Six Benefits To Doing YouTube As A Hobby

 

I've been trying for years to build up one YouTube channel or another to the point where it would at least pay our grocery bills. I've finally decided to give that up.

If you've tried to go full-time with YouTube and become frustrated, or if you enjoy making videos and are wondering whether you should just stick with it as a hobby, the video above and this article explains the six benefits to doing YouTube as a hobby.

Benefit #1.

When YouTube is a hobby, there's no pressure or stress around it. Anyone who makes any decent amount of money from YouTube, whether it's a few hundred dollars a month or six figures a month, will tell you that pleasing both their audience and the YouTube algorithm is stressful. You have to look right, sound right, say the right things, be entertaining in some way, edit footage well, and continually come up with fresh content. All this encompasses both financial stress and psychological stress.

Then there are the negative comments, and social media and online forums where big YouTubers are often ripped to shreds by perfect strangers. In some niches, such diet and nutrition, people opposed to a particular lifestyle create channels dedicated to tearing down YouTubers who follow that lifestyle. If you're just doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll probably never get that big, and won't have to worry about that.

As a hobby YouTuber, you can upload as frequently or as infrequently as you want. Full-time YouTubers, on the other hand, are constantly under pressure to upload videos on a consistent basis.

Benefit #2.

Unlike a full-time YouTuber, a hobbyist isn't constrained to a single topic or a single video format. You can create whatever kind of video suits your current whim, about whatever topic is on your mind. You can do a lifestyle vlog one day, and two days later do a talking head video teaching about the best way to remove fleas from a dog. 

Benefit #3.

I've already touched on this, but it's such a critical issue regarding what you want to do with YouTube that it bears repeating.

If YouTube is only a hobby, you don't have to worry about consistency in uploading. Someone trying to make YouTube into a career HAS to have an uploading schedule, and keep it consistent. And at this point in time, you need to be uploading a bare minimum of once a week if you want to be seen by even a few people.

But as a YouTube hobbyist, you would be under no such constraints. If you want to upload every day for two weeks, then disappear for four months, it's fine.  

Benefit #4.

You can turn off comments. 

If you want to build a big channel so you can make big bucks from it, this is a no-no. One thing the YouTube algorithm looks for when recommending videos to viewers is engagement; i.e., likes, dislikes, and comments. So, turning off comments while trying to become a full-time YouTuber is like shooting yourself in the foot right before running a marathon.

But if you don't care about growing a big channel, you can turn off comments. And therefore, never have to deal with ugly or stupid people.

Benefit #5.

If you're doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll never obsess over your analytics. When I say "obsess," I mean, OBSESS. People trying to grow a YouTube channel are constantly worrying over a variety of numbers: those related to watch time, subscribers, and views. If those numbers are discouraging - which is inevitable if you're trying to start a YouTube channel in 2023 and beyond - they turn their brains inside out trying to figure out how to "improve" the numbers.

Ugh.

But as a hobbyist, you couldn't care less about all that. All the fun, none of the stress.

Benefit #6.

There's a fact that YouTube gurus keep locked at the back of a closet that is essential to understand when you're looking at the "YouTube: hobby, or career?" question. That fact is, unless you're a really huge channel (tens of millions of subs or more), your YouTube income is inconsistent and unstable. In fact, many YouTubers who have been full-time, in recent years have been forced to go out and get a real job because their income suddenly and inexplicably tanked.

Ha. Not so inexplicably. The more channels that are vying for advertising dollars, the less there is to go around. 

Whereas, if you're doing YouTube as a hobby, getting your living income from some other source, you don't have to sell your soul to sponsors or care about YouTube advertising glitches, and the usual advertising dollar ups and downs. 

I've decided to tap into the health-giving benefits of doing YouTube as a hobby. How about you?

If You Feel Like A Failure, Read This!

I am a big, fat failure. Okay, so maybe not so much the fat part. But you get my drift.

I know I'm not alone in having thought, multiple times for multiple reasons, that I'm a failure. Likely as not, you clicked on this video because you are, right now, feeling like a failure.

In this post, I hope to change your mind about being a failure by sharing a bit of my story, as well as a few bits of wisdom that will help you shift your perspective about your worth as a human being.

How have I failed? 

Let me count the ways. 

**I didn't pursue my performing art dreams.

**I went into a career that, in hindsight, feels like a huge waste of thirteen years.

**I failed at getting a traditional publishing contract.

**I failed at blogging.

**I failed at making a full-time income with my self-published books...so far.

**I failed at choosing a place to live with optimum conditions for growing fruits and vegetables.

**I failed at YouTube.

And that's really what drove me to make this video at this point: a few days ago, for the hundredth time, I was going to quit one of the over dozen YouTube channels I've started since 2011.

And, why shouldn't I? On my original channel, over the space of 12 years, I haven't able to grow it to more than 4,160 subscribers and never made more than $80 in a month month. And that was one time. Then, a couple of years ago, YouTube changed the requirements for monetization, and it demonetized my channel.

And now, in 2023, it's extremely difficult to build even a modest following on a YouTube channel, even if you follow all the rules.

Back to the channel I was about to quit. It wasn't this one, though if you've been watching all of my videos for the past several months and noticed weeks between uploads and three distinct changes in topic, you might have gotten the hint that my frustration with the lack of growth on this channel had me on the edge.

As you can see, I haven't given up on this channel. Nor did I quit the other one. The reason? 

I watched a video about failure and ADHD.

Whether or not you have ADHD, the tips that Jessica shared in her video, as well as the thoughts I had afterward, might very well be your ticket out of the failure mindset.

In the video in question, one of the things Jessica points out that's specific to those of us with ADHD is that it's nearly impossible to succeed at anything when you've always got ten projects going on at one time. We need to learn to quiet our minds so we can enable ourselves to focus on just one thing at a time. If you're like me and get bored after a few days of doing just one thing, then make sure to schedule time to play and to work on hobbies. Or take one to two day breaks from the main project, during which you work on a less important project.

Jessica also explains that when we see others succeed where we feel like we're failing, we need to realize that they are different. They may have more time, or more money, or a different personality, or a larger resource pool, or more knowledge or innate skill. That circles back to the principle you've probably heard more than once, but if you're like me, need constant reminding of: though success is really a subjective concept, which each person can define as they like, we've been taught to equate it with some level of wealth and fame, and/or uncommon achievement.

I'll talk more on that in a minute.

The last thing that Jessica discusses in her video felt like a punch in a gut, but I needed to hear it: if you're failing at a thing, maybe you're simply not meant to do that thing. No matter how badly you want it. After I finished watching that video, which I've linked below in case you want to check it out, I pondered over Jessica's words for a while. I thought about all the ways in my fifty-three years that I've considered myself a failure, and realized that what I needed was a change in perspective. 

First and foremost, I need to drop the idea, once and for all, that success equals a lot of followers and/or a lot of money. I know that mindset is paralyzing and discouraging, have known it for years. But for personal reasons I won't get into, it's been next to impossible to rip the deeply rooted belief out of my soul. But for my own sanity, I need to. And I finally decided to do the inner work necessary to get it done.

My first step is to define success, in part, as having achieved something most people never do. I've written over thirty novels. I've given birth to a child and, along with my husband, raised him to be a decent young adult. I've stayed married to the same man for eighteen years, despite going through issues in our relationship that would send many couples to divorce court. Including Christian couples. 

I succeeded in holding onto the same teaching job until I got pregnant thirteen years into my career, in a school district with a notoriously high turnover rate. And though I know that until I get to heaven, I won't know the full extent of the positive impact I had on the lives of all the children who walked through my classroom door, I do realize that I made at least a small difference in each one.

I know that if I wasn't here, my husband and son would struggle. And not just because they'd have to do their own laundry and prepare their own meals. So somehow, despite my mistakes and shortcomings, I've succeeding in forming a small family with tight bonds, who love, care for, and depend on each other.

I've wildly succeeded in learning about nutrition and healthy living, and thereby in creating a healthy home for my husband and son. 

A second part of my new definition of success is about personal fulfillment and serving others. If I work on a YouTube channel, or write a book, I am successful if it brings me and/or others joy in some measure. For example, you're watching this video. If I help you in even a small way, I've succeeded with this channel. That's the way I've decided to see it.

See, the success-failure thing is simply a matter of perspective. In everything we do, there's always somebody better than us, and there's always somebody worse than us. Nobody can be good at everything, and when you find one of those things you're not good at, consider yourself at having succeeded in the discovery, and being one step closer to living a more simple, more fulfilling life where you're not trying to be a super hero, but just the best you that you can be.

In every encounter you have with another person, if you strive to be positive and encouraging, you succeed at helping the world become a better place. Even if you hate your job, if you do it well, it ultimately ends up helping people in some way.

Okay, unless you're a hitman for hire. But, let's not get off track here. 

The fact of the matter is, when you're full of real joy and peace, you don't give a hoot about the world's definition of success. You find true joy and peace by connecting with your Creator, and learning to walk moment by moment with Him. I teach you the best way to do this in my free ebook, So Long Stress. 

Even though I sometimes still struggle with following the principles I lay out in that book, I'm telling you, I would be much worse off today than I am if I hadn't begun applying them to my life. 

Want to hear a real success story? I've succeeded at staying alive, even though there have been many times I wanted to check out of this life. Because I know that feelings are fickle and temporary, but the truth that God wants me lasts forever.

Peace to you, and may blessings abound in every area of your life.

I Think I Finally Get The Ridiculous Misunderstandings in Romance Novels

 

As a reader of clean romance, I have been continually frustrated with the misunderstandings that many romance authors create for their two main characters, the big misunderstanding that is meant to pull them apart.

Of course, some of these misunderstandings – many of them, perhaps – really and truly are ridiculous, arbitrarily pulled out of the air by an author desperate to create drama and lacking the skill or patience to think of how to do so in a way that won’t make the reader roll their eyes.

In other words, the misunderstanding is unrealistic from anyone’s point of view.

However, the other day I realized that perhaps an equal number of these misunderstandings make perfect sense… to neurotypical people.

I am not neurotypical. I am autistic. I want people to speak to me with directness, no beating around the bush or polite white lies. And if I had a friend whom I knew could potentially get deceived by a former colleague, I would tell that friend outright, even right in front of the colleague, if necessary. And I wouldn’t care one whit about hurting the former colleague’s feelings. If they were a jerk known for making new friends, then using them and wringing them out like old rags when they were through, I would warn my friend about it right in front of the person.

Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t anyone? Jerks and con artists should be called out on their jerkhood so that they can stop victimizing people.

The scene that started it all.

That’s why, in a recent novel that I read, I got ticked off at the male protagonist. David’s old boss, Martin, had shown up to some corporate ball. Martin was notorious for stealing women away from the men who loved them, using them, then tossing them away, causing heartbreak all around.

So when Martin made a comment, out of Ellie’s earshot, about her beauty, David made it sound like he and Ellie were just friends and co-workers, at the ball as part of their job. He knew that if he let Martin have an inkling about his real feelings for Ellie, Martin would go after her and end up hurting her.

At that point, Ellie didn’t know how David felt about her, either. She only knew that she’d fallen for him sometime ago.

What happened was, Ellie was returning from the restroom at the time and overheard David’s callous remark. Instead of rushing to explain what Martin was about, David remained polite and simply introduced them.

Of course, after Martin was out of earshot, David tried to explain to Ellie, but in her mind he was too late. She refused to let him speak. Understandably so.

My autistic brain doesn’t get that kind of cow poop. Why are we worried about hurting the feelings of someone who is not only not a friend, but also a living turd? Who made the rule that you had to be polite when someone’s life might be at stake?

Then, I realized: it's a brain thing.

However, as I’ve been learning about how the autistic brain works and thinks, I’ve come to realize that one of the major reasons that autistic people struggle to make and keep friends is that they think literally. White lies aren’t part of literal thinking, or literal speech. All the social niceties and games that neurotypicals play for the sake of keeping the peace are also beyond the scope of literal thinking. This is why neurotypical people tend to consider autistic people as rude.

Blunt honesty hurts their feelings. If someone’s feelings are hurt, then by default the person who spoke the truthful words must be rude.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some things are unkind and unloving to say, true though they may be. But even if we autistics judge a certain truth not to be unkind, we learn to keep our mouths shut. We put on neurotypical masks so that we can make and keep friends. We learn what neurotypical people consider to be insulting or offensive, and we refrain from speaking our mind.

And it’s stressful. Very stressful.

Many other autistics, like my middle sister, never mask and say exactly what’s on their mind. Ironically, until I started to be too tired to mask a few years ago – especially until I discovered that I’m autistic – I considered that sister to be tactless and rude.

Now I know the truth. She’s never been capable of playing the social niceties game.

Back to romance novels. I now understand that my frustrations with the kind of misunderstanding I illustrated above have come from my brain being autistic. From now on, I will read such misunderstandings with better understanding.

That is, I will understand that the author is writing from a neurotypical point of view.

I guess I’ll never set the pond on fire with my romance stories, because I can’t make my characters flat-out lie for the sake of protecting a jerk. For the sake of creating tension and drama.

Even though I get it, really, I don’t get it.

You've Got Love All Wrong

Love. In any language, it's the most positive word that has ever existed. Scientists have even discovered that speaking the word can transform energy fields, even the molecular structure of water. 

Everyone thinks they know what love is. 

Most of them are wrong. 

Including most Christians. 

I have ample evidence to back up this claim. In Western society, if you ask most couples why they got married, they will respond with, "We fell in love." Eighteen years ago, I would have given the same response. But once you are with someone for a number of years, that feeling of being "in love" dminishes. Often, it disappears altogether.

This is the point where many people get divorced, claiming that they no longer love  their spouse.

Before I go on, I want to make it perfectly clear that I don't believe that anyone should remain in a marriage where the spouse turns out to be an abuser, a cheater, or an addict who refuses to rehabilitate. I'm talking only about people who walk away from a marriage, from the vows they made to God, simply because they lost that lovin' feeling.

And that gets us to the crux of the problem.

Most people believe that love is a feeling. Even if you have sat in a Sunday morning service and been told otherwise, chances are high that you persist in acting on the belief that love is a feeling. I understand why. For hundreds of years, cultures around the world have taught that the emotions surrounding romance, and that feelings of affection, whether toward one's children, friends, or pets, are equivalent to love. 

Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, brain researchers now know that the feeling of being "in love" is nothing more than a physiological reaction that occurs in the amygdala. This is the same part of the brain responsible for our basic instincts, such as feeling fear when facing an enemy, or anger when your life has been inconvenienced, or excitement when you're presented with a potentially big and positive opportunity.

In other words, the feeling of falling in love is not spiritual. It's not a sign from God that this person is "the one." It's a primitive response to a person whom you instinctively sense could make healthy babies with you. That is it. 

Now that I've destroyed my writing career by ruining romance novels for you...😉

 ...let's explore the truth about love. God so desired for you to understand it, that He inspired one of the original apostles to pen an entire chapter about it in the New Testament. It's found in the book of First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and is commonly known as "the love chapter." The Apostle Paul defines love as follows:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in inquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never fails.... [1 Corinthians 13:4-8a]

I ask you: where in that passage is there the slightest hint that love is a feeling or an emotion? The answer is, nowhere. This passage reveals that love is action, action the results from a state of perfect peaceful being.

You might say, "Emily, those verses are talking about the agape love, the unconditional love that God has for people. We mere human beings are incapable of that kind of perfection."

I completely agree. Mere human beings, in their current fallen state, are incapable of that kind of perfection. But human beings who have connected with their heavenly Father have the power within to produce that kind of love. I would dare to say that even atheists who believe that living by the Golden Rule have the ability to show real love to a certain extent. They have been, after all, created in the image of God as much as any Christian has.

But living a life completely free of sin, in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit every second of every day, is not the issue at stake here. What I want you to understand - what the world needs you to understand, especially if you call yourself a Christian - is that love is not a feeling. It has nothing to do with physical intimacy. Rather, love is the Golden Rule in action, but not from a sense of duty or obligation. Not from a sense of "I should" or "I have to." Instead, it's the natural outflow from a heart that desires to please God in all things. 

I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with wanting or feeling the pleasurable buzz that comes from romance. There's nothing wrong with feeling affection for other people. But in the ideal world, these feelings and desires should be grounded in a firm understanding of true love. Then, and only then, can the romance and affection be free of selfishness and manipulation.

Peace to you, and may blessing abound in every area of your life. 

And before you go, share in the comments a time when you experienced real love at the hand of another person.

 

I Wrote Another Novel; Here’s How I’m Planning to Avoid Burnout in the Future

 In the blog post I wrote this past June, I confessed that I might be through with writing novels.

Well.

A few days ago, I completed the first book in a new Christian holiday romance series. The 65,000 words took me about five weeks to write. As usual, the task began to feel like pulling teeth after about 30,000 words. As usual, I plowed through.

But this time, I didn’t resent the time. This time, I didn’t end up utterly hating the story and never wanting to see so much as a single word from it again.

Why? There were two things different this time around.

I understood my brain.

This is the first novel I’ve written while having an understanding of my brain. Knowing that I have ADHD, when I got to the notorious “halfway point,” I realized that I didn’t really hate the story. Nor did I think that I’d missed my calling, that I was going against God’s will by writing novels.

Instead, I realized that my brain had gotten bored with the story and wanted to do something different. I kept working on the novel every day until I felt like I was going to explode with the need for something different. And then, I took a day off.

Just one day.

I listened to somebody else’s novel. I watched YouTube. I walked around outside with no other aim than to be in nature.

If I’d needed to, I would have taken more days off to play. As it happened, the next day, I was able to sit down and get back to it.

Lesson number one: I can continue writing novels as long as, when in the middle of writing one, I give my brain a break to do something different when it’s begging me to.

I understood the cause of my burnout.

Related to that is the second thing that was different this time around. Because I understand my brain better, I figured out why I had my worst novel-writing burnout late last year and early this year.

I didn’t give myself enough time between books.

And my last series was the longest one I’ve ever written – six books, as opposed to my standard four.

Previously, I drove myself to complete a four-book series within a six-month time frame. Or less. I thought a two-week break in between novels was long enough.

Nope.

And my “Christmas Sisters” series being six books long, I pushed myself over the edge with it.

And because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, a couple of months later I pushed myself to write the next two books in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series.

There are other self-published authors who are this prolific, even more so, and can just keep going.

Obviously, they have neurotypical brains.

Either that, or they’re at high risk of being put into a psychiatric institution.

To prevent any level of novel-writing burnout ever again, I decided, before I began writing this last novel, to write only four novels per year. I decided, as well, that I would take a two-month break in between each novel.

I don’t know why it took learning that I have ADHD to figure this out, because I enjoy creating YouTube videos, as well. Why didn’t it ever occur to me to write one novel, then take some time off to create videos?

I enjoy YouTubing so much, in fact, that the more I think about it, the more the idea of becoming a full-time YouTuber appeals to me. But back when I was forcing myself to crank out a minimum of six novels per year, I simply didn’t have the time or creative energy to be both a novelist and a YouTuber. I blamed it on perimenopause, then menopause. I blamed it on aging. I blamed it on my Irlen Syndrome.

The truth was, I’d been working against my brain.

With a full eight weeks in between writing novels, I can create as many videos as I like… including enough videos to upload during the several weeks that I’m writing a novel. Likely as not, most of my future blog posts will consist of YouTube videos, plus any script I wrote for them.

Life is finally starting to feel fun. 😊

Lesson number two: I need to work with my brain, not against it.

Until next time, be blessed!

You MUST Understand This Vital Truth If You Want To Simplify Your Life

 

There's a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin's dad is standing in the aisle of a grocery store, expressing aloud his frustration at the vast amount of choices of peanut butter. In the end, he returns home without any. ... 

While the incident is humorous from the outside, it cleverly touches on one of the greatest dilemmas of a first-world lifestyle. ... That is, how too many choices can paralyze us. ... Researchers have actually confirmed this phenomenon, finding that when confronted with more than a small handful of options, most people can't make a decision. ... They simply don't know which one would be the best, and would rather back away than choose something that would end up being only second-best. ... 

I know, what a great problem to have, right? We're a spoiled lot if the worst thing that will happen to us during the day is being unable to choose between low-fat potato chips and unsalted. ...

But the phenomenon extends far beyond our grocery store choices. ... 

There are over a dozen hot social media sites, all clamoring for our attention, each promising that if you spend enough time on the site, connecting with enough people, sharing enough of your life, than you will benefit... Dating websites offer a plethora of profiles of potential partners... And if you Google, "how to make money online" or "how to make money from home," the results that come up offer an almost endless list of possibilities...

Then thereare the hundreds, even thousands, of gadgets and household items that pop up everywhere in ads. Worse, if you're online, they're more and more tailored to your personal preferences and lifestyle, making them increasingly more difficult to resist...

All of these opportunities pull at us with their promises to make out lives better, or their subtle threats that if you ignore them, you'll miss out on something big. ... Those of us who resist them are constantly dealing with the low-level stress that comes from the work of having to constantly push away temptation. Those of us who give in eventually discover that the detriments to all those sparkling objects considerably outweigh their benefits...

They suck away our precious time... They put a strain on our bank accounts... They decrease our ability to be creative and our desire to reach out and genuinely connect with others... They increase our anxiety and depression by exposing us to half-truths and outright lies that make the world feel like a scary place to live... They can even lead to broken relationships and broken hearts...

Ultimately, the abundance of opportunities lead to overwhelm and confusion, which increase our stress levels to the point of ill health. And if we feel pressured to make a choice, and make the wrong one, more and worse calamities can arise...

So today, I want to challenge and encourage you. The challenge is twofold. First, I challenge you to make the decision to purposely cut yourself off from at least some of the voices and images that are inducing the fear of missing out... Second, I challenge you to immerse yourself in real life, and in face-to-face connections. If you take on this challenge, you won't waste time, money, and energy chasing false hopes... 

My encouragement is simple: ... you can do it...

Peace to you, and may blessing abound in every area of your life.

Will I Ever Write Another Novel?

 In my last post, the one where I revealed that I am autistic, I more than hinted that this discovery has impacted my “writing career,” and promised to tell you how and why.

So, here I go.

AuDHD, anyone?

Before I get into all that, I need to explain that in addition to symptoms of autism, I also display/experience enough symptoms of ADHD that if I wanted to, I could carry the label of AuDHD. It’s what the neurodivergent community has dubbed (with some affection, I think) those of us who are dual-diagnosed with autism and ADHD.

I don’t really care for the label, because it’s misleading. I don’t think taking an interest in many things displays “hyperactivity,” and my brain isn’t attention deficit. On the contrary, it tries to pay attention to too many things at once!

But those traits of needing novelty with some frequency, and having a brain that wants to go everywhere all at once, make writing a novel a huge challenge.

I enjoy writing stories, but…

While I’ve always enjoyed writing stories, I also enjoy sitting down and playing my guitar, singing, and writing non-fiction to teach what I’ve learned.

I enjoy gardening, wish I could find the time to buff up my Spanish and sign language while learning other languages, and love to learn about nature.

Oh, and over the years, I've probably started AT LEAST ten - yes, ten! - YouTube channels. Right now, I'm keeping my gardening channel updated and am going to start a channel where I talk about neurodiversity, both sharing my journey and helping neurodivergent families live in greater harmony. I'd recently started an inspirational channel and comedy channel, but think I'm going to ditch both for a while, if not forever. 

Is your brain spinning yet?

In other words, for the past ten years, sitting down and making myself write 1500-3000 words per day has been a kind of slow torture, because I haven’t had time to pursue all of my other interests. And because my brain insists on novelty, it wants me to complete any given project as quickly as possible, which means I’ve been focusing most of my time, energy, and attention on whatever story line I’ve been writing. That means that by the time I finish even a short novel, I’m so burned out that I don’t want to pursue my other interests. So I end up wasting time listening to other people’s novels and/or watching entertaining YouTube videos.

And then after a week or two of vegging out, I push myself to write the next novel because if you want to make money with self-publishing, you have to write series and you have to keep your fans happy.

Last fall, I got sick of the merry-go-round. I was completely burned out with writing novels. Completely sick of the whole self-publishing scene.

At the time, I didn’t know the root cause. Now, I do.

I haven’t been true to myself.

I cringed, writing that sentence. “Be true to yourself” has become a cliché that the world seems to have interpreted as, “Be as self-centered and selfish as you want, because you deserve it.” However, when I use the phrase here, I’m talking about my natural bent.

Part of my natural bent is not to spend thirty days and more on a writing project.

Without exception, with every novel I’ve ever written I’ve wanted to quit at around twenty thousand words. A story is fun up until then, and at that point, I’m ready to move on to something else. Why? It’s the way my brain is wired. I crave novelty, changing things up with some frequency.

I’ve tried writing novellas and short stories, but somehow, the stories in my head are always a lot longer. I want to put in a lot more detail than those styles allow. And some would say that it’s a lot harder to write a good short story than to write a good novel.

Why not write more words a day and be able to finish a novel within a couple of weeks? Besides the thing about wanting to be able to a variety of things during the day, I have Irlen Syndrome, otherwise known as Visual Processing Disorder. Just writing 500 words at one time makes me tired; writing more at one time puts me at risk of straining my eyes, especially if I do it multiple times a day.

I can, to a large extent, write without looking, but even if I don’t end up with a ton of mistakes to fix (as task which DOES require looking, no way around it), the fact remains that for every half hour I spend working on a story, it’s a half hour I could spend working on one of my other hobbies or interests.

And when I ignore those other interests, novel-writing burnout happens more quickly. So I might as well have written less over a longer period of time.

Which I hate doing, because I get tired of the story when I do that.

Anyone seeing a catch-22 here?

Then there’s the autistic side of me.

I’ve tried really hard over the years to create what I used to call “normal” characters. Now I realize that they are characters I was trying to put into a neurotypical mold. In other words, I was trying to create people that I simply can’t understand. Women who care about makeup and fashion and babies; men who ooze confidence and boldness, and who can have a long-lasting conversation.

Want to know where I got the idea for Allison Whitlock of my “Pine Mountain Estates” series? She’s the woman I’ve always envied: calm and in control, even in the face of trauma and tragedy. Nurturing. Compassionate toward strangers. Hospitable.

Though I like her character, my favorite characters by far are those I’ve modeled, unknowingly, after people with neurodivergent brains.

Sheila Carson and Hank Johnson of The Envelope.

Michelle Dennis and Daniel West of Snuggling With The Christmas Chef.

Tiger O’Keefe in Talia’s Tiger.

Erin Halley in His First Choice.

Rachel Polowsky in Worth the Risk.

Tommy Ward in Pine Mountain Dreams.

But most women don’t relate to women who hate wearing makeup and shopping, and who’d rather spend a weekend researching some science topic than going out with “the girls,” so I’ve tried to write neurotypical characters as much as I could get myself to.

And it’s been really, really hard. And…they end up being the characters I find boring and mundane. In fact, my three least favorite books, the first in “Choices and Chances” and “Christmas Sisters,” and the second in “Rock Star Husbands,” are my least favorite, I recently realized, because both the main characters are neurotypical. By the reviews, readers disagree with me. But most of my readers are neurotypical, so they easily relate to those characters which I struggle to create.

Then there’s the marketing side of self-publishing. As an autistic person, I find maintaining and communicating to an e-mail list intimidating, some days downright frightening.

The reason is two-fold: first, I hate doing anything social, and e-mailing a bunch of people at a time feels social. Second, as is the case with many neurodivergent people, I am extremely sensitive to rejection. Every single time I’ve sent an e-mail to my subscribers, I’ve been afraid that someone would e-mail me back a scathing criticism.

Having received a comment on my blog like the one I share here has made me even more skittish.

The autistic side of me also cares more about learning and teaching than about writing fantasies (which any story with a happy ending is, really; life rarely ties up all loose ends with a neat bow, and in a way that satisfies everyone).

Will I ever write another novel?

That all brings us back to the original question. The answer is…

…I. Don’t. Know.

When I wrote this post about where I wanted to take my writing business, I was already questioning whether I truly wanted to continue writing novels. Not too long before that, I'd been genuinely enthusiastic about putting my Christian thriller and fantasy story ideas onto the proverbial paper. And I had committed to myself to write two more novels in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series to bring it to a close, and bring the total number of books in the series up to nine.

But now, I don’t know. In the past, I’ve written more than one blog post in which I declared I was done writing novels. Eventually, the story bug came back to bite me, and I returned to writing. So, it could be I’m simply in the biggest burn-out phase of my writing career.

It could simply be I can’t handle the stress of maintaining a large summer garden AND writing novels at the same time, and by fall I’ll feel like diving back into them again.

Or, it could be that my dream of making a living by writing novels has been misdirected.  Making videos is a lot less stressful, and I love using my gift of acting on my comedy channel, as well as my gift of teaching and desire to encourage on the other channels. I love having more time during the day to do whatever, instead of being chained to writing and editing.

Most of all, I love not having to worry that I’m a few minutes away from a severe eye strain. I love not being tired all day because I spent most of the morning writing.

Will I ever write another novel? At the moment, my mind says, “No.” But I’m not God. I don’t know what even the near future holds.

One thing I DO know: I love to write. Therefore, while I’m not writing novels, I’m going to be writing a whole lot more blog posts.

About whatever I want to write about. Autism. Homeschooling. Women’s health beyond fifty. Gardening. Maybe even self-publishing.

You have been updated. Sorry and you’re welcome.