taragwrites.com

2/25/2026

The last couple of days have been a roller coaster. I’ve made promising progress on my cozy mystery including writing a premise for four more in the series. Reaching a real high on that one.

On the other hand, with an average two-year timeline for traditional publishing, after all of the submitting and acquiring an agent and a publisher, it’s obvious this is not a route for me. After hearing from several published authors who have done both traditional and indie, almost to a person they advocate for indie publishing. Their recommendation comes due to time and income potential, two topics of high interest to me.

It has not been easy to recognize that no matter how fast I write, income is not going to be coming in soon. Yet I’m living on the edge of a fixed income budget with no prospects for remote employment. It’s an almost constant worry. My circumstances certainly don’t leave income for book prep for indie publishing: intellectual property lawyer, copy editor, cover design, professional formatting, advertising.

To countermand this, I’ve embarked on an adjacent career. I’m writing a guide for teachers to Create Young Writers. The bane of most classroom teachers is getting students to write, and to get close to good writing from a majority of the students. This is something I know about.

I am currently using my free trial on an application called Teachable. I’ve written two lessons in two days plus a full outline. Yes, part of it is AI generated, but once I got past gagging and flogging myself, I worked on making that text mine with additional comments, ideas, and activities.

While this is still not going to bring in income next week, it should beat the timeline for my book. It is still going to require creating a good digital copy, placing it for purchase, advertising it, and collecting the income. The good news is I still feel creative when I’m working on it and it seems achievable.

I’m dividing my days now. Writing part of the day on the guide, writing another part of the day on the book, devoting some time to reading. Some days also include online classes or community events like writing sprints or feedback circles. Tuesday nights are devoted to a Zoom critique group where I highly value the knowledge and experience of the participants. I feel honored to be included and taken seriously.

All in all, I’ve immersed myself in the writing craft either as a consumer or a producer. I’m learning that this is that it takes.

In a small celebration, I updated my quotes page on this website.