say, “I didn’t finish,” there’s room to be curious.

• What changed?
• What got heavier or more complicated than expected?
• What didn’t you know how to do?
• What kind of support was missing?

When you say, “this is just how I am,” that curiosity disappears.

Curiosity is crack to a writer’s brain. Curiosity is what keeps us moving forward with an idea, a character, a story.

One keeps the door open. The other quietly closes it.

Final Thought

This is the real power of finishing. Completing even one meaningful task or piece of work matters. Why?

Not because it proves anything to anyone else, but because it begins to repair your relationship with yourself.

Yes, you also get a dopamine hit from the finished task. But the real shift of a finished task or project is how you view yourself. Completion doesn’t have to be dramatic to be powerful. It doesn’t even have to be the whole project. It just has to be real and important to you.

And often, the most important thing you resolve by simply doing a creative task isn’t the project itself. It's resolving the story you’ve been carrying around in your subconscious. Finishing creative tasks you've set for yourself helps you let go of those pesky value judgments about what unfinished work says about YOU.

Have you ever experienced this kind of "writer identity crisis?" If not, what does your self-doubt look like? What self-talk messages feel like they sabotage you? Please do share your story in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.

Top photo purchased from Depositphotos.

How Games, Affirmations, and Playful Rituals Can Bring Your Writing Back to Life

By Sarah (Sally) Hamer

Writers often talk about creativity as if it’s a fickle creature — something that wanders off without warning, returns on its own schedule, and refuses to be summoned. But what if creativity isn’t fickle at all? What if it’s simply asleep, waiting for you to tap it gently on the shoulder?

Over the past few years, I’ve watched writers of every genre — novelists, memoirists, poets, fanfiction writers, beginners, veterans — struggle with the same quiet ache: I want to write, but I can’t seem to access the part of me that used to feel alive.

The truth is, creativity doesn’t disappear.
It gets buried under pressure, perfectionism, exhaustion, and the thousand tiny responsibilities that nibble at a writer’s day.

But it can be awakened.

And one of the most powerful ways to do that is through play.

Not childish play.
Not frivolous play.
But psychologically smart, writer‑centered play — the kind that bypasses the inner critic, lowers the stakes, and reintroduces joy into the writing process.

In my work with writers, especially through my Creating Creativity seminar, I’ve seen how games, affirmations, and small creative rituals can reignite imagination faster than any lecture on craft. Today, I want to share some of those tools with you — tools you can use right now, at your desk, without needing a full day or a fantasy world (though I won’t lie… a fantasy world helps). For the upcoming seminar, we've chosen dragons as our thematic partners. We may use pirates, or unicorns, or even angels in the next ones.

1. Use Games to Disrupt Your Creative Patterns

Writers tend to fall into familiar grooves — the same story beats, the same character arcs, the same emotional rhythms. These grooves aren’t bad; they’re signs of mastery. But when you’re stuck, those grooves can become ruts.

Games shake the snow globe.

Here are four disruption games you can try today:

• Reverse the hero/villain — Give your “bad guy” a heroic trait. Switch up the hero(ine) and find a trait that, even if it’s not horrible, that will shake up the story. Doesn’t mean those characters don’t still play the same role in the story, it just means that they have more depth to pull from.
• Reverse the Emotional Tone — Take a scene you’ve written and flip its emotional temperature. Make the sad scene funny. Make the romantic scene tense. Make the quiet scene chaotic. You’ll discover new layers you didn’t know were there.
• The Curiosity Auction — Set a timer for two minutes and list as many questions as you can about your story. Don’t answer them. Just auction them off to yourself and see which one sparks the most energy.
• The Object Drop — Grab a random object from your desk (a pen, a receipt, a paperclip) and force it into your story world. How does it change the scene? What does it reveal about your characters?

These games work because they interrupt the brain’s autopilot mode.

They remind your imagination that it has options.

And when writers feel like they have options, they feel free again.

2. Create a Physical Affirmation Deck for Your Writing Life

Writers are often told to “believe in themselves,” but belief is a muscle — and muscles need repetition.

Affirmations aren’t magic spells.

They’re interruptions — gentle, consistent reminders that counteract the stories your inner critic tells you.

A physical card deck makes those reminders tangible.

Here’s how to make your own:

1. Grab 10–20 index cards or small pieces of cardstock.
2. Choose affirmations that feel like invitations, not demands.
3. Add a symbol, color, or small doodle that feels meaningful.
4. Keep the deck on your desk and pull a card before each writing session.

If you want affirmations that are writer‑friendly, emotionally intelligent, and not saccharine, here are a few from the deck we create in the seminar:

• My creativity is a living system. I don’t have to force it — I can feed it.
• I am allowed to write badly on the way to writing well.
• Curiosity is enough.
• I don’t need permission to take up creative space.
• My stories are allowed to grow at the pace of my nervous system.
• I can return to my writing without apology.
• I am not behind. I am beginning again.

The goal isn’t to “fix” your mindset.

The goal is to support it — the way a trellis supports a growing vine.

3. Build Micro‑Rituals That Signal Safety to Your Creative Brain

Creativity thrives in safety, not pressure.

Small rituals — tiny, repeatable actions — tell your nervous system, You’re safe. You can open up now.

Some of my favorites:

• The 60‑Second Sensory Reset — Close your eyes and name one thing you can hear, one thing you can smell, one thing you can feel. This grounds you instantly.
• The Threshold Ritual — Before writing, place your hand on your notebook or keyboard and say (silently or aloud): I’m entering my creative space now. It sounds simple, but it works.
• The Dragon Breath — Inhale for four counts, exhale for six. Imagine you’re exhaling smoke or even fire, if there’s something you’d like to burn. It’s playful, grounding, and surprisingly effective.

These rituals aren’t about productivity.

They’re about permission — giving yourself a moment to transition from the world’s demands to your own imagination.

4. Map Your Creative Journey Like a Story

Writers understand story structure better than anyone.

So why not use it on yourself?

One of the most transformative exercises we’ll discuss in the seminar is the Flight Path Map — a visual map of your creative life that includes:

• your storms (blocks)
• your thermals (inspiration)
• your mountains (challenges)
• your hidden valleys (secret ideas)
• your destination (creative calling)

When writers map their journey, something shifts.

They stop seeing themselves as “behind” and start seeing themselves as in progress.

And progress is a much kinder place to stand.

5. Externalize Your Inner Critic Through Play

Every writer has an inner critic.

Most writers try to silence it.

But what if, instead, you gave it a role?

In the Creating Creativity seminar, we use a full Dragon Courtroom — complete with Judge Curiosity, Prosecutor Perfectionism, Defense Counsel Imagination, and a jury of dragons — to help writers externalize their internal conflicts.

You don’t need a full courtroom to try this.

You just need a pen.

Write a short dialogue between:

• your Inner Critic
• your Inner Imagination

Let them argue.
Let them call witnesses.
Let them make their case.

You’ll be surprised by how quickly the tension dissolves when the conflict is moved out of your head and onto the page.

6. Let Play Be the Doorway Back to Yourself

Writers often think they need discipline to return to the page.

But discipline without joy becomes punishment.

Play is the doorway back to yourself.

Play is what reminds you:

• why you started writing
• what you love about story
• what your imagination feels like when it’s awake
• that creativity is not a test — it’s a relationship

When you treat creativity as a living system instead of a performance metric, everything softens.

Everything opens.

And writing becomes possible again.

I will choose two writers who comment and give a "golden ticket" to my upcoming Creating Creativity seminar on May 15^th and 16^th, if you comment with, “I want a golden ticket!”

What makes your creativity shine? What do you do to wake it up?

About Sarah “Sally” Hamer

Sarah Sally Hamer has a B.S. in Psychology (which only makes her dangerous) and an MLA in history and philosophy. She is a multi‑award‑winning author who has taught creative and nonfiction writing at LSUS for over twenty years. She writes for two of the top one‑hundred writing blogs in the world, teaches online for three academies, and has been a long‑time columnist for The Best of Times senior magazine. She speaks nationally on writing, history, and philosophy, and believes wholeheartedly that every human being is an amazing story waiting to be told. She can be reached at sally@mindpotential.org.

Featured image from