Ten Ways to Stop Being a Writer

1. Daydream ideas for a monthly newsletter.

2. Ask your graphic designer friend to create a logo for said newsletter. Send her pictures of color palettes and designs you like. Reiterate your love of green and growth and grace and…gag can we stop with the alliteration already?

3. Realize you need to update your blog/website before you can send out a newsletter. Start to edit the Wordpress site your husband made you for Christmas. Lament that the design he chose does not go with your new logo.

4. Get Covid and put everything on hold for 3-5 days that turns into 3-5 weeks.

5. Finalize a tagline: Grace-filled Growth. Alliteration is okay in small doses, right? Right?

6. Start re-designing your Wordpress site. Experiment with 1-7 themes, watch the first 30 seconds of 15 Youtube tutorials. Google “How to change fonts in Wordpress,” “how to find the blog posts block Wordpress,” “how to display all your posts on one page Wordpress,”  “how to save your sanity Wordpress,” “why is Squarespace better than Wordpress?” 

7. Curse your husband for not being a developer.

8. Curse yourself for not being a developer.

9. Yell at your kids because you worked on your website for 8 hours and it looks WORSE.

10. Sign up for a free trial of Squarespace. Look for inspiration from websites you love (looking at you Ashlee and Rachel). Repeat steps 6-9. Tweak and fiddle until the site is presentable only to realize you need to start all over learning Substack or Mailchimp to send out the newsletter you wanted to start to get out of your writing rut in the first place.

After “Ten Ways to Stop Being a Writer” by Daien Guo and the prompting of Ashlee Gadd