An A to Z of publishing tips that are useful but too short for me to pad out into a whole newsletter

In my drafts folder, there is a wad of objectively useful advice posts I’ve started before realizing I had maybe one paragraph in me max. Behold: My wad is now thy wad

You ready for some rapid-fire publishing microtips? (That’s what she said.) (While getting tattooed or something.)

A is for authority, the most important thing any author can have.

I have said this many times now. It is still not enough. Authority is so important that it is literally the NAME of your JOB.

Authority isn’t the same thing as totalizing competence or knowledge. It is also not defensive rage, pompous grandiosity, or coercive control. And of course, it is also not submissive sniveling.

Authority means having calm, unshakeable, unconditional regard for your own being and brain. It is standing in your power and inhabiting every depth and crag in your soul with loving care.

Authority is what makes books good and criticism survivable—personally and professionally.

B is for Break the Cycle Coaching, whose self-care memes I’ve found so useful that I’ve convinced their author, Sian Crossley, to be my client 😎

I would be recommending Sian’s Instagram account even if she had turned me down. No, really!! Assuming I wasn’t feeling like a petty little bitch ogre that day.

Situated at the intersection of The Body Keeps the Score and Untamed, it offers sharp yet aesthetically soothing tutelage in the art of distinction between inspiration and agita, authentic desire and compulsive people-pleasing.

This is a useful skill for authors to have. Many first-timers struggle to differentiate between authentic creative progress and survival-mode busyness in the development process. This leaves them feeling stuck and miserable, spinning their wheels through draft after draft. They generally stay there until they figure out where and how they can write away from their own clanging cortisol alarms.

Enter Sian to help them recognize what is happening:

C is cover art, which is unfortunately just as important as you fear