That’s how long I spent writing about my life with Ellen, my wife of 47 years who died on Thanksgiving Day 2019. Five years of wrestling with memories, confronting regrets, trying to honor a complicated woman and an even more complicated marriage. Five years of starting over, deleting thousands of words, questioning whether I was smart enough or talented enough to write something she’d be proud of.

And here’s the part that’s going to make some of you uncomfortable: I didn’t do it alone. About 15% of the final manuscript was created with significant help from Claude, an AI assistant. Not ghost-written. Not generated by typing prompts into a machine. But genuinely collaborative in ways I’m still processing.

This is the story of that five-year journey, what I learned about grief and writing and perfectionism, and why inviting an AI into the most personal project of my life might have been the smartest—or strangest—decision I ever made as a writer.

The Project Ellen Would Have Wanted (And Also Hated)

Let me start by telling you about Ellen.

She was brilliant. Completed her graduate coursework in English literature with high honors. Started a dissertation on Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale that her advisor said was original and would land her a job at a top university. That was the plan—she’d finish her PhD, get a faculty position, and I’d finally have time to write those bestselling novels I was so confident I could produce.

Except Ellen never finished her dissertation.

She was the kind of perfectionist who kept expanding the project instead of narrowing in on completion. New ideas would emerge during the writing, connections she hadn’t seen before, and suddenly the dissertation needed another chapter, another revision, another year of work. I’d stay up nights typing her papers (this was before word processors), and she’d get new insights mid-typing and we’d have to start over.

It drove me crazy. My philosophy has always been “good enough is good enough—turn it in and move on.” Hers was “keep working until it’s as perfect as your mind can make it, even if that takes forever.”

Guess Which One…

Guess which one of us never finished her dissertation? Then take a shot at which approach I had to learn to respect, even when it frustrated the hell out of me?

Now here’s the cosmic joke: when Ellen died and I decided to write a memoir about our life together, I turned into her. The book I thought would take six months became a five-year obsession. What started as a simple collection of sweet memories morphed into something increasingly complicated—part tribute, part honest reckoning with a complicated marriage, part meditation on grief and regret and the meaning of a life shared.

I often felt like I was wrestling the manuscript in a tub of cold jello. I wrote thousands and thousands of words that got deleted. The project kept expanding instead of narrowing. I couldn’t figure out how to frame it, where to put the focus, what story I was actually trying to tell.

I’d become the perfectionist I used to be impatient with. Funny how that works.

Tolkien, Niggle, and the Purgatory of Creation

Four years into the project, still stuck, I just happened to discover Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle.”

If you don’t know it, here’s the relevant part: Niggle is a painter obsessed with capturing a single tree on canvas, getting every leaf perfect, constantly interrupted by mundane obligations but unable to let the painting go. He dies before finishing it. The story’s second half takes place in a kind of purgatory where Niggle finally sees his tree—his incomplete, imperfect tree—made real and whole in ways he never imagined possible on earth.

The story gutted me.

Because that’s exactly what I was doing. Obsessing over getting Ellen’s memoir perfect. Trying to capture every leaf on this impossible tree I was painting. Spending years in a kind of creative purgatory, revisiting memories both beautiful and painful, confronting things done and not done properly, questioning whether I’d ever finish or whether I’d die with this manuscript incomplete like Ellen’s dissertation.

The parallel to my own experience was eerie. Tolkien wrote “Leaf by Niggle” after a serious illness when he feared he might die before finishing The Lord of the Rings. I’m 77 now. I started this memoir at 72. Death isn’t an abstract concept anymore—it’s a neighbor I see every morning when I walk past the houses of the other widowers in my neighborhood.

Would I finish Ellen’s memoir before I joined her? Would I get to see my tree completed, or would this project remain forever unfinished like her dissertation?

When AI Became My Collaboration Partner

Here’s where the story gets interesting, and where I suspect I’ll lose some of you.

Almost five years into the project, I had a compelling idea: adding sections to the memoir written from the point of view of both living and dead writers, poets, philosophers, even scientists might finally give me the hook I needed to excavate the depths of grief that I didn’t have the smarts or the skill to mine. Since I didn’t have the skills or the detailed knowledge, I decided to turn to Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet AI to see if it could write drafts of these imagined sections for me to review and then either use or discard.

To clarify, the memoir needed supporting material—contextual pieces that would help readers understand grief more broadly, that would place my personal experience within the larger landscape of human loss. I’m a thriller writer by training. I can plot a creepy story. I can write snappy dialogue. But crafting imaginary journal entries from Hemingway or Mark Twain grappling with grief? Writing historical letters of condolence in the voice of Spinoza? Creating poems about loss that felt authentic but weren’t mine?

When You Need Help…

That’s not in my skill set.

So I asked Claude to help. And what emerged was something I hadn’t anticipated—a genuine creative collaboration.

I’d provide the concept: “I need a journal entry from Jung reflecting on the death of his wife.” Claude would create a draft. I’d read it, feel whether it worked emotionally in the context of my narrative, ask for revisions, push back on phrasings that felt wrong. We’d go back and forth until we had something that served the larger purpose of the memoir—enriching my personal story with broader perspectives on grief and loss.

The result? About 15% of the final manuscript consists of these supporting materials—journal entries, letters, poems, brief essays—all created through this collaborative process.

The Authenticity Question (And Why It’s Complicated)

I know what some of you are thinking. “That’s not real writing. That’s cheating. How can you claim this memoir is authentic if a machine wrote part of it?”

Fair question. Let me complicate it for you.

Ellen’s memoir is the most emotionally authentic thing I’ve ever written. Every memory, every moment of grief, every painful recognition of my failures as a caregiver—that’s all me, straight from the heart, no AI assistance. The core narrative is 100% human.

But here’s the thing: I wanted the memoir to be more than just my personal story. I wanted it to be useful to other grievers. I wanted it to place my specific loss within the broader context of how humans have always grappled with death and grief. That required perspectives and voices I couldn’t provide on my own.

Could I have spent years learning to write convincing historical letters and journal entries? Sure. Would that have made the book more “authentic” somehow? I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is this: Claude’s contributions helped me create a richer, more textured memoir than I could have created alone. The imaginary Hemingway journal entry helped me articulate aspects of masculine grief I was struggling to express. The Spinoza letter gave me language for philosophical dimensions of loss that were beyond my ability to capture. The poems about grief created emotional resonance at key moments.

Were these “real”? They felt real to me. They served the truth I was trying to tell, even if they weren’t created by my hand alone.

What “Good Enough” Actually Means

Remember Ellen’s perfectionism? Remember how she could never finish because there was always one more revision, one more insight, one more connection to explore?

Working with Claude helped me understand something about perfectionism that I’d never grasped when I was watching Ellen struggle with her dissertation: sometimes perfectionism isn’t about making something perfect. It’s about fear. Fear that if you call it finished, it might not be good enough or fear that people will see your work and find it lacking. Fear that you’re not smart enough, talented enough, worthy enough to produce something of value.

I carried all those fears into Ellen’s memoir. I’m not a literary writer. I’m a guy who wrote paperback thrillers. Ellen always wanted me to write something serious, something with literary merit. When she died, this memoir became my chance to write the serious book she’d always wished I would write.

Am I Smart Enough?

But what if I wasn’t smart enough? What if I couldn’t write at the level a memoir of our life together deserved?

Here’s what the five-year journey taught me: “good enough” doesn’t mean settling for mediocrity. It means recognizing when additional revision starts being about fear rather than improvement. It means trusting that the work you’ve done—imperfect as it is—has value.

The joy I finally felt when I could see the memoir’s completion wasn’t about achieving perfection. It was about reaching a place where I could say: “This is what I have to offer. This is my tree, painted with whatever skill I possess. It’s finished.”

And here’s the profound part: that satisfaction transcends any concern about whether the memoir finds readers, whether it gets reviewed, whether it leaves a legacy. Doing the work itself—wrestling those five years with memory and grief and language—that’s what mattered. The transformation it created in me is the real achievement.

The Technical Questions about Writing a Grief Memoir

Okay, let’s get practical. If you’re curious about AI collaboration for your own memoir or writing project, here’s what I learned:

• What worked: Using AI for supporting material that enriched the main narrative. Claude created content that required skills I don’t have—historical voice, poetic language, philosophical reflection. This freed me to focus on what I do well: straightforward narrative, emotional honesty, storytelling.
  
• What didn’t work: Any attempt to have AI write my personal memories. I tried once, early on, describing a memory to Claude and asking for a draft. The result was technically competent but emotionally dead. My memories have to be in my words or they’re lies.
  
• The transparency question: I was clear from the beginning that I’d acknowledge AI’s contribution. The memoir’s foreword explicitly states that less than 15% was created with an AI language model, and I explain exactly how that collaboration worked. I’m not trying to pass off AI-generated content as entirely my own work. That would be dishonest.
  
• The control question: Every piece of AI-generated content went through multiple revisions based on my direction. I made all final creative decisions. If something didn’t serve the memoir’s larger purpose, it got cut regardless of how well-crafted it was. The AI was a tool, not a co-author in the traditional sense.
  
• The future question: I genuinely don’t know if AI collaboration will become standard in memoir writing or if it’ll be seen as a weird experimental phase we look back on with embarrassment. What I do know is that for this particular project, at this particular moment in my life, it helped me create something I couldn’t have created alone. On my 77th birthday—January 2025, five years after starting this project—I wrote the final words of Ellen’s memoir.

Surprised by the Ending…

The ending surprised me. I’d planned to conclude with fetching her cremated remains from the funeral home. But when I brought her home and set the cardboard box on my desk, fragments of a poem started appearing. Not from me, exactly, but from that mysterious place where language sometimes emerges without conscious effort.

That poem became the actual ending. Unexpected. Imperfect. But true.

I thought about Niggle again. About how in Tolkien’s story, the painter finally gets to see his tree—the one he’d labored over his whole life, never finishing, never satisfied—made real and complete in ways he couldn’t have imagined when he was obsessing over individual leaves.

That’s what happened with Ellen’s memoir. I’d spent five years wrestling with it, never quite satisfied, always seeing ways it could be better. But when I wrote that final poem and knew I was done, I experienced something like what Niggle must have felt.

The memoir isn’t perfect. It’s a 77-year-old thriller writer’s attempt to capture a complicated 47-year marriage and process his grief. It includes imaginary journal entries and AI-assisted poems alongside my own memories and reflections. It’s messy and experimental and probably breaks several unwritten rules about what memoirs should be.

But it’s finished. It’s true, as true as I could make it. And it exists now, independent of whether anyone reads it.

That’s enough.

What This Means for Writing a Grief Memoir

If you’re working on your own memoir—whether about grief or any other significant life experience—here’s what I learned that might help:

• Let go of perfectionism. Not by settling for mediocre work, but by recognizing when you’re revising out of fear rather than genuine improvement. Ellen never finished her dissertation because she couldn’t call anything done. Don’t let that be you.
  
• Consider all your tools. AI collaboration isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be. But if there are aspects of your memoir that require skills you don’t have, consider whether technology might help you achieve your vision. Just be transparent about it.
  
• Trust your emotional truth. The parts of your memoir that come from direct personal experience need to be in your voice, with your words. That’s non-negotiable. But supporting material, contextual elements, things that enrich the narrative without being the narrative—there’s more flexibility there.
  
• Remember why you’re writing. On the hard days—and there will be many—reconnect with your purpose. For me it was honoring Ellen and helping other grievers. What’s yours? Let that guide your decisions.
  
• Define success on your own terms. My memoir will probably sell a few hundred copies to family and friends and random readers who stumble across it. That’s fine. The real success was completing it, processing my grief through writing, and creating something Ellen would recognize as serious work. Your success metrics will be different. That’s how it should be.

The Tree Is Real Now

There’s a line from Leonard Cohen that I included near the end of Ellen’s memoir: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Five years of writing Ellen’s memoir was evidence of a life burning. The grief burned. The love burned. The regret and the gratitude and the terrible recognition that I’d never fully appreciated her while she was alive—all of it burned.

The memoir is the ash. The evidence that something intense and transformative happened. That’s all any piece of writing ever is—evidence that someone was here, felt these things, tried to make sense of the chaos.

Whether you use AI or not, whether you’re a perfectionist like Ellen or a “good enough” person like me, whether you finish in six months or six years—if you’re writing memoir, you’re doing the same thing Niggle did. You’re trying to capture something true on the page. You’re painting your tree.

And here’s what I learned after five years: the tree becomes real not when it’s perfect, but when you finally stop working on it and let it stand.

Mine is standing now. Imperfect. Collaborative. Human and machine and memory and grief all tangled together.

But real. Finally real.

Ellen: A Memoir of Love, Life, and Grief by Chet Day is available now on Amazon Kindle. Click here to check it out.

The post What I Learned Writing a Grief Memoir About My Wife: Five Years, One AI, and the Question of What Makes Writing “Real” appeared first on Chet Day & CasaDay Press.

Memoirs are everywhere. Not just the celebrity tell-alls you’d expect (though yeah, those too), but regular people writing about their regular lives. And here’s the kicker: readers are eating them up. Amazon’s 2025 bestseller lists are packed with personal narratives. Grief memoirs. Coming-of-age stories. Tales of complicated family relationships. Books by people whose names you won’t recognize but whose experiences will gut you, comfort you, or help you understand your own messy life a little better.

This memoir surge isn’t random. Something’s shifted in our culture, and it’s worth understanding if you’ve been sitting on your own story, thinking nobody would care.

The Perfect Storm That Made This Memoir’s Moment

Three things converged to make 2025 the year of the memoir, and they’ve created a rare window of opportunity for writers with authentic stories to tell.

• First, we’re all processing collective trauma. The pandemic. Political chaos. Economic uncertainty. Climate anxiety. We’ve been through a lot together, and readers are hungry for stories that help them make sense of their own experiences. Personal narratives about resilience, grief, and finding meaning in chaos are resonating because they validate what we’ve all been feeling. When Geraldine Brooks writes about losing her Pulitzer Prize-winning husband and navigating the bureaucratic nightmare that follows death, readers recognize their own struggles with loss. When someone shares how they rebuilt their life after it fell apart, we’re not just reading for entertainment, we’re looking for roadmaps.
  
• Second, authenticity became more valuable than polish. For decades, memoir meant you needed an MFA, a literary agent, and a New York publisher who believed your story was “important enough.” Those gatekeepers are still around, but Amazon and the Kindle revolution blew the doors wide open. Now readers can find your story directly, and they’re actively seeking out voices that sound real rather than workshop-polished. The publishing industry has finally caught up to what readers have been saying all along: we want truth more than we want perfection.
  
• Third, we’re all grappling with the same fundamental questions. Who am I? Where did I come from? What’s the meaning of all this? What have I done with what I was given, and what am I leaving behind? These aren’t new questions—humans have been asking them since we first sat around fires telling stories—but something about our current moment has made them urgent again. Maybe it’s the aging population (guilty as charged at 77). Maybe it’s the way technology makes us question what’s real and what matters. Whatever the reason, memoir has become less about ego and more about the universal human need to translate our lives into meaning.

“But Nobody Cares About My Life”

Let me address the elephant in the room, because I know what you’re thinking. You’re not famous and you’re not a celebrity or a politician or someone who climbed Everest or survived a plane crash. You’re just… you. Why would anyone care about your story?

I get it. I wrote paperback thrillers for years because I thought my real life wasn’t interesting enough for “serious” writing. My late wife Ellen always wanted me to write something more substantial, something with literary merit, but I figured that was for smarter people with more important lives.

Then she died on Thanksgiving Day of 2019, and I spent five years writing a memoir about our 47 years together, and here’s what I learned: The “nobody cares” objection fundamentally misunderstands what memoir does.

Memoir isn’t about proving your life is more interesting than everyone else’s. It’s about illuminating the human experience through the specific details of one life lived honestly. When you write about losing your wife, you’re not just telling your story—you’re helping every widow and widower recognize their grief. If you write about your complicated relationship with your mother, you’re giving voice to everyone who’s struggled with family. When you write about finding yourself at 40 or 60 or 80, you’re creating a mirror where readers can see their own journeys reflected.

The specifics of your life are what make it universal. That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not. The more honestly and specifically you write about your particular experience, the more readers will recognize themselves in your story.

Besides, “interesting” is overrated. You know what readers consistently say about the memoirs they love? “This could have been written about my life.” That’s not a criticism; that’s the highest compliment. It means you’ve told a specific truth so well that it became a universal truth.

The Grief Memoir: A Special Case

I want to talk specifically about grief memoirs for a moment. If you’ve lost someone and you’re wondering whether to write about it, the answer is probably yes.

Grief memoirs are having a particular moment right now. Geraldine Brooks’ Memorial Days is getting huge attention on Amazon for its raw honesty about losing her husband. These books are selling not because readers are morbid, but because grief is one of those universal experiences that still manages to make us feel utterly alone. When you’re in the thick of it, you’re convinced nobody understands the specific weight of your loss. Then you read someone else’s story and think, “Oh my God, they felt that too.”

Writing about grief serves two audiences: the writer and the reader. For the writer, it’s a way to process the impossible, to find meaning in loss, to continue the relationship with the person you’ve lost through the act of remembering and writing. For the reader, it’s validation, comfort, and a reminder that they’re not alone in this terrible club nobody wants to join.

If you’ve experienced significant loss and you’ve thought about writing about it, don’t dismiss that impulse. The world needs more honest grief memoirs. Not trauma porn or tragedy for entertainment, but real, messy, complicated stories about love and loss and learning to live in the after.

The Amazon Advantage: Why Kindle Changes Everything

Here’s where I want to get practical for a moment, because understanding the business side matters if you’re serious about this.

Traditional publishing still favors the famous, the connected, and the “platform-ready.” But Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing doesn’t care about any of that. It cares about whether readers want your book. And in 2025, memoir is one of the top-selling categories on Kindle. Regular people—not celebrities, not influencers, just people with stories to tell—are finding readers who need exactly the story they have to offer.

The Kindle ecosystem has created something remarkable: a direct connection between memoir writers and memoir readers. You don’t need a six-figure marketing budget or a spot on Good Morning America. You need a compelling story told honestly, a decent cover, and basic understanding of how Amazon’s algorithm works. (More on that in my next post about the practical side of getting your memoir onto Kindle.)

The financial barrier to entry is almost nonexistent. The gatekeepers are gone. The only question is: do you have a story worth telling, and are you willing to tell it honestly?

What This Means for You

If you’ve been sitting on a memoir or if you’ve been thinking about writing your story but convinced yourself nobody would care, 2025 might be your moment.

The readers are there. The platform exists. The cultural hunger for authentic personal narratives has never been stronger. What’s missing is your particular story, told in your particular voice, illuminating some corner of human experience that only you can illuminate.

You don’t need permission, you don’t need credentials, and you don’t need to be younger or smarter or more accomplished than you are. You just need honesty, specificity, and the courage to tell your truth.

In my next post, I’ll walk through the practical side: how to actually write and publish your memoir on Kindle, from structure to formatting to hitting the publish button. But before we get tactical, I wanted you to understand why now matters, and why your story—yes, yours—belongs in this conversation.

Because here’s the truth I’ve learned at 77, after spending five years wrestling with my own memoir: the stories we tell about our lives aren’t just for us. They’re how we connect, how we make sense of the chaos, how we leave something behind that says “I was here, I lived this, maybe it’ll help you understand your own life a little better.”

That’s not vanity. That’s what humans do. It’s what we’ve always done.

And right now, in 2025, the world is listening.

Hey, I’m 77 and I’ve Got Stories…

Stories about what it’s like to navigate life at this age (spoiler: it’s weird, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying). And stories about collaborating with AI to write books in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I started putting words on paper. Stories about the daily realities, unexpected surprises, and hard-won wisdom that comes from three-quarters of a century on this planet. If you’re curious about authentic aging, writing innovation, or just enjoy good storytelling from someone who’s been around the block, subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Old Man Still Got Stories.” I promise to make it worth your time.

The post Why Your Life Story Matters More Than Ever: Memoir’s Unlikely Moment appeared first on Chet Day & CasaDay Press.

Fair point. There are authors who’ve turned blogging into legitimate career fuel. The question is: what makes them different from the thousands who’ve burned through their writing energy maintaining blogs that nobody reads?

Today we’re diving into the specific conditions that separate blogging success stories from blogging cautionary tales. Because while most authors shouldn’t blog, some absolutely should–and the difference isn’t what you might think.

The Authors Who Actually Benefit from Blogging

Let me start with what successful author bloggers have in common, because it’s not what the marketing gurus usually emphasize.

First, they were experts in something before they became novelists. Take Hugh Howey, who spent years blogging about indie publishing while building his own catalog. Or Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn, who combined business expertise with publishing knowledge. These aren’t fiction writers who decided to blog about writing–they’re subject matter experts who happened to write fiction too.

Second, they treat blogging as a legitimate business function, not a creative outlet. The successful ones track metrics, test headlines, optimize for search engines, and yes, sometimes write posts that feel more like work than art. They understand that a blog is a marketing tool, not a diary.

Third, and this is crucial, they had patience measured in years, not months. The authors making real money from their blogs often started before they published their first novel. They built their platforms alongside their writing careers, not as an afterthought when their books weren’t selling.

Jane Friedman is probably the best example of this. She didn’t start blogging to market her fiction; she built expertise in publishing business, shared that knowledge consistently for years, and eventually monetized that expertise through books, courses, and speaking. Her blog works because it serves an audience beyond just her fiction readers.

The Three Types of Author Blogs That Actually Work

After researching dozens of successful author bloggers, I’ve identified three distinct models that consistently generate results. If your blog doesn’t fit one of these patterns, you’re probably wasting your time.

• The Expert Platform: These authors blog about their professional expertise outside of fiction writing. They might be therapists who write psychological thrillers, historians who write historical fiction, or former cops who write crime novels. Their blogs attract readers interested in their expertise, some of whom become fiction readers as a bonus. Chuck Wendig is a great example. He built his platform around writing advice and industry commentary, establishing himself as an authority before his fiction took off. His blog readers came for the writing insights and stayed for the novels.
  
• The Process Chronicler: Writers like me document their writing journey in detail, sharing what they’re learning about craft, business, and the industry. They succeed because they’re genuinely helping other writers, not just promoting their own work. The key difference: they’re teaching, not just talking about themselves. They analyze what works and what doesn’t, share specific strategies, and provide value that goes beyond “buy my book.”
  
• The Niche Authority: These authors become the go-to voice for specific genres, historical periods, or writing communities. They might blog exclusively about Viking history while writing Viking fiction, or become the authority on cozy mystery writing techniques. Kristen Lamb built a significant platform by focusing specifically on social media for writers. She wasn’t trying to appeal to all readers—she was serving a specific audience with specific needs.

The Uncomfortable Prerequisites Most Authors Don’t Have

Here’s where I’m going to lose some of you, because the prerequisites for successful author blogging are more demanding than most writers want to acknowledge.

You need genuine expertise beyond storytelling. If your only qualification is “I write books,” you’re competing with thousands of other authors saying the same thing. What can you teach that other people can’t? What problems can you solve that readers actually have?

You need to enjoy the business side of writing. Successful author bloggers spend significant time on keyword research, SEO optimization, email list building, and conversion tracking. If the phrase “sales funnel” makes you break out in hives, blogging probably isn’t your marketing channel.

You need consistent output for years. Not months, years. The authors who build substantial platforms typically publish 2-3 substantial blog posts per month for 3-5 years before seeing significant results. That’s 100+ blog posts before you break even.

You need to prioritize audience service over self-promotion. The ratio should be roughly 80% value, 20% promotion. Most author blogs flip this ratio and wonder why nobody reads them.

Most importantly, you need to be comfortable with the fact that blogging might cannibalize your fiction writing time without generating proportional income for years. That’s a trade-off many authors simply can’t afford to make.

When Blogging Definitely Doesn’t Work

Let me save you some time by identifying the situations where author blogging consistently fails, regardless of how much effort you put in.

If you’re writing in competitive fiction genres with no unique angle. Romance, fantasy, and thriller authors face massive competition in the blogging space. Unless you have a truly unique perspective or expertise, you’re probably better off focusing on direct reader engagement through social media or newsletters.

If you’re impatient for results. I cannot stress this enough: author blogging is a 3-5 year strategy. If you need marketing results in the next 12 months to keep your writing career viable, blogging isn’t going to save you.

If you’re already struggling to maintain a fiction writing schedule. Adding regular blogging to an already packed schedule is a recipe for burnout. Master your fiction writing routine first, then consider whether you have bandwidth for blogging.

If you hate the business aspects of writing. Blogging amplifies all the business elements of a writing career—market research, audience analysis, metrics tracking, content optimization. If you got into writing to escape business thinking, blogging will make you miserable.

If your only blog topics are “my writing process” or generic writing advice. The market for this content is saturated. Unless you’re bringing genuinely fresh insights or substantial expertise, you’re just adding to the noise.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

Even when author blogging works, it comes with opportunity costs that most writers underestimate.

Time is the obvious one. A quality blog post takes hours when you factor in research, writing, editing, optimization, and promotion. Those are hours you’re not writing books, and books pay most authors’ bills. Well, in truth, that’s not so because most authors don’t make a living with their writing. You don’t believe me? Including self-published and commercially published, over 4 million new books were published in 2022. And most of us are indie writers self-publishing in 2025, so the odds for success are miniscule.

But there’s also creative energy depletion. Many authors find that blogging drains their creative well, leaving them with less energy for the imaginative work their novels require. You might maintain your word count, but the quality suffers.

Then there’s the pressure to have opinions about everything happening in the publishing industry. Successful author bloggers often become reluctant industry commentators, weighing in on controversies and trends whether they want to or not. That can be exhausting and sometimes damaging to your reputation.

Finally, there’s the platform maintenance burden. A successful blog becomes a business that requires feeding. You can’t just disappear for six months to write your novel–your audience expects consistency.

The Alternative That Might Work Better

Before you decide whether to start that author blog, consider this: many of the benefits that author blogging supposedly provides can be achieved more efficiently through other channels.

• Want to build an email list? A simple author website with a compelling reader magnet often converts better than a blog with scattered traffic.
  
• Want to establish expertise? Guest posting on established platforms, podcast interviews, and strategic social media engagement can build authority faster than starting from zero with your own blog.
  
• Want to connect with readers? Newsletter marketing and social media provide more direct, controllable communication channels.
  
• Want to improve your writing? The time you’d spend blogging might be better invested in fiction writing, where every word directly serves your primary career goal.

The question isn’t whether blogging can work for authors–it’s whether it’s the best use of your limited time and energy compared to alternative strategies.

Making the Decision

So how do you decide if you’re one of the exceptions who should blog?

Ask yourself these questions honestly:

Do I have genuine expertise beyond fiction writing that people actively seek out?

Am I genuinely excited about teaching and helping other people, or do I just want to promote my books?

Can I commit to 3-5 years of consistent posting before expecting significant results?

Do I enjoy the business aspects of writing enough to add SEO, analytics, and conversion optimization to my routine?

Can I maintain my fiction writing schedule while adding regular blogging commitments?

If you answered “yes” to all five questions, you might be a candidate for successful author blogging. If you hesitated on any of them, you’re probably better off focusing your marketing energy elsewhere.

The Bottom Line

Author blogging works for a specific type of writer in specific circumstances. It requires substantial expertise, business thinking, long-term commitment, and the right personality fit. Most importantly, it requires treating blogging as a serious business function, not a creative hobby.

The authors who succeed with blogging don’t do it because it’s easy or because someone told them they should. They do it because they have something unique to teach, they enjoy the process of teaching it, and they’re willing to invest years building an audience that values their expertise.

If that doesn’t describe you, that’s perfectly fine. Some of the most successful indie authors I know have never published a single blog post. They’ve built their careers through compelling fiction, strategic marketing, and direct reader engagement.

The goal isn’t to blog because other authors do it. The goal is to find the marketing strategies that fit your strengths, your schedule, and your long-term career objectives.

Next week, in our final post of this series, we’ll explore the non-SEO benefits of author blogging—the hidden value that has nothing to do with search rankings but might still make blogging worthwhile for certain authors. Because even if blogging doesn’t drive traffic, it might serve other important functions in your writing career.

Hey, I’m 77 and I’ve got stories…

Stories about what it’s like to navigate life at this age (spoiler: it’s weird, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying). And stories about collaborating with AI to write books in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I started putting words on paper. Stories about the daily realities, unexpected surprises, and hard-won wisdom that comes from three-quarters of a century on this planet. If you’re curious about authentic aging, writing innovation, or just enjoy good storytelling from someone who’s been around the block, subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Old Man Still Got Stories.” I promise to make it worth your time.

The post When Author Blogging Actually Works (And When It Doesn’t) appeared first on Chet Day & CasaDay Press.

I know, I know. That’s not what you expected to hear from a guy who’s about to spend three blog posts writing about author blogging. But here’s the thing–and this comes from someone who’s been at this long enough to watch countless writers burn themselves out chasing the wrong strategies–the conventional wisdom about author blogging is mostly wrong.

Jane Friedman, who knows more about the publishing business than most of us know about our own coffee preferences, put it bluntly: “The average author does not benefit much from blogging.” She went on to explain that blogging does work, but only “if certain conditions are met. The problem is that few authors meet those conditions.”

That’s what I want to write about today. Not the fantasy version of author blogging that gets peddled in marketing courses, but the messy, complicated reality of trying to build an audience through your own website in 2025.

The Algorithm Gods Have Gone Rogue

Remember when SEO felt like a game you could actually learn to play? Those days are about as dead as my first laptop. Google’s 2025 updates have been–and I’m using the technical term here–absolutely bananas.

The June 2025 core update alone was described as “one of the biggest shake-ups to search results we’ve seen in a while.” Sites that had been ranking well for years suddenly vanished into the digital equivalent of witness protection. Other sites that had been penalized for months suddenly shot back to the top like they’d been fired from a cannon.

Here’s what’s really messing with indie authors: Google’s new AI-powered search results are answering questions directly on the search page. Why click through to your thoughtful blog post about “How to Overcome Writer’s Block” when Google’s AI can summarize the answer right there in the search results? It’s like having a really efficient librarian who never sends you to the actual books.

The data backs this up in ways that should make any author pause. Multiple studies suggest that somewhere between 58-65% of searches are now “zero-click”–meaning people get their answers without ever leaving Google. While the exact numbers are disputed (these studies have methodological limitations), the trend is clear and concerning. The majority of searches now end right there on the search results page.

Think about what that means for your carefully crafted blog posts. You’re not just competing with other authors anymore. You’re competing with Google itself.

The Uncomfortable Mathematics of Author Blogging

Let’s talk numbers, because someone needs to.

Research from multiple sources shows that sites maintaining their search visibility need to publish at least one new post per month and make at least five updates to existing content. That’s the minimum just to stay in place–not to grow, just to avoid sliding backward.

Now, here’s where it gets uncomfortable. The same research shows that most successful indie authors don’t see meaningful results until they have 5-7 books published. If you’re spending 10-15 hours a week blogging (and that’s conservative if you’re doing it right), that’s time you’re not spending writing your next book.

I’m not saying this to discourage anyone. I’m saying it because I’ve watched too many talented writers tie themselves in knots trying to maintain a blog schedule while also trying to write the books that will actually build their careers. Hell, I’ve done it myself on far too many occasions, only to have Google change algorithms out of the blue. Results? Traffic diminishes or swirls around the bowl before getting flushed.

The math stinks: time spent blogging is time not spent writing fiction. And fiction is what most of us would like to have paying the bills.

The Conditions That Actually Matter

So what are these mysterious “conditions” that Jane Friedman mentioned? What separates the authors who benefit from blogging from those who just burn through their writing energy?

First, you need to genuinely enjoy the process of blogging itself. Not the idea of having a blog, not the fantasy of building a platform–the actual work of researching, writing, editing, and publishing blog posts week after week. If blogging feels like homework, you’re probably not going to stick with it long enough to see results.

Second, you need something unique to say that can’t be found elsewhere. Generic writing advice? There are thousands of sites covering that territory better than you probably can. Your specific expertise in underwater basket weaving as it relates to your fantasy novels? Now that’s interesting.

Third–the big one–you need to understand that you measure the long-term game of blogging in years, not months. The authors who succeed with blogging are often the ones who were blogging before they published their first book, who built their platform alongside their writing career rather than as an afterthought.

Most importantly, you need to accept that blogging might not work for you at all, and that’s perfectly fine. Many successful indie authors have never published a single blog post. They’ve built their careers through other means: social media, newsletter marketing, direct reader engagement, or simply by writing really good books.

The Real Question

Here’s what I think is the wrong question: “Should I blog to market my books?”

Here’s the right question: “What’s the best use of my limited time and energy to build a sustainable writing career?”

For some of you, the answer might involve blogging. For many of you, it won’t. And that’s not a failure, that’s wisdom.

In my next post, I’ll dig into when blogging actually does work for authors, what those success stories look like, and how to know if you might be one of the exceptions to the rule. Because yes, there are exceptions. Some authors have built thriving careers partly through consistent, strategic blogging.

But before we get to the success stories, I wanted you to understand the terrain we’re operating in. The search engine landscape has changed dramatically, the competition is fiercer than ever, and the old playbook doesn’t work anymore.

The Authors Who Thrive

The authors who thrive in this environment aren’t the ones who follow every piece of marketing advice they read. They’re the ones who think strategically about where to invest their energy, who understand their own strengths and limitations, and who aren’t afraid to say no to strategies that don’t fit their situation.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is not start that blog at all. And if that sounds like heresy coming from someone who obviously blogs regularly, well… that probably tells you something about how much the landscape has changed.

On Wednesday, we’ll explore when blogging actually works. Spoiler alert: it’s more specific than you might think.

Hey, I’m 77 and I’ve got stories…

Stories about what it’s like to navigate life at this age (spoiler: it’s weird, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying). And stories about collaborating with AI to write books in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I started putting words on paper. Stories about the daily realities, unexpected surprises, and hard-won wisdom that comes from three-quarters of a century on this planet. If you’re curious about authentic aging, writing innovation, or just enjoy good storytelling from someone who’s been around the block, subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Old Man Still Got Stories.” I promise to make it worth your time.

The post The Harsh Truth About Author Blogging in 2025 appeared first on Chet Day & CasaDay Press.

So there I was last week, deep in research for a crazy bestseller quest I keep fantasizing about at 77, when I stumbled across some indie author income numbers that made me put down my coffee and stare at the screen for a good five minutes.

Not because the numbers were encouraging–hell no. Because they were so brutally honest about what we indie authors are really up against that I felt like I’d been handed the keys to a vault I didn’t know existed.

See, most of us writers operate on hope and caffeine, convinced that our book is going to be the exception to all the rules. We hear about Hugh Howey or Amanda Hocking making millions, and we think, “That’ll be me next year.”

Well, let me share some data that’ll either cure you of that delusion or help you plan for actually making it happen.

The Indie Author Income Reality That Nobody Talks About

Here’s the thing that knocked me sideways: according to recent survey data, the top 1% of indie authors–that’s the Hugh Howeys and Amanda Hockings of the world–earn 31% of all the revenue in this business.

Think about that for a minute. One percent of authors are taking home nearly one-third of all the money.

It gets better. The top 10% of indie authors earn 71% of total revenue. That means 90% of us are fighting over the remaining 29% of the pie.

This isn’t a normal distribution. This is what economists call a “winner-takes-all” market, and if you’re not prepared for that reality, you’re going to get your literary ass handed to you.

What the “Average” Author Actually Makes

Now, before you throw your laptop out the window and go back to that accounting job you hated, let me share the other side of these numbers.

The median annual income for self-published authors in 2023 was $12,759. That’s up 53% from the previous year, which sounds encouraging until you realize that’s still poverty-level income in most of the civilized world.

But here’s where it gets interesting: veteran authors who’ve been at this since 2018 are earning a median of $24,000 annually. Still not enough to quit your day job, but it’s double the overall median and shows that persistence and experience matter.

Compare that to traditionally published authors, who earned a median of just $6,000 to $8,000 last year–and their income is trending downward. Suddenly, that $24,000 for experienced indie authors doesn’t look so bad.

The Mean vs. Median Trap

Here’s where things get really interesting, and where a lot of aspiring authors get led astray.

The mean (average) income for indie authors is estimated at $82,600. Holy crap, right? That’s a living wage! That’s quit-your-day-job money!

Except it’s also complete baloney as a predictor of what you’ll earn.

The mean is so much higher than the median because those superstar outliers–the folks earning six and seven figures–drag the average way up. It’s like saying the average person in a room with Jeff Bezos is a billionaire. Technically true, mathematically meaningless.

The median tells you what the author in the middle of the pack actually earns. And that author is making $12,759 a year.

This isn’t me trying to discourage you–it’s me trying to make sure you go into this business with your eyes wide open instead of chasing unicorns.

Why This Actually Matters for Your Strategy

Now, you might be thinking, “Gee, thanks for the pep talk, Chet. Really feeling motivated here.”

But here’s why understanding these numbers is actually the most valuable thing you can do for your writing career: it shows you exactly what you’re trying to climb out of, and it explains why the strategies that work are so different from what most authors try.

If 90% of authors are splitting 29% of the revenue, that tells you something crucial: volume matters more than perfection.

The authors in that top 10%–the ones earning actual money–aren’t necessarily better writers. They’re more prolific. They understand that in a winner-takes-all market, you need multiple lottery tickets, not one perfect ticket.

The data backs this up. Authors earning over $20,000 per month have published an average of 61 books. Sixty-one! That’s not a typo.

Meanwhile, most authors are still polishing their first manuscript, convinced that if they just get it perfect enough, it’ll be the one that breaks through.

The Compounding Effect Nobody Explains

Here’s what those brutal numbers actually reveal about building a sustainable author business: it’s not about hitting a home run with book one. It’s about getting on base consistently.

Every new book you publish becomes a marketing tool for every other book you’ve written. A reader who discovers your latest release through an Amazon ad doesn’t just buy that book–they often go back and buy your entire backlist.

This is why prolific authors earn disproportionately more. It’s not just that they have more books to sell; it’s that each new book increases the sales potential of every previous book. Book 10 doesn’t just earn royalties on its own sales–it drives additional sales for books 1 through 9.

The math starts working for you instead of against you, but only if you understand that building a catalog is more important than perfecting individual titles.

What This Means for Your Publishing Plan

So what do you do with this information? Give up? Hell no.

You use it to make better strategic decisions:

• Stop betting everything on one book. If the top earners have an average of 61 published titles, your first book isn’t your lottery ticket–it’s your business card.
  
• Focus on consistency over perfection. A good book published is worth more than a perfect book sitting on your hard drive. The market will teach you what readers want better than any amount of self-editing.
  
• Plan for the long game. That median income of $24,000 for veteran authors? That’s the result of years of consistent publishing, learning, and building audience. It’s not year-one money.
  
• Understand your real competition. You’re not competing against Stephen King or James Patterson. You’re competing against the other 90% of authors fighting over 29% of the revenue. That’s a much more winnable game.

The Tool That Makes It Real

Want to see these numbers in action for your own situation? I’ve embedded a simple royalty calculator on my author’s resource page that lets you play with different scenarios of books published for the Kindle.

Plug in your current numbers–how many books you have, what you’re charging, how many you sell per day–and see what your actual monthly and yearly income looks like. Then adjust the numbers to see what it would take to reach your income goals.

I’ll warn you: the first time you run your real numbers, it’s sobering as hell. But it’s also clarifying. Dreams without math are just fantasies. Dreams with math become plans.

Why I’m Sharing This

You might wonder why a 77-year-old guy chasing his own bestseller dream is sharing data that could discourage other authors.

Simple: because the authors who get discouraged by reality weren’t going to make it anyway. And the authors who see these numbers and think, “Okay, now I know what I’m really up against, let’s make a plan”–those are the ones who might actually join me in that top 10%.

The indie publishing world doesn’t need more dreamers. It needs more strategists.

The numbers are brutal, but they’re not hopeless. They just require a different approach than most authors try.

In my next post, I’ll break down why your first book will probably lose money–and why that’s actually part of a smart business plan. Because once you understand the real economics of indie publishing, losing money in the right way becomes the first step toward making money in the long run.

Hey, I’ve got stories…

Stories about what it’s like to navigate life at this age (spoiler: it’s weird, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying). And stories about collaborating with AI to write books in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I started putting words on paper. Stories about the daily realities, unexpected surprises, and hard-won wisdom that comes from three-quarters of a century on this planet. If you’re curious about authentic aging, writing innovation, or just enjoy good storytelling from someone who’s been around the block, subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Old Man Still Got Stories.” I promise to make it worth your time.

The post The Brutal Math Every Indie Author Needs to See appeared first on Chet Day & CasaDay Press.