🌲 Portland has been in the news lately, and this piece by journalist Leah Sottile really captured what I've been feeling about the stories being told about my current home town.

In her poignant essay about the disconnect between living in Portland vs. seeing it portrayed on the news, Sottile writes, "Since the President trained his eye on our city again, I’ve come to realize that there is a deep chasm between what lived reality is here, and what people want to believe is happening. These are the two Portlands. I live in Real Portland. The other one is Internet Portland. That is a place I don’t understand."

Sottile is a journalist who's spent much of her career covering Portland's history of protest, and I found her take extremely enlightening—and hopeful.

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📣 I absolutely adore the way Chad R. Allen reframes the author platform in this piece for Jane Friedman's blog: Why Your Book Isn’t Enough (and Why That’s Good News). Allen echoes something I often tell authors who say they just want to write their book in peace, without the pressure to show up online or build an audience. Yes, your book should stand on its own. But if your goal is to really make an impact with your story, your book is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how you can share your message and make a difference in the lives of your readers.

⏰ A conversation with a friend last night led me down a rabbit hole about productivity today. He quit his day job earlier this year to write fiction full time, and confessed that he wasn't nearly as productive as he thought he'd be. "I guess I thought my fiction-writing time would expand to fill the time I used to be at work," he said. "But I haven't been able to do that."

Spoiler alert: none of us can.

I used to beat myself up about not spending more hours in deep work mode, but when you think about the typical office worker's schedule, they're getting an hour or two—maybe three MAX—of actual work done each day. The rest is taken up with meetings, admin, futzing around, and all the other stuff that fills in the cracks of our days.

That's why schedule design for creative workers is far more important than hours spend Doing A Thing. I find that I tend to have two 90-120 minute chunks of deep work time each day—either both in the morning, or one in the morning, one in the afternoon. When I protect those, I get a ton done. When I let other things creep in... well.

If you've never done an energy mapping exercise to see where your creative peaks and valleys lie, I'm a huge fan of Charlie Gilkey's heat mapping exercise.

Telling Your Story from the Middle

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That’s how I ended my very first Substack post back in September of 2023. I called the fledgling project From Chaos with Love as a nod to my first creative productivity book From Chaos to Creativity—and as acknowledgement that no productivity system could fully erase the chaos.

I wrote that post only two months after my eye injury, before I understood exactly how long it would take me to recover not just physically, but emotionally and mentally.

I figured I was good to go! I had a story to tell—with a beginning, middle, and end! It even had useful lessons and morals I could share with my audience!

I was wrong.

—> Read the rest on the Story Rebel blog

📚 Are you joining the hundreds of thousands of people who are writing a novel next month? Nanowrimo may be officially done, but dozens of other writing challenges have sprung up in its absence. (Editor Alina Wells has a fairly comprehensive list on her website.)

🏴‍☠️ If you are planning to push your storytelling chops in November, why not get clarity with a 1:1 coaching call? I offer a 90-minute Story Clarity Call for authors and entrepreneurs with a story to tell—as well as a larger package to help you make sense of your manuscript and get momentum. Details on how to work with me are here.

🎉 Oh look, I have a new book out! My newest book for writers is From Solo to Supported: The Writer's Guide to Finding Community. In celebration, I'm running a deal if you buy all four of the books in that series—the bundle is only $40 + shipping. And newsletter subscribers always get 10% off my online store. Just use the code THANKYOUNEWSLETTER.