The Time of the Writer Has Come

And the creative coach era is drawing to a close

Death showed up in my tarot cards again. The last time it did was a little over a year ago, just before I applied for my content writer job. It was timely then, and it is timely now.

In tarot, Death symbolises not actual death, but change and rebirth. As someone who’s ever so slightly addicted to the sense of a new beginning, it’s a card I love deeply.

This time around, Death brings a shift in my creative identity, in my creative brand, in my creative business, in how I think about what I create. It’s a change that has gotten clearer and clearer over the past year, ever since the last time Death showed up. This is the final step on that journey of transformation.

The time of the writer has come.

A writer first

I began my creative life as a writer. As a kid who wrote stories and dreamed of writing books. As a young adult working on that first novel between university lectures. My blogging started as a way to deal with my struggles to write consistently. I got interested in the creative process to figure out how to be a writer.

It grew from there. The photography, the creative coaching, the branding, the videography, the marketing, the podcasting, the business. My creative life became layered and varied. But it all began with writing.

For the last couple of years, I have been a creative coach first, a writer second. I grappled with it in the beginning, but eventually I settled into showing up as someone who help others create, first and foremost.

When I look back, I can see the pendulum starting to swing back a year ago, when I applied for and then started my content writer job. Half my work week, I was primarily a writer. It felt good. Like, really good.

Then, at the beginning of 2023, I started noticing the pull towards writing in my own creative life as well. I longed to work more on my fiction writing again, to bother less with selling and strategic business building, to be an artist more than an expert. I increased my hours at my job to four days a week, and I started this Substack.

Now a year has passed since the shift began, and it’s time for it to reach its completion.

Creative coaching is incredible. It has taught me so much, and I have formed strong bonds and friendships with my clients. But I’m ready for my focus to be elsewhere. I want to be a writer first, in both my job and my own creativity.

At the end of October, I’m retiring my group coaching community Companions In Creativity. I will have run it for exactly two years and it has been incredible, by far my favourite coaching service, but it’s the right time to give myself the space for a different focus.

From today, I’ll be full-time at my writing job. I crave honing my craft as a copywriter and communicator. I have books lined up for more in-depth study.

And in my own creativity, I’ll be a writer.

A writer endlessly fascinated by the creative process

I will call myself a writer, and I will keep obsessing about creativity. This Substack will still be about living a good creative life. It already has the freedom for me to be more of an artist-writer than a how to-writer, and it will stay that way.

I will still sell my Four Seasons of Creative Work planning guide, and I have an idea for another journaling guide that I hope to bring to life eventually. I’ve also brought back my self paced course The Creative’s Compass, which helps you explore your creative direction. It’s 25% off during October as a welcome back discount.

I’ll also keep offering some one off 1-1 coaching sessions, and do them at request. But I’m doing all of this secondary to my writing. I’m creating as a writer endlessly fascinated by the creative process.

To reflect this shift, I’ve updated the branding of my website. I’ve also changed the ultimate marker of identity - my bio on Instagram. Instead of showing up as a coach helping you make the projects you dream of, I show up as a writer. Less at the service of others, more as an artist sharing my work. I put my writing front and center. It’s liberating.

Here’s what my website used to look like:

And if you want to see what it looks like now, go have a look.

You might have noticed that this post comes with a new logo for The Good Creative Life. It matches the new logo for my website and personal brand.

Redesigning my website feels like a fresh haircut or a new notebook. It has the energy of a new start, the relief of shedding an old version of myself and stepping into who I am becoming. Odd, yes. Scary. Creative coaching was my goal, my identity for years. It was the thing I kept moving towards, and now it’s what I’m moving away from. But it also feels free. Open. Expansive. It’s that last part of the shift that started one year ago.

Death lies on my desk, beside my keyboard. He looks off towards some unseen horizon, decisive, satisfied with his kill. I’m keeping him near, a reminder of the ending of one phase and the start of another.

A reminder that the time of the writer has finally come.

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Now back: The Creative’s Compass

A self-paced course for discovering your creative direction. By exploring your inspiration, your true creative self, and what's most important to you in your creative life, you calibrate your own creative compass.

Get 25% off during October with discount code myautumncompass

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