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The world doesn’t feel stable right now—and if your writing productivity has taken a hit, you're not alone. Between global conflicts, economic strain, climate anxiety, and the constant noise of social media, it’s harder than ever to maintain focus and creativity. For writers, the emotional and mental bandwidth once available for storytelling can be consumed by worry, doomscrolling, and burnout.
But this is also a time when stories are more important than ever. Whether you're writing fiction, memoir, or nonfiction, your voice matters. And that means finding a sustainable, nourishing routine to support your creative work—even if your days feel unpredictable.
Let’s start by reclaiming your routine in manageable, meaningful ways:
1. Morning: Anchor Your Start
Even in chaotic times, how you begin the day sets the tone. You don't need to wake up at 5 a.m. and meditate for an hour—but you do need to reclaim your morning as yours. Here’s how:
- Wake up around the same time each day. Consistency helps regulate your sleep, mood, and creativity.
- Avoid reaching for your phone first thing. Starting the day with social media or news can derail your mindset. Instead, drink water, stretch, and ease into your morning.
- Establish a short ritual before writing. This could be journaling, reading a poem, or sitting with your coffee in silence.
- Write first, if you can. Morning is often the best time to access unfiltered creative thinking before decision fatigue sets in.
Read more: Creating a New Writing Routine in Uncertain Times
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Are you an entrepreneur who is looking for alternative ways to market your products? When many business owners think about marketing, they think about buying online ads, TV ads and possibly radio ads and billboards. All of these marketing ideas are considered traditional. You pay a company to serve or show your ad a certain number of times per day or whenever someone performs an Internet search that relates to your business and the products you sell. While traditional marketing works well, the savvy entrepreneur looks for alternative ways to create more interest in their products, and one of those ways is through affiliate marketing, which is sometimes referred to as a partner program. With a partner program, you may be better able to reach a larger target audience and increase your sales.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing program that allows you to offer a certain percentage of the sale of an item to any entrepreneur who may be willing to place your products on their website. This is an ideal way to target a broader audience because the online business that hosts your products as advertisements probably sells similar services and products as your company. For example, if you sell custom car parts for older vehicles, websites that host your ads probably offer new and used car parts, but not custom car parts.
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An entrepreneur or online business signs up to be an affiliate marketer on your website.
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The entrepreneur or website owner chooses various products to advertise on their website and are given a custom link that points to your website and/or specific products.
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Potential customers view both the hosting sites products and the affiliate ads.
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If a customer clicks on the affiliate ad, they are taken to your online business and the specific product page.
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If the customer purchases a product, you gain a sale, and your affiliate marketer earns a percentage of that sale.
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When you’re in business, whether you’re a large corporation or a small business, operating as a sole-proprietor, LLC or S-corp, it’s extremely important to provide exemplary customer service in order to maintain your current customer base and grow. However, many companies, especially Comcast go out of their way to make terrible customer service a priority.
The Number One Reason Customers Quit Businesses
According to American Express, 86 percent of customers quit a business due to a bad customer experience. This means that it’s not due to getting a bad quality product or service, it’s absolutely due to the way the company handles the customer experience. For a brick and mortar store, providing a good customer experience may be as easy as having employees readily available to help customers find items and offering a speedy checkout service. If the customer does get a hold of a bad product or accidentally purchases the wrong product, it may be as simple as offering a speedy return process. For online companies, it means have quick phone customer service and/or no-hassle online options, like email and a chat option, where customers can get a fast resolution to their problems, questions or concerns.
Read more: 6 Ways to Create a Terrible Customer Service Experience
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Do you love Twitter and your followers, but aren’t sure how to interact with them in order to be considered a great Twitter friend? You’re not alone! Many individuals, authors, businesses and casual accounts have no idea what’s needed in order to be a great Twitter friend and increase the engagements with their accounts.
1. Like It
One of the easiest things you can do to engage with your followers is to like their posts. To me, a like either indicates the person really did like it, or they read it. Either way, a like is good, and it takes less than a second. If you’re wondering if likes really matter, they do. I know who regularly likes my posts. Eventually, those names become ingrained in your head, and when people think about other accounts to mention or shout-out, the liking accounts are usually first to be mentioned because they’re the first ones that come to mind.
Read more: 5 Ways to Be a Great Twitter (X Social Network) Friend!
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Oh boy. Oh boy. You’ve found yourself in a pickle. You need money and you need it now. In fact, you need it so desperately that you are hitting up everyone you can find on every social media site you can find. Your sick uncle needs $3,000 for an emergency surgery. You’re an author who just published a book, and your username ends in 44568685628966996, and you just don’t know how to get the money for your next book (seriously, this author thing has happened to me). Not to mention, your home just flooded, your roof fell in and you feel a front yard sinkhole coming on! Wait!? That didn’t impress anyone? Well, shit. In that case, I guess you forgot to mention your sick kid who’s life is in jeopardy due to a mysterious illness that you can’t name, but it also requires traveling to a foreign country to receive an experimental surgery, and you just don’t know what you can do about it! So!!! OMG . . You hit up every stranger on the Internet and try to think of the worst possible stories you can tell them.
Read more: How to Get My Rich Alaskan Uncle to Give You Money (Sarcasm)