Back to Basics

Many years ago as a newly single mom someone asked me what I wanted to be. “A writer,” was my answer. At that point, fiction writing was the only kind I thought about, yet that just seemed like such a far-fetched dream. I’d had a teacher in high school who told me I was a terrible writer (jokes on her as I’ve now written nearly 20 non-fiction books under either my own name or ghostwriting for the author).

If you had told me years ago that I would eventually migrate into the nonfiction world, and even further still, expand into publishing, I would have laughed. I couldn’t see that path for myself—I actually didn’t even know that many of the services I provide now were something that an everyday person (who didn’t work for a large traditional publishing company) could even make a living doing.

Times have changed—well, mostly, my education has changed, and I’ve grown.

I operate two businesses now. One of them is a family pet sitting business, and the other is my publishing services business. I’ve been in a business mastermind for a few years now, and at our December meeting, my coach and mentor asked how I wanted to spend my time in 2026. I expressed my frustration at not having the bandwidth in my current workflow to write fiction.

So, as any awesome mentor and coach would do—she showed me that not only was I earning what I needed to earn, but that I was enjoying consistent referral based business so marketing efforts weren’t intense at this stage, and that I very well could afford to slow down and write fiction.

We wrote the pathway, we wrote the plan. And then January hit. I was so used to viewing my businesses through a certain lens that I pretty much put fiction on the back burner (again) so I could continue building my business. Until she saw me working to create new things, and I received an email saying, “I wonder what your mentor would think about this?”

We hopped on a call and she calmly, and patiently revealed to me how yet again I was deprioritizing a dream I had in order to create what other people wanted. I never asked myself if those things aligned. I never wondered if it was the wrong thing to give other people what they wanted; I just assumed that was more important.

See—even after all of these years in business, my mindset still needs work.

Once we ended that call, I pulled out my notes from our December meeting. I wrote my 3 points of focus (you can call them goals) for the first 100 Days of 2026 down on an index card in blue ink, and I taped it up to the wall in front of my desk.

I worked to revamp my website a little, pare down my offerings to ensure that the clients I am attracting are the right type of clients, and now—I am writing fiction.

I thought I would use this page to chronicle my journey a little, share characters, scenes and inside peeks into the process.

I’ve focused my niche, and have my north star. Now, onward toward fiction.