Your Write Life Coach | Motivation and Momentum for Heart-Led Authors

I tackle a belief that quietly sabotages a lot of writers: that the real obstacle to getting words on the page is a lack of time. Using a recent, honest example from my own life — sitting down to write this very episode and hitting nothing but brain fog — I make the case that energy, not time, is usually the real bottleneck. I share three practical shifts for working with your natural energy inste...

In Part 2 of my conversation with bestselling indie author Paula Scott, I turn to the practical side of the writing life: marketing, readers, and growth. Paula shares the surreal story of an unsolicited Publishers Weekly review, why she keeps her books mostly off her personal marketing efforts and lets them find readers on their own, and where she believes real readers actually spend their time. P...

I sit down with longtime friend and bestselling self-published author Paula Scott for the first half of a wide-ranging conversation about the writing life. Paula traces her path from newspaper reporter to novelist — including two early manuscripts that almost sold, a Hollywood movie option that never became a film, and nearly a decade away from writing while raising her family. Paula and I dig int...

That voice that shouts “you're crazy” in the middle of a rough draft, or calls you names the second you catch a mistake — it's not going anywhere. Not through willpower, not through positive thinking, not through gritted-teeth persistence. This episode is a follow-up to Episode 17. I draw a sharp line between everyday self-doubt and the much louder, much crueler voice of the inner critic —...

You may have already called yourself a fraud at least once this week. Not out loud, but just that quiet voice that shows up right before you hit send, right before you speak up, right before you finally share the thing you've been working on. We've been told for almost fifty years that this feeling has a name — imposter syndrome — and a cause rooted in self-doubt. In this episode, I — auth...

In Part 1, Laurie Davies got honest about the decade of inner work — and self-rejection — behind her debut book, Emotional Hoarding: Letting Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Stuck . In this second half of the conversation, Laurie and I turn to what actually moves a writing career forward: staying authentic instead of chasing platform tactics, why writers' conferences matter more for relationship...

In this first half of a two-part conversation, I sit down with author, speaker, and lay counselor Laurie Davies to talk about the long road to her debut book, Emotional Hoarding: Letting Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Stuck. Laurie and I met ten years ago at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference, and in this episode Laurie gets honest about what it actually took to get from "rising st...

Most of us never actually stop to ask why we write. We assume we know — and often, we're wrong. In this episode, I take listeners back to my own teenage assumption that being good at English meant I was meant to be a writer, and the adult detour that followed: chasing the idea of making money as an author, before realizing that wasn't my real why after all. That realization led me to editi...

I sit down with author Angela Ruth Strong — flight attendant, breast cancer survivor, and multi-published, award-winning writer of Christian romantic comedy — for a candid conversation about the real road from unpublished to multi-published. Angela shares her “victim ladder” framework for processing rejection, the moment a rejection nearly broke her, how she kept writing through chemo brain, and w...

Before Chicken Soup for the Soul became a bestselling franchise, the original manuscript was rejected 144 times. Jack Canfield's advice for handling a pile of no's? "Reject rejection. If someone says no, just say NEXT!" Last episode, I talked about why rejection hurts and how to hold it as information instead of a verdict. This week, I'm back with seven more ways to actually...

That email. That phone call. "Thank you for your submission, but it's not a fit for our list right now." If you've ever felt your whole identity as a writer wobble after reading one of those, this episode is for you. This week, I'm unpacking why rejection cuts so deep — and why it doesn't mean what you think it means. I'm sharing the story of an author I coached throu...

Readers don’t connect with your vocabulary — they connect with who you’re being on the page. In this episode, I break down three practical ways to help readers experience your writing instead of just understanding it: writing scenes instead of summaries, using concrete sensory detail, and letting vulnerability do the trust-building work that polish can’t. (There’s also a horse named Nugget involve...

From the outside, momentum looks like nothing's happening — until suddenly it is. In this episode, I take us back to my childhood, riding shotgun in my uncle's twin-engine Cessna, to unpack a truth every heart-led author needs to hear: the writers who actually finish their books aren't the ones waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration. They're the ones who learned how to taxi —...

You've been told your whole life that multitasking is a skill — maybe even a superpower. You put it on your resume. You wear your ability to juggle everything as a badge of honor. But what if it's been costing you more than it's giving you? In this episode, I share why multitasking is actually a myth, what it's doing to your writing, and the simple shift that can unlock more focus,...

What if the pressure you feel to make it happen right now is the very thing standing between you and a lasting publishing career?   In this episode, I share one of the most powerful — and most overlooked — strategies in publishing: the shift from short-term thinking to long-term thinking. Through two contrasting author stories, a Nelson Mandela quote that reframes rejection entirely, and three qua...

You’ve probably said it. Maybe you’ve said it this week: “I just don’t have time to write.” In this episode, I lovingly, firmly push back on that story — because what looks like a time problem is almost always something deeper. Drawing on my own experience building an online course in the margins of a very full life, and honoring the legacy of my friend Beverly — a writer who published four books...

What if the wall between you and the work you were made to do isn’t your writing, your marketing, or your platform at all — but something much closer to home? In this episode, I get honest about what this show is not about (writing tips, marketing hacks, the usual strategies) and what it’s really for: calling you up to your highest self-expression. I share my story of chasing my dream of becoming...

You’ve poured yourself into your writing. You’ve revised, wrestled, and stayed up too late getting it right. And still — crickets. Polite nods. A readership that doesn’t quite connect the way you hoped. Here’s what I’ve noticed after working with writers and manuscripts for years: most of the time, the gap isn’t about the quality of the writing. It’s about whether the writing is speaking to what t...

Have you ever felt so harshly judged that you stopped being yourself just to survive? In this deeply personal episode, I share the story I don't tell lightly — the time I almost lost my dream job, and what happened when desperation finally pushed me toward the most important discovery of my career: the power of becoming my real self. This one is for every heart-led author who's been perfor...

Have you ever found yourself posting, promoting, and showing up everywhere online — and still feeling invisible? Or worse, like you've somehow lost the thread back to why you started writing in the first place? In this episode, I get honest about the hidden cost of hustling for attention — and it's not just your time. It's your voice. Drawing on stories from my coaching and editing wor...

If you’ve ever Googled “how do I get more readers” and gotten back “build your platform” — this episode is for you. In this episode, I share the story of an unlikely author: a rocket scientist who never set out to write a book, had zero social media presence, and ended up with a six-book deal with a traditional publisher. His secret? He followed his heart and stayed open to creative ideas about ho...

If you're a heart-centered author of non-fiction, fiction, or memoir who is done with confusion and ready for clarity — done with hustle and ready to rise — you're in the right place. Welcome to Your Write Life Coach! I'm Alice Crider, your write life coach. As a book editor and certified life coach with almost 30 years inside the publishing world, I've worked with hundreds of auth...