It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for another posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

I don’t know about you, but 2021 has been quite an interesting year for me.

Okay, this was the best meme I could find (most memes about success and 2021 are just inappropriate). And who doesn’t love Yoda?

2021 was the year of loads of change. Now, I have to preface this with: I hate change. I know it’s necessary for growth, I know it’s inevitable, and I know it’s the only constant. Still, it makes me uncomfortable and supercharges all the different acronyms I suffer from, overriding my meds. But doing my best to get on top of a situation (read: manically doing everything to be in control of what had changed), I can find a place of calm.

Just love that gif from Supernatural…

The first thing that changed for me this year is getting a new day job — one that took a lot of physical work, emotional involvement, and was utterly exhausting on those levels while being quite rewarding. But I needed to figure out how to write and run my author business around this. It took time, but I got there. (Around the middle of the year…)

The second thing that changed, because of the first, was throwing my publishing schedule out the window. I took a project — the Irascible Immortals series — and finished it. I finished writing the books, I started on the translations into Afrikaans, and I started on the audiobooks. A small caveat: Smoke on the Water and Radioactive aren’t published yet. More below.

It was a big change from what I had planned (only publishing three of the books a year, no translations, and only nine books). But inspiration struck and I believe it’s because I didn’t multitask — jumping from one project to another.

Joanna Penn said in her book “The Successful Author Mindset” that there isn’t such a thing as multitasking, you’re only dividing your attention.

The third thing that changed for me was mostly reading eBooks. This has two reasons: one, print books have doubled in price for some unholy reason which made them unaffordable, two, I can buy eBooks directly from most indie authors.

The fourth thing that changed, which segues into the third, is that I read a lot more indie books this year. Though I’ve stopped taking review requests on the blog (which I’ll talk about in January), I still published a lot of reviews of indie books I’ve read. Honestly, my TBR is out of control (especially the books I actually own!) that I’ll probably have to do something structured about it. Perhaps an A-Z of my TBR?

The fifth thing that changed, completely out of my control, was Kobo disallowing payments from PayPal on the South African store. One day I was able to buy books, the next it was impossible. And it took a month for them to come back with the flimsy excuse that it was never a possibility for me to do this in the first place (despite always having used the SA store in conjunction with PayPal). So now I have no way to buy eBooks, except on stores that allow PayPal (using another country in Kobo will have some legal repercussions that I’m not willing to incur). I’ve found that some indie authors have stores on their websites where I can use PayPal, and Smashwords also allows PayPal payments. So now I have to find other round-about ways to buy books. Infuriating!

The sixth thing that changed was I added a podcast to my online presence. It is a great way to do some content marketing in the audio space and I’m actually enjoying it.

The seventh thing that changed is how I use social media. I’ve moved from doing the intense Twitter thing, concentrating instead on Instagram where I find I have more interaction with others, and I’m continuing doing Pinterest as I’ve found that most referrals to my website comes from this site. I still post on Twitter, but mostly about my newsletter (which surprisingly works to attract new subscribers), folklore, and my newest blog post.

The eighth thing that changed is how I approach writing. No longer do I stare at a mocking cursor and blank screen: I write everything by hand and then type it up. This was born from the increased load shedding in my country and became a habit. I’m writing a cleaner first draft (probably because I do some light editing as I type it) and I’m enjoying the skeleton draft method instead of planning everything out first.

The ninth thing that changed is how I approach reading. There was a time that I would only read books I liked. But now I read more widely (even non-fiction that makes me roll my eyes a lot) and I also read popular series — even if I don’t like the style — to see what makes them popular. The last is only in my genre as I only have so much patience with stories that don’t work for me.

The tenth thing that changed, something I sometimes have issues with, is being more assertive, being more myself, being okay that not everyone will like what I write and publish (even on my blog and social media). I did a bootcamp with Brandon Lucero to master my messaging and I learned how to be more authentically me, to stop trying to make everyone happy with everything I say and do, and to use my core values and identities to craft my social media posts, blog posts and post titles. As Brandon says: not everyone will like what you have to say, but those who do are friends (fans) for life.

Yeah, I’ve been watching The Devil Wears Prada a few times too many this year… Miranda is awesome, though. Brutally honest. Who doesn’t want to be as decisive and calculating in their careers as Miranda?

The eleventh thing that changed, which segues into the tenth, is that I’m exploring different things with my fiction. Joanna Penn said in The Successful Author Mindset, that she has found her voice once she stopped being afraid to explore the things she was interested in through her fiction. I’ve found a similar freedom.

The twelfth thing that changed was the way the IWSG book club was going to be run. Out of the blue, for me, changes were announced and as a moderator I had to quickstep to catch up. Like I said: I don’t like change. But I did everything I could to make it work for me. And I think it’s working out. You can learn more about the book club here.

You can read my reviews of last month’s IWSG Book Club selections here.

The thirteenth thing that changed was, as one probably could have predicted with the way life has been going since the pandemic started, was that since August I was unable to write. Things were going along well, I was juggling all the balls in the air that I should, I was being awesome, and then things changed. I’m not going to bore you with the details of my life: suffice to say that my publishing schedule, my writing schedule, my everything perfectly planned for the year, was thrown out the window.

The fourteenth thing that changed, a good change, was that sales on all my eBooks have doubled since last year. I’ll take that win.

Do you know of any eBook stores that accept PayPal? Where do you buy your eBooks? What kind of changes have you faced this year? Have you watched The Devil Wears Prada? What do you think of change?