I’ve been reading a lot of self-help books of late. I’ve said it before, but the transition to full-time self-employment has been turbulent to say the least. So, when in doubt, I always turn to books. Knowledge is power, education is the only solution. I thought I’d share some of the best self-help books for writers out there in the hopes it helps you on your journey too.

In no particular order:

11 Self-Help Books for Writers

Girl, Stop Apologising by Rachel Hollis

Also by the same author in the series and actually the prequel, Girl, Wash Your Face.

To buy Girl, Stop Apologising, you can use these links:

Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

This particular book gave me a couple of revelations which you can read about here, but predominantly, one about focus and how I should treat my to-do list results list.

Part memoir, part actionable self-help book, it’s split in two: excuses you need to get rid of and behaviors you need to adopt.

You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You can get it from Amazon UK, Amazon USA

This for me was less about the actionable things I need to do and more that I finished the book feeling like I could do anything I damn well wanted. A proper powerhouse of motivation. Part philosophical fooey (which I happen to agree) it’s full of anecdotes and memories of a life you wish you could have led.

Jen Sincero is seriously badass, and now I feel like I am too.

The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

You can get it from Amazon UK and Amazon USA

I actually listened to this one on audiobook. One of the most powerful books I’ve read, this is probably my number one recommendation. There are tons of actionable steps you can take in this book. I kept a post-it note in my wallet which read

I will leave my job in 2020

I signed the note and kept it in my wallet for two years. I ended up leaving in 2019.

His book is full of stories of success, tips and a boatload of motivation. If you’re a writer, this is one self-help book for writers you should not miss out on.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

I adore Elizabeth Gilbert. Every time she opens her mouth it’s like molten gold and flowing inspiration. Big Magic is a whole book of it. Her style sucks you in and grips you until the finish. I’m pretty sure I sank Big Magic in one or maybe two sittings.

Very much a book for writers and creatives. It’s largely about mindset and moving beyond fear, but it’s an all-round motivational read that reassures you you’re not alone in the highs and lows of creative life.

I highly recommend it.

Indie Author Mindset by Adam Croft

Purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA

I had the pleasure of reading this before it was published. This is a refreshing, short read for any author (trad or indie) looking to give their mindset a check.

Key takeaways are around how to view your writing as a business and the key things you need to do in order to set yourself up for business success.

This book pulls no punches, but it’s a fantastic guide and I highly recommend it.

The Successful Author Mindset by Joanna Penn

Purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA

Similar to the above book, this one is also for any author (trad or indie) looking to give their mindset a check. However, this one is focused much more on the mental highs and lows of writing and the journey we take to publication and beyond. A great one to read and then re-read as you continue in your career.

How to Be a Bawse by Lilly Singh

*Winner of the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards: Non-Fiction Book of the Year!*

Purchase on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Listen on Audible UK or Audible USA

This is another one I listened to on audiobook. Lilly is a YouTube sensation. But she’s also an inspiration. Young, ambitious, and super successful. She’s motivational and hilarious to boot. I actually recommend you listen to the audiobook. It’s narrated by Lilly herself and is so much the better for it. If you fancy a feel-good book and a giggle, go listen, NOW!

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Purchase on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

This one is a mind-blower. It’s pretty heavy going, lots of science and research and facts.

But I HIGHLY recommend it. It’s all about the concept of shallow ‘busy’ work versus doing deep effective work. It’s challenging, thought-provoking and a must-read for anyone with a goal.

The War on Art by Steven Pressfield

Purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA

I’ve read absolutely every non-fiction book Steven Pressfield’s ever written. I would recommend ANY of them. I particularly like Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t and Do The Work as well as.

He has a particular way of writing. You’ll love it or hate it. I’m the former. I find him inspirational, motivating and the provider of a jolly good kick up the backside!

Grit for Writers by Tamar Sloan

Purchase on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

A fantastic book for authors, all about keeping the right mindset, digging deep and pushing hard to meet all your writing dreams and goals.

If you’ve ever felt the slump, this is a short sharp reminder to pick yourself up and keep on keeping on.

The One Thing by Gary Keller

Purchase on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Another fantastic book about focus. Gary’s point isn’t that you can’t do and achieve lots of things, just that you have to focus on one at a time. There’s science and research to back up his points. A fascinating read and one that’s sure to change your point of view.

Next up on my to-read list are the following recommended by some author pals.

• Do Less by Kate Northrup purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA
• Grit by Angela Duckworth purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA
• Be the Change by Marin McCue purchase on Amazon UK and Amazon USA

Please note because these are books I’ve read and loved, this post does contain affiliate links.

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So that’s my reading list. What about yours? What self-help books for writers have you read or would you recommend? Let me know in the comments.

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We both know it, though neither of us will admit it. It might possibly, probably be the reason I have 22,000 words of a novel on ‘How to Be Productive’ and it’s also – ironically – the reason I’ve neither finished it, nor published it.

Sigh.

Most of you will know I left my job back in May. It’s been… Turbulent shall we say. Something akin to a giant steroid-injected rollercoaster of ‘da-fuck-am-i-doing-itis’ and blindingly hysterical euphoria.

In my more lucid moments, I’m come to realise how much I’ve got to re-learn. Like, time management.

You’d think, what with being a grown ass woman of thirty something years, that time management would come naturally by now. After all, I’m a driven and ambitious lady, I’m a kickass lion-roar-for-breakfast kinda gal. There’s no fucking about, I get shit done.

Except that, apparently, I don’t anymore.

I mean, I did. I had to in order to get where I am. I didn’t quit my job with zero clues where my income was coming from. I knew… sorry, KNOW, where my income is coming. And yet, for some reason, I work and work and work, and shit is not getting done.

It’s a lesson. It’s a revelation. It’s a fucking paradox.

If In Doubt, Read

I don’t take this stuff lying down. In an attempt to ‘sort my life out’ I’ve been reading self-help books by the dozen. Not only have they helped shift my mindset, I’ve had somewhat of what you’d call an epiphany on the time management front.

The specific book in question today is Girl, Stop Apologising by Rachel Hollis go get in on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

Something major stuck out to me.

Get Rid of Your To Do List

The first is that I’m going to do away with my to do list. I know. Shocking. But fear not my productivity ninjas, I’m not, NOT having a list. Christ, I’d hyperventilate a lung out if I did that. What I am doing though, is reframing it.

I’m finding more and more that this working for yourself business is 90% mindset, 10% gritty persperation. The trick to mindset is all universe, maraccas and philosophical fooey for another day. The tangible trick Ms Hollis gave me produced a slack-jawed Sacha manically flipping the pages and drooling over the simple and blindingly obvious technique.

Henceforth, chuck your ‘to do’ lists in the fuck-it bucket. Why?

“The average woman’s to-do list is approximately 319 items long, which means you’re never going to get through it anyway.” Rachel Hollis, Girl, Stop Apologising p.189

Now, whether or not she’s being sarcastic on the ‘319’, I’ll never know. But honestly? It doesn’t matter. It struck a chord with me because my to do list actually is about 319 items long. Now, for the last lord knows how many years, I’ve prided myself on these ridiculous ‘to do’ lists. Claiming that having a longer list drives me on harder. And sure, there’s some truth in that…

There’s also a royal waft of Horse Shit. Can you smell it?

Let’s be real here, folks.

Where’s it left me? With a shitty broken mindset and a serious case of bitchin burnout.

The Results List i.e. How to Be More Productive

What y’all need, is a results list.

Don’t be narrowing your eyes at me, I see you all squinty and sceptical because how in the shitsticks can a ‘results list’ which sounds suspiciously like a ‘to do’ list make you more productive?

Stop that.

Listen up.

“…if you’re anything like me [and I am like her] back in the day, you’ll spend your entire work time doing the easiest items on your to-do list, simply so you can have some items crossed out.” Rachel Hollis, Girl, Stop Apologising p.189

Sweet Jesus of small mercies, I am so like her. That juicy dopamine-nectar fills my body hard when I cross off a task. Nnnnggh. It’s glorious, it’s addictive. It’s also totally fucking pointless.

Responding to 80 emails might make my anxiety feel better, but it does fuck-nothing for my bank balance. So here’s me calling myself out. No more working on other people’s agendas, no more ‘busy’ work.

What are you [Sacha] going to create today that will take you closer to achieving your goals?

Because that’s what this is about. That’s why I left my job, it’s why I moved house, changed my son’s school, risked everything to follow the dream.

What’s The Difference Between a Results List and a To Do List?

I’ll tell you.

A ‘to do’ might contain things like:

• Upload new versions of Keepers to Kobo
• Reduce inbox to below 100 unread emails
• Schedule tweets
• Do more AMS ads

And so on. All important work. All work I have to do. But none of it is taking me closer to my goal. I can’t sell more books unless I write more books. I can’t sell courses if they’re not written.

A results list should be highly specific:

• Create 3 slides and write the transcript for those three slides on your conflict course
• Record those three slides
• Write 1000 words of Anatomy of Prose

Those three tasks would actually get me closer to being able to publish and sell my writing course. Once those things are done I can do the ‘busy’ work. Results are specific and push you toward your goal. Maybe yours would be ‘write 2000 words before 2pm’. Maybe it’s ‘edit four chapters by lunch tomorrow’. Doesn’t matter. But they should be project specific and tangible. Don’t leave yourself any room for backing out or saying you’ve ‘half done it’

You can’t half do 2000 words. And hush now all the smart arses saying 1000 words is half of 2000. I KNOW THAT, GET BACK IN YOUR PEDANTIC BOX.

The point is, either you write 2k or you don’t. End of.

If you want to achieve a goal, it’s not just about working hard, it’s about working hard on the right things. Apparently, I only just learnt that.

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You know when you watch movies and a group of friends actually stage an intervention and you laugh because you’re like HAHA that shit never happens, and it would definitely not happen to me.

Well it did.

Believe me, post its and actual man sized flip charts were involved.
But before I tell you the story, let me explain… as the year draws to a close, I’ve been getting a wickle bit reflective. Especially because next year is going to be a big year.

I hit the big 3.0, I’ll publish for the first and hopefully second and third time, and there are some other BIG secrets I can’t reveal yet.

But for now, another year has past and while lots of things have been achieved, my dreams have not been met… YET. But instead of being disheartened it force fed me petrol and made the fire inside me burn hotter than a million Kelvin.

Let the reflectioning begin…

My friends, lets call them Black Hole (yes there is a story behind this, no I will not tell you…today ever. Cough.) and Tasmanian Devil (TD) for short.

Black Hole and TD were concerned.

LESSON ONE – I’M A HEAD BURYING BITCH

I was… being abnormal, they said. Acting strange, off colour. It made me raise an eyebrow, because my strange scale and theirs ain’t even close to the same league. So I must have been behaving really fucking weirdly.

Anyway, they decided a dinner was required, they were going to help me sort my writing life out. No laptop required. *my eyebrow inched up another notch*

Dinner was served, eaten and barely digested before the flip charts were pulled out.

We agreed I had a problem. I was overwhelmed. Despite strategic planning,  enough spreadsheets to drown a tech god and To Do Lists that made George RR Martin’s manuscripts look like short stories, I was STILL overwhelmed and it wouldn’t go away.

We stuck my goals on flip chart and then they ‘suggested’ I lower my word count goals.

Um. No.

No really, they said, lower the word count goal, give yourself more time. The logic was irrefutable… damn their sense making logic mumbo jumbo. 

But I’m not sure they realised what they were saying… Asking a writer to lower their word count is like making a kid stand in the worlds largest sweet shop with their hands handcuffed while wearing a ball gag. Don’t they know I hear voices? They whisper things, scream dialogue if I don’t write it down. They rattle my brain until I have so much static I vomit words…literally.

A silent war raged over the dinner table. Death by squinty-eyed rage darts, jaws clenched and flexed violently enough to crush cars and there was an excess of hand yanks through hair.

Even after I agreed to extend my word counts the pressure hadn’t lifted. Word counts weren’t the problem. Then I leant back in my chair and realised I’d been covering another post it goal. Turns out when they asked about that bad boy I nearly broke down.

My subconscious had been covering the one thing I didn’t want to talk about. Insert epiphany as I realise this was most definitely not the first time I’d done this! I always joke about burying my head. But apparently I do. Awkward.

But the intervention and head burying is only one of many things I’ve learnt about my writing this year.

What have you learnt about your writing, writing process or mindset? Let me know in the comments below.

LESSON TWO – I’M NOT SUPERWOMAN AKA LIMITS & BARRIERS

It’s not that I have superhero syndrome, I mean, I only fly on Tuesday nights, but apparently I can’t do everything. I tried. HARD. Like lived off 4 hours sleep and drank enough coffee to sink my coal covered heart into a cardiac specialist consultants room, #truestory.

But it’s less about doing everything and realising that I don’t have to do everything. Sounds like one of those obvious dumbass things you should know, but apparently I didn’t. This year has taught me I don’t have to be good at everything. I can be excellent at some things and just okay at others, AND fuck me, THAT’S OKAY. No one died, no one drowned in a vat of self-loathing because they got a B+.

If I want to be excellent at writing, I can only be mediocre at something else. That’s life baby and it was a fucking cut glass pill to swallow, hurt like fuck to go down, but at least I only had to learn that lesson once.

This ones dedicated to my amazing hypnotist friend.

LESSON THREE – NO MAN IS AN ISLAND OR SOME BULLSHIT LIKE THAT

See, I could learn everything, I could learn to chisel diamonds into spears, the location of every dolphin on the planet, the number of wooden forks located in Romania, wait… I mean I could learn to code, learn to migrate my website, and master the nuances of formatting and all the other detailed bullshit that goes with authoring. But I don’t have to. Maybe I shouldn’t have to, because what I want to do, ALL I want to do is write books.

I dont have to be amazing at everything. I just have to be amazing at writing. And I’m not. Yet. Because I pissed about with loads of other bullshit, stressed my curly little head off when I should’ve just asked for help.

Wait what? I can ask for help? WTF… I CAN  ACTUALLY ASK FOR HELP?

FFS. I will chain myself to the laptop and whip myself with writing sprints later for this one later.

In my defence, the idiot part of my brain thought that paying someone else to do something for me was failing. Well fuck that. It’s not failing. Its efficient and more importantly a better use of my very fucking limited time. Why struggle through weeks of stress and not writing when I could just pay someone else to do it in a few minutes?

Publishing books, even as an indie, is a team effort, I’d do jolly well to remember it.

Note to self: Yeah dumbass, you won’t make that mistake again will you? Dick.

LESSON FOUR – INTRO, EXTRO ALL THE ‘TRO

I am both introvert and extrovert. Greedy bitch eh! But it’s true. Put me in a small group of friends and I’ll seem like the only extrovert. But put me in a room full of new people, or suggest something social without my nearest and dearest and I break out in awkward social STD’s. I shrink away from most social events, choosing instead to spend time with myself and my stories, and I need that to regenerate.

BUT, and it’s a big but, I definitely think externally. Unlike introverted thinkers, I need to do things with my hands, work shit out, bounce ideas off other people and scrawl stuff with my grubby mitts.

If I have a book problem I can’t just write through it like some authors, I have to stop and problem solve physically. It’s like my brain is only partially located in my brain, the other half of it firmly resides in my finger tips.

I need to remember this, and know it’s okay. We all have different processes, methods and mechanisms of writing. What works for one, won’t necessarily work for me.

LESSON FIVE – I STILL DON’T HAVE A FREAKING CLUE WHAT I’M DOING

Seriously. Okay, I mean, I’m not walking round slack jawed, goggle eyed, arms hanging like an ape. But I am still regularly fucking my shit up.

One minute I am pantsing the next I am stopping mid book to plot. Sometimes I outline, others I don’t. Sometimes I edit backwards, then I spontaneously edit forwards. The only thing I do consistently is embody complete and utter chaotic spontaneity. It’s like my signature writing perfume. But it’s fucking annoying, and inefficient.

One thing I am sure of, is that my writing processes for fiction is totally different from non-fiction. I still don’t know if I am a plotter or a planner, (somewhere in the middle I suspect) but still, my process is as clear as swamp juice.

I’m like an inebriated kid who just had the training wheels taken off their bike. Almost there, but swerving all over the shitting street. A bit more practice and I might have it sorted. But that’s for next year…!

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