🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How is your week going?

I am now 25 weeks pregnant, meaning I am just 3 weeks shy of the third trimester and a baby coming near Christmas. It’s a little terrifying to be on the brink of this major change.

But I know that creating this process will evolve me into the person that I am meant to become, like all good creative projects do (more on that below).

So far I have had a lot of energy the past 2 months and have been doing as much as I can to be productive.

But I won’t be feeling like super woman forever. I have never been a morning person–but I notice that it’s getting harder in the mornings to gear up for the day.

Today I promised myself a baked good if I could pack up and get to a cafe as early as possible since all the good treats are gone after around 10.

Then I spent several hours on a Seasonal review including how the last season of summer went, what I learned, what projects I completed or didn’t and what is on the docket for fall ahead.

A seasonal review process really helps me feel like all my ideas for the next 3 months (for writing, for life, for creative projects, for my 2 businesses) are in one place

so I feel less scattered and can make best use of my time and energy.

I really need that right now so I’m glad I got that review done. All I needed was a bribe!

Today I’m sharing an article I posted to my Linkedin newsletter. I like my newsletter there, but I do fear that sometimes my articles don’t make it to enough people.

I really want people to read the article below as it is a message I really believe in.

My business has changed me. Becoming a writer has changed me.

And I have seen over a hundred writers and entrepeneurs enter the door of my virtual coaching office change their lives by following their inspiration and ideas.

So let’s talk about that 🙂

Personal Evolution Through Writing for a Book or Business

​(Article first published on LinkedIn)​

Not to freak you out, but if you are writing for a book or a business, you may have noticed that you have some difficult choices to make:

What are you talking about in your writing?

Who are you talking to in your writing? Who is the writing for?

How are you addressing the person you are talking to? Are you giving them something to relate to?

What is the purpose for your writing? What are you hoping they do next?

You don’t have to make these decisions this second, BUT they are things to think about.

And beyond these wide ranging questions, there are the simple ones:

How do you start?

What word do you put down first, and what word do you put in next….and on and on until you reach the end.

Writing is a sequence of difficult choices for many people, but, to be honest, I often find it extraordinarily easy.

It is that ease that I want to share with my clients, my readers and my community.

Because at its heart, writing is one of the most accessible tools of communication: all you need is a notebook and a pen, or maybe a computer or a phone, if you want to get fancy.

And it offers so many benefits.

Writing has been shown scientifically to improve the way people think and remember, and to even have the power to heal trauma.

Plus, I have seen with my eyes how the written word has connected people from around the world into communities, funded nonprofits, and brought businesses a higher level of success.

But so often, the daunting nature of the choices necessary to write for their book or business causes people to not write much of anything.

There’s another way

I won’t argue with you that writing can be a difficult endeavor.

I know this, I’ve seen it, and I have been there. I’ve also walked along hundreds of writers struggling to write time and time again.

So let’s not belittle the struggle. Let’s not turn it into a story about your personal failing or lack of skill or knowledge, or allow it to be an excuse to give up…as so often the inner critic wants us to do.

Instead, let’s move into the solution. Let’s talk motivation:

If you want to do something really difficult, then it helps to have a good reason for doing it.

So let’s discuss why you should bother pushing through difficulty to create that thing that has been coming to mind:

A book, blog, youtube video, podcast, a class, or marketing for it all.

All these things seem like projects that could be fulfilling, make you money, or serve someone in a deep way…

but what if it could do something bigger, something life-changing?

What if the ideas for your book or business were planted in your mind to help you become more of who you were meant to be?

Change sometimes comes from unexpected sources.

And your ideas may be showing you the way.

I’ve spent over 10+ years coaching and supporting writers and entrepreneurs. I know lives change when you engage your ideas and try to bring them to life.

I’ve seen:

-The article that healed someone’s past.

-The bestselling book that opened doors you couldn’t imagine.

-The class that taught the teacher even more than the students.

My 10+ years in business has changed me, as has the 25 years I’ve spent publishing my writing online.

​In that time, creativity has become my religion. It consists of listening to the ideas that come. (If you missed my last Linkedin article about this, you can find it here.)​

And the point I want to emphasize today is that:

Your book, your business is the spirit guiding you to the next level of who you are meant to become.

Pressure from the Outside

Think about what you’ve been feeling called to work on:

Your business, your book, a blog, a youtube video, a class, a podcast, your marketing…

These are things that may be on your mind, or on your to do list. They are in the realm of ideas right now, as you haven’t fully completed them yet.

Pick one of them. You may see this idea as an extension of your personal self – a way to express what is inside of you, or your gifts, talents, beliefs, and experience.

But I like to think of these ideas for books and business as something else.

They are forces of pressure pushing on you from the outside. They pushing on you to create them.

Ideas don’t have tangible form until you go through the process of creating them, but if it helps you visualize how they exist outside of you, you could imagine them as little thought bubbles or pools of light dancing near your head.

You could imagine them putting pressure on the veil between ideas and reality. Begging you to let them in.

However it helps you to understand, know that you can reach out, touch the idea (so to speak), connect to it, tap into it, and learn from it.

It wants so badly to help you create it into form that it is happy to shower you with love and all the help and support it can muster.

Not love from a desperate place of a child, either, but from the endless love of the most perfect parental figure, someone who wants well for you from a place of total personal detachment of their own needs.

Because in the end, bringing this idea into form is more about you stepping into your purpose than anything else.

You need the heat

The truth is, if it were all up to you–or any of us–if you could choose, you would probably stay the same.

Or you would choose to only grow in certain ways that are comfortable, controllable or make sense to you in your current state of mind. That mind is limited.

The biggest, and probably most positive, sorts of changes that you could undergo often involve outside intervention.

That means a pressure, a push into a new form. Some heat.

And your projects will provide that.

Your book or business will challenge you.

Here are some examples:

1. Your writing for a book, article, or blog will force you to explain things.

Rereading this first draft or thinking about how to put it into words will make you confront the things that do not make sense in your thinking. You’ll work on rewording the things you can’t explain, and find new ways to understand yourself or your work.

You’ll take things to a new level, whether it’s a new way to explain your brilliant ideas, or a new way to understand your past fears.

2. Your business will force you to learn how to ask for help, work through your money fears, talk about money with other people and many other things.

It will be one of the most challenging things that anyone can try to do, and the true reward won’t be financial, it will be who you will become out of it.

3. Anything you want someone to read or to buy will force you to learn how to market.

That will bring up your worst fears about being a fraud, being exposed, being rejected, seeming too much or too little.

You’ll face these fears and overcome them, becoming stronger in the process.

You Must Change to Evolve

If you really want to be successful, you have to change.

To change, you have to go through the process of creating your book or business and following your ideas to the end.

And that means that you have to walk into uncomfortable situations, do hard things, and resist the urge to run away screaming.

In order to make change less painful, and less scary, you have to change. If you don’t bend, you’ll break.

Many people have given up. What makes the people who stay in it different? They learn, they grow, they change.

And there’s something that I recommend that you try. Take on this idea: bringing your creative ideas into life is a collaboration.

It is not all on you. You are not alone. Something is rooting for your success.

Outside forces are shaping you into who you are meant to become.

You still have choices within this process, that’s what makes it collaborative…

But the challenges you face are shaping you, like pressure that turns coal into a diamond.

When you see it that way, it’s a little bit less scary because:

First off, you are not alone and the universe isn’t punishing you. It wants you to succeed.

Secondly, it means that there is no failure. You probably will make mistakes, or have things that do not work out.

But in the end, you’re always going to learn something and grow from it.

You can relax knowing that whatever happens, one way or another you will use the dung that you are given as fertilizer to grow something good.

My Hopes for You

May your creative process not be led by limited thinking.

May you release expectations of perfection, no typos, no stumbles, never looking anything less than cool or professional.

May you learn the concept of “good enough.”

May the success of your endeavors not lock you into a lifestyle of overwork that risks your health and relationships.

May you not be short sighted and reject everything that would give you joy for the opportunity to make or save a few dollars. Don’t lose sight of other factors.

May this creative process you are riding be led by something bigger.

May this adventure remind you of what is truly important to you.

May it help you value everything you have right now in this moment and see the things that are precious.

May you choose to leave limited judgements and anal-retentive impulses in the dust.

May this process of creation help you to become a version of yourself that you will be proud of on your deathbed:

fully alive, appreciative of the beauty in life,

free, creative, & whole.

I truly believe that if you listen for the ideas you are really called to pursue and write, and follow them to their end

then step by step you will find yourself making this alive, and free way of being a consistent part of your reality.

So remember that you always have choices.

And writing and creating is all about choices.

So choose to evolve your writing and your work in the direction of the person you are here to become.

Thanks for reading and have a good day!

-Sofia Wren

Get coached by Sofia

Ready to finally stop feeling overwhelmed or confused?

Consider me the translator between you and your writing ideas for your book or business.

I help you listen to yourself and your ideas so you can know what to do next to finish your projects, and in the process, evolve into the next level of who you are meant to be.

Don’t waste a minute more–know what to do next to write for your book or business as easily as a mermaid swims.

​Click here to read more about my 2 month “Rapid Progress” coaching package.​​

I offer both coaching services, as well as editing for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.

​For questions contact me here.​

Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.

My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

How has your week been?

Quick note:

I got some bad news about Convertkit – the service I use for my emails that I have recommended to others as well. They are raising their rate for me quite a lot in the next month.

Just sharing in case you are one of the people I recommended Convertkit to, as perhaps this is something you are also thinking about.

Since I am planning a maternity leave, I’m not sure I want to pay extra right now…and making a change may mean moving to a whole different email provider.

Whether I stay with Convertkit and downgrade or choose to change providers will be a lot of work.

It means I’ll have to deconstruct all the systems for optins and email sequences and so on that I have built over many years. I will have to copy out a version of everything.

If I do all that, maybe I should just move.

Many people recommend Flodesk which has an unlimited emails plan available only for the next few months…so I’m considering that as an alternative.

If you have recommendations, you like your email provider, let me know and I’ll add it to the stewpot I am mulling over. I need segmentation, sequences and email automations.

But let’s get into what I really want to talk about, continuing a recent theme I’ve been discussing in my emails:

TIME.

Lately I have been going through a lot of introspection, getting clear on how to prioritize because there’s so much to do, so little time.

I’ve been seriously reevaluating my expectations of myself this week.

​For example, when I really sat down to journal and reflect on ALL the things that feel like they are hanging over my head,

I realized that there was a huge writing project from 2021 that I still expected myself to go back to somehow.

I didn’t even realize that expectation was there, but it has been. Consciously, I don’t even want to do it. Subsconsciously, I’ve had a hard time letting it go.

Something that has finally helped me to “ungoal” from this project is some recent knowledge I’ve gained from the last week of introspection.

My Why

I now know what my deeper WHY is for writing.

I have two main reasons why I want to write these days:

A. To share about what I know and my experience as a service to others in a way that supports my business, helping people write for books or business.

B. To write as personal development for myself, i.e. for my own support, learning, self care and growth.

This particular project fits neither category, so I decided it is firmly going on the shelf for the forseeable future. Until things change I will not expect to make progress on it.

What a relief.

The Deep Why

When you know your deeper WHY and what you value, it makes it easier to prioritize.

And you can stop expecting yourself to do everything and anything.

It’s not just me, I see finding your WHY and clarity on your values works for other people, too.

I had a client come to me over the past few months with a lot of ideas and difficulty juggling them, choosing between them and maintaining long-term motivation on them.

Over these past 2 months talking with her, I’ve seen a groundedness emerge as we explored the WHY of all the ideas, and determined what is really most important.

Going Deep

Everyone has different values, we all have different reasons WHY we want to write or pursue different projects.

But the thing is, often, we just think about them. We think about how to get into motion, so we don’t really think that deeply about WHY we want to do them.

One of the things I have been really good at doing with my clients is helping them to nonjudgmentally evaluate ideas and their motivations for pursuing each of them. This helps them know what to do next or what to do first.

This illuminates things lurking under the surface. Often, people reveal that some of their ideas were subconsciously motivated by things that they don’t consciously value.

It’s human nature to do things subconsciously because it will please other people.

But consciously, many of us are aware that people pleasing isn’t that great of a reason to spend a whole lot of time on things that don’t feel fun or exciting otherwise.

It’s not that people are dumb not to immediately realize that these ideas are a waste of time from the get go,

it’s just that the world is fast and it is noisy.

It can be difficult to take the time, and have the space, to sit and reflect and evaluate different ideas and put them under the microscope in a new way.

To ask WHY? What would I get out of finishing this, really?

Once you finally have that quiet to poke and prod, and develop new shades of self awareness, only then can you realize–

“Oh, hey, I really only wanted to do this to raise my value in the eyes of other people. That means this is a form of people pleasing and I don’t feel like this is in alignment with the way I want to move in the world….”

And then it is entirely a no brainer to just let the whole project go.

I hope this is relatable to you, because the truth is we all do this.

I definitely uncovered my own version of it this week!

Try it

Explore the deeper why for your projects and ideas and what is motivating them.

Is there anything you are doing primarily to please someone else or have them think positively of you?

Take some time to write about it and explore, and I guarantee you’ll end up saving a LOT of time.

Because you really can’t control what other people think, right? So you’ll probably need to either dig deeper to find another reason to do that project so you stay motivated OR find another project to focus on.

Maybe you’ll be able to let some things go and remove them from your plate. But regardless, you’ll be able to focus on the things that really matter to you, and not just to someone else.

Get coached by Sofia

Ready to finally stop feeling overwhelmed or confused?

Get coached by Sofia Wren for more clarity, flow and ease so you can make faster progress on writing for your book or business.

Click here to read more about Sofia’s most popular coaching service.

Sofia offers both coaching and editing services for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.

For questions about editing, and coaching, just send me (Sofia) a reply to this email.

Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.

My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

How has your week been?

Time feels like it is moving fast! We are already in September, and if you are like me, that feels absolutely insane. But here we are.

I managed to go to the pool 3 times this past weekend, since it’ll be the last time I can go this year…and who knows how we will make it happen in 2026 with a baby!

Today I want to share this video I made. I made it for a problem I have sometimes and I am sure others do, too.

When I’m really busy some times I can get my blinders on.

Which is too bad because sometimes that means I shoo away really brilliant ideas!

Let’s remember not to over do it and keep some creativity alive this week ahead.

New Video

I’d like to give you a permission slip to get creative today!

Often, we get creative impulses that give us a sense of resistance.

When you get inspired to write, or create, this can look like thinking,

“Oh that would be a waste of time to do that today. I have things I need to do today instead. I said I was going to XYZ.”

Is it a waste?

What is the item on your list you are REALLY procrastinating?

Is it having the freedom to follow a spontaneous idea? Or should you really buckle down and stay on track with your other task?

Tapping is a great goal to help you find clarity on what your soul is really trying to tell you about what you should do next–

This video will help you find a balance between staying “on track” and following your latest creative impulse.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

​Make progress now with this Creative Permission Slip video

Get coached by Sofia

Ready to finally stop feeling overwhelmed or confused?

Get coached by Sofia Wren for more clarity, flow and ease so you can make faster progress on writing for your book or business.

Click here to read more about Sofia’s most popular coaching service.

Sofia offers both coaching and editing services for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.

For questions about editing, and coaching, just send me (Sofia) a reply to this email.

Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.

My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

I had a lovely moment this weekend where I checked something off of my summer bucket list:

I went to a local lake and watched the sunset go down over it with my husband.

It’s just what I needed to celebrate the transition from summer into fall that is happening all around me, cool breezes included.

And I also have been fighting off the recurrent little voice in my head that keeps telling me to hurry, hurry, hurry.

Do you ever have the feeling like there’s just not enough time to do everything you need to do?

A book, blog, youtube video, podcast, email series, a class, marketing it all. You might have a ton of ideas and things that you want to bring to life.

This stress about time keeps boomeranging back to me lately!

Especially since at this point I am 5 months pregnant!

I had a rough first trimester with brainfog, fatigue and nausea so I didn’t get so many things done that I wanted to in spring and early summer, and I have felt behind ever since.

There are things I want to write, projects for my two businesses I need to complete, classes to make new salespages for, etc. etc. etc.

Now that I have a bit more energy and mental clarity, my capacity to do things feels temporary and vulnerable.

Out of the blue, I sometimes am overcome with so much exhaustion that I can barely keep my eyes open.

And I feel like a new symptom or chaotic life event is going to crop up and dash all my plans any day now so I better get things done right now before that happens.

And of course when the baby comes sometime around Christmas, a lot more will change.

But the thing is—THIS URGENT FEELING IS NOT NEW.

Feeling a sense of needing to rush or hurry up is not unique to my being pregnant.

I have regularly felt some version of anxiety about time my whole life!

And so if you are feeling that sense of rush, then we are in similar scenarios.

The Power of Noticing Your Blindspots

To understand what I mean that this feeling is not unique to me being pregnant, let me back up for a second.

I know that a need for speed is one of my blindspots because I wrote it down and I regularly take time to work with my notes.

It’s really my super weapon.

This week I felt the seasons changing, so I felt compelled to look at what I consider to be my sacred texts:

my periodic reviews of the past week, month, and seasons.

The habit of reviewing the past has been totally lifechanging, and I always refer back to what I write about how the week, month or season is going as well as my intentions for the next time segment.

I keep the worksheets I made to do this in a disc bound notebook I call my “Get Fired” book, or my motivational commonplace book.

​(You can get the review worksheets here if you want your own copy!)

I also archive them digitally in my second brain which is in Obsidian, so it’s all available to me quickly.

(My classes about how I use Obsidian to digitally organize my ideas and notes are coming back later in the fall.)

When I went back to the notes I took in January about my plans for the year, I saw it in black and white:

one of my major goals for 2025 was to put myself first by taking my time.

And why was this a goal?

Because rushing and getting anxious is a pernicious pattern I have noticed over the past few years.

It became very obvious since 2021 as I started digitizing my notes and journals and noticing patterns among them, like how often I said I was stressed about time or feeling behind.

Getting things done in the time I have can be a huge source of anxiety for me, and it is not new.

Of course, when I am in a rush and feeling all the urgency, this goal of TAKING MY TIME feels totally impossible.

Mindful Exploration

But this week, I decided to try to be more mindful so I have been sitting with the feeling of needing to rush and be busy. Exploring it. Questioning it. Musing about it.

Am I sometimes busy as a way to feel more control in the face of uncontrollable change? Probably.

Does hurrying up to do something help me avoid sitting with deeper feelings that I need to process? Sure.

I have been popping up the hood to look under these things, writing about them and even doing a live video conversation about it.

Finding a Middle Path

I can’t just sit decide to do nothing all fall, but I also can’t run myself into the ground rushing to do everything without ever taking a breath.

There has to be a MIDDLE way.

And my goal is to find that.

Because it is true that I AM busy, and I do have limited time,

but getting into a frenzy because of this will only result in more anxiety, less control and less clarity about what is really important to get done in the first place.

I feel like a part of my mind has so much trouble accepting the idea that going quickly can actually be more work and be less effective…but it’s really important for me to slow down.

Why it Matters

For years I have been saying this:

If you are digging for treasure, it is more important to get clear on where the X marks the spot is on your treasure map, before you start digging a deep hole really fast.

When I feel a hurry energy, a part of me just wants to get moving into action.

But what if I am digging a deep hole in the wrong place?

Throwing all my time and energy into the wrong tasks?

There are MANY things I could be doing with my time. Even if I do it quickly, I still can’t do all the things.

I need strategic thinking to make the best possible use of my time as a writer, creator, entrepreneur and human.

And that requires higher level thinking, and

a connection to my whole self not just my fight or flight system.

I can’t have that mental clarity if I am always in GO MODE,

frantically focused on checking off every little tiny thing on my to do list like my life depends on it.

I have to take a breather, get perspective so I can really know what are the biggest most important things to tackle next are.

Ungoaling

Many people tell me they are faced by this same conundrum of how to tackle all their ideas in the limited time they have.

A lot of my clients talk to me about it.

-Should they do the book now, or start with a blog?

-Then there is the website, and they want to start posting on social media…

-But what about an email list, or networking groups?

-They also have a youtube channel or a podcast they want to start, so when is a good time to do that?

-Which thing should they do in their business first, the 1-1 coaching, or launch 10 classes about XYZ things?

I’ve made it part of my job as a writing and business marketing coach to talk people through their ideas,

and really explore WHY each idea matters to them so that they can find clarity and clear direction before running into action and burning out.

A lot of times after we talk, they have decided some goals don’t make the cut.

The reason for doing them was not powerful enough, or maybe it was that they subconsciously wanted to impress people.

Once they realize that their motivation for some ideas isn’t really coming from a healthy or authentic desire, they find that they don’t really care about doing them right now.

I call this ungoaling, releasing the pressure merely to do things because you said you would do them before…

Often goals sloof away like old skin cells under a loofah. And you can leave them behind.

Me and You = Same Boat

If you are feeling pressed for time. I feel you.

I’m on the journey with you.

And I don’t believe the answer is to tell you that you really can do it all at once, because I don’t think that is true.

I think we just have to be honest about our limits and try to make the hard choices about what really matters to get done with the time that we have now.

Hopefully that doesn’t mean sacrificing everything that you DESIRE to do, just to tackle what you need to do.

Let’s allow ourselves some whimsy, some beauty, some peace, some space.

But avoid overly high expectations that are either setting you up to fail, or making you too stressed to function.

I hope you enjoy the video I made talking more about all of this as I share time in this cycle of reevaluation, ungoaling and refocusing

as I, too, try to make the use of my time and energy for important projects,

as well as take a deep breath in the space I have now before I enter the cave of motherhood in a few months.

I’m on this creative journey of living life and needing to prioritize, just like everyone else.

And I hope my one life is not all about being busy, and that I do create memories and moments that not only make me satisfied with what I got done, but also make me smile.

And I wish for that for you, too. 🙂

New Video

​Feeling Rushed? On Reclaiming Your Time and Creativity

Are you constantly feeling behind, stressed about time, and struggling to pursue your true passions?

Join me as I share my personal journey of navigating time pressure, pregnancy, and the challenge of balancing responsibilities with creative dreams.

In this raw and honest conversation, I’ll explore:

-Why feeling “rushed” is a deeper pattern, not just a temporary stress

-Accepting your limits and responding to new information to prioritize

-Giving yourself permission to change goals or “ungoal”

-The power of allowing yourself “time-wasting” creative outlets and how they save you time on everything else.

-Practical insights for reclaiming your time and energy

Watch the new video

Get coached by Sofia

Ready to finally stop feeling overwhelmed or confused?

Get coached by Sofia Wren for more clarity, flow and ease so you can make faster progress on writing for your book or business.

Click here to read more about Sofia’s most popular coaching service.

Sofia offers both coaching and editing services for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.

For questions about editing, and coaching, just send me (Sofia) a reply to this email.

Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.

My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

I spent the last two weeks trying to catch up on work because I had a cold in early August.

That means having some “redos” of events that were going to be near my birthday.

So it’s been very busy, but some fun things are going on, too.

In this email, I am sharing:

• 3 recommendations for things I’ve been enjoying this season
• 1 article I wrote this week.

Here are the Recommendations:

1. Movie

Okay, this is cheesy, but for my birthday I was excited to see Freakier Friday.​

All I wanted were some nostalgia vibes, as it’s a sequel to a Lindsey Lohan movie that came out in 2003.

Well, I would say nostalgia vibes were achieved.

It’s not a high brow movie by any means, but it made me laugh and I’d still recommend it with 4 stars.

2. Book

Recently, my friend and I were reminiscing about being teens at the beach together, reading fantasy novels side by side.

I recommended a fantasy novel I’ve enjoyed recently. It is a single, stand alone novel, so no commitment to read a whole series.

This is set at a wizarding college in England. Think Oxford plus magic vibes.

I would say it is “New Adult,” not YA, not for children but not super dark or intense like The Magicians.

It got a solid 5 stars from me.

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry

3. Game

I love this new book-related video game that I picked up, called Tiny Bookshop. 

“Leave everything behind and open a tiny bookshop by the sea in this ambient narrative management game.

Stock your tiny bookshop with different books and items, set up shop in scenic locations, and run your cosy second-hand bookshop while getting to know the locals.”

5 Stars from me.

It’s easy to play for either a ten minute chunk or way longer, depending on how much time you have.

Worth checking out!

And now for a deeper topic that I hope inspires you to write and create!

New Article

The Secret to Creative Clarity by Sofia Wren

Learn how to gain clarity on your book, business and writing projects by letting them guide you.

Read this article on Linkedin to make faster progress today.

People come to me about their creative projects: books, business blogs, articles, emails, sales pages, marketing launches, websites, posts, and videos.

Often, they meet with me because they have been struggling. They have a lot of questions and choices to sort through in order to make progress for their book or business.

Confused, and stuck between different actions that they can take, they start telling me about the whole tangle.

Often, the confusion is compounded because they worry about doing things the wrong way, going in the right direction, or writing the wrong thing.

If you struggle with this confusion and overwhelm, it can be a lot.

If you want to know what to do next to make progress on your nonfiction writing, marketing or business project, you have come to the right place.

Read the rest of the article to get clear on what to do next.

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Sofia offers both coaching and editing services for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.

For questions about editing, and coaching, just send me (Sofia) a reply to this email.

Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.

My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

Last week I was sick with a cold, but I am good now.

I saw a youtube video today that got me a bit energized, so I thought I would write to you about it.

The topic centers around ai writing generation.

I’m going to share my thoughts, and please don’t take it as shaming anyone, but I am a professional writer and I do have some feelings about it.

Actually, I think I have even stronger feelings as a READER than I do as a writer.

Which is saying something.

So let me back up and start at the beginning.

I’m planning to go on maternity leave at the end of the year.

It’s not wise as a writer, or business owner to totally disappear for weeks, or months on end.

I’m not entirely sure how long I’ll be taking off, because I haven’t had a child before, but regardless I want to be prepared.

SO I’m thinking mainly about how to prepare things like my content:

Weekly Funletters ahead of time, as well as blogposts, Linkedin Articles, Youtube videos, social media posts, etc.

It’s a lot and pretty overwhelming to think about producing en mass weeks or months ahead

AND this is all on top of the things I need to do in the present for my business, as well as–you know–preparing for a baby.

I actually realized yesterday that not everything I produce needs to be from scratch because I’ve been in business 10 years, and I have some really cool stuff already created.

I still refer to these articles with my coaching clients.

Those articles could be good to revisit because I really think they could help more people write and make progress on their projects.

I feel good about this direction.

Not This:

Here’s something that never ever occurred to me because I think it would be a terrible solution:

to use ai writing generation to produce pages and pages of stuff to email to you with minimal imput from me.

The reason being that I do not think that the result would be up to snuff, and

it would actually cause more harm than good.

This brings us to a video I saw recently.

​”I Trained AI to Write Like Me–Here’s How” ​ by Tiago Forte

Originally it was titled, “This AI Writes 90% of My Content Now (Yours Can Too)”

Yikes, this one got some provocative comments in response…

“Good to know: unsubscribing.”

“I was wondering why I didn’t resonate with your content lately. Now I know.”

“I am one of your customers and you definitely lost me today.”

They might have been a bit spicy…

but reading on to different things people were saying, I realized that they have a point.

Who is Tiago?

Tiago Forte is the author of “Building a Second Brain,” a book that came out before AI generation was widely available so I’m pretty sure he wrote it himself.

That book changed my life in a big way, unlocking new ways for me to use technology to organize my ideas.

I didn’t learn everything I know about digital organization from Tiago,

a lot of it I had to learn through trial and error, and the labor over years of experimenting with technology and systems to find things that worked for me as a writer.

I’ve since developed my own system for using digital organization for ideas and writing.

But Tiago’s book definitely opened the door for me to start to explore a whole new world I didn’t know existed.

After reading, I signed up for his email list and kept an eye on everything he was creating.

Often it was super thought provoking and I would hang on to emails he sent out to ponder them further.

But sometime in the last 6 months? I don’t know… something changed.

I was finding I’d open his emails only to quickly skim them and hit delete.

It just didn’t hook me. This didn’t just happen once, it happened time and time again.

SO when he made the bold claim that he has outsourced 90% of his writing process to AI…it makes sense.

His stuff hasn’t been that great lately, I don’t know how else to put it.

And I guess this is why.

And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

I feel like this is an important to discuss because AI is such a huge topic these days.

Everywhere I look there is a new course about using AI generation–and the thing is I’ve taken some of these courses. I’ve used it and I’ve tried.

THE RANGE

The thing is I don’t see this as black and white.

There’s a range of HOW much you can delegate writing to AI.

A little bit:

-to proofread your writing spelling and grammer (such as using Grammerly, or Google Doc’s ability to spellcheck)

-using ai to transcribe audio materials into written version of your original words (I like Otter.ai for this.)

A little bit more:

-a conversation partner to bounce ideas off of, to suggest improvements to things you have written, or to point out issues (and then you go fix them yourself).

-to analyze your writing and pull out certain elements (For example, I like to feed it a sales page I have written and then tell me what the main benefits of the offer I am selling is. Then I can decide what the strongest way to word something is and make sure it is emphasized through the piece. But I’m changing the text myself.)

A medium amount:

– coming up with title ideas

– to summarize things you have already written

– writing an introductory paragraph or specific paragraphs to insert into a longer piece you wrote

A decent amount (could result in small changes or could be a lot of changes):

– feeding it large amounts of original work like an hour long class transcript and asking it to find clips to turn into stand alone content

-feeding it large amounts of original work to remix into new formats like taking a podcast and turning it into a blogpost

A very large amount

– giving it a few sentences or guidelines for what content should be and then pushing the button to have the ai generate a whole thousand word plus essay that you edit only minimally by hand.

What Tiago was talking about doing is on the far side of the writing generation spectrum.

And that’s why I don’t like it.

Now he did imput some things…

He was supplying “style guides” and templates to the ai. These basically tell the ai what shape to spit something out into.

But he provided little of the actual substance for the essay he demonstrated making in the video, with ai doing 90% of the work.

He told it to produce an article about a book, and then uploaded a list of notable quotes from the book.

He did bold some parts of the quotes but he said he had about 10 pages of quotes he uploaded into the machine, from a book he didn’t write.

This means he hadn’t even isolated the core message from the book that he wanted the ai to focus on exactly, and why it mattered.

He didn’t add any of his own thoughts, really.

This is something he could have done without time, thought and reflection…but he didn’t want to take the time to do that.

Instead, it took a minute to push the button to produce a 3,000 word essay generated by ai that he deemed good enough.

Now, I’m not saying maybe some people would get something out of this article–

but I read Tiago’s previous work and it was really thoughtful and interesting.

THIS ISN’T IT.

This isn’t what I liked about his writing.

Ironically, Tiago’s previous writing in Building a Second Brain led to my changing my life so that it was easier for me to develop my ideas and take them to the next level in my writing through digital organization.

At the time so much of his writing and content was revolutionary for me to think on a higher level.

And now that he’s using AI, for months his writing has just been something I skim and delete.

I do not recommend letting ai do 90% of your writing.

I’m talking about doing things on the far far far side of the AI scale.

Other Issues

For the purposes of brevity, I’m not getting into the other issues with AI like the fact that it uses a ton of natural resources, has resulted in a lot of pollution and waste.

(I really wish google would just let me do a normal search by default so I’m not wasting energy using AI to look up stupid stuff online!! I want to opt INTO using AI when I want to so I can save energy when I don’t want it but anyway…)

I’m also not touching the issue where AI was trained on stolen writing taken from other people’s websites and other people’s books, without bothering to pay anyone for their work.

None of that lands super well with me, but right now I’m basically just talking about something major:

The products are not the same.

Using AI to do 90% of the writing for you is not the same as writing it yourself.

The process of writing is also a process of thinking and refining your ideas.

You get a better idea of what you are trying to say through trying to write about it.

If all you do to write is press a button, the output is going to be a more mediocre, generic and less intelligent than what you could come up with yourself given the time and effort.

And as a READER, I don’t want this crap!

I have seen my favorite sites online get filled up with annoying generic AI written articles

that drown out all the actual original and interesting articles I could be reading.

It’s made my life as a avid reader online more frustrating and less satisfying.

Please don’t outsource all your ideas to ai.

I might be ok with some use of it depending on how it is used and what the product is, but outsourcing 90% of the writing process is way, way too much. It just is filling the world with mediocre writing.

The world has enough noise!!

And you are shooting yourself in the foot because as more and more people use AI generation (which is already a lot), it all starts to sounds samey same.

It will be the people who continue to develop their ideas and skills as a writer that will end up standing out.

The entrepreneurs that continue to invest in creating original content using a chunk of their own brain will build relationships with customers more easily.

–they will seem refreshing and honest compared to the ocean of people who are just phoning it by using ai.

And that is way more trustworthy.

And one day when the AI bubble bursts…

(As I believe it will, since how can the data farms that AI relies on cost billlions in overhead and, yet, become profitable by charging you practically nothing?) In the future Chat GPT and other models may not be as cheap as they are today, and everyone who became totally dependent on them may have to pay up the wazoo or learn to do without.

Those of us who keep our heads by not overrelying on ai to produce writing that is just okay,

and instead write more, edit more, learn more, and

develop our ideas and skills as writers and creators,

WE will be stronger and brighter and more brilliant than ever in the future.

So in sum:

Here is what I am not going to do.

I’m not going to push a bunch of buttons on ai and send you a bunch of emails of stuff,

stuff, that I totally outsourced to ai and spent NO time at all writing or developing the ideas for.

Because I think using ai to write 90% of a piece of writing makes it not fun to read.

There’s no heart, no passion,

no living breathing person behind it and

I can feel something is missing.

I wouldn’t want to read it.

My time is valuable as a reader, and your time is valuable as a reader.

I have a high standard for what I think is good writing, good enough to share with you,

and baby, as a writer, I have my pride.

And P.S.

just because I often use an emdash (this punctuation: — ) does NOT mean I am using AI.

There is an awful and vicious myth that em dashes are only used by AI writing generation bots.

In fact, many human writers love an emdash.

And yet now people are contemplating not using it ever again so they don’t get accused of using AI to write.

But I will never stop using it!

Justice for the em dash!

VIVA LA EM DASH.

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

I am trying to shake a sore throat. Hopefully, it goes away soon.

Feeling a little emotional today. Which makes sense…

August always begins dramatically for me –

the 8th is my bday, while

the 6th is my dad’s death day.

Because these dates have come together in the same week for me ever since I turned 34, they will always be tied together in a bittersweet way.

I’ll be 38 this week, and, of course, I still miss my dad. He was my only parent growing up because my mom died when I was three.

Creating in Darkness

If you haven’t felt deep grief for a loved one who went too soon, it’s nothing I can describe to you in words.

I don’t believe that losing a loved one has a silver lining.

But I think the human spirit is so incredibly bright that it can keep burning and making beauty no matter what.

Even in the most difficult times, or the darkest of days.

​I made this video after my dad’s first death anniversary, and it remains one of the best things I have ever created. ​

In it, I share about things I learned about grief, myself, and the world. How to survive bad things, and get up out of bed anyway.

Growth & Evolution

While grieving and missing my dad, I have changed a lot and grown these past few years. I’ve become a new version of myself.

I grew out my hair from the pixie cut I had for a decade.

I got married, and now I am having a baby.

I will keep on evolving, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to who I was.

And that’s okay, because who I am today isn’t someone I became passively as a result of my experiences.

–This transformation inside and out has been my choice, an intentional creative process I decided to undergo.

I knew a change in my identity was inevitable, anyway, so I decided to grab the wheel and steer towards who I wanted to be.

Specifically, over the past year, I’ve had certain goals for myself.

My Goal For Last Year

What I wanted to address over the last year was my lack of optimism and motivation.

Because my dad’s death made me distrust the universe.

It wasn’t the first bad thing that happened in my life so it felt like the last straw.

I lost hope that good things were possible for me.

It didn’t matter if I was a good person or not, or if I worked hard.

Some dumb shit was just going to happen to ruin my life anyway.

(Like my dad getting pancreatic cancer and dying suddenly, even though otherwise he was in the best shape of his life.)

Basically, how I felt deep down was that there was no real point in trying to achieve anything good in life, because it’s just a bad universe.

Bad things happen to good people. There’s nothing I can do about a lot of things that suck in life.

And yet…

A bit over a year ago, I decided I was tired of feeling that way.

And of letting it stop me from trying to make anything about my life better.

I figured that I had a choice:

I could either be right

that there was no point in hoping for a better life or trying for it

or I could be happy.

I could be right, or I could be happy, but I couldn’t be both.

So I decided I’d rather be happy.

The Transformation

A year ago, if I measured how optimistic I was feeling on a scale of 1-10,

on an average day, I was probably around a 4.

After I decided to work on being optimistic,

I tried different tools to raise that number.

I started tracking it daily.

After 30 days, it was up to a 6.

That number began to rise, and then rise a little more.

Now, a year later, my optimism is around an 8 out of 10 most days.

Conclusion

I’ve come a long way in a relatively short time.

Life isn’t perfect.

The world, and things I experience closer to home, still have problems.

But I feel a little more optimistic about things in general.

Specifically, I am optimistic about my slice of things.

I’m motivated to take action in my own life and work to make things better.

And I trust myself, and am optimistic that I will be able to handle whatever happens.

Which is the thing that really matters.

By the way…

I put everything that worked for me into a Toolkit so you can feel more optimism in 30 days or less.

If you are on a journey to find the hope, and motivation to take action on your goals,

​explore the 30 Day Optimism Toolkit to get started today.​

Thanks for reading

🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How are you?

Thank you to everyone for your support after I announced the big news last week!

Having a baby on the way is exciting, and a little daunting. I appreciate all the good vibes!

Today I want to share a new video + recommendations of things I am enjoying right now

New Video

You may know that I have a paper commonplace book that I use to help me stay motivated and FIRED UP to work on my long term goals.

I love using digital tools daily to organize my thoughts but I also love paper notebooks, as well.

​Rather than wax poetic here about commonplace books and paper journals (like I do in this podcast) ​and how much I love them and why they matter and what you can get out of them as a writer, entrepreneur or human being…

I will just say that no matter how great and useful something is, it can still grow stale.

I got bored with my Commonbook and paper planner system recently, and wasn’t using it much…

so my solution was a refresh!

The answer for me this time is fairies:

I gave my notebook a Forest and Fairy themed visual refresher with DIY Decorations I made.

I highly recommend trying something like this if you need to get your eyes on a notebook, planner, or organizational tool and you just aren’t drawn to it.

In my video, I show you how I used some simple craft supplies to bring new life to my planner and commonplace book. Maybe it will give you ideas for something you can decorate as well.

May you find new motivation with the power of decoration!

​Decorate with me by watching the new video here

Things I am Enjoying:

1. Video Game: ​Palia​ –

This is a new cozy game I have been playing this week. I run around this fantasy landscape gathering supplies so I can make and cook things.

It’s relaxing and I like the aesthetic. Also…It is free!

2. Book: ​The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper​

by Roland Allen

Description:

“We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

He tells the notebook stories of Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, Isaac Newton and Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James; shows how Darwin developed his theory of evolution in tiny pocket books and Agatha Christie plotted a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books; and introduces a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers, and mathematicians, all of whom used their notebooks as a space to think—and in doing so, shaped the modern world.”

I recently finished this book and it did not disappoint.

My brain really enjoyed all the facts and storytelling,

including details about how famous thinkers, writers and people over history used paper as a way to develop their genius.

3. Activities:

• going to the pool (when it’s nnot a rainy day like today)
  
• new baby bunnies showing up outside in my courtyard
  
• trying new recipes like gluten free pineapple upside down cake
  
• walking outside with my husband after dinner and seeing fireflies
  
• seeing live music with a friend of mine. (I gotta do it while I can! I’m sure I won’t be leaving the house much once I have a newborn.) We saw Beck play with the Chicago Orchestra last night.

Like I said last week, I have availability for editing clients and 1-1 writing coaching over the next several months. I expect to be on maternity leave sometime after November.

Contact me if you’d like to talk about your writing for your book or business and how I can help.

Hope you are enjoying this summer!

Thanks for reading

If you need a boost of energy to help you overcome procrastination & make progress:

​Check out this clip from my live coaching session last week.​

In it, I guide you through powerful exercises to overcome procrastination.

If you’ve been feeling paralyzed, stuck trying to decide between things or mentally blocked, soon you’ll get clear on what’s really important so you can make speedier progress.

Also during that coaching session, I made a huge announcement–

I’m going to have a baby this winter!

By the end of December, I should be holding my future child.

This means that if you’ve ever wanted to work with me, now is the perfect time!

Right now, I have the capacity to help more clients to make faster progress writing and creating for your book or business

–via 1-1 coaching or editing services.

So if you want help with your writing, with my editing or coaching, don’t wait long!

Contact me now and let me know that you are interested in working with me.

My schedule will get more limited by the end of the year and the beginning of 2026. I intend to take a maternity leave and will announce those details as we get closer.

Overcome Procrastination

Are you feeling like it’s difficult to make any progress?

Watch this video. You’ll get coaching to:

-Feel more motivated to get some writing done for your book or business.

-Overcome procrastination and make progress because you know what’s really important.

​Watch below or click here to overcome procrastination & make faster progress now​