Guiding Principles for Author Sanity

My publishing schedule for 2026 — insert hollow laugh here — took something of an ass-kicking.

A book I thought was going to be a breeze turned out to be two inconvenient things at once: bigger than anything I’ve written before, and considerably more complex than I expected. From a writer’s point of view, this is excellent news. The book grew because it needed to grow. The world deepened. The characters became sharper. The choices mattered more.

From a publisher’s point of view, however, there may have been some pacing about the room, muttering darkly about release schedules.

Because publishing loves a schedule. Publishing loves a plan. Publishing loves a tidy spreadsheet that says this book will be finished here, edited there, uploaded then, launched promptly, and followed by the next book before anyone has time to forget you exist.

Stories, inconveniently, are less obedient.

They don’t always mature according to the production calendar. Sometimes they reveal a hidden wing of the house. Sometimes a supporting character develops opinions. Sometimes the “straightforward” book becomes the book that asks harder questions, demands deeper answers, and quietly doubles the emotional load.

And sometimes, the person writing it realises that the problem is not the book.

The problem is the pressure.

I found myself feeling increasingly rebellious about the idea that I needed to produce more, faster, and more visibly. More books. More posts. More updates. More marketing. More optimisation. More platform presence. More proving that I was, in fact, taking this author career seriously.

Which is ridiculous, because the books are the serious part.

But the machinery around the books can become very loud. It tells you that every gap is dangerous. That pausing is lost momentum. Every quiet season is a failure of discipline. Days spent thinking instead of posting are days wasted.

This is how normal fatigue begins to blur into burnout.

Not with a single dramatic collapse. More often it begins with irritation. Resistance. The sense that everything you once loved has been turned into a task. You still care deeply about the work, but the work is now surrounded by so many demands that getting to it feels like fighting your way through brambles.

That was my warning sign. So I did something I learned in my corporate executive days: I wrote a set of guiding principles.

Not goals. Not targets. Not a productivity system. Not a colour-coded plan designed to make me feel inadequate by Tuesday (although I do love me a good, well coloured plan!).

Guiding principles.

A set of decisions made in a calm moment, so I don’t have to renegotiate my sanity every time publishing culture starts banging a spoon on the table.

They are there to remind me what kind of creative career I am actually building, and to keep me on the straight and narrow. They are there to hold a red velvet rope around the actual writing.

So here we go.

1. The Work Comes First

The books are the point, not the production calendar. Not the algorithm. Not the launch calendar. Not the current advice about how frequently one must appear in public to remain relevant. The work.

For me, that means prioritising the quality and integrity of the books over speed of release. It means allowing stories the time they need to mature fully before publication. It means building a body of work, not a content treadmill.

This sounds obvious until you are standing in the middle of a publishing year with a delayed book, a marketing plan, a newsletter, a Substack, a website, a backlist, a brain, a body, a household, and the faint sense that someone on the internet is probably releasing twelve books this year while also growing their list by 400 percent and batch-creating video content in linen trousers.

At that point, “the work comes first” becomes less obvious.

It becomes radical.

2. Sustainability Over Intensity

A creative career has to be livable if it is going to last.

I’m very good at intensity. Many authors are. We can push. We can rally. We can finish the chapter, revise the scene, meet the deadline, and keep going long after a sensible person would have wandered off to stare at a tree.

Intensity has its uses. But intensity is not a life.

I want a creative career that is emotionally, intellectually, and physically sustainable. That means protecting spaciousness, rest, reflection, reading, walking, and ordinary life. Not because those things are indulgent extras, but because they are part of the compost from which the books grow.

A depleted person can still produce words. But I am not convinced a depleted person produces the best books.

3. Depth Over Visibility

Being widely seen is not the same as being meaningfully read.

This is a difficult one in an online world. Visibility is measurable. Subscriber counts are measurable. Clicks are measurable. Sales rank is measurable. Revenue is measurable. Open rates are measurable. The number of people who quietly read something and feel less alone isn’t always measurable.

But it matters.

Meaningful connection with readers matters more to me than maximum attention. Trust, resonance, and longevity matter more than virality. I’d rather be read deeply by the right people than briefly noticed by everyone.

Visibility and significance are not the same thing.

This doesn’t mean hiding in a cupboard and refusing to tell anyone the books exist. Marketing matters. Communication matters. Readers can’t find books they never hear about.

4. Marketing Supports the Work

The question is not whether to market. The question is whether the marketing remains in service to the work. Promotion should amplify the books, not consume the writer.

For me, marketing needs to amplify the books, not replace the writing life with a second full-time job in performance. I want consistency and authenticity over relentless optimisation. I want slow, steady growth over pressure and exhaustion. I want to use platforms strategically, not devotionally. Which brings us to …

5. Platforms Are Tools, Not Masters

Use the machinery. Don’t kneel before it.

My website is a tool. Social media is a tool. My newsletter is a tool. Amazon, Kobo, Apple, BookFunnel, all of them — tools.

Useful tools, sometimes powerful tools, occasionally infuriating tools.

But tools.

They don’t get to dictate my creative choices or assign my worth. They don’t get to decide whether a quiet writing week was valuable. And they most definitely do not get to turn the deep work into an interruption. All of this is to …

6. Protect the Creative Mind

The imagination needs room, silence, curiosity, and ordinary life.

The creative mind isn’t a machine that can be fed input, output, discourse, outrage, advice, comparison, notifications, and sales data all day long and still be expected to produce wonder on command.

It needs room.

It needs curiosity, humour, contemplation, and intellectual freedom. It needs time away from reaction. It needs the occasional period of invisibility so the deeper work can happen.

A writer who is constantly responding may have very little left for imagining.

And imagination is the job.

7. Honour the Long Game

Strong books, reader trust, and craftsmanship compound slowly.

The longer I do this, the more I believe in the long game. Strong books create stronger foundations than rapid output. Craftsmanship compounds. Reader trust compounds. A body of work compounds. None of this happens as quickly as we would like, and almost none of it looks impressive in the early stages.

But a creative career designed to endure for decades cannot be built entirely on urgency.

Urgency is useful when there is an actual fire. It is less useful as a daily operating system.

8. Stay Aligned With Reality

Writing matters, but it does not have to justify your existence.

Writing does not justify my personal worth. Publishing success does not make me more worthy. A delayed book does not make me less disciplined. This has been a tough one for me and I’ve had to take lots of deep breaths around the concept.

But a quiet season doesn’t mean I have failed. There are many forms of wealth beyond money, and a creative life should enrich the whole person, not merely the professional identity.

This matters because ambition can be beautiful.

I like ambition. I like excellence. I like doing good work. I like finishing things. I like the satisfying click of a well-made plan. But ambition untethered from reality becomes a rather unpleasant houseguest.

It starts rearranging the furniture. It tells you rest is laziness. It whispers that enough is never enough. It looks at a life full of books, readers, walks, family, meals, cats, weather, laughter, and ordinary magic, and asks whether the metrics are improving quickly enough.

No, thank you.

9. The Rowanswood Principle

Keep wonder alive.

Leave room for whimsy, mystery, kindness, and delight.

Never let the machinery of publishing extinguish the magic that made the work worth creating in the first place.

That one may be the most important of all.

Because the machinery isn’t evil. Schedules are useful. Marketing is useful. Strategy is useful. Publishing plans are useful. I am not throwing the entire business side of authorship into the sea, tempting though that may be on certain afternoons.

But the machinery must remain in service to the magic. Not the other way around.

The book that disrupted my tidy 2026 schedule has now gone to copy editing. It will be out in the fall. I am thrilled with how it has turned out, even if it did not behave itself in the slightest.

And yes, I may have inadvertently started writing another series.

Hamish and Magnus may yet have another novella before the end of the year. Or they may not. We shall see. I am trying not to make promises on behalf of fictional beings, especially ones with strong opinions and access to magical objects.

What I do know is this: I would rather build slowly and sanely than sprint myself into resentment.

I would rather write books I am proud of than keep pace with a schedule that no longer fits the work.

I would rather protect the creative life than perform productivity.

And if I need a red velvet rope, a list of guiding principles, and the occasional stern look from a fictional Scottish piskie to remember that, so be it.

There are worse ways to stay sane.