I’ve followed Claire for a while now because I find her enneagram approach to writing characters to be really helpful (I’ve had alignment sessions with her before as well); it focuses on the core desires and fears of a character and feels a bit more intuitive than deciding what a character’s MBTI is (or however you build characters). So when I found out she was doing a Kickstarter for a non-fiction book, I knew I had to support it.

Reclaim Your Author Career is a part author-alignment, part craft book on how to nail your story. Using the enneagram as a base, book takes you through:

• Identifying your creative values
• Identifying/building your author persona
• Identifying story and series theme
• Writing your protagonist

The idea behind this book is that all of us are motivated differently. Some of us prioritise our individuality, some of us prioritise control/empowerment, others prioritise peacemaking. And of course, even if the goal is to make money, the way we see and use money differs from person to person as well. And so, if we’re not aligned or unaware of our deeper motivations for writing, we’re likely to follow a strategy that doesn’t suit us and leads to burnout or unhappiness. Conversely, if we know why we write and what we want money to do for us, we can pick and choose what to write and how to sell to make it benefit ourselves.

While I’m already somewhat familiar with the enneagram method for writing, I still found it helpful for everything to be written in a structured manner. The chapter on theme was probably the most enlightening one; I’ve never thought too deeply about whether my books have a theme but it seems like “relationships” is something that I like to explore. For example:

• One-sided relationships/when you do whatever it takes to turn reality into your dream (Nutcracker)
• Mother-daughter relationships (Beauty)
• Parasocial relationships (my WIP on zombies and influencers that may never be finished at the rate I’m going).

If I can ever finish my dark fairytale series, I’ll be coming back to this chapter to make sure things are satisfying.

The book also helped me clarify why I have very little motivation to return to writing/selling my fiction; what I like is the total control over writing and the ability to try what I want to try. I’ve tried it, so now my energy is focused on other projects I want to try more. Knowing this, it’s easier to not feel guilty about my lack of productivity but to just continue with life and trust that eventually, I’ll come back to writing again.