Your journey to writing involves overcoming a lot of roadblocks. Technicalities and standardizations are set for artists to follow, but these are exactly what can hinder you from finding the writer within. Masterful writer’s coach Sage Adderley believes there is no right way to do things. She sits with Ella Barnard and shares how letting go of limiting beliefs opens new opportunities for writers. Listen in as Sage brings things outside the box and shares ways you can cultivate creativity with a different approach to writing.
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Finding The Writer Within: Bringing Your Stories To Life With Sage Adderley
We are here with Sage Adderley, a masterful writer’s coach who is passionate about guiding people on their writing journey. She has many years of creative writing, self-publishing and book marketing experience. Sage is a Certified Cosmic Smash Booking Guide and the host’s the annual event, Finding the Writer Within. She resides in the magical land of the Pacific Northwest, where she spoons over the breathtaking views of Mount Rainier. As well as being a Writer’s Coach and published author, she’s a mom of three rad humans, a coffee lover and a vintage typewriter collector. Sage gets excited about kindness and snail-mail. Welcome to the show, Sage.
Thank you, Ella. I’m so excited.
Let’s hop right in. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your author’s journey?
I was always a book nerd. I was an only child and books were my best friends. My most favorite place was the library as nerdy.
I’m looking at you and I’m seeing a little bit myself. Maybe it’s because of the glasses and the reading.
It was an early rooted love for books and writing. In my first job, I was a page at the local library so I’ve always done something in regards to writing and books. It started with me creating my first self-published magazine. It was called Eye Candy and it was an art and literary magazine. This was before all the fantastic tools that we have on the internet.
I lived in Georgia at the time and found a printing company in Florida. I hand-cut and pasted the master copies for each page of the magazine. I would mail the hard copies to the printer. It was so different. I’m grateful that I had that experience. Publishing that magazine was when I started exploring self-publishing. I was writing smaller things, not book-sized projects. I started exploring the possibility of, “I can do bigger projects and self-publish.”
I started writing a young adult novel called Invoking Nonna. It was dear to my heart because I grew up in a place where it was very conservative. If you were different and you didn’t plop ever so smoothly into the mold, you had a rough time. I input some of those experiences in that book. That’s what makes it magical. It’s real-life stuff while also being a magical realism book.
It’s unbelievable what you can create by just going out and trying things
That was my first time dipping my toes in writing a book and self-publishing in between launching my first magazine, Eye Candy and publishing and Invoking Nonna. A lot of writing is happening for online places, magazines and websites. I was exploring different possibilities of being a writer. What I found was I like making up my way. I loved self-publishing and being in control of my creativity.
What’s the timeframe on this?
I launched Eye Candy in 2004. A lot has changed like all the ways of writing, book production, publishing and marketing. I feel the internet was still so new and fresh at that time.
You started writing and working on these projects. When did you self-publish the book?
Invoking Nonna was initially published in 2014. I spent a lot of time in the Zine community and a great chunk of ten years writing and self-publishing. I love it because it helped me get past the fear of being visible with others and sharing my work. When I did publish my first book, it was still scary and terrifying but because I had eased myself into sharing my work with people that didn’t know me, it helped me when I did get into book writing.
I don’t think a lot of people’s first bit of writing is self-publishing a magazine. It seems like you come to writing. I only know one other person who is self-publishing a magazine. That doesn’t mean there’s a ton of more people doing it but I’m in a community where it’s not common. It seems like you have a different approach to writing.
Your journey is slightly different because you’re more like, “I’m going to make a magazine,” which is not just writing. It’s writing plus art, plus it’s not necessarily you only writing all the pieces in the magazine. You’re like, “This is a Sage magazine, just me.” That’s a slightly different approach but exciting. Are you still doing the magazine?
No.
I do appreciate putting yourself out there as you practice because that’s part of it but what other things did you learn from doing the magazine and interacting with other writers and artists that has affected and impacted your writing or author journey?
A few things have come up for me. I’m going to go back and touch on it again. It’s practicing getting uncomfortable. I would do a feature interview in each Eye Candy. Some of the people that I reached out to were scary. I was like, “What if they say no or think this is stupid?” It’s stretching yourself to get uncomfortable. There’s this piece about connecting with others and collaborating, which is this whole other world if you’re used to writings solitary with yourself and doing everything on your own.
I learned about the different types of publishing. A lot of people were critical of self-publishing and that was surprising for me. I don’t know why. My biggest takeaway was it’s unbelievable what you can create by going out and trying it. My entire journey is me going, “This sounds cool. Let me figure out how to do it.” I don’t get stuck in this place of spinning wheels and going, “Let me overthink this and get all the pieces in place before I launch.”
I’m on the opposite side where I probably need someone to reign me in because I’ll jump in and go, “Let’s publish a magazine. What’s that going to look like?” That serves me in a lot of ways and I’ve also learned a lot like structure, being patient and taking your time is important. When you talk about plotters and pantsers, I’m a classic pantser jumping and ready to roll. That doesn’t always serve me. It taught me where I get to grow as a creative person.
The lessons you’ve learned are more mindset than, “Here’s my strategy for the margins on your magazine.” With all the people who are on their journey or maybe in the earlier part of their journey, we minimize how putting yourself out there is. I used to be somebody who would think like, “I have an idea. Let me go find a dozen books about it and read.” I was insecure so I was like, “Let me go find a bunch of books, read and learn everything I can about the topic.”
What would happen is by the time that “I knew enough” to get started, I wasn’t as excited about it anymore because it almost felt like I’d completed it by learning everything about it. All the enthusiasm went to learning about it instead of doing it and then I never did it. In the last years, I’ve had to practice being like, “No, just do it.” I haven’t read a self-help book. I used to read self-help books, writer books and all these things. I read one occasionally but I don’t often because I’m like, “I’d rather do it now.” I’m on the other side where I’ve found like, “Let me start this course.” I then give myself six weeks to launch it, which is not enough time to find anybody to purchase it.
There’s a balance of like, “I have a great idea. How do I maintain that enthusiasm for the amount of time to make it helpful?” If you make a course and want to help people then you have to have enough time for people to sign up or tell people about it so they’re excited and you can help people. It’s interesting. I appreciate that that’s where you’re taking your lessons.
I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong way to do things. What I keep at my forefront constantly is that we’re going to make mistakes. I embrace messiness. It’s uncomfortable. Some people think I’m way more confident than I am but I’m just embracing that I’m a human. I’m going to try things. Some are going to work and some aren’t. That’s okay. I look at life as practicing and collecting information. I’m having the experiences. I don’t try to get it right because I would be in a constant space of disappointment and self-beat up. Being willing to acknowledge that a lot of this, in my opinion, in writing and publishing is trial and error.
Breakthroughs guide you to shifting those habits that don’t serve you.
You’ve had something in your bio that is related because it’s a trial-and-error thing and not having one way to do things. It segues nicely into my concept of what you’re doing with these smash books. Can you tell me about this? I don’t know that much about them but it feels like it is related. You’re a Cosmic Smash Booking Guide. Everybody reading, Sage showed me a smash book and it looks like this fun, colorfully painted with a magazine like a decoupage, Mod podge kind of book. I’m curious about how that works with the writing.
Imagine taking your printed diary, painting in it, wrapping ribbons on the spine, writing and collaging in it. It’s very hands-on. The reason that I love it is I’m a hands-on person. I started hand-cutting and pasting my master copy of the magazine. Zines are very hands-on. I’m a visual learner so when I outline my books, I’m touching and moving things around with my hands.
Saying all that leads to cosmic smash booking because it’s a very hands-on process. It’s an intentional creativity process. With art journaling, you might open up your pages and start putting beautiful things on and things that make you feel good. With cosmic smash booking, it’s a little messier and more intentional. You might say, “This limiting belief keeps popping up and getting in my way so I’m going to open the page, write everything out, do some free-flow writing and then put color on it to shift the energy. I’m not going to dictate what it looks like.”
If I look at my paints and red’s looking at me so I’m going to pick red, it’s very much a process of allowing yourself to be messy, release and listen to yourself, which is massive for creatives trusting yourself. It’s this beautiful creative transformational process. I use it with my writers to do some releasing of the limiting beliefs or any obstacles that are getting in the way. I use it for visioning and we use it to set intentions. “What do we want to create this month?”
It’s funny because a lot of writers don’t associate themselves with being creative or artists, which I’m always like, “Stop it. You’re creative.” Every person that’s ever been skeptical of like, “What is this exactly,” as soon as they try it, I’m like, “Be open to it. Try one page. If you don’t like it, you don’t ever have to do it again.” I’ve never had somebody try it and go, “This isn’t for me.” I’m not saying it’s for everyone but from my experience, once people try it, they’re like, “This feels good.”
It looked like a vision board but not because it’s a book. The way you’re talking about it is more comprehensive of not just intentions for what you want to create but releasing. I followed an author. This was a while ago. I’m old. She would make these posters of her characters but they looked like your smash books.
She’s like, “I’m making a character.” She would do a whole poster, not just a page and it’d be like magazine stuff. It was mixed media and all kinds of stuff that she would make. Any time she needed to get into the mind of the character or in their point of view, she could look at that for a little bit and be like, “Who is this character?” I was like, “That is so cool.”
I have a question for you. Painting and visual art versus writing art are some of the things that I would like to do that maybe I’ve researched. I have all the things and then when I sit down to do it, I cannot get into the right headspace to let it be. When I do paint, it comes out worse than it would. I have more talent than what comes out because I’m in this headspace of not allowing.
Like almost trying to make it look a certain way and then it just that virus.
That happens for people with writing too. Hopefully, this can relate both ways to people who are reading but how do you get out of that headspace of, “This is how it’s supposed to be,” and allow yourself that freedom? Is there a way that you do that?
It takes lots and lots of practice. I’m a big fan of feeling the feels. If I am working on something and I’m like, “It’s got to look this way. It came out that way. That stinks. That’s not what I wanted.” I allow myself to acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable because what happens is we instantly want to cover up that feeling. Not many people enjoy feeling uncomfortable. Not many people can be like, “I’m feeling awful.”
Be with it like, “This feels bad. Why does it feel bad?” My writers will tell you that I am the queen of digging. I’m like, “What’s underneath that?” We keep going to, “What’s making you uncomfortable about not getting it ‘right?’” I’m using air quotes because there’s no right. The work that I do is deep and messy but also very beautiful because we have breakthroughs to guide us to shifting those habits that don’t serve us.
I’m a huge fan of working around instead of working through. I like tricking my brain. I’m like, “Write it. It’s not a real draft. It’s a fun draft.” I tell myself that enough to believe it and then I can write. It feels like the smash booking might be another tool to work around whatever my issues are. I’m not addressing this issue. I’m playing with these paints around it. You still get to the point is what I’m saying. You and I still get what we need. The draft still gets done but I’m playing with my mindset in a way to do it. It feels like that would be another creative and playful way of working around the resistance until you were like, “There’s the resistance.”
Name it because it’s there like, “Resistance is back. This is happening.” It is like writing that messy first draft. I’m a big fan of not revising or editing. Allow yourself to be in the mess and be curious about it. Smash booking is fabulous. It’s a great tool and extra help for people who identify as perfectionists. In the beginning, it takes them a little bit longer to get into but I asked them to crumple pages and color over things that they’ve written. They’re like, “Why would you want to crumble the perfect page? What do you mean I’m going to color over that? I can’t see it again.” I’m like, “Exactly.” It’s not towards that, I swear.
What a fun way of putting things out there and working through that perfectionist in a way that nobody else ever has to see. I remember hitting the publish button on my first book. It was Halloween and I was having a panic attack like, “It’s out there.” I took a shot of tequila and was like, “I can do this.” I’m handing out candy. I wasn’t drunk or anything but I was able to calm down. The shot was off and I was catching my breath. It’s hugely terrifying.
I write short romances. I’m publishing a book a week. That is not even a thing anymore but it is for other aspects or things that I’m trying new for the first time. What a fun way to practice that. I’m sending this intention and then maybe messing with it a little bit, allowing yourself to put something out there that might not be perfect, mess with it and still have it be fine like nothing happened.
Allow yourself to be in the mess and be curious about it.
It’s okay. I’m always looking at how they keep people in movement but not pushing. There’s the push like, “You know you could show up in a bigger way but you’re choosing to stay safe.” There’s also the push where you’re exhausted and if you go any further, you’re going to have a breakdown. Don’t do that. I’m not advocating for that. I love helping people stay in a movement where they’re always understanding like, “Why do I do this? This happens to me again and again. I don’t like it. Let me be curious about it.” Staying out of judgment introduces curiosity.
Give a couple of examples. They don’t have to be names or anything but what are some of the resistances that come up with your writers? What are they able to work through with this? I’m very curious about the smash booking because it was so pretty. It’s everything.
There’s a piece about wanting to edit while you write. With a smash booking, you could try to perfect it but if you follow the steps, it doesn’t allow you to without you noticing that you’re doing it. My goal is that people notice that that’s their go-to. What has served people is allowing themselves to be in the process, not trying to control, dictate and manipulate it. I’m like, “Don’t use scissors. Tear pictures out with your hands.” They’re like, “I might rip the picture.” You might and it’s okay. It’s keeping people in that flow.
I’m thinking about this because I don’t edit while I write and I also don’t talk. I have a big vocabulary but it doesn’t all come up to my brain very quickly or easily. Sometimes I see people on TikTok and stuff and they’re snappy. I can see that they’re not stopping the record button. Their brain is providing the words that they want to say very quickly. Mine doesn’t do that. I have the idea but trying to get it into words is a slow process. I don’t think that that’s necessarily what you’re talking about when you’re talking about editing.
First, I want to say, whatever works for you, keep doing it. Second, what I find is my perfectionists who want to write and edit, what that could look like is, write a paragraph and then stop and go, “I could say that in a better and cleaner way. I can tighten that up. I used that word twice in the paragraph.” It takes them out of the excitement and connection and then they start thinking about the mechanics.
I talk a lot about head versus heart in my teachings. Writing from the heart is that intuitive and it’s messy. Being in your head is more of an editor. You’re looking at it like, “How can I perfect and make this just so?” I know my writers who don’t support them in the first draft because they’ll never finish the first draft. They will spin wheels on perfecting it and never finish. It reminds me of a tire stuck in mud spinning and spinning. I’ve done many paintings. You can overwork a painting by not letting it be like, “Let me put a little more color on the nose.” Before you know it, you’ve ruined the nostrils or whatever you’re painting. Give some breathing room in there.
We can all see and know what that feels like when you’re writing, overworking it. I see what you mean with the heart versus head thing. You can write from your heart, put it out there and then your head can overthink it until it doesn’t have the authentic feel anymore. Interestingly, I’m going to go a little practical here and I found asking multiple authors this.
The more fun that you’re having as you write, at a certain level when you make sure that you have correct grammar or story structure within the frame of the story that you’re putting out there. They do better and are more successful when they’re having fun while they’re writing than when they’re too much in their head. To take it to a financial point, in a practical financial way, having more fun as you write and maybe from the heart, within certain structures of like that you’re still putting a story out, generally, there are still going to be the successful people.
Being in your head and heart, they’re both very important. You don’t have to choose one like only right in your heart or head. It’s understanding when will this serve you and what will that serve you? When I’m in the first draft, maybe being in my head doesn’t support me but being in my heart does. As I navigate the next draft, I can start pulling from my head more.
You have your books out. Are you writing and publishing books still?
I’ve got a YA magical realism trilogy and I’m on my third book.
Have you used smash booking in this book that you’re working on?
Yes. It helps me with being more playful. Some of my main characters are teenagers so I use them for fairies and magic. It helps with the world-building for me when I can see it and then write it much easier.
I’m stuck on these smash books because it was so pretty and exactly the thing that I like. They looked like an accordion. It was a vision board book because it folded down to a book like a little square thing. You could do vision boarding on each side. Each little accordion square could be a different goal. I made a handful of those. I loved them. It reminds me of something that I had already done.
I’m also very woo-woo around intentions. This is one of the benefits of doing a show. I can ask all the questions I want to know which hopefully helps everybody but, in my life, I want to break through some resistance in money, which is a huge thing and setting intentions. Feminine is more playful. My energy is I want to come to it breaking through the series of my new relationship with money in a feminine, enjoyable and abundant playful way. You have this going through resistance and setting intentions. How do you do that? We’re not getting into the nitty-gritty of secret sharing of it. How does that work with the smash books?
It could look like you open to a fresh page in your book. To give you a visual, think of those old, classic composition books, the black and white marble. That’s what we use to build cosmic smash books traditionally. You open to a page and free write what your intention is. I’ll use me as an example. My intention in 1 month was to meet my 50,000-word count goal with my draft.
I might be writing like, “This is my intention for December 2021.” I then go deeper and go, “What would get in the way of me not hitting that?” Exploring like, “What could it look like? What would get in the way of not having to schedule, not sticking to it and not being consistent? What would help me be accountable?”
Whatever works for you, keep doing it.
I’m freewriting. It’s messy. It might be fragmented, not even sentences. You put color over it. The color is not to cover the words. I use watercolor because it simply dries faster. You could use crayons or markers. That is to shift the energy. All the stuff from your head went onto the paper. You’re shifting it. You then take a magazine. Some people will paint over it. I like mixed-media collages so I would take a magazine, start flipping through and take pictures out.
I’m going to take you on a woo-woo ride. Spoiler alert, I’m also a woo-woo. One of the biggest things that I’d mentioned is that you’re listening to yourself. If you’re like, “I want it to be purple.” If there’s something in you that’s like, “Nope, red,” go with red. Listening, trusting and building that intuition and connection with yourself.
I look in the magazines like, “An elephant.” For some reason, that’ll fit and it wants to live on this page. I rip out the elephant and then build a collage. Sometimes I rip pictures out, glue them on my page and they don’t want to go there anymore. It doesn’t fit and works so I put it aside. I look at my page like, “What are some of the words that stuck out to me? Love, lore, knowledge is power. There’s an elder woman and a tree with a crow.” It’s almost like a puzzle. “How could I look at collecting information and inspiration from these images, the color and words?” I’m trusting that I pulled these things for a reason and then started exploring what those pieces are and how could I use that to support my intention of finishing my first draft.
My jaw has dropped. I love that so much. I’m in the process of looking at moving. A few practical things have happened. I had a little filling fallout and get it replaced. I got Medicaid and needed to find a psychiatrist. I was applying to these apartments. I need to make these calls and get these things happening like getting the tooth filled, getting a psychiatrist, applying to these apartments, finding an accountant. These things have happened.
Two of them went super smoothly. My tooth doesn’t have a chip in it. You’re like, “That was one of the ones that went very smoothly.” The other ones did not. It was like pulling teeth. I was like, “This is weird.” Finally, with the accountant, it was trying and trying then I was like, “In the last weeks, I’ve had these experiences with similar energy where I need to get this thing done in my life.” The ease of some of them was just done and others were like pulling teeth. It was so hard.
I’m like, “I don’t want to do things anymore unless they feel they have more ease with them.” Them being so difficult was a sign from my woo-woo universe that that’s not the right accounting company and apartment complex. I want to be more in touch. My soul and spirit know so much more than my brain knows. To be able to access that, it sounds like what you’re doing is different like, “I’m going to trust that part of me that maybe my conscious mind isn’t communicating with very easily,” whether it’s your subconscious, your spirit, the universe or whatever you want to call it some part of me knows what’s best for me. If you can’t tell, I’m like, “How do I sign up to learn how to do my cosmic smash book? Thanks, Sage.”
You’re understanding the idea. You’re in it. I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t have a definite date but I have built a program where you can use cosmic smash booking to outline and structure your book. I’m excited about it. It’s ready to roll in 2022.
A lot of people would enjoy that. It could be useful in getting past financial blocks, outlining your story, preening your world, making your characters and in so many ways. I love that. I saw that you and a friend or somebody are doing a smash booking thing. Is that something you’re going to do on occasion?
Yes. We’re calling it A Creative Experience. It’s a five-hour live creative experience on January 15th, 2022. We’ve gotten such good feedback around it. We’re thinking about the possibility of doing it quarterly or offering it in different ways. I was talking to him. I had the visionary behind cosmic smash booking and Elizabeth. I was like, “Wouldn’t it be cool when we’re feeling bad and not feeling confident that we had a cosmic smash book that we could go to that reminds us about how awesome we are?” They were like, “Do you want to do a program with that?” Activate Your Awesomeness was birthed out of that with me going, “Wouldn’t it be cool?”
We do also have Finding the Writer Within. That’s how we met. I saw it and was like, “Hi, Sage.” I was in my period of reaching out to people. I don’t have that much fear about reaching out to people anymore because I’m like, “They’ll say no if they say no.” Are you still doing it? Tell us more.
Finding the Writer Within is my annual online summit. I’ve started hosting it. I’ve played around with it differently for a few months but I like hosting it in the summer. It feels like people have a little bit more spaciousness to dive deep. I set an intention of, “What would I like people to experience in this summit?” In 2021, it was around nourishment. How do writers get to take care of themselves? I think about, “Who do I know or who could I reach out to that would be a great fit for this intention that I have for my audience?
Summits look all different ways. Some of them have one day. Some of them are 3 weeks so it’s 25 people. They’re all different. I have found a week-long that 5 to 10 speakers are a good fit for my community. It’s easier for them to digest and be present with. I have a lot of fun putting it together. It’s a great way to collaborate with other people in the industry. Sometimes I have people in different industries and it’s cool to co-create together. It’s also a great offering for people in my community and other communities.
It seems like a lot of your intention is not like, “I have a lot of focus in what empowers me. What I love to do is empower women to make money with their creativity.” I love that idea so much. Women having money would transform the world, especially creative women and writers. I’m like, “If anybody’s going to be good at putting themselves into somebody else’s shoes, it’s going to be a writer who’s writing different characters. If anybody’s going to be able to be empathetic and compassionate, it’s going to be a writer specifically and mostly women.” That’s my passion. I have a lot of focus around that.
Doing it in a playful feminine way but also like, “I want you to get the money because I love women with money.” It seems like yours is a lot about, which I do think as part of making money is being in alignment with yourself, who you are and what you want to create like your woo-woo spirit. You have the cosmic smash books and Finding the Writer Within. I’m seeing a theme happening here. What is your intention for writers? Mine is empowering women to make money with their creativity to have fun doing it. That’s what I want for you. What’s yours?
There are a lot of pieces of what I do but essentially, the root of it is I also want to empower women to feel their value and share and see their stories as gifts whether they’re real-life non-fiction stories or fictional stories but to see and own their value. Sometimes people are afraid of sales and making money, which I love what you’re creating because we get to create abundance and prosperity in our lives. Value is very much tied into that. If we don’t value ourselves or see ourselves and our wisdom as gifts for others, it’s hard to put a price tag on that when you don’t have that confidence and trust in yourself.
The work that I’m doing is to get women to a place where they can start bringing in whatever they want to create, whatever that looks like. It comes from doing that messy work. I try to do it in a way. I’m laughing because some of my clients will be like, “Sage is a loving, hard-ass. She loves you but she’s real talk.” I care about them so much. I want them to be in their greatness. You don’t do that by keeping people small. Thinking about, “Using creativity and my wisdom, how do I guide women through their journey?” That was a lot.
You can overwork a painting by not just letting it be.
It was beautiful. It was my favorite thing ever. I’ve had people say something similar about me. They didn’t say loving hard-ass but they used more words to say, “She corrects you but somehow you don’t feel upset about it.” You’re like, “You’re right.” I have an author friend who I’ve coached but we’re all dear friends. I was like, “When every through a thing, I give good feedback. I’m good.” She’s won’t answer. I’m like, “Why are you pausing?” You say what needs to be said. I don’t hold back but I try to gently because the other thing I’m passionate about is I don’t want to stifle anyone’s creativity because of the way that I am trying to help them. That’s the opposite of my intent on what I want to do.
You’ve told us about your books, cosmic smash books, Finding the Writer Within and Activating Your Awesomeness. You have a lot going on. I love it. With all this experience, plus you have the magazines, what’s your best advice for authors and maybe for who are you talking to? This has been a slightly different episode, which I’m not opposed to at all. I love it. It’s more woo-woo to some of my other episodes, which I also love. I’m like, “That woo-woo part makes me so happy.”
Let’s say a couple of different audiences. One is an audience who’s starting, hasn’t finished their book yet and wants to publish. The next one would be people who have published but haven’t reached their goals. They’re like, “I published. I’m on my way but something still isn’t there.” What is your advice either if it’s the same or different but I’m curious about those two people?
For the people who are starting this journey, there’s no right or wrong way. I’m leaning back into that because I hear it so much. People want to get it right. We’re living in this beautiful age of publishing where you have so many options. Get up to the speed of what publishing looks like in 2022 and not 1985.
People still have these ideas of what the industry looks like from many moons ago and it doesn’t apply and serve them when they’re embarking on their writing journey but they’ve got these old ways in their brain. It’s not their fault. That’s what they know. Understand that there are so many different possibilities. There is no right or wrong way to do things. Permit yourself to try different things. It’s important. Being stuck that it has to look a certain way and not budging means we get in our way.
For the folks who have published and maybe haven’t reached their goals, for me, the two incredibly helpful things are collecting information on what’s working. Let’s keep doing that. What’s not working? Let’s not do that again. Sometimes people are in the movement and I get that but also pay attention to when you’re trying different marketing things what was awesome and what not so much. Same advice to beginners. Be willing to try different things. What works for one author may not work for the other author. We have different audiences, goals and ideas of what success looks like.
You need to reach out for support. That’s huge because there are a lot of writers who are lone wolfers and think they have to do everything on their own. Support is so valuable. I ran my business on my own until I was like, “I don’t know how to grow larger and reach a wider audience without getting help.” That’s when I knew I needed to hire a mentor because I knew I had taken myself as far as I could on my own with my knowledge. There’s no shame in reaching out for support.
For women, it’s okay to ask for help. All of these people who are so successful, whoever you’re looking at that you’re like, “I want to be them,” have help guaranteed. They are not doing it on their own. You have these YA stories and all the things that we mentioned. Where is the best place for people to find you?
It’s my website because it has links to all the things. You can find me at SageAdderleyKnox.com. There’s a contact form if you have questions. You can see what I’m up to. I’d love to hear what you thought about this woo-woo episode.
You can see what she has coming up and available in the next little bit. Who knows where you might pop in right in the middle? You’re like, “Finding the Writer Within.” She’s got a lot going on. I want to thank you so much, Sage. I don’t know if this went off in a different direction you were expecting.
I showed up with coffee and was ready to have fun with you. Mission accomplished. It was great.
Sage, thank you so much for being here and sharing your time with me.
Thank you. I appreciate it and all of you, readers. I honor you for choosing to hang out with us.
That’s what I love saying. Thank you for being here and reading. Hugs and happy authoring.
Important Links
- Sage Adderley
- Finding the Writer Within
- Invoking Nonna
- YA Magical Realism Trilogy – Sisters in the Craft (The Triple Goddess Series)
- Activate Your Awesomeness – Facebook
- Contact Form
About Sage Adderley
Sage Adderley is a masterful writer’s coach who is passionate about guiding people on their writing journey. She has over 17 years of creative writing, self-publishing, and book marketing experience. Sage is a Certified Cosmic Smash Booking Guide and hosts the annual event, Finding the Writer Within.
Sage resides in the magical land of the Pacific Northwest, where she swoons over the breathtaking view of Mount Rainier. As well as being a writer’s coach and published author, she’s a mom of three rad humans, a coffee lover, and a vintage typewriter collector. Sage gets excited about kindness and snail-mail.
