While writing Into the Fishpond, a novel-length fan fiction story set in the “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” universe (FE3H), I built a growth model for tracking my readers’ engagement.

The story is long: forty-seven chapters, and over 200,000 words.

When I finished the initial story in August 2024, I copied my model and populated it with a fake/sample data set for other writers with a growth marketing mindset to use.

This post explains the model and my thinking, and contains a link to the Google Sheet for those who wish to apply it to their own projects.

Why I built a growth marketing AO3 stats model

In my day job, I’ve been the head of marketing for several tech companies and worked with many talented growth marketers. If you haven’t heard the term, it’s the field of marketing most concerned with how you grow and sustain a customer base.

Or, in this case, a group of engaged readers.

On whim, I started writing Fishpond on February 9, 2024. I didn’t know what I was doing or why, but I decided to post chapters beginning on February 22.

As a writer, I was completely new to AO3. I didn’t have any presence or following when I started. I had read some FE3H work by other writers dealing with this particular character pairing, but only as a guest. In the beginning, it felt like I was publishing the story for myself. I was skeptical that it would find readers. 

Case in point about how little I knew — I didn’t discover the “Statistics” tab in the home screen until after I had published Chapter 14.

By mid-April, Fishpond had reached 1,000 hits. I told a growth marketing colleague what I was doing. 

My colleague: “What’re you doing for Analytics?” 

Me: “Not much. All the site data is in the moment. There’s no time-based record of the metrics at all.”

My colleague: “How about we fix that?”

We built out a Google Sheet to track what was happening with the story. My colleague also encouraged me to adopt a regular posting schedule given my steady output. 

My use case and assumptions

I started applying my data model when I published Chapter 17 of Fishpond on April 26, 2024. Thanks to back-and-forth texts with my colleague, I had some historical data from screenshots dating from my first weeks of publishing.

My numbers were and are limited to what appears on AO3’s summary page:

Beginning with Chapter 17, I posted twice a week on Monday and Thursday between 4 and 5:30 pm EST. That pattern continued until I reached Chapter 38. After that, my writing process got complicated. I needed more time between instalments.

By July, I’d switched to a weekly model (Thursdays) with Chapter 39. At this posting tempo, I saw significant growth between with each chapter. I’d now recommend going weekly or monthly, although it requires more patience.

True experiments, where marketers control everything except one variable to determine which option wins, are harder to do with fiction. The stories themselves vary. Knowing whether audiences are responding to the frequency or the content would be next-to-impossible to parse out (unless AO3 itself did a study).

As you’ll see, my AO3 Stats Model has two primary tabs: 

• General Growth by chapter, which tracks the baseline AO3 stats — I updated this sheet once a week in the 15 minutes before the next chapter went live. It contains a trend line that changes trajectory as you feed it more data, and a table for tracking overall audience engagement by chapter (kudos, comments, bookmarks and subscriptions). 
• Chapter Growth by key metrics, which tracks activity within the first 24 hours and until the next chapter is published — I track hits, kudos and subscriptions (capped 15 minutes before publication). 

You can’t beat email subscriptions for reach

Growth marketing focuses on actions that reduce friction between user and product. That’s why brands ask you to subscribe to their marketing newsletters when you buy something or to provide an email address before you see a demonstration.

Growth marketers love email because it partially solves the tug of war between social platforms building for self-serving needs and content creators trying to gain an audience. It’s a medium we control end-to-end. 

AO3 is more like a library archive (with a beautiful tagging system) than it is like a social platform. It doesn’t have or need an algorithm with filtration power like you’d find on sites run by Meta or TikTok.

The subscription feature that AO3 provides is similar to email, but not the same. I can’t see the names addresses of anyone who subscribes; AO3 handles the actual emailing of updates I make.

But in principal, it’s close.  

What I tracked

Hits are a key AO3 metric because they’re the way to know how many visits a work has had. Long-time AO3 users know the site counts a hit as one visit from an IP address within a 24-hour period. Multiple hits are not recorded, nor are hits from writers to their own work when logged in.

You can read more about how it works in the AO3 FAQ.

Kudos, the site’s equivalent to likes, indicate a work’s popularity and act as social proof that a story is engaging. Some writers particularly value them from registered accounts. Most platforms have a like/heart/Kudos function. I’m grateful to every single person who gave me one, whether from a registered user or a guest account.

Subscriptions, either to a work or to everything an AO3 writer publishes, mean readers get emailed every time you update. That makes a subscription the single most valuable metric to a growth marketer over time.

Why? Because the engagement action is a single click from your email inbox. As my subscriber count grew, so did the hit and kudos count week-to-week. I’m grateful to every reader who subscribed to the story or, eventually, to me.

My model only includes work subscriptions and not user subscriptions. When I started, I didn’t have any user subscriptions. You could adapt the model to track them separately or together as you see fit.

I can tell you that as Fishpond got more popular, I received double the subscriptions in the period 24 hours after a chapter published compared to the first 24 hours.

Why aren’t bookmarks tracked in Chapter Growth?

When a reader sets a bookmark, they still have to actively remember to check it to read the next piece of story, and some readers have dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of bookmarks.

Readers can choose to make bookmarks private. That means the public-facing bookmark count on a story’s summary doesn’t give the whole picture.

I did love seeing my bookmark number rise; I tracked it in the General Growth tab.  I also really love it when someone annotates their bookmark on my story — I can sometimes tell from the description how far they’ve read or which kind of reader they think story would appeal to. 

But as growth stats go, it’s not as active or transparent an indicator of interest as a subscription.

Why aren’t comments tracked in Chapter Growth?

Comments are great. I love them.

From a growth perspective, their numbers are misleading, especially for works like mine. I responded to all my comments. That’s why I track them in the General Growth tab.

I respond to all of my comments because I enjoyed the interaction with the audience. They were a great source of qualitative feedback about whether the audience agreed with my instincts for the characters and plot — but I don’t count my comment responses in the model.

Given the number of people who never ever comment but will happily give a kudos, my colleague and I opted to give the kudos metric more weight.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think AO3 should count responses from creators on their own stories, either. Writers know we’re engaged in what’s happening with our work. I’d exclude them from the Dashboard counter.

Your mileage may vary and you can adapt your copy of the sheet how you like. Make it work for you!

If I could change one thing about AO3 stats  . . . 

I’d want to know how many users hit all the chapters in a work. Or, I’d ask for a ‘percentage read’ number or ‘completion rate’. Given how the Hit counter works, the number I see could easily be many, many people reading the first chapter and then stopping.

That’s why comments or annotated bookmarks are so nice when they crop up. It’s the only way to get a sense of how far people are reading. But I don’t believe they’re an accurate measure.

Growth marketers can be a bit obsessive

In general, growth marketers are data-driven people. We can be a bit (a lot?) obsessive about things we track.

Getting accurate numbers requires manual updates a couple times a week. I’m comfortable with that, but you may want to change it up. 

If the sheet is too much, feel free to cut back for your copy, adapt it, or ignore it. Track whatever feels right for you.

My goal is to give you a tool, not an obligation.

Data trends take time to develop on any platform

If you’re new to any Internet platform, it takes a while for people interested in your content to find your work.

I saw a big inflection point for Fishpond in Chapter 16 and again in Chapter 27. When I moved to the weekly model, I again saw a big jump with Chapter 39. 

My data and publishing frequency prior to Chapter 15 were erratic. If I’d decided then to pass judgement on whether the story was a success or failure, whatever answer I gave myself about what was happening would probably have been wrong.

It was simply too soon to know. 

Be patient with your work. It takes time to find an audience and for people to get invested.

That’s the lesson I’m taking forward with The Xenthian Cycle.

Other posts in this series:

• What AO3 Taught Me: Golden Route = Powerful Premise
• Overturning my Internet Bullshit: That time I wrote romantasy action on AO3

The post My AO3 Stats Model appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Meeting your writing heroes can be a fraught exercise. It’s easy to put people on a pedestal and meet your idea of the presence rather than the person.

Luckily, by the time I crossed paths with the late Ursula K. Le Guin in 2005, she was adroit at managing her public persona. I suspect she was very aware of what happened when she entered fan spaces and how to slip through those expectations.

She’s also the reason why I have a rare advanced bound manuscript of Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris.

How’d I meet her? Here’s the story. 

Las Vegas and fantasy legends

I’ve written before about my early career ambition be a science fiction and fantasy academic. I loved reading and academia, and SFF was my favourite genre. It was a place to get my bearings while I figured out what to do with my life.

While exploring this idea, I attended the Science Fiction Research Association and gave papers (circa 2003-05), including the original paper that became my TedxTalk on why we need new stories about female superheroes. That paper led to my work on The Xenthian Cycle when I realized I wanted to use my writing as a place to address the problems I’d identified.  

Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel hosted the 2005 meeting. Ursula LeGuin was the guest of honour and one of the big reasons I was determined to go. I brought copies of A Wizard of Earthsea and Rocannon’s World for her to sign.

Like a lot of Canada over the last few years, California was burning that spring and summer. It made for an apocalyptic atmosphere. Environmental concerns form a large through line in Le Guin’s work, so that also felt on point.

If you’ve never been, Las Vegas a weird place. Beyond the artificial glitz and gambling, the windowless rooms, strange chemical smell and strong scent of wildfire on the wind made for a strange conference.

What was Le Guin like?

Let me be clear: I didn’t know Le Guin as a person. I encountered only her public author persona. So take this all with a grain of salt.

My first impression was of her height. I’m quite tall. Le Guin, in her mid-seventies by this point, was maybe five feet.

But her presence unquestionably made her a giant.

She attended some of the academic talks and sat in the back. The panelists and the audience were definitely aware of her in the room.

At one panel, I remember she listened quietly until they made a point she clearly disagreed with. Le Guin put her hand up, gently deflated the hyperbole, and shifted the discussion to another tangent.

I remember thinking that she wasn’t interested in protecting her position as the most influential author and critic in the room. She struck me as someone accustomed to side-stepping her own reputation. There was a deftness to how she reacted whenever people deferred to her.

Later, when being announced at the dinner in her honour, she made a funny squealing noise and threw her hands in the air. It was playful, a little silly, and another way to demonstrate that she wasn’t there to take herself too seriously.

I spoke briefly with her during the signing session. She was definitely intimidating to my mid-twenties self, but also kind.

I expect you don’t have a career like hers and not know the effect you have on younger readers and writers. I remember her saying she hadn’t seen this edition of Rocannon’s World in a while:

There are so many questions I wish I had asked her now, but our time to speak was limited. And I was too chicken-shit to approach her outside of that opportunity.

2005 was a big year for writing heroes

In that same year, TOR also published Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. He’s a juggernaut now and a writing hero to many SF/F readers. At the time, no one knew who he was or what he would begin in The Cosmere of connected worlds with that first book.

Ahead of publication day, publishers and indies give away advance reader copies (known as ARCs). People from TOR Books (Sanderson’s publisher), were also at this conference. I vaguely remember finding a pile of ARCs in the middle of a table. Maybe at dinner? Maybe on another day?

In my memory, the ARC piles were distributed at the big dinner tables, but I might be wrong about that. Perhaps because it was bright yellow, I picked up Elantris (more pictures here).

I sometimes talk about this experience to people in their twenties when we’re discussing the importance of going to in-person events. Flying to the States is not cheap from Canada, but I’m glad I went (also online attendance options weren’t available back then).

If I hadn’t gone, I never would have met Le Guin, heard her speak, or returned with so many treasured memories.

A writing career for the ages

Le Guin remains a posthumous influence on SF/F and American letters.

She is credited with coining the word ansible, a literary device used by many SF authors to explain communication across the stars. Gender, sexuality, identity and cultural expectations are frequent themes in her work, and she wasn’t afraid to acknowledge her growth or the flaws in her past work.

I was sad when she died in 2018, and glad I contributed to Arwyn Curry’s documentary about her life and work, Worlds of Ursula Le Guin, which was raised nearly $250,000 USD through Kickstarter.

Ursula remains one of my writing heroes. If you’d like suggestions on where to start with her books, visit my Substack for a list.

The post Writing Heroes: Ursula K. Le Guin appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

I’d seen Gilbert’s Tedx talks about creativity and working through her phenomenal writing success after Eat, Pray, Love. When I learned she was publishing a non-fiction book about living with creativity, I devoured it in print and audio.

That first read was a revelation. I admired the way Gilbert punctures the fallacy that living an artistic life means suffering. “If the art legitimates cruelty, the art may not be worth having,” she writes.

Her approach to creative living is decidedly anti-elitist. I’ve written about how Big Magic encouraged me to cast off my outdated, ignorant opinions about fan fiction. It also cemented my conviction that self-publishing was absolutely the right choice for me.

I read it again before I launched Chaos Calling, certain that I understood what Gilbert meant when she wrote, “The outcome does not and cannot matter.”

Spoiler alert: I had no fucking idea.

I’ve talked about how challenging it is to write a series, particularly as an indie. It’s time-consuming and expensive.

My newsletter subscribers also know that editing Chaos Armor’s fourth draft has taken longer than I’d planned. I wanted to publish it in 2025. That deadline has slipped. To be kinder to myself, I won’t name another date until I can meet that promise with certainty.

Immediately after sharing that delay, I received devastating news.

My book is among the millions of texts first pirated by LibGen and then stolen by Meta and other unethical tech companies to train their AI engines.

When pirates aren’t cool, just gross

I work in tech. Toronto is a well-regarded hotbed for AI research (e.g., Geoff Hinton). Tech investment is soft right now. Guess what’s still getting funding? AI projects.

Over the last five years, I’ve also listened to my peers and friends get increasingly enthusiastic about the various chatbot tools. As with environmentalism, DEI concerns, or flagrant violations of human rights, speaking up about the ethical quagmires AI presents may threaten your livelihood in tangible ways.

Many job descriptions in tech require fluency with AI skills, processes, and prompting. Recruiters want to know you can use it appropriately.

I’d been watching all of these trends with a mix of interest and skepticism.

But it’s one thing to suspect a technology billionaires are pirating books to feed their data-ravenous algorithms. It’s another to know that your work is among them.

When I read Alex Reisner’s article, “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” in The Atlantic and found Chaos Calling in the searchable database, my stomach lurched the same way it does in a fast-moving elevator.

Who do the other 121 results belong to? An academic who also publishes as E. M. Williams. Pirates have also stolen her published papers. The LibGen dataset includes millions of academic and non-fiction publications, along with novels, short stories and poetry collections.

Nearly every writer you can think of has likely had their works pirated by LibGen, a decentralized system that reminds me of the early days of Napster and KaZaA. LibGen includes original works, translations, and audiobooks recorded by equally talented voice artists.

Meta then scraped that pirated archive to train its engines because it didn’t want to pay market cost for acquiring data.

Elizabeth Gilbert (117 records) is also among the thousands of affected writers, academics and voice artists. Like her, many writers have lost the work of their entire careers.

What kills big magic? Despair

Without a publishing house or agent to commiserate with, I spent the next few weeks in a fog.

Writing felt impossible. What was the point? Why was I living my life on hard mode? Why should I bust my ass (and wallet) to write and publish another book when some combination of pirates and tech autocrats were going to steal my work the second I hit ‘upload’?

Worse, when I talked about what had happened, colleagues were sympathetic to a point, but it’s clear no one thinks the open exploitation of creative people means we should put AI back in the box.

Part of me understands. AI is the big trend. The hiring market is already precarious. No one wants to be left behind.

On another level, the whole thing made me want to lie down and never get up.

“Fear gets boring after a while”

In March, my book club picked Big Magic as our monthly read. I snagged the audiobook from Toronto Public Library. While I listened, I asked myself what Liz Gilbert would say about my piracy/theft situation.

No one was worried about AI when Big Magic was published. Gilbert does, however, write at length about, “me, creativity, and fear, advancing once more into the wide, terrifying terrain of UNKNOWN OUTCOME” [capitals mine]. After all, she says, “Uncertainty is what we sign up for.”

No kidding, Liz.

I kept coming back to these and other lines, which so accurately capture the hardest parts of pursuing a creative project. To write is to wrestle with uncertainty all the time.

But I’ve also experienced indescribable joy when an idea blooms in my mind like a flower, and bubbles of delight when a reader tells me how much my work means to them. Over the last three years, I’ve had so many of these moments. Am I prepared to never have those experiences again? That’s a far steeper price to pay.

When I launched Chaos Calling, I also had no data to temper my wild, first-time novelist ambitions. In 2025, I know better.

Sure, I’ve had sales reports with weeks and weeks of nothing. I’ve got scores of TikTok videos and other social posts that flopped. It’s hard to psych yourself up to run through another wall when you’ve still got bruises on your face and a bum knee from your last attempt.

At the same time, writing Into the Fishpond showed me that you literally cannot see the shape of your story’s success or the following it may amass until you’re at least seventy-five percent of the way through.

Chaos Calling is only twenty percent of The Xenthian Cycle. Until I publish Book IV or V, I truly won’t know what I’ve got.

As Gilbert writes:

“How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your craft and how equipped you are for the challenges of creative living. [ . . .] “I am asking you to put aside your innocence for a moment, and to step into something far more bracing, and far more powerful:

There are no guarantees for anyone. Will you put forth your work anyhow?”

I know that I suffer when I’m not writing. Which means there’s only one viable answer.

The most bracing Big Magic

Every writer has an outside story we draw upon when asked to explain our inspiration. We also have an inside story—the personal motivations that drive our work.

When I’m outside my courage, it’s the inside story that keeps me going.

I remember sitting on a footstool in my kitchen at 1:30 a.m. one cold December night in 2015. Unbeknownst to me, I’d finished my second-last day of work on the first manuscript. I recall tipping my head back against the cabinets and staring at nothing, exhausted by and astounded at what I’d captured.

Later, I stood behind one of the swivel chairs in my living room, consumed by my story’s propulsive potential. This book has legs, I thought. This book can go the distance.

If I give up now, I’m turning my back on that younger and more courageous version of me.

If I give up now, the technocrats win.

And, as Liz Gilbert would no doubt remind me, nothing about writing has ever been certain.

Actions I’ve taken:

• I wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for better policy to protect the work of Canadian artists. It’s posted on my work site.
• I finished a short story set in the world of The Xenthian Cycle. More details to come, but I hope to have it out soon.
• I’ve made Into the Fishpond visible only to registered AO3 members. Doing so adds another layer of protection from data scraping. The title page also includes a disclaimer stating my opposition to AI engines mining my work.
• Future editions of my book will explicitly call out AI scraping or training on the copyright page as something I do not consent to for any reason.
• I’m evaluating which digital platforms make sense for Book II’s release (I may also opt to sell it directly, who knows).
• I continue to work on Chaos Armor.

“Argue for your fears and you get to keep them,” Gilbert writes in Big Magic. “Fear gets boring after a while.”

Learning about the piracy and theft of my work definitely rekindled many of my writing fears.

It’s been true before and it will be true again—only way out is to keep moving.

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From the outset of a new manuscript, I begin with a vision for what I want to achieve. Inevitably, as the draft gets longer, my ideas about what I’m doing shift.

Sometimes, it’s because:

• I’m building new skills to fully achieve my ambitions.
• My ideas about the story have irrevocably changed.
• My attempt failed.

That’s part of the journey and somewhat understood by people who don’t write.

Writers may not agree on much when it comes to the creative process, but we do seem to agree that writing a second book is always a different psychological experience than writing a first.

I think that’s partly because your idea about the kind of writer you’re going to be changes when your first book is out.

The moment you publish, you burn your dearly held dreams about who you might be in the fire of who you’re becoming. If you’re lucky and your book finds readers, that group’s feedback may also shift your perceptions (positively or negatively).

I’ve experienced a little of that. But after publishing Chaos Calling, I also experienced a deeper loss.

And that’s also something many writers navigate.

My recent chaotic loss: Richard Rudy

In August 2022, my family lost a stalwart, lifelong friend in Richard Rudy. Cancer claimed this wonderful person far too soon and with little warning.

Rick and I first met through the University of Waterloo’s Fencing Club. We shared an understanding of depression and mental health. He loved fantasy books (especially Dune, C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy and Wheel of Time), and was a staunch supporter of my creative work.

We stayed friends as we began our careers. He worked in graphic design and development, while I focused on communications and marketing.

Rick quietly orchestrated my first date with my husband (they’ve been friends since grade school). We later attended each other’s weddings and welcomed children into our families.

Over time, Rick and I collaborated on dozens of marketing projects. Working with him was fun and productive. We developed a short hand and an unbreakable trust. At his funeral, peers confirmed his talent for design and web development, and his willingness to pitch in during a crunch.

Most importantly, he was a devoted father, friend and husband.

A stalwart supporter

Rick took the black and white headshot of me that appears in my Tedx talk intro on YouTube. He built all my websites, including my first blog. I later lost it when payments on his servers failed before I could get into the back end and move the site.

His illness progressed so rapidly. By the time we realized how sick he was, making time for technical administration was out of the question.

In the final year of his life, Rick designed and built the first iteration of emwilliams.ca. His version was active from March 2022 to June 2023. He also delivered an eleventh-hour tweak to Chaos Calling‘s paperback cover, removing a smudge and somehow fixing a file error that had dogged the project without even knowing what he’d done.

If I had known how little time he had left, I don’t know if I could have asked for his help. But he was that kind of friend.

With hindsight, I also see how fearless he helped me be when pitching. With Rick in my corner, I knew he’d either work with me to solve my technical challenges or bail me out if I got overextended.

Beyond the milestones he lost with his family and friends, I deeply regret that Rick never read Chaos Calling. I can’t remember how much we discussed the story. Unlike many friends who volunteered to beta read, Rick wanted the polished version.

I trust that he’s at peace, and he knows how deeply we love and miss him.

Chaos Armor is dedicated to Rick’s memory.

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How did I end up with a rare ARC of Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first book in the Cosmere universe? 

Sanderson is a juggernaut in science fiction and fantasy. His work is so popular that when he announced four secret book projects in February 2022, he raised over $41 million from over 185,000 people.

I’ve done crowdfunding for work (never at that scale, jees) and that kind of audience response is no joke!

So why do I have this book? It’s a long story. 

How I got a rare ARC of Elantris in 2005 

If you know my background, you may know that at point I thought I’d be a science fiction and fantasy academic. I loved reading and academia, and SFF was my favourite genre.

Slam dunk, right? (Well, except for the part where I needed a job and money. But I digress.)

While pivoting into a career in marketing, I went to a few conferences with the Science Fiction Research Association and gave papers (circa 2003-05), including the original paper that became my TedxTalk on why we need new stories about female superheroes. That paper later led to my work on The Xenthian Cycle when I realized I wanted to address the problems I’d identified through my own writing.  

Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel hosted the 2005 meeting. The late and great Ursula LeGuin was the guest of honour (she’s the reason I went). 

It was also the year that Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first novel, was published.

Ahead of publication day, publishers and indie authors give away advance reader copies (known as ARCs) to hype the reading audience.

People from TOR Books, Sanderson’s publisher, were also at this conference. I vaguely remember finding a pile of ARCs in the middle of a table for the academics to pick up (and, presumably, read and write papers about). Perhaps because it was bright yellow, I randomly picked up this copy of Elantris.

On the inside, someone has written the number 13 in pencil, so there must be at least 12 of these books in existence (maybe more).

I did a little research via the Sanderson Collectors Guild, the discord server for Sanderson’s fans who collect his work. One of the moderators reached out and kindly shared that ARCS of this book run in the $1000+ range at auction.

What I have is technically an advanced bound manuscript (the yellow version). To the moderator’s knowledge, it’s never come up for auction. The only copy he knew of with certainty is on a shelf in Sanderson’s office, though I did see a Reddit post where someone talked about finding a copy at a yard sale.

There’s a weird little white mark on the cover, but otherwise my copy is in pristine condition.

And I’ve never read it. 

You never read your rare ARC of Elantris?!? 

Nope. It may seem hard to believe, but for a long time, I low-key forgot I had this copy of Elantris.

It moved from my room in my parents’ house to our first apartment to our first house and to our current home in Toronto. 

When I get an ARC I’m not looking for, it doesn’t hold the same priority as books I’ve actively requested. 

For example, that happened with Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. I got a copy at ComicCon 2022 when I bought a copy of Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby from the TOR Books table. The sales clerk was like, “oh, take one of these,” and handed Tesh’s book to me. It went on to win the Hugo, which is awesome

Have I read either of those books yet? No, I have not (I did eventually read Glory). This is a peril of being a book dragon.

I want to be clear that I have read other Brandon Sanderson books.

I’ve read and enjoyed the two Mistborn trilogies. The Stormlight Archive are on my TBR along with, like, 700+ other books (update: I read The Way of Kings in 2025 and really loved it). I prefer to read Sanderson’s work in audio format, largely because I adore Michael Kramer and Kate Reading as narrators. They did the original Wheel of Time audiobooks, which is how I fell in love with their voices. 

I intend to read Elantris one day. And when I do, I won’t be reading this ARC because doing so would ruin it (the type inside is very close to the margin). 

I’ll definitely go audiobook when the time comes.

Will Chaos Calling‘s ARC ever be that popular?

Ha!

The odds are extremely long and I have no illusions about that, but it’s fun to dream that someday that they could be. After all, dreaming is why writers do what we do.

I’m happy for all the fans and readers who are attending Dragonsteel Nexus this weekend. There’s something so joyful about being in person with people who love the things that you love. And my husband is among the readers looking forward to cracking Wind and Truth open this holiday season.

Some day, I’ll get around to reading it and the rest of The Stormlight Archive, too.

For now, I’ll keep working on getting Book II of The Xenthian Cycle out for next year. 

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Her episode aired on November 4, 2024. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Listen Notes

On the How Did I Not Know That podcast, Conny brings her listeners information about crucial topics they missed out on in school. She uncovers knowledge, explores fascinating facts, and discussses pressing issues.

Conny and I connected through Growclass, where we’re both part of the Internet’s kindest marketing community. Since she knows me professionally, I appear as both my writing and marketing selves in this episode.

We had a great conversation about writing The Xenthian Cycle and my journey through self-publishing. We also talk about Taylor Swift’s choice to self-publish her Eras Tour book and the pros and cons of going it alone.

Topics we cover on How Did I Not Know That?

• 1:20 — My journey into self-publishing, and my TedxTalk about women, superheroes and power
• 3:00 — How my work and life combines my passions for books, marketing and career strategy
• 4:40 — How The Xenthian Cycle evolved, and my background in crowdfunding
• 6:10 — Who self publishing is for and Taylor Swift’s decision to self publish her Eras Tour book
• 7: 15 — The traditional publishing path
• 9:00 — Celebrity and book publishing (Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, etc.)
• 10:00 — The importance of the backlist for indie authors
• 10:25 — Building in public before your book launches and the pitfalls of Internet piracy for authors
• 13:10 — The pros and cons of self-publishing vs traditional publishing
• 15:30 — Why money generally flows to the author if you go the traditional path, not the other way around
• 17:10 — My advice to aspiring authors: Pick an idea you love, finish it and get private feedback
• 18:00 — The stages of manuscript review and book promotion (I refer to Travis Baldree’s guide to self-publishing)
• 21:10 — Why finishing a project is so important and so hard
• 22:10 — How I find time to write, before and after Covid-19
• 23:20 — Writing and AI

Note that in the section about Taylor Swift, I mentioned that I thought the Eras book was coming out next year. My mistake! It’s coming out in November as the tour ends.

For more, you can follow Conny Lee and the How Did I Not Know That podcast:

• LinkedIn: Conny Lee
• Spotify: How Did I Not Know That? show page
• Apple: How Did I Not Know That? show page

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The first signal from the Velvet Ditch is subtle.

As usual, I misread it.

Gradually, I notice my morning writing is bogged down in tedium. I’m not progressing at my usual pace. Checklist items remain unchecked. The growing list fills me with dread instead of excitement.

After a few weeks, opening my current file each morning requires an immense act of willpower—and I’ve structured my life to create that gift of time.

So, why am I squandering it?

To be clear, the pattern I’m describing isn’t depression or physical exhaustion. I’ve experienced both and would seek clinical attention should they recur.

How can I be sure?

For starters, my depression usually comes with a walloping dose of persistent pessimism where any positive feelings flatline. That isn’t happening. Work with clients is proceeding. I’m meeting my deadlines on that front.

Physically, I’m fortunate to also feel fine: I have no body pain, fatigue, or atypical reluctance to get out of bed. I sleep well. My commitments at home, with my family, and with friends are being met. When I fulfill these obligations, I feel joy.

But there’s a definite spark missing.

Concurrent signals:

• Reading way less than I normally do and watching minimal movies or television.
• Developing a sudden, voracious appetite for immersive video games.
• Wanting to be outside, preferably in water (I love to swim).

“What is happening?” becomes the undercurrent in conversations with peers and mentors.

Gradually, I realize that my creativity has stalled out. And, thanks to my friend Jeff, I even have a name for this recurring pattern.

I’m back in the Velvet Ditch.

What is the Velvet Ditch?

Jeff Wetherhold is a fellow consultant in a different field; we met through Growclass.

We first talked about the Velvet Ditch during a call in February 2023. The holiday festivities were firmly in the rear-view by that point, but we hadn’t caught up in a while.

“How’ve you been?” I ask. “How were your holidays?”

“January was slow,” he tells me. “I didn’t climb out of the Velvet Ditch until the end of the month.”

“Climb out of what?” I ask, instantly fascinated. “Can you tell me more?”

“You know,” he says. “When you’re crawling toward the holidays and you can’t take on another single thing. And then you get there, and you do all the extra work of celebration. And after that, there’s this period where you watch movies or TV or read and relax. It’s like lying in a ditch, but you’re also wrapped in this velvet blanket of creature comforts.”

“I know that feeling,” I tell him, thinking of every December in my adult life and especially my last holiday break. Getting there had been the darkest of crawls. “You mean the unstructured week between Christmas and New Year when time seems to stop.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Only, sometimes, I stay in the ditch way past the holiday. When that happens, I don’t ask very much of myself. I do what’s needed and no more. I let myself recharge. And at some point, I know it’s time to throw off the blanket and stand up.”

I hung up the call filled with the clarity and gratitude that only a talk with a wise friend gives me.

Sadly, awareness isn’t inoculation.

Am I in the Velvet Ditch?

The Urban English Dictionary describes the Velvet Ditch as, “A place that is easy to fall into and hard to crawl out of.”

NO KIDDING.  

Talking with Jeff added his work-specific context—that the Velvet Ditch is both collapse and escape, comfort and holding pattern. That it’s a place of gentleness with your working self, something of an inevitability in the cultural landscape of late-capitalist societies, and not at all limited to the Western holiday periods.

And ditch seasons may also look different, depending on your industry:

• If you’re in accounting, I bet you fall in the ditch right after you finish filing every tax report in existence each spring.
• If you teach, the first month of summer break is probably a big-time Velvet Ditch experience.
• If you’re a work-from-home parent with school-age children, having them come home for THEIR summer break may also be enough to send you tumbling into the ditch.

Depending on your profession, you can probably think of one or two high probability fields in your calendar when the Velvet Ditch looms large.

How I fell in this time

Looking back at last June, I see some obvious ‘straw/camel’s back’ risk factors:

• I lost a dear friend and colleague in 2022. While I had processed a lot of my rawest grief by the time I fell in the ditch, I was not at my most emotionally resilient. (I’m still not.)
• I signed up for a three-week virtual course that month, right after running my first in-person author event on top of the annual end-of-school madness. Until the course started, I’d been deep in a 30,000-word writing sprint on Book II of The Xenthian Cycle and enjoying great momentum. I expected the course to interrupt my streak. I didn’t expect it would derail my writing afterward.
• As a working parent with a home office, I’m on deck when my kids are on summer break. They’re much more autonomous now, but their presences (and camp-related calendars) still shift my working rhythms. A lot, as it happens.
• My consulting practice undergoes a sea change roughly every two years, usually in summer. With hindsight, guess what else often happens during that period?

While my Velvet Ditch stay eventually became obvious, figuring it out took me a good five weeks. After, I felt silly that it took me so long, especially when Jeff had given me the framing concept earlier in the year.

Had a ditch stay in 2023? You weren’t alone

Here’s the kicker.

This fall—as I talked to colleagues, went to conferences, and read other people who are insightful about working life—I realized I wasn’t the only creative wrapped in some version of the Velvet Ditch.

And I don’t think all the factors are personal.

Here’s a short list of energetic drains you may have experienced this year:

• Smelling smoke in your city for days on end or even evacuating from your community while record-breaking forest fires raged through North America.
• Watching your leadership team try to stuff the remote-work genie back into the ‘5 days in-office’ bottle.
• Understanding that we live in a patriarchal society systemically built on white supremacy and colonization, which requires variable energy to manage depending on how this framework interacts with your life, liberty, and goals.
• Continued attacks on the rights of LGBTQ2S people across North America.
• Enduring Covid-19’s long-tail impact on your work, social, and creative life. Many acute disruptions have ended, but we all experienced a mountain of change in four years.
• Caring for an elder or vulnerable relative in an increasingly broken long-term healthcare system.

I’m sure you can list a dozen more factors without breaking a sweat.

So, what’s to be done?

Getting out of the Velvet Ditch: A working guide

I don’t have all the answers for how to escape the Velvet Ditch, and I won’t pretend that I do.

Here are some patterns I’ve noticed:

1. As with grief, there is no timeline. It takes as long as it takes.
2. The lack of timeline likely pisses you off. And the Velvet Ditch does not care. Trying to force your way out may wrap that blanket around you even tighter.
3. Listen to Jeff and let yourself rest. Answer the diversions tugging at your hand. If you suddenly feel like learning the piano, give that a try. Personally, I played a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. (Damn, that’s a great game.)
4. Give yourself permission to stop creating for a while. Your drive will come back. I honestly believe that.
5. If you can, take a social media break. Clearing that bandwidth can help a lot, particularly for extremely online people (my brethren, hello).
6. Spend time outdoors with loved ones, pets, and/or small children, depending on how your life is structured. They can be a balm for your soul during a Velvet Ditch stay.

I’m not entirely out of the ditch, even now. I still have days that are less creatively productive.

And yeah, they bother me.

When that happens, I have a little talk with myself about being a human being. I try to gift myself some of the kindness I would give to another.

And I trust that when it’s time to fully stand back up and run again, I’ll know.

EMW Note: Finding yourself in the Velvet Ditch is itself a marker of privilege. I want to acknowledge that.

I wrote this essay weeks before the Hamas attack that left innocent Israeli civilians dead and saw hostages taken. The attack in turn prompted the State of Israel to place over two million people living in Gaza under direct threat of starvation, dehydration, and physical harm as it cut water, electricity and bombed this heavily populated area at an astounding rate.

I am thinking of the Palestinian and Israeli people who have lost or fear for their family, friends, and homes. I’ve written to my representatives asking for an immediate ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to be sent.

If you are grieving for people you care about or in fear for their safety, please know I’m thinking of you with love.

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Since this show involves both work me and writing me, the interview is attributed to my full name. We will pretend it’s E. M. Williams as usual. My pseudonym is more about being intentional regarding which part of my life I’m speaking to than an attempt to conceal my gender or create iron-clad anonymity, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The episode originally aired on August 14 and runs for about 40 minutes. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

On Learning with Lerner, Lindsey interviews unconventional leaders who have blazed trails in a variety of ways. Her goal is to challenge norms, explore unique journeys, and ignite personal growth for the show’s audience.

Lindsey and I connected on email after I heard Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale on her podcast earlier in the year. I enjoyed Lindsey’s interviewing style so much that pitching my own story was the next logical step.

We ended up having a great conversation about leadership, mentorship, learning how to do hard things by doing them before you feel ready, crowdfunding, launching a consultancy, cracking my own creative productivity code to write Chaos Calling, and why I don’t think you have to suffer to make art.

Who is this conversation for?

Anyone pursuing an unconventional path who wants to hear more from people with similar ambitions in adjacent fields.

Topics we covered on the Learning with Lerner Podcast

• 1:55 — Living in Toronto and a bit about my family history, along with my childhood desire to write
• 3:00 — Integrating creativity without bankrupting your existence; the myth of artistic suffering; Big Magic
• 9:50 — How I cracked the secret to figuring out my creative productivity process; the ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ story; Chaos Calling’s origins in movement and Wattpad
• 16:40 — Being a woman in a field dominated by men; working in tech and academia; how those experiences informed Dave Montcalm’s and Jason Lin’s storylines; using commuting and consulting to make art
• 24:00 — What my typical day looks like now
• 25:20 — Changes in technology and research across my working life
• 26:50 — Mentorship’s role in my career and why I believe in giving back; working with Growclass
• 28:00 — How crowdfunding helped me develop the skills to launch a self-published book
• 32:00 — I pitch Chaos Calling to Lindsey’s listeners
• 33:35 — My career advice on how to go rogue and work for yourself
• 35:45 — Telling people what you do when you have multiple career pursuits; being comfortable with self promotion
• 37:00 — Best and worst career advice I ever got; inspiration is super weird

For more, you can follow Lindsey and the Learning with Lerner podcast:

• Instagram: @lindseylerner
• LinkedIn: Lindsey Lerner

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We recorded the episode in February 2022 and it aired on March 9, 2023. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• YouTube

On the Abundantly Aware podcast, Katie Woodruff explores how to help overwhelmed creatives move from paralyzed to empowered. It’s a transition so many of us want to make and aren’t sure exactly what to do, but as a coach it’s the kind of thing Katie thinks about a lot. Her episodes are conversational, revolving around relatable stories on a given topic.

Katie and I connected on Instagram. I saw Katie’s content mentioned by Kirsti McNabney, host of the Thinking About podcast who had me on her show last month. I went to check out Katie’s work, pitched her my story, and we hit it off.

We ended up having a great conversation about writing Chaos Calling and my journey through self-publishing. We also talk about the choices I’m glad I made on my journey and things I would adjust if I had my time over again.

Who is this conversation for? Anyone who wants to write a book or is interested in learning more about writing, self-publishing and chasing creative goals.

Topics we cover on the Abundantly Aware Podcast

• 1:00 — How I got into self-publishing and why it was the right choice for me
• 5:00 — The myth of overnight success in the arts and in other fields.
• 6:00 — How Chaos Calling came to me as a project.
• 10:30 — The importance of getting good feedback early and often.
• 12:00 — What choices I would make again with the creative process: The best decision I made was not to talk too much about the plot until the draft was finished and then when it was ready for primetime.
• 17:00 — My creativity model and why I don’t believe you have to suffer to make art.
• 24:00 — Why you can’t let fear drive when you’re building something new and how I think about writing books and reviewing books by other authors.
• 32:00 — The joy of crowd response when you achieve a goal you’ve been chasing your whole life contrasted to the resting power of the Velvet Ditch.
• 35:00 — Authors I’m reading and enjoying.
• 37:20 — I pitch Chaos Calling to Katie Woodruff’s audience and tell her where to find it on Amazon.

If you’d like to watch us talk, you can do that there:

The best part? Katie told me on International Women’s Day that she’s got a copy of the book, which is the greatest kind of message to get at 3 pm on a Wednesday.

For more, you can follow Katie and the Abundantly Aware podcast:

• Instagram: @abundantlyawarepodcast
• YouTube: Abundantly Aware’s channel

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We recorded the episode back in November 2022, but it aired February 7, 2023. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple podcasts
• Spotify podcasts
• Other podcast places –> Here’s a a list of other podcast sites where Kirsti’s work is distributed.

Kirsti and I met in 2021 through Growclass, Sarah Stockdale’s online growth marketing community. I’ve been a big fan of Kirsti’s podcast work since she launched her show in March 2022.

On the Thinking About Podcast, Kirsti talks with thoughtful, interesting people. Many are also entrepreneurs sharing lessons and insights they’ve picked up on their journeys.

I spoke about writing Chaos Calling and my journey through self-publishing. We also talk about balancing career commitments with creative work, having a life, and finding the motivation to persevere when chasing a long-term dream.

Who is this conversation for? Anyone thinking about writing a book, wanting to publish a book, or pursuing a long-term creative project.

It’s a tough world. Motivation can be hard to come by. We talk about that, too.

Part I: Writing Topics on the Thinking About Podcast

• 0:00 – 4:00 — Kirsti’s intro, which made me tear up, I won’t lie
• 4:00 – 6:00 — Why I chose E. M. Williams as my pen name, segmenting a professional life, thinking about privacy, and whether a pen name might be a good choice for you.
• 6:00 – 8:00 — Should you couple your business divisions? Why grouping consulting and publishing under one company works for me (so far).
• 8:00 – 13:00 — ‘Don’t Stop Believing‘: I believed at one point that my writing dreams were dead. We talk about the Medium essay I wrote, and why you can’t give up when life pivots around you.
• 13:00 – 17:00 — My wild experience writing Chaos Calling. Being open to a fresh inspiration download helped me to level-up my writing work. And, I also talk about how pivoting my approach to writing with Wattpad.
• 17:00 – 23:00 — Where did these characters and the Chaos Calling story come from? I tell Kirsti how I built the series in onion layers, and give an overview of the plot. Do I see the book in my head as I’m writing? Yes, I do. And people reading say it feels like watching a movie.
• 23:00 – 26:00 — Tricking your brain into being productive: I wrote the first three drafts on my phone while riding the TTC.
• 26:00 – 28:30 — Writing a story set in Toronto, why I wanted to write fantasy set in the city where I live, and taking inspo from the Raptors’ victory parade in 2019.
• 28:30 – 35:00 — Book production and feedback: How I took the manuscript through the editing process. We also talk about finding beta readers and editors. Is it scary to share your work? Yes, but you get over it.

Part II: Book Production Topics on the Thinking About Podcast

• 35:00 – 38:00 — What would I say to that younger version of me stuck in that car? We talk about how you don’t get to stay in the high place of inspiration, or the low place of despair.
• 39:00 – 50:00 — Book production and launch: We cover my process and decisions I made, and how to make space for the things you don’t know. Weirdly, Frozen 2 comes up a lot. I suggest places to look for resources and people to help with your creative project.
• 50:00 – 58:30 — What’s the most rewarding part of chasing your dream? I talk about the beautiful conversations I’ve had with people post launch, and why Growclass is the best. We also discuss the importance of focusing on the process and enjoying the ride.
• 58:30 – 1:04:00 — Books I recommend and how early Twitter (pre 2017) taught me how to be a better creative person on the Internet.

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