Writing Lessons for Indie Authors from A Novella

Writing lessons for indie authors

I wasn’t expecting to teach myself writing lessons when I wrote a novella, but I did.

Most aspiring writers have plenty of imagination, but exhausted by their day jobs, they have no energy.

Before I wrote Change of Lifestyle, I’d seen it happen repeatedly in different writing groups: aspiring authors with sprawling imaginations who never finished a WIP because their day chewed up their energy.

That’s where my fictional aspiring author Gabe Shaw begins. He’s a London teacher running on fumes and surrounded by crisis, constantly “plugging leaks” in a drowning system. By the time he gets home, he has nothing left for fiction. Eventually, after a personal betrayal, he quits his job and flies 7000 miles away to Jakarta to start his writing career.

Here are five writing lessons I learnt from writing about Gabe’s escape.

1. If Your Job Consumes Your Empathy, Your Writing Will Starve

For anyone in a caring profession (e.g. doctors, nurses, social workers, teachers like Gabe), the emotional demands are huge.

But writing also requires deep reservoirs of care. If your day job takes 100% of your empathy, your characters get the leftovers.

Gabe goes to Jakarta because he’s burnt out. He needs to refill his creative tank.

Indie takeaway: audit your energy as well as your time. Unlike Gabe, you may not need to quit your job, but you may need to change your lifestyle so your creativity isn’t living on scraps.

2. Freedom Needs Structure

Escaping your job doesn’t mean inspiration will flood in.

In Jakarta, Gabe builds a rigid routine. He wakes at 1:00 AM to write and research Cold War tradecraft. He drinks green tea on a balcony while the city sleeps. Gabe knows that to write a novel, he needs to be as disciplined as he was as a teacher.

“Sticking to his normal work routine helped keep his writing schedule on track.”

Indie takeaway: treat writing like a job before it pays like one.

3. Weaponise your Observations

One of my favourite sections in Change of Lifestyle is “Selfie in Budapest.” It’s a bonus story that I added on the end of the novella. It shows the inspiration behind a short story called Szuzan that Gabe wrote in Budapest when he watched a smug English tourist flirting with a Hungarian student.

In reality, the scene was a simple vignette. But in Gabe’s imagination, the man became an intelligence officer grooming an asset – Szuzan – only for Szusan to be something else entirely.

It’s the same setting, with the same physical descriptions of the characters, but with higher stakes. The reality served as raw material, not the finished product because writers observe and then ask: where’s the conflict?

Indie takeaway: next time you’re in a café or airport, don’t record the reality. Reframe it as espionage, betrayal, seduction or catastrophe.

4. Protect Your Ruthlessness

There’s a line in the story about being “one finger in a dam full of holes.”

That’s what emotionally heavy professions can feel like. You’re endlessly trying to fix things for other people. But writing requires selfishness. You have to prioritise the page.

As Gabe’s girlfriend tells him, “At some point, you’ll have to prioritise… Writing or teaching.”

That doesn’t mean abandoning your responsibilities. It means recognising that if you give everything away, you’ll have nothing left for writing.

Indie takeaway: guard your creative ruthlessness. No one else will.

The Real Risk

The heart of Change of Lifestyle is this question: what happens if you change your lifestyle to protect your creativity?

If you stepped away from the thing draining you, what story would you finally write?

Writing Lessons for Indie Authors from A Novella