Blog Post #43: How to Run an Etsy Store and Lessons I’ve Learned Over the Past Two Years

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

Etsy isn’t a get rich quick kind of game, but if you’re into nurturing something until it blooms Etsy can pay off with patience, effort, and strategy.

Prints, Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

If you’ve been here for a while you’re probably thinking to yourself: Chels, you never officially told us you had an Etsy…

So here’s another post that’s well overdue, something that I should’ve recorded my progress on slowly and surely, but I got so overwhelmed and wrapped up I’m here to report to you all after the fact. Late is better than never, after all. Or so they say…

I started my Etsy nearly two years ago in the fall of 2023. It’s been an exciting journey where created candles, sold prints of my photography, and started making gorgeous digital art to put on everything from shower curtains to office supplies to canvas.

My one sentence pitch for Notes of Nature Co would be: A collection of chic nature-themed home wares and women’s clothing, designed and created by me and my close friends. Like a small-town-nature-Household Goods store, and if this sounds appealing to you, I implore you to come visit our store and take a look around.


That’s enough shameless plugging, here’s what you need to know to start your own Etsy Store.


1) Your Etsy isn’t going to take off overnight because the truth is that NO ONE’s does.

When people start ventures they often get starry-eyed, thinking of everything that could come true and how much money they could make if this store took off.

Know when you start that Etsy is not a get-rich-quick-scheme, but a serious venture. I remember thinking I was falling behind everyone else, and I figured the only way I could get ahead was to research. So, to YouTube I went, binging Etsy video one after another, until I came across a lovely older man whose name escapes me. He showed traffic and order flows for different popular Etsy stores, and the truth is that they were active for upwards of ten years before they saw the explosion of business.

The cold, hard truth is that Etsy is a slow game — all of the super successful stores had been grinding on Etsy for five to ten years prior to their explosion, and with all of that waiting and posting it took grit, determination, and perseverance. That’s what Etsy is: it’s a slow climb up a mountain, but reaching the peak is always better when you had to work hard to get there!


2) Know the rules because there is no appealing for mistakes!

Be careful what you name things. Making candles, I research what to call scents that buyers would be searching for. One of the candles I made was a gorgeous silvery blue with pink moons and roses — very Sailor Moon, if I do say myself. The scent was a copy cat Coco Chanel Mademoiselle and French Vanilla mix…

But when I put the item up on my Etsy, I forgot to include “copy cat” next to Coco Chanel in the title, and Etsy took it down, claiming I was selling counterfeit items…

As if I were dumping a $100+ bottle of perfume into wax to make a candle… (though, if someone has the start up costs for that, that could be a goldmine).

And let me tell you, I was ANNOYED when I saw how many duplicate Starbucks items are all over Etsy… And there was no option for me to appeal, so I had to eat that and take the warning, which was a very real “do it again and we’ll close your store no questions asked”.

But, that’s not my point.

My point is that I’ve made easily over $2,000 with my Etsy over the past two years, so the thought of losing my entire store because I was peeved over a single candle, not smart, not what a business owner would do.

Life’s not fair, and that’s that. Sometimes you just have to take it on the chin, be happy to be there at all, and move on.


3) It Takes Money to Make Money

Let’s just cut to the chase on this one: it costs $15 to start an Etsy Store, and every item you put on Etsy costs an additional $0.20, meaning that you can only put up five items before you hit a dollar.

Then, you’ll have fees deducted from every purchase made on your store and even the clicks they get.

This isn’t even counting Etsy ads, which are an additional amount (but the start is a minimum of $1 per day, so another $30/a month.

To manage my in-home candle manufacturing, I have to have money in my business account to purchase wax, wicks, jars, lids, labels, fragrances, dyes. To manage my print-on-demand items I have to have enough money floating to handle the initial cost of the item’s production, which goes through before the payment from Etsy. This isn’t even counting the handful of subscription services I use (Canva, Adobe Suite, ChatGPT — My Personal Assistant LOL ((I will be doing a “how to use ChatGPT to make the administrative stuff in your business easier post down the line)), just to name a few).

That old adage about it taking money to make money … it’s still true.


4) Always Be Ready to Innovate

At first I thought Notes of Nature Co was just going to be candles. When I came across Print-On-Demand, my mind was blown, and my inspiration went through the roof as someone who got really into photoshop as a teenager. I was now able to turn that creative passion for digital art into real money instead of just custom Myspace pages and fan-sites like I used to make for myself and friends.

So my last key piece of advice for anyone who’s interested in owning any kind of store is always be looking for the next innovation, the next product, the next niche.

By filling a niche demand you are targeting not only an untapped market of potential wealth, but also a new project of fulfillment for yourself.

When Print-On-Demand became a possibility, I began translating my love of Art History into my store by offering famous art pieces on Canvas for purchase. I plan to pursue this even further by reformatting beloved classics and including historical context and literary study questions to breathe life back into loving what we came from. My first reformatted book will be Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and I can’t wait to announce its publication!

In everything you do, always be looking ahead, and asking yourself what more you can offer.

Everything you do should be about offering a service to the people around you.

Helping each other is when we’re most valuable, after all.

Blog Post #42: How to Get Into Freelance Fiction Ghostwriting As A Complete Beginner

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

The idea of submitting your own work as samples to potentially get work probably sounds panic-inducing, but believing in yourself might be the difference between sitting by the sidelines and getting vital experience.

Prints, Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

Three years ago, I took a leap that changed everything — I became a ghostwriter. I’d always loved writing: especially the creative projects I scribbled on the side, diligently working on when I got off school, and eventually work. But it wasn’t until I dove into ghostwriting full-time that I truly understood the industry and how to carve out a place in it.

If you’re thinking of doing the same, here’s how I got started (and how you can too):

1. Write Books First—Yes, Really

Before I ever pitched myself as a ghostwriter, I wrote full-length books—plural. Not for clients. Just for me. That experience was invaluable because it proved I could do it. It taught me pacing, story structure, and how to finish what I started. Clients want to know they’re hiring someone who can carry a project from page one to The End. Writing your own books first makes you credible.

2. Pull Samples From Finished Manuscripts

You don’t need to have ghostwritten for others yet—use your original work. I pulled compelling excerpts from my finished novels and memoir drafts. When clients asked for samples, I had them ready. Make sure the tone and genre of your samples match the jobs you’re applying for.

3. Find Work Where Clients Are Looking

Upwork and LinkedIn were goldmines for me when starting out. Upwork especially helped me land my first consistent clients. Don’t underestimate the power of a solid profile and a few customized pitches.

Bonus Tip: Start With Platforms That Offer Protection

Upwork might take a cut, but when you’re starting out, it’s worth it. Payment protection, contracts, and clear client reviews gave me peace of mind—and guaranteed I got paid. Once you’ve built trust and have referrals, you can branch out to private contracts with confidence.

I just wrapped up my ghostwriting chapter to finally pursue my own publishing journey. And while I’m excited for what’s next, I’ll always be grateful to ghostwriting—it paid the bills, sharpened my skills, and taught me how to thrive on deadlines.

Stay tuned as this Autumn will be an exciting time of change for me as a writer!

Blog Post #41: Fantasy versus Romantasy, and why Romantasy has some Fantasy Fans PISSED OFF!

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While Fantasy and Romantasy might seem nearly interchangable, the introduction of this new sub-genre to Romance has some traditional Fantasy fans steaming! Here, I explain how this frustration comes down to reader expectations and the tropes Romantasy are built on.

Prints, Candles Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

Romantasy is a new, mixed genre that has been taking the reading community by storm. Touted with best-sellers like Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Bride, this genre has taken over social media in the past years, sparking tens of thousands of love-struck fans to rush to social media to pine for their new heart-throb through tiktok videos.

Still, there exists a subgroup of readers who find the fleeting magic systems, hollow plots, and excessive sex scenes not only juvenile but just straight up off-putting.

And the irony is that these readers who are dejected by Romantasy are the very same fans the genre was hoping to garner from the very beginning!

Who are these readers who hate Romantasy? Are they police procedural readers? Non-fiction readers? Are they Romance readers who want a contemporary, familiar world?

Nope.

Romantasy’s most ardent, fervent haters happen to be Fantasy readers.

“But how?” You may ask.

How could a genre so close to Fantasy miss the mark on those very readers? Wouldn’t fantasy stories that lean into romance tropes be exactly what Fantasy readers are looking for?

Well as it turns out… no. Not at all.

And it all comes down to tropes, reader expectations, and genre standards.

For one, Romantasy, as the name suggests, puts the Romance first. As a romance writer when I see these books I can start identifying the romance tropes right off the bat: enemies to lovers, rags to riches, star-crossed lovers, forbidden love. These are the key plot points for the story, and because the Romance is pushed front and center, this means that the relationship is the key plot point of the story.

So, fantasy readers who come to Romantasy looking for rich world building, religions, deities, languages, coups and prophecies… they would be left surely disappointed (and questioning how many sex-scenes does a YA romance need *gag* …)

The difference between a Romantasy and a Fantasy with a strong romance arc is which story line is A and which is B.

The A story-line is the main one. The B story-line is the second most prevalent in the story. C story-line is the third, so on and so forth.

So, let’s juxtaposition two different genre’s plot outlines to showcase the reader’s expectations and (di)satisfaction. We’ll go with Pride and Prejudice as the Romance and Lord of the Rings as the Fantasy. To sympathize with Fantasy readers, we’ll lay out the situation from their perspective.

LotR’s main “A” story-line is Frodo and Sam pushing past the temptation of the ring to drop it into a volcano. Aragorn’s return as the King of Men and the all-out-war against Sauron would be the B-plot. Pippin, Mirin, and their adventure with the Ents, Orcs, and Men could be considered the C-plot. As everyone knows, LotR’s story is about Good v Evil and how even the smallest, humblest of beings can conquer evil.

Pride and Prejudice’s main “A” story-line would be the relationship between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, a brewing, smoldering, enemies-to-lovers romance sparked when Mr. Darcy tells his friend that Elizabeth isn’t that pretty (Not very handsome, is she?) — a comment Elizabeth overhears at a courting party. The B plot would be between Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley. The C plot would be Mr. Collins and Charlotte, which provides key insights into Darcy’s character. It is a story about forgiveness, love, and accepting someone for who they are.

Comparing these two plots you can see immediately why someone expecting the pacing and tropes of LOTR would be disappointed with Pride and Prejudice. Even beyond the genre expectations of swords, dragons, magic, and danger, Pride and Prejudice gives nothing to the readers of fantasy; it features no overarching wars between good and evil, no fantastical characters, and would be quite dry and boring.

This is ultimately the reason why fantasy readers are TIRED of Romantasy. Romantasy’s are basically romance books with a fantasy skin overlayed. The magic system, world mythology, religion, and all the things that take front and center stage in Fantasy are either pushed to the way-side or done so tactlessly that Fantasy readers throw in the DNF towel.

Now, I did want to say before I leave that this is not a hate-tirade on Romantasy. I can see the appeal, Romance is THE largest genre in the fiction writing world. The formula for how a romance is written can be applied to any genre to make millions.

As always, no genre can make everyone happy, and Romantasy is no exception.

Blog Post #40: How to Build Characters that Feel Real and the Power of Your Lived Experience

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Telling your lived experience through your artistic works is a nerve-wracking, panic-inducing idea for some, and this is a wake-up call to aspire for more than your fear’s bounds.

Featured Candle: Maple Butterscotch
Handmade Candles, Prints, Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

One of the biggest compliments I received as a ghostwriter was that my characters felt “made for each other”.

Reflecting has got me thinking what that really means, how does someone write a character that feels real. Like a real person, so incomplete that they somehow feel whole.

In order to make the audience root for, ship, or cry for your characters, a writer must make the character feel as if they’re true reflections of our own experiences. Humans connect with stories on a fundamental level, and as writers, we need to build the “persona” of the character based on what we’ve experienced with other people.

So, draw from what you’ve seen and what you know. Draw from your own experiences. It is important to project the world accurately for your audience to be able to relate and connect to it. The polluted, fake world of Phillip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Bladerunner, for you cinephiles) resonates with audiences today because we see how that could become our reality – hone that sentiment in your own works. Use your voice to actually say something.

Be courageous in your perception and retelling of your existence; don’t shy away from the harsh truths and painful emotions. It’s often in our depictions of these circumstances that we shine the brightest. We connect with characters that have gone through pain, who have experienced trouble and turmoil. We relate to these characters because we all understand what it’s like to struggle in some way or another; to suffer is a universal human experience.

So, embrace it.
Embrace the hard.
Confront the ugly to spool something beautiful out of the benign.
To create something daring from the desolate…

Rising from the ashes, that’s what gives us humans good character, after all.

Blog Post #39: How to Write Faster and Why You HAVE to Plot!

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

The Pants-ing v. Plotting Debate has always been a point of pleasure versus productivity. In the high-speed world of indie publishing, a career built on solid plotting leaves a lot more time to move on to the next project.

Prints, Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

Let’s be honest, writing a scene with no notes is magical.

It really takes your breathe away when you develop a scene from absolutely nothing, the words just ebbing and flowing from the dialogue to the descriptions. No notes, no cards, no scene plots guiding you along. It reminds the storyteller why they do this.

Because we savor creating.

But success isn’t just about creating.

It’s about cultivating, crafting, and execution.

So how do we balance this as creatives? The push and pull of feeling like we’re boxing ourselves in while wanting to be free and expressive in the moment?

Well, first, we must admit one thing to ourselves: that we are better when we plan.

Scenes have a natural pacing that people look for, and when a scene doesn’t follow it, the readers feel it immediately. It’s why movies like The Room are so notorious — the mix-matched, rushed and stalled pacing where the viewers are lulled into boredom only to be thrashed awake by a strange, gentle inflection of words following an extreme emotional outburst.

Sometimes, when we trust our instincts too much in writing scenes, what we’re left with at the end is not a reflection of reality, but the rushed, half-baked perceptions made between haste and disregard. We end up with characters whose motives make no sense, whose words don’t sound like their own, and whose actions frustrate and confuse readers.

When we have no compass to follow, we walk in fruitless circles, encapsulated within the darkness of the forest we attempt to escape.

That’s why, as artists, we must lean into structure, no matter how much it frustrates us. Only with a map can we make it out with our voice and our message intact.

Without structure our art ceases to be art and becomes only noise.

I won’t go into the beat structures, or the myriad of ways in which to dice up a scene or a story, or an act structure. Frankly, those are all personal decisions you must make for yourself. By repeating the cycle of crafting a story, you will make your own rhythm, your own system, that works best for you. In a later post I will deep dive on my way of crafting a story, but I wish to put my work out first before I start giving away my trade secrets…

This post is simply a call to learn how to reign in your muse – how to give her a target to aim for when she pulls back her bow-string and lets her arrow fly. To not fear structure and to see it as a framework from which to create your story.

Afterall, a painter cannot paint without a canvas, and beans cannot grow without a pole or trellis. Learning to plot is not a way to kill your creativity, but a way to hone your ideas into a cohesive story your readers will love.

By taking off the creative pressure to manifest entire scenes from nothing, you give yourself the space to creatively “freestyle” off of the scenes you’ve plotted. I am not advocating you to meticulously plot every scene (I do meticulously plot every scene, but they still change from time to time to adjust to the story overall) but by plotting out the general structure of your story and the most powerful scenes you give yourself a framework to be freely creative within.

And that’s when your muse will work her most effectively: when she has something to build off of.

Afterall, stories are powerful to humans because we see ourselves within them: we see our life’s journey through the hero’s journey, and see our times of peril and fortune as an overarching story.

When a reader connects with the story you’ve crafted with their own lived experience, that’s when you start entering best-seller territory.

Blog Post #38: Three Reasons Why I Quit Ghostwriting and What I’m Doing Going Forward

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

It became impossible to work on my own literary projects when swamped with commission work for clients. Here’s the three big reasons I quit ghostwriting and a peek and what I’ll be doing going forward.

Prints, Clothing, and More available at my Etsy Store, Notes of Nature Co: NotesofNatureCo.Etsy.Com

If you’ve been here a while, you know a few things about me…

1) I’m pessimistic. (Or, at least more realistic than optimistic).
2) I’m inconsistent with blog posts.
3) I’m pulling myself in a lot of directions at once.

In my daily life I struggle with three main things when it comes to managing time…

  1. I HATE losing spontaneity in my creative ventures.
  2. I tend to follow my heart and not my head when it comes to what I manage to get completed.
  3. My husband relies on me for all domestic duties because he’s constantly on-call for his job and he “brings home the bacon”, per se.

To no one’s surprise, taking on ghostwriting only dwindled my capability to be creative even further.

And at times, I felt like I was wringing my internal muse out like a rag — squeezing the last little bit of creativity clean out of her to hand to someone else.

So, in the interest of transparency, here’s the main three reasons why I’ve said goodbye to ghostwriting, (despite my clients begging me to stay).


#1 My Writing Outgrew My Clients

I began ghostwriting as a way to get my feet wet in the writing industry. I was warned by a few writers that I was selling myself short by giving away my work for someone else to publish, but I didn’t see it that way.

I saw ghostwriting as a paid internship, and I still encourage other people considering getting into ghostwriting to do so! I learned so many things about how stories are written, how tropes are expected to be handled in stories and how to create tight, psychologically sound love stories that are exciting and fun for readers!

Still, I learned a lot of hard lessons too, including how to tell when I’m working with someone who wants me to “dumb down” my work, or someone who wants me to write pure smut under the guise of “romance”. I started to feel like I was required to be a robot, to completely strip my voice from my work, and on top of that, there were times where I would come up with something really beautiful and have to sell it away…

All in all, it became unfulfilling…


The Market Doesn’t Pay As Well Thanks to AI

When I started ghostwriting back in September 2022 the idea that AI was about to sweep the international workforce was unheard of, but now, we all see the reality. With the introduction of AI, people who are not the best at crafting stories (or even, the best at having a rudimentary understanding of the English language) are now able to crank out manuscripts at lightning speed in perfect English, while the story maybe lacking entirely.

I can’t tell you all how many manuscripts I edited that had “4o” at the end of each chapter…

At the same time as this AI influx occurred, there was a mass influx of new “ghostwriters” taking contracts for the lowest of rates, which drove down the overall rates of the contracts entirely. No longer could you write a book for 2, even 3 cents per word — nearly all contracts at this time are 1 cent per word or less!

For the quality I put out, it started to feel like I was giving away my work for free…


I Realized It Was Time To Move On To Publishing My Own Work

I really loved my last client.

He’s a great guy, someone who really loved the work I put out and was consistent with payments.

He was also the first client I had to show me the reviews the romances I had written for him were getting…

All the consistent 5/5 star reviews…
Reviews from readers beaming over the storytelling, the characters…

It was after a handful of these reviews that I looked through my dusty stack of ideas and notebooks — the internal bibles of my extensive storylines that I had put on hold back in 2022 when I began ghostwriting in the first place…

And I realized in that moment that I had achieved what I had set out to do.
I proved myself capable of writing 5/5 star books.
I had proven that I could write multiple books at a time.
That I could write over 15 manuscripts in a year’s time…

And it was in this moment that I decided to put myself first again.

I promptly closed out my last contract, sent out the files that I had been dragging my feet on to send to him, and told him that I was stepping away from ghostwriting for good. He’s still messaging me to come back, but I don’t have it in my heart anymore…

I want to write for me again.

I am still so grateful to myself for taking this on. Ghostwriting the last three years has given me perspective and understanding beyond any “how-to-write” book could’ve. Every manuscript I wrote for a client went to at least one editor, and the vast majority of replies were lessons in what not to do with certain genres, so much so that when I began writing manuscripts so clean the editors had no remarks, it was another sign I was ready for more.

Now I’m excited to take the knowledge I’ve gained and move forward with my own projects!

And I plan to document the entire plan and launch here, for you all to see.

To the people who have been here since the beginning, I can’t tell you what your patronage means to me. The fact you even come and visit my blog at all… it makes me so happy I want to cry.

Fall seems to be my season of change.
Let’s see what comes this year!


Blog Post #37: Writing Different Romance Subgenres and How I Keep Reader Expectations Straight

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

Different Romance Subgenres have different expectations, and not abiding by reader expectations can spell DISASTER for a manuscript.

As a ghostwriter I feel it is my duty to understand reader expectations in and out, and my career relies on that knowledge. Often times my clients are new to the self-publishing realm and don’t really have a firm grasp on how it works as a whole (and they often are paying for courses to walk them through publishing books written by ghostwriters).

To learn all of these tropes has a steep learning curve, as there are integral story beats that follow each trope. For example, you wouldn’t want to read a romance book with a single-father if the child isn’t going to be a key part of bringing the couple together. Likewise, you wouldn’t want to read a romance with a forced-marriage trope if the audience hardly gets to see the awkward moments of flirtation and frustration that comes with being in an arranged marriage.

Working with multiple editors (each client comes with their own freelance editor in tow) has sharpened my knowledge of common romance tropes that are key to the modern romance writing game. However, each subgenre of romance comes with its own rules, bending and molding the old tired trope into something new and daring (or at least fun and exciting). As you can imagine, an arranged marriage trope is going to look a lot different in say 1800’s Regency England v. 2020’s NYC USA. However, there’s still going to be a good amount of overlap when it comes to the emotional expectations the readers have for the trope itself (e.g., family and friend drama surrounding new partner’s arrival as a marriage prospect, the difficulty getting used to being intimate for show ((especially if there’s an enemies to lovers trope included, which often goes hand in hand with arranged marriage)), etc., etc.

Here are five key ways I keep the expectations straight between subgenres that utilize the same tropes.

  1. Know your tropes.
    Here’s the keys to the castle y’all, because everything in stories comes down to tropes. Story Tropes, by definition, are common or frequently used devices, themes, images, or plot points in a work of art or literature. Think amnesia, secret child, surprise pregnancy, orphan, “the chosen one” … these are all story tropes utilized in almost every genre ranging from westerns to horrors, from romances to mysteries.

    Understanding how these tropes play out requires an understanding of how people function and react to situations. A surprise child reveal isn’t going to hit the reader emotionally if there wasn’t a good reason (i.e. danger) to keep the child a secret in the first place, they’re going to start pondering the ethics of keeping children away from their perfectly decent (yet still flawed as we all are) parent.

  2. Know your subgenre (read ALL the books you can).
    If the story tropes are the keys to the castle, consider the subgenre the castle itself. Subgenres are sub-categories of a main genre, examples being: Regency Romance, Psychological Thriller, Police Procedural Mystery, Zombie Horror.

    Understanding the nuances of the sub-genre is integral to writing a story that readers will love. Readers who love Werewolf Shifter Romances, for example, are going to be very annoyed if you don’t understand Alpha/Beta dynamics of packs, as well as heat cycles, transformation, and a whole slew of other details no where to be found in really any other sub-genre of Romance (besides twists and variations in other shifter works such as Dragons, Vampires, etc).

  3. Know your audience.
    Here’s the third ingredient for success (but clearly, the most important by far) and that’s Audience Expectation. See, most readers of fiction lean towards a handful of specific genres and then a few specific subgenres in those genres; sure, they may go out and read something completely different every once in a while, but everyone has favorites, and voracious readers are no exception.

    This means that the new readers to your story have most likely read 20+ other stories very similar to your own, some even featuring the exact same tropes you’ve chosen.

    That’s kind of terrifying, isn’t it?

    So, in turn, you have to make sure you’re READING AS MANY BOOKS IN YOUR GENRE/SUBGENRE AS POSSIBLE. You need to be aware of what your readers are reading and how those popular books are shaping the market.

    The market always moves, and you better move with it, otherwise you’ll be left behind.

  4. Read Reader Reviews
    As well as reading the most popular books you need to be reading up on the reader reviews of the books you read — or haven’t read, as I also suggest going through the complaints of some of the worst books in your genre to see what readers DON’T like. Reading up on reviews available by readers gives you insight into what the readers, your target audience, are looking for. I often scrap the Romance subs in Reddit looking for what readers are demanding when brainstorming for new stories.

  5. Practice, Practice, PRACTICE!!!
    The final piece of advice is the same old thing you’ve always been told: if you want to be a great writer you have to WRITE. I advise writing literally as much as possible, some days that’s going to be zero, other days it might be 10,000 words, but getting words on the page, no matter how boring or useless, is always good practice, and practice, as they say, makes perfect.

Blog Post #36: Five Harsh Truths About Starting Your Own Business

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Most people dream of starting their own businesses and while some are too apprehensive to ever start, others are too willing to jump in feet first without knowing what they’re getting into! Here are five harsh truths I learned in the past two years of being a beginner business owner.

1. This will not replace your full-time job… yet.

This one is for those of you who are still in the 9-5 grind. No, you can’t just immediately jump from a steady, stable income to opening your own business and expect to keep the same pay, it just doesn’t work that way. Instead, what you should be doing is executing a side business that will later become your full-time business. This means if you want to become an independent author, or a freelance ghostwriter or editor, you better be writing/editing/reading/studying in your off hours.

Yes, this is exhausting. I know first hand, as I had been plotting and writing the first book I wrote (and still plan to publish) while simultaneously working overtime at a call center. Honestly, at the time, I knew I wanted to self-publish (self-publishing authors on Youtube were just starting to become a thing, think 2015-2016ish…) but I didn’t know when that would happen or how, but I kept writing because I realized it was making me HAPPIER.

That’s my honest advice: if you’re working full-time because you HAVE to to survive, then just nurture the hobby that will later become the business. Now is not forever, and you have no idea how the work you did as a hobby now will pay you back in the future.

For example, the samples I pulled from that book I wrote as a hobby got me a significant amount of clients, including clients for genres that I wouldn’t have had any other work to apply with otherwise.

2. Baby’s-First-Business mistakes will happen!

Mistakes happen, there’s no way around it. My best advice is to try to mitigate them from COSTING you money. For example, I not only ghostwrite/edit full-time I also run an Etsy Store called Notes of Nature Co where I sell handmade candles (made by yours truly) as well as direct-to-print home-goods that I’ve designed/are in the creative commons.

When I made my first international sale to Ireland I was so excited! I couldn’t believe someone in Ireland was going to be wearing the hoodie with my company’s logo on it, it was so cool!

Then I looked at my business account and realized that the direct-to-print company pulled the money out to create the hoodie before the Etsy payment came through, and it overdrafted my business account costing me $35 in charges!!!!

I was so upset! How could a milestone like this bite me so hard?

Because, I made a baby’s-first-business mistake. I didn’t pay attention to how the direct-to-print company worked with Etsy, and I didn’t give myself the grace to have an extra $500+ rolling in that bank account at least at all times (like I do now).

Being a business owner means making mistakes. My advice is to try to mitigate how COSTLY these mistakes are.

Another Mistake: My LLC’s name.

My husband told me earlier: “You should just drop the Ghostwriting & Editing and just make it Ethereal Quill Co.”

Guess who didn’t listen.

Guess who spent $70 bucks on a DBA just to turn around and spend another $70 to file a proper name change.

There is a reason I have NO business debt for my LLC and I might not ever lol.

3. Everything costs more than you think.

Let’s say you’ve been writing or sewing or painting as a hobby for years, you’ve been doing the market research, you know the websites you’re going to use to work/ the avenues to sell your goods in person, and you’re ready to jump in. Woohoo!

You’ve gone on your state website and filed your business paperwork, but you find that you have to pay extra to be an LLC, something you’ve been advised to do (because it protects your personal assets from your business, essentially, if your LLC gets into financial trouble the creditors are not entitled to anything beyond the business: they cannot go after your home, your car, your personal savings, retirements, or investments. In discussions of lawsuits it’s generally accepted advice that LLC’s protect your personal assets from litigation as well, but there are some circumstances where this is not the case).

Now you see that filing an LLC is nearly twice the price as the Sole Proprietorship, though? What gives?

And when you go to open your business account you realize they want another $100 to establish the account “in good faith” what the fuck?!

And, under the advice of someone with your best interest at heart, they tell you to go to a formal tax professional to file your taxes, as the tax office will certify the authenticity and handle any audits you may receive from the IRS. When you get the bill for that it’s an eye watering $500?!

I am here to tell you the cold hard fact: everything costs more than you think. In budgeting it’s common to pad the budget, and when you’re a business owner there is no truer fact. As I stated above I over-drafted my business account and had to pay 35 bucks extra out of pocket instead of being excited about my first international sale because I didn’t give myself enough padding.

Financial padding helps. You can’t let yourself get caught up in the “oh a new book, oh a new desk, oh a new keyboard”, you need to keep yourself focused on your growth goals and your goal trajectory.

Otherwise, you’ve just given yourself a very expensive hobby.

4. RESEARCH IS REQUIRED BEFORE YOU START.

This is all caps FOR A REASON. You should NEVER be jumping into starting a business without doing the proper research of EVERYTHING that will be necessary including laws, documentation, and proper business practices in your field. You need to understand your state laws, the federal laws and all of the paperwork you’ll be required to file as a business.

This isn’t all the research you need to do though: you need to do market research to know the entire ins-and-outs of the industry you’re about to launch head first into. If you don’t have any business courses under your belt, you might want to consider taking a few to familiarize yourself with how businesses are structured and managed. You might want to take a few courses to get some certifications or credentials under your belt relative to your field (like I did by getting my certification in copyediting). If you’re gunning to be an author, you’ll most certainly want to look at workshops and classes held by authors both independent and traditional to understand the publishing industry as a whole.

All of the research you do pays you back 1000-fold. The more knowledge you have the less likely you are to be caught flat-footed, and that’s worth the missed sleep or groggy mornings.

5. On-going learning is mandatory.

You will never be ahead if you’re not researching, researching, RESEARCHING.

Here’s one last hard line tip for you: THE MARKET NEVER STOPS. You are either ahead of the curve or behind and following along. You need to be plugged into social media (even if you’re just an introverted lurker) because then you can see where the market is shifting and what’s becoming popular.

Jumping on a popular trend before the swell? That’s the ticket to success!

Blog Post #35: From Unemployed to Self-Employed, How I Got Into Freelance Ghostwriting and Editing

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

I’ve had some people tell me that I’m being taken advantage of as a writer by ghostwriting for cash, but I see it as honest work, almost like a paid internship.

I had this blog post drafted nearly two years ago, but at the time I knew I hadn’t worked long enough as a ghostwriter to be able to discuss it appropriately; I hadn’t paid my dues, in a sense.

Now that I’ve been doing ghostwriting for over two years, I feel I can give some insight into entering a freelance career as a former “nine-to-fiver”.

I lost my Administrative Assistant job at a small company that did union benefits back in March of 2020. I was not upset over this (in truth I was giddy) because I had already seen multiple integral employees of the small office find new jobs, and rumors had been circulating that the office wasn’t going to be open much longer. At the same time the earliest reports of COVID spreading through China had been all over the US news for the past three months; everyone was getting pretty nervous that it was going to jump the Pacific and come to America, and no joke, the morning I was let go was the morning I awoke to news that COVID had spread to the US and that people in hospitals had tested positive.

Before working at that little office I had never gone longer than a month without working, working at a student loan call center for nearly six years beforehand and doing consistent retail work before that.

Getting let go from that little office for really no reason outside of them finding someone cheaper to do my job allowed me to stay home and collect the unemployment I had been paying into for over ten years while the world seemed to fall apart.

I spent that year and a half on unemployment earning my certificate in Copy Editing from ACES and Poynter while also writing three more manuscripts; bringing my total of manuscripts up to five. These are the books I’ve been holding on to, waiting to polish and publish under my own pen names, one of them being Anastasia Frost.

It was when I was notified that unemployment was ending that I began to look into freelance editing and ghostwriting. The consistent payouts from my unemployment was more than I’d be able to make initially while just starting out, so, I held back until it ended to begin. I did research, though, I researched the best freelance websites, and began taking scenes from the manuscripts I had written to create samples to send to jobs.

Admittedly, breaking into my first client was the most difficult aspect; the ghostwriting field is competitive and the editing sphere even more so; we’re talking 20-50 applicants per job at times. One must hone their craft by reading writing books and learning how to create characters and stories so they don’t receive constant rejects, or worst, get a job over their head and make a fool of themselves. Reviews are king; and having good reviews is what brings in new clients.

If a freelance career is began with a one-star rating, one may as well give up entirely.

My first client was a sweet girl who had an entire story written but wasn’t comfortable writing the sex scene and needed the ending finished up. I wrote the scenes for her and she gave me my first rating: a perfect five out five with a glowing review.

That review has been responsible for every other contract I’ve sealed. That’s not to say I haven’t had a less than stellar review; I have (and I’ll explain that in another post), but I feel for certain that had it been subpar, I wouldn’t have had as much work as I have.

Consistency, is key, though, and so to maintain getting new work I need to maintain stellar reviews going forward.

Transitioning to freelance work has given me the freedom and liberty that I never had at any other job; no longer do I have a boss attempting to micromanage my every move.

Not everything is greener on the other side, however, as my fears of being fired for not doing my job have been replaced with fears that I’ll be seen as a failure and a loser if I don’t succeed as a freelancer.

After all, success as a freelancer is directly relative to the person themselves. There is no boss to blame, no co-workers. Your work speaks for you, and if it’s not good enough, you’re not good enough.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to roll and show your belly all the time. I’ll be documenting the ins and outs of all clients, including how to politely tell a client to fuck off; like I had to very early in my freelancing career.

But that is for another day.


Blog Post #34: Best Books on Writing; The Emotional Wound Thesaurus and Writers Helping Writers

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

I can’t stress enough how helpful this book is when creating character arcs, and it’s been fundamental as a plotting tool.

A book that categorizes every emotionally traumatic event someone could go through in life and characterizes the person’s reactions, fears, beliefs, relationship patterns, and personality traits (both good and bad); this is a MUST HAVE for any fiction writers who strive to write characters that feel like real people.

“Readers connect to characters with depth, ones who have experienced life’s ups and downs. To deliver key players that are both realistic and compelling, writers must know them intimately-not only who they are in the present story, but also what made them that way. Of all the formative experiences in a character’s past, none are more destructive than emotional wounds. The aftershocks of trauma can change who they are, alter what they believe, and sabotage their ability to achieve meaningful goals, all of which will affect the trajectory of your story.

Identifying the backstory wound is crucial to understanding how it will shape your character’s behavior, and The Emotional Wound Thesaurus can help. Inside, you’ll find:

  • A database of traumatic situations common to the human experience
  • An in-depth study on a wound’s impact, including the fears, lies, personality shifts, and dysfunctional behaviors that can arise from different painful events
  • An extensive analysis of character arc and how the wound and any resulting unmet needs fit into it
  • Techniques on how to show the past experience to readers in a way that is both engaging and revelatory while avoiding the pitfalls of info dumps and telling
  • A showcase of popular characters and how their traumatic experiences reshaped them, leading to very specific story goals
  • A Backstory Wound Profile tool that will enable you to document your characters’ negative past experiences and the aftereffects

Root your characters in reality by giving them an authentic wound that causes difficulties and prompts them to strive for inner growth to overcome it. With its easy-to-read format and over 100 entries packed with information, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is a crash course in psychology for creating characters that feel incredibly real to readers.”

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is available for purchase on Amazon.