Writers in the Storm

By Rachel Warmath

Becoming an author is a wild ride, and that’s what I want to talk about in today’s blog post: the emotional journey of publishing your work and how it’s an initiation into a new phase of your life. 

There are a lot of emotional highs and lows that come with the process, and it helps to embrace them! When you step into more authority and visibility, you’re going to feel a bit uncomfortable at first. But that’s when your real courage as an author kicks in. And the more open-minded and open-hearted you can be, the more you’ll receive from the experience.

Here are 7 things I’ve learned from my own author journey (and as a witness and guide to hundreds of authors as a ghostwriter, editor, and coach).

1. Writing is a transformational journey of healing and identity. It goes beyond expanding your career or becoming a bestseller.

Selling copies is wonderful, but there’s so much more to embodying your author identity than what people can see on the surface. When you become an author, your confidence grows in powerful and sometimes unseen ways. You carry yourself differently. You show up differently.

Finishing a project can feel like wholeness. Peace. Pride. Newfound self-assurance. Trusting your voice. You may suddenly find you have the courage to pursue other challenging projects you’ve previously held off on because you now know you have the endurance. Things shift for you at a soul level. 

For many of us, becoming an author is a lifetime dream achieved. Notice how happy your inner child is when you hold your book in your hands for the first time. Of course it’s great if the book opens doors to speaking opportunities or more money in your bank account, but it’s also about who you’re becoming as a person.

2. In the beginning, writing can be very messy, which can feel scary especially if you have perfectionist or control-freak tendencies.

I’m smiling as I write this because I definitely fall into this category. What’s really cool is that every book I’ve worked on has helped me heal my perfectionism through seeing the early stages of creation as a phase of experimentation. I run experiments in my first drafts, instead of needing to get it “right.” I have fun and go wild and let sentences be rambly and all over the place. I don’t worry about organizing the ideas yet. This allows the rawness of the truth and my lived experience to come out on the page. 

If you can stay out of your own way during a first draft, you open up a beautiful world where you get to play and see what happens.

As the great writer and writing teacher Anne Lamott says, “Messes are the artist’s true friend. We need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”

3. At some point you are likely to feel a gnarly sense of imposter syndrome and question whether your story is worth telling at all. 

You may even give up on your book momentarily. 

Please don't let this stop you. And please remember that this is actually quite normal. Wanting to throw your draft in the trash and walk away forever is often a sign of a breakthrough on its way.

It’s like we say in the recovery community, “Don’t quit before the miracle happens.” You’re on the edge of something great and if you can surrender to the unknown, you’ll find stable ground again soon.

Walking through the fire is part of becoming an author. Writing a book often forces you to confront the places where you still don’t fully believe yourself. That can be tough, but keep trusting yourself along the way.

4. Getting to know your inner critic can be incredibly revealing and rewarding.

You might see advice out there saying to just “quiet” or “banish” your inner critic—the harsh, judgmental inner voice. But from what I’ve experienced and seen, that can actually be counterproductive and even harmful. Instead, get to know this part of you and how they have helped you survive.

What if you sat with your inner critic and had lunch or went for a walk? Go on a coffee date with them. What drink do they order? What are they itching to talk to you about? What’s their body language like? 

Ask this part of you what they want you to know. What are they worried about or stressed over? What do they need?

When you soothe and befriend your inner critic, you grow. Learning where this part of you comes from and what they’re wanting to manage or protect you from can help you learn a lot about yourself. As Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), says, “Parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.” And your inner critic part may just need some extra love and reassurance as you step into this new chapter of creating a meaningful book and sharing it with the world. 

5. Writing a book is probably going to take longer than you think it will, and that’s okay.

Every book is on its own unique timetable. What if instead of rushing or trying to cut corners, you believed that you were right on time?

Give yourself ample time to rest and process your emotions. This will serve you and your readers and will give a calmer energy to the stories when people read them.

Hurrying and trying to use shortcuts only leads you back to yourself.

6. Structuring a book is hard.

Don’t worry about getting the order of chapters and the organization of ideas right on the first draft. Things might feel out of place. This is where an editor comes in. They can help you with structure as this is their zone of genius. Find someone who you feel safe and comfortable around, and be really honest with them about what you’re most concerned about. Let them guide you in tackling structure head-on rather than avoiding talking about it.

Trust the process. Take the pressure off. If you can create freedom and fun within the revision process, some amazing ideas will bubble up to the surface.

7. Save some energy for marketing and launching your book (because that phase is a whole new project in and of itself). And check yourself on what limiting beliefs are holding you back when you launch.

Many authors struggle to enjoy promoting their work. This often comes down to limiting self-beliefs. If you have a negative, yucky inner monologue all the time, it’s time to flip the script!

Here are the most common limiting beliefs I see authors needing to reframe:

• “I suck at marketing.”
• “Others will be annoyed hearing about my book over and over.”
• “People will just find my book eventually, so I'll just wait instead of promoting it.”
• “What if no one reads my work or cares?”
• “I'm not good with the tech side of marketing.”

Here are five reframes for those beliefs:

• “I love sharing about my work because my book helps others.”
• “Others want to hear from me, and my voice is important.”
• “The best way for my audience to know about my book is if I tell them.”
• “The right people will find my book because I have the courage to talk about it.”
• “I'm empowered to learn a new skill and I can ask for help any time I need it.”

This is profound inner work and growth. If you can create a safe, encouraging, and upbeat inner monologue around launching your work, you will go far.

Becoming an author will ask a lot of you, but it will also give back to you in amazing ways. Whether you’re just starting to write, you’re in the messy middle, or you’ve launched your book, keep enjoying the experience of trusting yourself more and more.

Choosing to keep going is what makes you the author you are.

I’d love to hear which of these lessons resonates most with you and where you are in your author journey. What else have you learned that you weren’t expecting?

About Rachel

Rachel Warmath is a writer, ghostwriter, and book shaman based in Utah. She loves supporting authors. You can connect with her and learn more about her work at www.RachelWarmath.com.

Featured photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash.

by James R. Preston

When you’re in the hospital you have a lot of time to think.

In my case it was, in part, what do I want to say to the WITS audience if I get a chance to write to them again?

The answer was clear.

We’re going to touch a lot of bases. We’ll examine what makes a story different from real life; we’ll look at the end of one of Robert A. Heinlein’s novels and you’ll have a chance to rewrite it, and then a chance to see what the majority of readers think. I’ll critique a movie I just saw, and we’ll have a few words about a constellation, a little astronomy bonus at no extra charge. And I’ll share the answer I came up with to a question I wasn’t aware I was asking.

In “Peter Pan” Tinkerbelle dies. The audience is asked to clap to show that they believe in fairies and bring her back to life, changing the end.

Orion’s Belt

If you have a chance, go outside some fall evening and look for Orion. It’s one of the most easily-recognized constellations. To find it if you are in the northern hemisphere, look south on a fall night. Find three bright stars in a row. That’s his belt. Hold that thought.

Podkayne of Mars

Spoiler alert! I’m going to tell you the end, and then I’ll tell you the other end. (Huh? What? Yeah, there’re two ends, sort of like the Director’s Cut of a movie.) When Heinlein first published Podkayne of Mars, the publisher didn’t like the way it ended. Still with me? Ok, here’s the spoiler: in the first end, the way Heinlein wrote it, Podkayne dies. Yep. Heinlein kills the main character.

He kills the lead character in a story that is mostly first-person, which is a pretty neat trick. Yow! What gives? It was not what I would have expected, but that’s not what I read because he was made to change it. When first published, Podkayne is seriously injured but she lives and that’s what I first read when I was in Junior High. Years later, Baen Books came out with a paperback edition in which they added Heinlein’s original end. And they asked readers which one they liked best.

Ok, let’s talk about what makes a story satisfying. It doesn’t have to be a “Happy End,” it just has to be the right end. The characters in your stories are, by definition, going to have problems. The essence of a story is a character who wants something and another something is keeping them from getting it. The conflict in the story, whether external or internal, and its resolution are what make a satisfying end.

Story and Reality

Ok, “real life” doesn’t always have neat, happy endings. So what? If your novel was a mirror of real life you could just write down everything that happened to you for a day (see James Joyce’s Ulysses) and it would be a story. It worked for Joyce, but I can’t do it. If you can, more power to you. Meanwhile, you know and I know that it doesn’t work like that for us.

As a writer, you make a story, supplying structure to life’s randomness. Pattern recognition. Pattern making. It goes back at least to hunter-gatherers looking at the sky and seeing animals and people and even Orion and recording those stories in caves for us to find 50,000 years later.

Let Your characters Have Some Fun

Robert B. Parker’s Spenser finds joy in cooking and in his relationship with Susan Silverman. Matt Helm (from the books, not the silly Dean Martin movies) enjoys being outdoors fishing and camping. Stephanie Plum loves her family despite the fact that they make her want to scream. Let your characters experience some joy. In my case, my protagonist in the Surf City Mysteries revels in early morning at the Huntington Pier when the air is still and the waves are glassy.

Iron Lung

I recently saw a science fiction movie where a convict is welded into a submarine and sent off to find something. “Iron Lung” made me think about this essay in a new way. There is not a moment of relief in that whole two hours. And the end is “ripped from the headlines of realism”—the viewer is not sure whether the hero succeeded or not, or if it mattered. It just ends.

I found it unsatisfying, totally unsatisfying. There are many good things about the film, but it’s as if we looked at the sky, at Orion, and saw—nothing. Random spots of light. “But, life is like that.” “Right! Art is not life. Art is making sense of the world around us.” It’s our job as writers to look at the sky and say, “Hey that looks like Orion. See those three stars? That’s his belt.”

Which leads us back to Podkayne of Mars.

Podkayne Again

Like I said, I believe the author has the responsibility to pick an end. That’s their job. I don’t mean tying everything up with a big pink bow, but a conclusion of some sort. The ending RAH picked was, to say the least, a downer. Podkayne is killed in a bomb explosion. The publisher didn’t like it; one reason being that the book was aimed at a young market, readers who would not see the point of the death. Reluctantly, Heinlein wrote a new end in which she lives. And the end of the story? In the new edition, when Baen asked readers which they preferred, by a 2-to-1 margin they voted for—wait for it—Podkayne dying.

How do I feel about that?

I have to go with Podkayne living. I think the publisher was right and Heinlein was right to make the change. With Poddy dead, buried in radioactive mud, what’s the point? I think most modern interpretations are reading into the story things that are not there. However, it’s Heinlein’s story and he should get to pick the end. The fact that I think he is wrong is immaterial. The comments on the web indicate that I’ve got a lot of company.

I was privileged to study writing under the great Harlan Ellison. I will never forget how he drummed into us, “What’s the point?” What’s the story about? What’s the point of an ambiguous end? That life is ambiguous? Tell me something I don’t know.

Lest you think I am devoted to only “And they lived happily ever after” ends, stream The Outer Limits, “Demon with a Glass Hand” by Harlan Ellison, which I think is one of the best stories ever to appear on the small screen, and which does not have that kind of end. This time: no spoiler. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat.

I stand by the last line of James Clavell’s Noble House: It’s good to be alive.

One More Time

Orion doesn’t really have a belt. We give him one when we look at the sky and see the constellation. Pattern creation. That’s what we do.

Has there ever been a performance of Peter Pan where the audience doesn’t clap and the director says, “Well, that’s it, folks. Tinkerbelle bit the tuna. The end.” I don’t think so.

Let your work reflect a little joy and supply a bit of structure to a chaotic universe.

It’s good to be alive.

—James Clavell, Noble House and
William Faulkner, the Long Hot Summer

Now, since Writers in the Storm is an active community of writers, it’s your turn. What’s your take on endings? Have you read a novel with two ends and if so, what did you think? Did you get a chance to Google Podkayne and read about the two ends? Am I behind the times when I say Iron Lung is unsatisfying? What kind of end do you like to write or read?

About James

James R. Preston is the author of the award-winning Surf City Mysteries. He is currently at work on Roachclip, the third of his short novels set at Cal State Long Beach in 1969, Kirkus Reviews called the first of the series, Buzzkill, “A historical thriller enriched by characters who sparkle and refuse to be forgotten.” His work has been selected for inclusion in the University Of Berkeley collection California Detective Fiction.

Find out more about James at his website.

Top image from Pixabay.

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.