The Power of the Good Stuff Jar, author homework, and another writer’s gorgeous writing, to create inspiration in 2025

We’re in those first few weeks of the new year. Kirk and I are still remembering all the good things that happened in 2024, thanks to reading every slip of paper in the Good Stuff Jar on New Year’s Eve.

[If you haven’t heard me talk about this before, the Good Stuff Jar is a year-long project suggested to us by our good friend and Executive Coach Carol Lempert. Throughout the year, we jot down anything good that happened—professional or personal, big or small. On NYE, we order in sushi and go through every slip of paper. I highly recommend this activity. In January, I then type them all up, and now I have a record, from years gone by, of all the good things that have happened. There are many—but it’s easy to forget that in the bustle of everyday life.]

Now we’re three weeks into January. It’s a time when our resolutions are still roaming around our heads, but old habits threaten to take over on automatic pilot. I’m trying to make room for the new habits, especially around writing.

I recently listened to a great episode of The Indy Author, a podcast all about the creative writing and publishing process, hosted by Matty Dalrymple. She interviewed Dre Baldwin, the CEO and Founder of Work on Your Game. A past professional basketball player, he’s given 4 TEDx Talks and authored many books about professional high performance, consistency, results, entrepreneurship, and mindset. Perfect New Year fare.

Here's the episode in podcast form, and here’s the episode on YouTube.

As you can imagine, the interview was about goalsetting, it being the beginning of the year. I’ve been doing a bunch of that work with a couple of accountability partners.

In listening to the episode, I realized I’m doing a few things well. For example, one of the thing Dre talks about is author homework (@22:01 of the interview). Matty asked him for advice about writers who have shown the discipline to work, have allocated the time and space, but when they sit down, and face the blank page, they freeze. Did he have any advice to help people get past that challenge?

Here's what Dre said: “Yes, we call that doing your homework. So that's part of discipline. Doing your homework means setting yourself up so it's easier to do the thing when it comes time to do it. In school you do your homework. Ostensibly, the theory is, you do your homework, you'll be better prepared for the quiz or the test. And it's the same thing in the sports world. You do your homework by practicing and training so that when you get into the game, you're ready to execute and do what you need to do. So if we're talking about something like writing, the homework is setting yourself up so that you already have your headers and your subjects and your sub-headers in place, so that when you sit down to write, you're not just looking at a blank page.”

Being a plotter, not a pantser myself—and being a writer who likes very developed outlines with character dialogue from which to cherry pick, questions in the margin, etc.—I am happy not to face the blank page.

There are other ways you can prime the pump, too.

This past summer, Kirk and I went on a trip to Dorset to research Thomas Hardy, who set his novels there. I have a novel project which is a re-imagining of Hardy’s writing for which I was so happy to receive an Ontario Arts Council Recommender grant from Invisible Publishing (yes, they are the delightful folk who published my first novel, At Last Count), and so I used that grant to help us get to Dorset.

To spend several days visiting the places in my book, listening to the local accent, seeing the distance between buildings, taking a few tours—that was author homework for sure (and really makes the writing all the more fun—as if it wasn’t fun enough already).

Here, for example is one of the places we visited: Thomas Hardy’s cottage just outside Dorchester. I mean, come ON.

My favourite part of that tour: the desk where Thomas Hardy wrote his novels Under The Greenwood Tree and Far From the Madding Crowd. It’s a great reminder that you don’t need much to be inspired or productive.

Everything we did on that research trip—the sights, the sounds, the views, the stories about Hardy’s life, and the characters and stories he wrote—are etched in my brain, and fodder. Author’s homework, as Dre says.

But back to the interview. I realized during the podcast, that I have a way to go in other goals Dre talked about. They discussed time management @13:43. Here’s what he said: “Time management is a misnomer because there is no such thing as managing time. Time goes at the exact same pace no matter what we do. You work really hard, time goes—an hour is still an hour. And if you do absolutely nothing, an hour is still an hour. So when people talk about time management, I get what they mean, but there's no such thing as managing time. And there's a reason why people call it time management: because it makes it seem like it's some outside, external force that we need to get control over, when what we actually mean when we say time management is self-accountability and self-control. That's really what we need to manage. We need to manage ourselves.”

While I’m great at getting to the writing in the morning, my afternoon time management—or self-management—energy dissipates very easily. I feel that the important work—the writing—is done (and it is), but there are so many admin hounds barking at my door, that every day I don’t deal with them efficiently, they lurk and pace and create 4 a.m. frets.

So in 2025, I’m going to try to apply the same clear thinking and efficiency with my admin as I do with my writing. I took a pomodoro writing method workshop with writing coach and mentor Sue Reynolds at the end of 2024—which is very productive for writing. But I’ve decided to apply the 25-min intense work period, with a subsequent 5-min break, to the admin part of my work life too. You know, answer one grant application question—you have 25 minutes. Go. Take a 5-minute break. Answer 3 emails—you have 25 minutes. Go. Followed by a break.

Because otherwise, the result is this:

One last thing about The Indy Author podcast: the host, Matty Dalrymple, dedicated Eps 101-107 of her podcast to chatting with Orna Ross, author and founder-director of ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors), about the overall process of indie publishing. It’s a great resource. I’ll definitely go back to these episodes at some point in the future. They are:

​Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross

Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross

Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross

Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross

Episode 105 - The Fifth Process of Publishing: Marketing with Orna Ross

Episode 106 - The Sixth Process of Publishing: Promotion with Orna Ross

Episode 107 - The Seventh Process of Publishing: Selective Rights Licensing with Orna Ross

Random Useful Writerly Things

A writer in my morning PJ Writing group shared this super useful resource: The Virtual Author & Writer Events newsletter compiled by Sarah Nicholas. It lists free and paid author and reader events weekly.

My friend Ann Douglas, bestselling author of many books including Navigating The Messy Middle, recommended this article called “End-of-the-Year Author Platform Tune-Up: Simple To-Dos So You Can Hit the Ground Running with your 2025 Plans” by Jeffrey Yamaguchi. It is so smart, and has so many recommendations, and I am behind on all of them. Oh well. Now is as good a time as any to start.

Gorgeous Writing

Sometimes I am lucky enough to read exquisite writing—writing that transports, inspires, and improves my life. If you have 10 minutes, read this essay called “Grinning in Airports” by my friend, oft-mentor, and gorgeous writer, Jill Golick.

Happy writing and reading.

Claire