191. Five Lessons from my Hardest Year

This past year, my personal life has been rough. Lots of grief. Lots of once-in-a-lifetime stressful events. Yet despite all the hardships, I’ve still made a ton of progress in my author career. I revised my 2026 novel. Wrote and revised a YA proposal. And am about 30k into the first draft of my 2027 book. And through it all, I’ve had fun in my writing life. I’ve thought a lot about how I’ve been able to do this and settled on the top five lessons I learned this year from going through some Really Hard Shit. Today, I’m sharing all five lessons with advice on how you can apply them to your author career. *** The waitlist is now open for the January 2026 cohort of The Confident Author Academy. Join here: http://www.isabelsterling.com/academy-cohort Applications are open November 11th - 22nd. Prefer one-one one support? Limited private coaching spots are available now: http://www.isabelsterling.com/academy Looking for even more author advice and notifications about upcoming workshops? Sign up for my weekly Real Talk for Writers newsletter by clicking here. DM me on Instagram & let me know what you thought of this episode!