Leaving Social Media, Writing Iconic Characters, and Building Trust With Claire Taylor

Summary

The Creative Penn Podcast for Writers

Episode 845 — Leaving Social Media, Writing Iconic Characters, and Building Trust With Claire Taylor

Host: Joanna Penn
Guest: Claire Taylor
Date: January 12, 2026
Theme: Writing Craft, Creative Business, and Trust in the Changing Creative Landscape

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Overview

In this episode, Joanna Penn sits down with humor and mystery author Claire Taylor, founder of FFS Media and certified Enneagram coach, to discuss key changes in the writing world. They chat about Claire's big move to leave social media, the power of writing iconic characters, and how trust and authenticity will play a central role for authors and creatives in 2026. The conversation covers the reality of creative pivots, how personality frameworks like the Enneagram can deepen character work, and strategies for building loyal readership in a time of rapid technological change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Claire's Journey Since 2024: Pivots in Craft and Business

Timestamps: 27:26–28:44

• Deconstructing Story Rules:
  Claire shares her recent focus on questioning conventional story structures:

  "All the story structure books aren’t law... They’re all kinds of suggestions, frameworks. They’re trying to quantify humans' innate ability to understand a story." (27:50, Claire)
  She emphasizes trusting her own sense of story and prioritizing engaging readers and achieving the intended emotional effect.

• Business Shifts & Leaving Social Media:
  Claire made two major changes: she left social media and shifted her business to focus on one-on-one coaching, in-person networking, and launching a craft-based Kickstarter.

  “I left social media earlier this year... I didn’t like what it did to my attention... My life feels more settled.” (29:18–30:39, Claire)

2. Life Without Social Media: Why and How

Timestamps: 29:18–34:39

• Reasons for Quitting:
  Social media’s diminishing returns, addictive design, and negative impact on attention and well-being convinced Claire to step away.

  "Even when I wasn’t on it, there was almost a hangover… my attention just did not feel as sharp and focused." (29:36, Claire)
  “There’s some things money can’t buy.” (30:39, Claire)

• Replacing Social Reach:
  Claire doubled down on her email list and started a Substack, which allows for discovery, longer-form engagement, and audience ownership. She’s investing in local, in-person book selling, direct marketing, and nurturing word-of-mouth through close relationships.

  “Word of mouth has always been how my business best markets.” (34:22, Claire)

• Joanna’s Commentary:
  Joanna reflects that, despite years of driving traffic to Amazon, author email lists are key now more than ever, especially for direct sales and owning the customer relationship.

3. The Enneagram: Tool for Character & Author Growth

Timestamps: 35:27–37:46

• What is the Enneagram?
  A personality framework that breaks down human motivation into nine core fears and desires, influencing patterns of thought, feeling, and action.

  “What we fear and desire above all determines where attention goes—and authors benefit greatly from understanding attention.” (36:01, Claire)

• Why the Enneagram for Writers?
  Claire prefers it to other frameworks (e.g., MBTI) because it not only maps the ways we confine ourselves but charts a path to liberation—helpful for authors stuck in creative ruts.

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4. Common Author Struggles & How Motivations Change

Timestamps: 37:46–42:04

• Early Career Authors:
  Often plagued by “am I doing this right?” and feeling doomed if advice doesn’t fit.

  “There’s not a right way to do this. There’s a way that’s going to feel more aligned to you…” (38:44, Claire)

• Mature Authors:
  More likely to face, “I’m getting sick of my own stuff” and need to realign their evolving personal brand and motivations.

  “I’ve changed so much since I started writing. I need to figure out how to adjust my career.” (39:43, Claire)

• On Personal Brand and Change:
  Joanna and Claire agree that building a brand around the authentic self makes long-term evolution possible and sustainable.

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5. Writing Iconic Characters With the Enneagram

Timestamps: 42:04–47:08

• What Is an Iconic Character?
  An iconic character sticks in readers’ minds, often acting as a reference point, and resonates truthfully with some aspect of the human condition—even if not strictly human.

• From Glimmer to Depth—A Discovery Writer’s Path:
  Authors can use the Enneagram at any stage: start writing with just a character spark and layer on deeper motivation as needed.

  “At some point… go a little bit deeper in understanding this character and create a cohesive thread to pull through. That’s where the Enneagram can really start to be useful.” (44:04, Claire)

• Practical Example:
  Say your character is “bold and adventurous”—the likely core fears and desires (e.g., avoidance of pain or deprivation for Type 7, need for autonomy for Type 8) will guide their decisions and arc.

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6. Case Study: Wednesday Addams as Type 8

Timestamps: 47:08–51:32

• Enneagram Typing Through Behavior:
  By analyzing Wednesday’s choices—her disdain for weakness, assertion of power, and desire for autonomy—Claire demonstrates she’s a textbook Type 8 (the Challenger):

  “She considers emotions to be weakness… she has to be in a position of power in all moments. She has to be in control of herself, which is more of that 8.” (47:41–50:29, Claire)

• Using the Inciting Incident:
  Wednesday’s inciting moment (brother bullied, she retaliates) is both the story catalyst and a window into her core motivation.

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7. Building Character Conflict with the Enneagram

Timestamps: 51:32–56:38

• Creating Meaningful Conflict:
  The Enneagram provides a framework for pairing types with inherent friction—for example, an 8 (power-seeker) with a 1 (moralist) will inevitably clash over means vs. ends.

  “You can grab any two types and they’ll have unique conflict.” (54:30, Claire)

• Dynamic Pairings:
  Types next to each other on the circle (like 8 and 9 or 4 and 5) often create strong contrasts—e.g., conflict-averse vs. conflict-seeking.

• Upcoming Work:
  Claire hints at a new Kickstarter project: “Write Iconic Relationships,” diving deeper into character dynamics.

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8. 2026 and Beyond: Navigating Change, Building Trust

Timestamps: 56:38–61:55

• Facing Fear of Change:
  Claire observes a pervasive fear as online and global shifts accelerate. She recommends grounding oneself in what’s universal and authentic.

• AI and Polarization:
  Rather than dividing into camps, Claire advises authors to follow their comfort and values with tech and transparency—there is no virtue in either full adoption or rejection.

• Most Important Value: Trustworthiness

  “With the increased number of images and videos that are AI… I think there’s… a mistrust of our own senses on the Internet… so, as an author, focus on how to build trust with your readers.” (57:52, Claire)

• How to Foster Trust:

  • Disclose use of AI and be transparent about your process.
  • Show authenticity and vulnerability—let your “messy self” be present.
  • Reliability matters: don’t make promises you won’t keep.
  • Ask: “Where have I not been trustworthy to my readers?” (60:04, Claire)

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9. On Personal Branding, Vulnerability & Courage

Timestamps: 61:55–64:44

• Being Courageously Human:
  There will always be legitimate reasons for anonymity, but in an AI-heavy, impersonal world, humanity and vulnerability are more valuable than ever.

  “Life is not meant to be spent hiding… Even if you’re not comfortable showing your face, communicate who you are and what matters to you through other ways.” (63:19, Claire)
  The reward is a freer, more meaningful creative life and stronger reader bonds.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "All the story structure books aren’t law... You already know what a story is." (27:50, Claire)
• “There’s some things money can’t buy.” (30:39, Claire, on leaving social media)
• “Word of mouth has always been how my business best markets.” (34:22, Claire)
• “What our attention goes to builds our understanding of ourselves in the world.” (36:09, Claire)
• "There's a way that's going to feel more aligned to you." (38:45, Claire)
• “If we don’t allow ourselves to change, we end up in this tiny box.” (41:16, Claire)
• “An iconic character is true to some sort of fundamental part of the human condition, even if they’re not strictly human.” (42:44, Claire)
• “Wednesday [Addams] considers emotions to be weakness... [and] has to be in a position of power in all moments.” (47:41–50:29, Claire)
• “Trustworthiness comes at the cost of courage and honesty.” (60:28, Claire)
• “Life is not meant to be spent hiding.” (63:19, Claire)

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Resources & Where to Find More

• Claire Taylor’s Author Education: LiberatedWriter.com
• Claire on Substack: The Liberated Writer ([Substack link])
• FFS Media (Claire’s fiction): FFS Media
• Joanna Penn: TheCreativePenn.com

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Segment Guide

• Claire’s Updates — 27:26
• Quitting Social Media — 29:18
• Marketing Without Social — 33:16
• The Enneagram for Characters — 35:27
• Common Author Struggles — 37:46
• Writing Iconic Characters — 42:04
• Wednesday Addams Example — 47:08
• Conflict via Enneagram — 51:32
• Courage & Personal Branding — 61:55
• End & Resources — 64:52

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for any writer or creative wrestling with questions of attention, authenticity, and trust in a changing digital world. Claire Taylor’s perspective empowers authors to honor their real selves and find sustainable, meaningful ways forward—both in writing craft and author business—no matter what 2026 brings.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Creative Penn Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots [e-mail] and that's Pen with a double n. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 845 of the podcast and it is Friday the 9th of January 2026. As I record this at the time of year when you keep writing the wrong year on things I don't know about you, I keep doing that. Anyway, in today's show I'm talking to Claire Taylor about leaving social media, writing iconic characters and building trust. So that's coming up in the interview. In Writing and Publishing and first today on Craft, an interview with Dan Brown on Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast. Now, even if you don't read Dan Brown's thrillers like I do, he is one of the best selling authors in the world since the Da Vinci Code. So it's worth a listen. A few interesting things they talk about how even massive bestsellers can start with failure. Dan Brown's first three novels, Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and Deception Point, were commercial failures. And he talks a bit about the publishing industry where the difference between a flop and a hit is often internal politics. And he said that Angels and Demons failed partly because the editor who acquired it was fired, leaving the book with no internal champion or marketing budget. And I've heard this happen to so many authors, I didn't know it had happened to Dan Brown, but there you go. And then the Da Vinci Code succeeded because the new publisher put substantial financial resources behind it. And then of course, when it was released, when the Da Vinci Code came out, the book came out, the Vatican told people not to read it and the churches talked about calling it lies and everything. Getting banned by the Vatican is the best publicity. And I believe since then they just don't comment on controversial books because obviously it just attracts more attention. Now I was also shocked in the interview because he says, I don't read fiction. I read all the time, but I only read non fiction. I like to learn and I feel like the fiction I want to read is fiction that informs me about the real world. And when you're a creative person, all you have to guide yourself is your taste. You write the novel you want to read, you mix the song you want to hear. I write the kind of novel I want to Read, which I found hilarious because he doesn't read novels. Now I actually found this a bit devastating because I've always said to people, well, you can't write fiction if you don't read fiction. I just imagine not reading fiction. I read fiction pretty much every day. We do watch some TV together, me and Jonathan, my husband, and then we head for bed as such. But I will always read, you know, 30 minutes an hour, sometimes every night, some kind of fiction. That's just what I do as part of my relaxing in the evening. And so yeah, I just, this was kind of stunning to me. But yeah, having read all of Dan Brown's books, I actually think you can tell this because they are packed with information and the story sometimes feels like it's constructed around the information he wants you to know. Now I love learning, so this actually suits me. But it makes more sense sort of examining his books. So I think I'm going to have to eat my words and say, I guess you don't have to read fiction to write fiction. I just don't understand why you wouldn't. Also, Dan Brown's health regime says I really believe there's a connection between mind and body. I work hard to stay in shape. I've got an antique hourglass on my desk and every hour I stop and do push ups or sit ups or stretching just to keep the blood moving because I will often write six, seven or eight hours a day. And you just need to know your heart rate can almost stop if you're at your desk the whole time. So yes, I totally agree with that. And a reminder to do some exercise. I'm right now I'm standing up. I have a stand sit desk and when I'm editing, I'm editing at the moment, editing bones of the deep. And I often walk down to my local cafe. I do a lot, I do most of my writing in my home office, but I do all my editing at a local cafe. And so by the time I walk down and do some and then walk back, it's a few kilometers. Although today as I'm recording this, we've got a storm here in the uk, so I'm getting ready to bundle up in my super warm, super waterproof stuff and my backpack with a backpack cover with my manuscript in because I print it out and I edit in by hand. But yeah, it really is awful weather right now. Anyway, check out Dan Brown on the Tetragrammaton podcast and lots of other interesting interviews on there. And of course, if you enjoy Dan Brown's books you might enjoy my arcane thrillers, which do have some interesting information behind them, but I believe are still mostly fiction or stories. You can also read them as standalones. So yes, that is Tetragrammaton on publishing. Self publishing advice has an episode which you can also read about book design. It's called Design Rules that Make or Break a Book with Mattie Dalrymple and Sam Pearce. And since one of the trends in 2026 is more beautiful books, yes, let's all make more beautiful things in the world, it is definitely worth checking out. And some of the tips include prioritizing readability as an emotional experience, helping readers sort of instinctively judge a book. You know, you get a feeling about the quality of the book from the quality of the physical product. And even if readers don understand typography or design, there is a feeling that you get from good design on the external book, but also the internal so font size. This is one of my pet hates and I've been feeling it a lot with the degree I'm doing the masters I'm doing because I'm reading a lot of academic works and boy oh boy, some of them have just done tiny font size in books with tiny margins and hardly any white space. Extremely hard to read. So please let your text breathe a bit more. Don't have too small a font size or margin size. That's just old school academic. And yeah, not not good for readers. In terms of fonts, readers and algorithms expect specific design cues for different genres. So if it is a curly, beautiful, flowing font, it's probably romance. It might be historical and there's more sort of angular, futuristic styles for science fiction. Fiction usually is more businesslike, that kind of thing. If you try and do that differently. So put a historic font on a techno thriller, it's just not going to work because people instinctively know what fonts mean, even if they don't really understand why they feel that way. Also use style sheets, particularly for non fiction, I think, to ensure consistency around chapter headings, subheadings, bullet points, all of this. There's so much around the professionalism of a print book. You can be a proud indie author and still want to have a book that is as good or better quality than traditional publishing. And of course adopt a publisher's mindset. As authors, of course we're writing for ourselves, but publishing is for the reader. Every design decision should be made in the interest of the reader's experience. And also I'd just add on that yes, it is also for you. I love, love love having my hardback beautiful foiled, sprayed edges hardback books. And one of the reasons that try and just do my entire backlist in beautiful hardbacks is for my own personal sort of pride. But also people do like buying those. So I think we can blend our own choices with what readers want. But we are lucky, I think we're really lucky at this point to have companies like Book Vault doing this real custom bespoke beautiful books. And I think there'll be more of these companies arriving and we can just do really cool beautiful things. So let's do that. That is the self Publishing with Ally podcast or self publishingadvice.org, links in the show notes as ever then on Amazon's DRM change, which you have probably had an email about. If you are publishing on Amazon, KDP Kindlepreneur has an extensive article, so please check that out because it's very extensive. I mean I personally I've never used drm, which is digital rights management. It's like a checkbox. It basically locks up the format. Some people think having it on somehow stops piracy, but pirates will be pirates and I focus on real readers, so I've never used it on any platform. So Amazon's change doesn't bother me at all. But I know it bothers some people. So check out the Kindlepreneur article around Amazon DRM and the downloads there from the article. Starting January 20, 2026, Amazon will allow verified purchasers to download EPUB and PDF files for certain Kindle books. This applies only to DRM free books published through kdp. Amazon isn't removing DRM and authors aren't losing control over their titles. But for authors who publish without DRM like me, this update introduces a decision point, one that weighs reader convenience against the easier redistribution that comes with downloadable files. Yes, so this may make piracy easier, but to be fair, everything I've ever done has been pirated. Like people just do this stuff. I just don't think that any kind of digital lock works. So my preference is to focus on the readers who who truly want to support me. The readers who are happy to pay for their borrows or use the library or buy books in all formats. Like, I choose to focus on the positive side of buyers and customers and readers and fans and all that, rather than worrying about the negative side. So yeah, that's my opinion. But you will have your opinion. So yes, before the 20th of January, go decide what you want to do and make those changes if you want to change them and link to The Kindlepreneur article in the Notes then also still on Author Business Things, Rachel Heron shares her annual Show Me the Money episode which is an honest look at how a year as a full time author entrepreneur does now like me. Rachel has fiction and non fiction parts to her business and also teachers and the bulk of her income did come from teaching and coaching. All writing related. But this is so important because even if you have lots of books and lots of experience, some years book income is down. It is not always up and to the right. Rachel even says, I have been doing this gig for 20 years and I still have to set myself minimum viable goals. I still have to ignore the critic's editorial voice. I can't fight with it, I will lose. I have to ignore it and do the work. And yes, so I'm at 20 years as well with Rachel. So yeah, I get it. Long term authors have an inner voice criticizing so in terms of her books, Rachel was very pleased to essentially have generated passive income from her backlist. I don't think it's passive passive income because Rachel podcasts every week and that always brings people in somehow. But she earned over 16,000 US dollars from self published books despite giving them no support, no interest and no ad spend at all. So she described this as the backlist chugging merrily along and compared to traditional publishing books which only made her US$1,400 because she didn't sell a book to traditional publishing last year. And I wanted to mention this because it's so important to consider traditional publishing is completely different in terms of how the money comes. You'll get a bigger payment hopefully and then you may never get any more payments or it might be split into three and then you might not get royalties or you might get tiny royalties in the future, but there's usually some more spikes and then it might disappear. Whereas indie is less of a big spike but more consistency over time because you have the control of that. You can always do some promotion. So I think that's really interesting to consider if you are someone who does both indie and traditional publishing, how differently things are in terms of the cash flow. In terms of a mistake, Rachel admits she took a financial hit by removing a knitting romance series out of ku. She was intending to sell the books directly on Shopify, but she did not get the Shopify store done or drive traffic to it. So she lost the income without replacing it with direct sales. So I would say the very clear choice here is if you're going to do that, remember to set things up somewhere else. You don't need to turn off the KU stuff until you're ready to turn on the new stream of income. So I'm not sure what she's going to do with that this year. But if you do want to build up, shopify there, build it all, and then like at the last minute turn it off. That's what I would do. I also love that Rachel fesses up. She says, I was just faffing around, not picking a goal, not setting a deadline. I had a lovely year, but I don't know where it went and I don't have much to show for it. She does, though. She's done really, really well. But she says it feels like I ate a big Cherry cake for 20 what I have got to show for it now. Sometimes you need a big cherry cake of a year and Rachel is delightful to listen to and clearly just had a good time and still made amazing money for a cherry cake of the year. I definitely feel like I need a cherry cake of a year at some point, but not this year. At least I'm not planning it to be. So I think it's really good to recognize when you focused on other things and had a cherry cake of a year. I think that might become a new phrase so then you can accept lower income versus if you've really pushed, super. If Rachel had pushed hard, hard, hard all year and still felt like she didn't get the money back, that's when you need to really think about, okay, so what am I wasting my time and money on? These are all the things we have to consider about what works, what doesn't in our lives and our author businesses. Lots of other interesting things in that episode. So head on over to Ink in your Veins podcast and have a listen to Rachel. That's ink in your veins on AI things. I mentioned lots on AI last week, but a listener sent me a press release from Wycliffe who published Bibles amongst other things. Now remember that although I'm not a Christian, I have a master's in theology and I'm currently studying for another master's in death, religion and culture. So I'm pretty much immersed in all things religion. Much of my fiction writing in particular has a lot of elements of that. And yeah, I have a deep interest in religion, particularly Christianity, and also a deep interest in AI. So this hits on all levels. The article is the impact of AI on Bible translation opportunities and challenges. It's a really well thought out essay from a translator and linguist who's Also been working with AI for many years and specializes in Bible translation and of course is a Christian. It goes into the details of how the technology works and then the author says, when AI handles simple, repetitive drafting decisions, translation efficiency increases substantially. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that humans should retain final authority over high level decisions, particularly those involving exegesis and theological nuance. As AI capabilities rapidly advance, we must resist the misconception that AI can independently complete Bible translation. The essential characteristic of Bible translation is its spiritual dimension, a process guided by the Holy Spirit through prayer. We must vigilantly preserve this spiritual aspect amid technological advancement. It ends by carefully balancing technological innovation with human expertise and spiritual sensitivity. Bible translation can harness AI's powerful capabilities while maintaining translation fidelity. Now, whatever you believe, I love the idea of balancing AI usage with real humanity. Whether that is a creative spark or a spiritual element, or if you think it's the Holy Spirit, whatever that is. Of course I'm a big user of AI tools, but I am absolutely not a one click output person. I think we have to keep these elements of the things that are truly human. And so I wanted to mention that because I loved this embracing of technology, but also the balance of spirituality. And I also, I was going to share this last year, but I didn't at the time because I just thought it didn't really fit. But I think it fits now because in 2025 Pope Leo went viral for a tweet on X. Now you might have your feelings about X, but it is absolutely the platform for people who use use AI tools. Lots shared. And the Ontifex handle, which is Pope Leo's or presumably his team, is extremely active on X. And so yeah, this is Ontifex. And his tweet that went viral is as technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation, it carries an ethical and spiritual weight for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity. The Church therefore calls all builders of AI to cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work, to develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity and a genuine reverence for life. I actually printed this in my photo album for the year. I do a photo album and I just did it for 2025. And I often print out tweets or quotes or things that I have been affected by. And again, I love this because it blends both. It blends. It calls for builders of AI to develop systems. So it is embracing technology, but also obviously technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation. So creativity through Technology is also encouraged, but it carries an ethical and spiritual weight with every design choice expressing a vision of humanity. So again, I love both of these things and whatever you think, whatever you come from, what spiritual tradition, religious tradition, I hope you find that interesting, the sort of encouragement towards technological innovation, the use of these tools, but also weighing everything with this spiritual side, whatever you might call that the spark of humanity, the spark of creativity. But yeah, I love that. Made me think, that's for sure. Sure. I'll link to that tweet and the Wycliffe article in the show notes then in personal news, I have been finalizing my webinar deck for Business for Authors and I wanted to mention this because I have been preparing it over Christmas. I've been doing all this stuff and literally this week I threw it all out and started again. This is so what happens. So I'm an intuitive discovery writer as long term listeners will know. So what happens is I tend to over create or I will sort of do this. And I had this huge chaotic deck with so much I wanted to say. And then what happens is at some point and I'm mulling it over and thinking about it, winnowing it down, trying different angles and then at some point, and this happens with my books as well, there's this breakthrough moment where everything crystallizes and I kind of settle on one thing that encompasses the whole situation, the whole book, the whole deck or whatever. So thankfully that happened earlier this week and I rejigged the whole deck based on essentially a process flow diagram that I was a business consultant before I was a full time author entrepreneur. So process flow diagrams were my life and when I did this process flow diagram everything fell into place. So I'm really happy with the webinar now and which is good because as this goes out, the first webinar will have happened. I'm recording this the day before, but by the time this goes out the first webinar happened. You can still join me. Saturday 24th of January is the next business for authors webinar. So if you want to trans your Author Business in 2026, come and join me live. You can get the replay if you buy a ticket and the slides and other material. So the links [e-mail] live. Patrons get 25% discount, so check the Patreon before you book. I've also been working on Bones of the Deep and in fact as soon as I finish recording this I'm heading back down to the cafe to do some more editing. It is also quite chaotic and readers of my fiction will not be surprised to know there is a storm. Of course there's a storm. It's set out on the ocean between Fiji and Vanuatu, a route I sailed in 1999 and so there was no storm. But my fiction always has a storm of some kind, so the characters are in flux. It is a thriller. It is so much fun. I'm really enjoying it. I have a bit of a hard deadline because my luckily the academic year starts quite late, so I've got a couple more weeks before I be deep into the Masters, but I need to get it to Kristen, my editor then. It is so much fun. I'm really enjoying it. Sort of half editing, half brainstorming and writing. My first edit is the real hardcore structural redesign. So my handwritten notes all over my pages and arrows going insert this here, do this, do that. So it's. It's really fun. And if you want to know more, check out the Kickstarter landing [e-mail] book phones that will be going out in April at the moment, I think. Yeah, it's so funny, isn't it, how. How you have to think these months and months ahead. Right? Thank you for all your emails and comments and photos this week. Lots of people commenting on my insights for the years ahead. Vicky St. Clair on YouTube said, Excellent and useful. You make it so much easier to keep abreast of rapidly moving changes. Thank you. I apprec that. And Albert said this is the most informative and thought provoking essay I have read so far and I loved getting that because I always obviously that my show notes are essentially for the solo episodes I do. I write everything first and then I narrate what I've written. And of course if you're listening you do get the sort of extra bits and bobs that I put in as I read. But there's always a transcript of the main section of the show on the show notes. So nice to know people still reading as well as listening. Listening. And Saskia also said, I've just listened but I'm going to have to go over the written transcript because there was so much I want to pull out. Definitely helpful in getting my strategy together for 2026. Brilliant. You can leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes atthecreative pen.com or on the YouTube channel. You can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your thoughts or comments or your favorite cemetery, crypt or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you it makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by Book Funnel, who I use for my ebook and audiobook delivery to readers, for my Kickstarters, for my Shopify store, and also for my free ebooks. So would you rather spend your time writing or tech supporting your readers who want to get your books and audiobooks onto their devices? That is now a solved problem. You write the book's book funnel handles delivering them to readers and I just jump in here. If you haven't been around a long time, you won't really know how big a deal this used to be. Essentially, we just used to spend so much time in customer support and Book Funnel did solve this problem. So whether you're offering a free short story or exclusive content to grow your list or selling ebooks and audiobooks direct, Book Funnel makes it simple. Your readers get their book instantly. You get happy readers grow your subscriber list and no one has to troubleshoot broken links or help Aunt Carol get her books onto her new e reader or phone. That's the other thing. So many different kinds of phones and all of this. Thousands of authors use BookFunnel to deliver books because it works. No tech headaches, no lost subscribers, no can you resend that link? It definitely takes away the customer support headache. Ready to grow your list the easy way? [e-mail] thecreativepen that's bookfunnel.com thecreativepenn so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show sponsored by my [e-mail] TheCreativePen thanks to the 23 new patrons who've joined in the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering writing, craft, author business tutorials on AI. This week I shared my prompt and some of the responses on how to use AI in the intuitive discovery writing process. Some people seem to think you need to be like a robot to work with these AI tools. But you don't. You can be chaotic like me and enjoy sparking off another brain, even if it's digital. So I shared that this week patrons also get 25% discount for the business for Authors, Webinar and my other webinars as I do them. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling jealous, generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more. Come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePenn Right, let's get into the interview. Claire Taylor is a humor and mystery author, the owner of FFS Media and a certified Enneagram coach. She teaches authors to write stronger stories and build sustainable careers@liberated writer.com and her latest book is Write Ideas Iconic Characters Unlocking the Core Motivations that Fuel Unforgettable Stories. So welcome back to the show, Claire.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here.

[A]

No, it's great to have you back on the show. Now it was March 2024 when you were last on the show, so almost two years as this goes out. So give us a bit of an update. How has your writing craft and your author business changed in that time?

[B]

Well, one of the things I've been focusing on with my own like fiction craft is is deconstructing rules of how a story should be. That's just been a sort of hobby focus of mine. Like all the story structure, books aren't law.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's why there's so many of them. They're all kinds of suggestions, frameworks. They're trying to quantify humans innate ability to understand a story. So I'm trying to remember more that I already know what a story is and all I have to do as an author is to keep the reader's attention from start to finish and leave them the way I hope to leave them. So so as far as craft, that's kind of been my focus. And then with author business I've made some big shifts. I left social media earlier this year and I've been looking more toward just one on one coaching, networking. I did this craft based Kickstarter. So I had been focusing a lot on career and now I'm sort of creating more content around using the Enneagram for writing craft. So there's been a lot of transition since 2024 for me.

[A]

Well, I think it's so important. Obviously we're going to get into your book in more detail, but I do think it's important for people to hear about our pivots because I haven't spoken to you for a while but I started a master's degree a few months back so I'm doing like a full time masters alongside everything else. And so I've kind of put down book writing and I'm doing essay writing and academic writing. And it's like, this is quite different. And it sounds like what you're doing is different too. But one thing I know will have perked up people's ears is the. I left social media. Tell us a bit more about that.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, this was a move that I could kind of feel coming for a while. Like, I just. I didn't like what it did to my attention. And even when I wasn't on it there, there was almost like a hangover of being on it where my attention just did not feel as sharp and focused as it used to be back before social media became what it was or what it is. And I was just asking the questions of what is lost if I leave, what is gained if I leave? And really looking at what is social media doing for me today, because I think sometimes we will hold on to what it was doing for us and try to keep squeezing out more and more of what it was. But it has changed so much. You know, there's. There's almost no places where there's sufficient organic reach. And it's all pay to play. And you can see that pay to play going up in price. And I just, I looked at the numbers for my business. My Kickstarter was a great place to look because they track so much traffic sources. And I was like, okay, that's how much I'm getting from social media when I advertise and promote my projects. Can I let that go to get my attention back back and to make my life feel more settled? And I decided, yeah, I can.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. There's some things money can't buy, so.

[A]

Well, that is the thing. Sometimes it's not about the money, but in terms of. I like your question. What is lost and what is gained? You said that it's only pay to play and there's no organic reach. I think there is. What? Some people don't pay to play, but they are able to play the game of yes, whatever. So tick tock, for example, you might not have to pay money yet, but you do have to play their game. You do have to pay with your time.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Rather than money. So I don't. I agree with you. I don't think there's anywhere that you can literally just like post something and it actually hits the people who follow you.

[B]

Right, exactly. And I mean, yeah, TikTok, currently, if you really play the game, sometimes you'll be picked. Right. But that pick me energy is not really my jam. And also we can see the trend. Right. This won't Last, it's organic for now. You can play the game for now. But TikTok would be crazy not to change it so that they make more money off that. So eventually everything becomes pay to play. And I think so just TikTok is fun but for me it's addictive and I took it off my phone years ago because I, I just, I would do the infinite scroll on TikTok. There's so much candy there. And then I would wake up the next morning just with my mood not where I wanted it to be. Energy low. I just really saw a correl. And so yeah, I was like, I'm not the person to pay to play or to play the game here. And I'm not even convinced that the pay to play on certain social media networks is even legit anymore.

[A]

So.

[B]

Because I'm like, well who's holding them accountable for tracking all of this? But you can kind of see the correlation in your sales and anyway it just wasn't for me and my life is, I feel so much better on a daily basis off of it. So that's definitely something I have not regretted for a second.

[A]

Yeah, well, and I'm sorry to keep on about this but I think this is great because this is going out in January 2026 and there will be lots of people who are examining social media. It's like one of those things that everyone examines. Right. Every year, pretty much the other thing just on that. So I think, I mean you're a very self aware person and you spend a lot of time thinking about these things and stopping and thinking is such a, an important part of it. But the big question then is, and I know one of the reasons people don't want to come off social media is they're afraid, need that, they don't know how else to market. So how else, how are you marketing if you're not using social media?

[B]

So I have over, over time. So I didn't just leave social media overnight. I've been adjusting, transitioning, preparing my business and that sort of thing mentally, emotionally for probably a year. And so I still market to my list and I have started a substack that I think fits more of how my brain works works. So I guess substack may be considered social media by some people. It's got like news feed. Yeah but it's much more like blogging and it's like a blogging where you can get discovered and so I've been doing that also. You get to have access to all of the emails of your Subscribers, which is important to me to not be building on something that I can't take with me. And so I've been doing more long form stuff and that seems to keep my core audience because I have plenty of people subscribe. I have people who continue to come back and see me and work with me and tell their friends. And word of mouth has always been how my business best markets. And so just because it's hard to. It's hard to describe the benefits sometimes to people of what I do. And so for me that I'm doing that and then I'm transitioning my book selling to more local.

[A]

Because in person.

[B]

In person, in person and local and networking and just telling more people that I'm an author and working with my lists, my existing email lists.

[A]

Yeah. And I think at the end of the day it does come back to the email list. Right. And I think this is actually one of the benefits of selling direct. If people are using Shopify or Payhip or whatever or locally or whatever. If you, because you can build your email list, like every person you. You funnel into sort of selling, that way you get their data. Whereas all the years of kind of all the things we did to get people to go to Amazon and we didn't get their emails and stuff. So yeah, it's so interesting where we are in the author business. Okay, so we'll come back to some of these things, but let's get into the book and what you do. So obviously what underpins the book is the Enneagram. So just remind us what the Enneagram is and why you incorporate it into so much of your work and why you find it resonates so much. Much.

[B]

Yeah. The Enneagram is a framework that describes patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions that tend to arise from these nine different core motivations. So these core motivations are made up of a fear desire pair. So for instance, there's the fear of lacking worth and the desire to be worthy. That would be one pair. And that's the type 3 core motivation. So if you're a type 3, sometimes called the achiever, that would be your core motivations. So what we fear and desire above, kind of all the other fears and desires that determines where attention goes. And attention is something that authors benefit greatly from understanding. We have to keep people's attention. So we want to understand our own attention and how to cultivate our own attention. Because what our attention goes to builds our understanding of ourselves in the world. So being intentional about that, but also paying attention to what your characters pay attention to and what your readers are paying attention to is hugely beneficial and can really give you a leg up. So that's why I focus on the Enneagram. I find it very useful at that core level. You can build a lot of other things on top of it with your characters. You can build their backgrounds or personal histories, little quirks, whatever you want to do from that foundation of the Enneagram. And why I like the Enneagram more than, you know, why I use it more than other frameworks like MBTI or the Big Five. It not only shows us how our fears are confining us, that's really what it's charting for us, but it also shows us a path toward liberation from those fears. So that's really where the Enneagram shines. It's the growth and freedom from the confines of our own personality. And it offers that to anyone who really wants to study it and discover it. And so a lot of the authors I work with are like, I'm just so sick of my own. My own stuff. And it's like, yeah, we all kind of get sick of the same thing over and over again. I mean, we all can kind of get sick of our personality. And so the Enneagram is a really good tool for figuring out what's going on. How do we try something new? Because sometimes we can't even see that there are other new options because we have our particular lens. So that's why I like to play around with it. That's why I find it so useful.

[A]

Well, that, I mean, that's a really interesting. It's sounds like you have a lot of mature authors. And when I say mature, I mean as in they have a lot of books, for example, because there are obviously different problems at different stages of the author career as such. And the problem you outline there, which is, I'm getting sick of my stuff, sounds like a mature author kind of issue. But I guess what are some of the other issues you see in the community that are quite common amongst. In the authors?

[B]

Yeah, I think one that. That comes up a lot, especially early on in the career, is am I doing this right? That's a big question. People are like, I don't know if I'm doing this right, I'm going to screw up. And. And this person told me this was the way to do things, but there's. It just. I don't think I can do it this way. Am I doomed? Right. That's kind of the fear.

[A]

And.

[B]

And so a lot of what I get to help people do is see that no, there's not a right way to do this. There's a way that's going to feel more aligned to you. And there are millions of ways to approach this because we're all just kind of constructing it. I mean, you were there in the early days. We were all just making this up.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. There was a time, like, when ebooks were PDFs and they. There wasn't even a Kindle and there was no iPhone.

[B]

Right, right. And so that kind of spirit of, hey, we're all making it up. Some of us have come up with frameworks that work for us and we will tell other people about it. Or here's a process, try this process. But that doesn't mean that it's the process. Right. So really helping people understand what motivates them enough, those core motivations. So you can kind of see, like, where you're going to bump into advice that's just not right for you. You and how you can start to make decisions that are appropriate for your attention, your life, your desire in this role as author. And so that's early on. That's a lot of what we do. But a lot of authors who started off a while ago have a bunch of books will just hit a point where they're like, I've changed so much since I started writing. I need to figure out how to adjust my career, forward it.

[A]

Yeah. Well, tell us more about that, because I think that's. That's you and me. Yeah. How do we, how do we deal with that?

[B]

Well, crying helps, but.

[A]

That is true. But I, I do think, though, I mean, personal to me, personal brand, as in people are still here. I know some people listening who've been listening since the podcast started in 2009, and, and I've always been me. Even though I've done tons of different things and changed along the way, I'm still at heart, I'm me. And so I'm glad that I built a personal brand around me rather than around a genre or around something else. I don't know. How about you?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I feel, I feel the same. And I, I just can't stick with something that doesn't feel right for me. It just, I, I will start to rebel. And so I really never like, I, I. But there's also like, that good girl in me that wants to do things the way they're supposed to be done and keep everyone happy, you know, So I have to kind of keep an eye on her because she'll just default to, okay, this is the way it should be done. And so I think as we advance through our career, positioning around what motivates us and what we love, and allowing ourselves to understand that it's okay to change, even though it's painful to change, it's. It's destructive to not change. Over time, we end up forfeiting a lot of things that. That really make life worth living. If we don't allow ourselves to change, we end up in this tiny box. So a lot of the times people will say, like, oh, the Enneagram is very restrictive. It's only. Only nine types. You know, you're going to put me in a box. And it's like, no, these are the boxes we've put ourselves in. And then we figure out how to get out of the box. So as we start to see the box box that we have put ourselves in of our personality, what we were like, that's me. That's not me. We then realize how much movement we have, how many options we have while still being ourselves.

[A]

So many options. Well, we. This kind of brings us into your book because obviously part of the sort of personal brand thing is being real and having different facets to us and all of that. And your book is right. I. Iconic characters. And presumably these are characters that people want to read more about, and it uses the Enneagram to construct these better characters. So first up, what is your definition of an iconic character as opposed to just any old character? And how can we use the Enneagram to construct it?

[B]

Yeah, so an iconic character in my imagination is one that really sticks with with us after we've finished the story. Right. And it's. It becomes almost a way. A reference point for us that maybe we're like, oh, that person's kind of like this character, right? It. It can be our friends, our enemies. So when we meet on the bus, whoever it is reminds us of this character. So it really gets lodged in our psyche. And it. An iconic character is true to some sort of fundamental part of the human condition, even if they're not strictly human. So all the alien romance people, don't worry, but, you know, they take on a life of their own. Sometimes with an iconic character, we may hear them talking to us right after. Outside of the book, because we just have tapped into that essential part of them, and they really. They become almost an archetype. But this. This thing that we go back to over and over again in our minds. So as the writer and as the.

[A]

Writer reader, and then so how can we use the Enneagram to construct an iconic character? And I'm saying this as a discovery writer who struggles to construct anything before. It's more like, I write stuff and then something emerges. But then I have definitely not had a hit series with an iconic character, so I'm willing to try your way. Yeah.

[B]

So it works for whatever your process is. Right. If you're a discovery writer, start with the spark of the idea in your head. Right. If there's a character that is just kind of that glimmer of a character, maybe you know a few things about them, just keep writing. And then at some point you're going to recognize, okay, I think it's time to go a little bit deeper in understanding this character and. And create a sort of cohesive thread to pull through. And that's where the Enneagram can really start to be useful. So you can put on your armchair psychologist hat, and then you can add, ask which of the nine core fears seems like it might be driving those parts of their personality that you already see emerging. So, thankfully, we intuitively recognize the nine types. So when we start gathering bits for a new character, we tend to pull from essentially the same constellation of personality, even if we don't recognize that's what we're doing. So, for instance, you may be like, this character is bold and adventurous, and that's all you know to start out with. That's fine. Right? But you're probably not going to also add, and they're incredibly shy. Right? Because bold and adventurous and incredibly shy don't really go together. And we know that kind of instinctively. So, okay, they're bold and adventurous, and you write that to a certain point, and then you get to a place where you're like, I don't really know them deeply, then you can go back to those nine core fears and start to eliminate some of them pretty quickly. So I have, like, the descriptions of each of them. You can read the character descriptions, you can read about the motivations and start to kind of attach. Okay, well, it's definitely not these five types. I can rule those out. If they're bold and adventurous, maybe the core fear is that they're afraid of deprivation, being trapped in deprivation and pain. Right. Or they're afraid of being harmed and controlled. So those correspond to type 7, that the enthusiast in type 8, the challenger respective. And so you can say, okay, maybe there are seven or an eight. Right. And then from that, if you can kind of pin down where their type is, then you can read more about it. You can get ideas you can understand at the next big decision point. If they're, say, a type 7, which is the enthusiast, what's going to motivate them? Well, they're going to do whatever keeps them from being trapped in pain and deprivation, and they're going to be seeking satisfaction faction in some way because that's the core desire that goes with that core fear. So now you're like, okay, how do I get them to get on the spaceship and leave Earth? Well, you could offer them some adventure, right, because they're bold and adventurous. You could have. I have a character who's a seven and she gets on a spaceship and takes off because her boyfriend just proposed. And the idea of being trapped in marriage, she's like, nope, I'm going to whatever's on the spaceship to. I'm going out of here. So you can play around with that. Once you identify a type, and you can go as deep with that type as you want, or you can just say just with the core fear and use that. There's no. There's no better or worse. It's whatever you feel comfortable with and whatever you need in the story.

[A]

So you do have. In the book, you do have all the Enneagram types and you do go into them all. But I. You do have one example, which is Wednesday Addams, and I thought maybe you could talk a bit more about her as an example. She's one of my favorites, and either people listening have seen the series or they probably have something in their mind around Wednesday Addams in terms of the old school Addams family. But maybe you could talk about that example.

[B]

Yeah, definitely. I will say doing these deep dives was some of the more fun research for this book. I was like, okay. I told John, my husband, I was like, okay, don't bother me. I need to sit and binge watch. Watch Wednesday. Yeah, Again with my notebook this time. Yeah. So, yeah, Wednesday was one where the Internet was like, oh, she's maybe this, maybe that. And as soon as I started watching, I was like, oh, this is a type 8. This is the challenger. One of the first things we hear from her mouth is that she considers emotions to be weakness. Right. And so immediately you can cross out a bunch of types from that. And when we're looking at, like, weak and strong, we tend to be looking towards 8. So because the 8 tends to sort things in terms of weak and strong because they're concerned about being harmed or controlled. And so they need to be strong and they need to be powerful. So that Kind of gave me a hint in that direction. And then when we look at, like, the inciting incident. So the inciting incident is a great place to look for what triggers this character because this is. It needs to be triggering enough to launch the story. The rest of the story story. So the inciting incident for this series is Wednesday. Finds her little brother Pugsley, he's stuffed in a locker. And she says, who did this? And because her. Her belief is, I'm the only one that gets to bully you. And so that's. No one gets to bully you. I get to bully you. And this is a very stereotypical type 8 thing, right? The 8 can sometimes. The unhealthy 8 can sort of of dip into being a little bit of a bully, right? Because we're looking at power and power dynamics. But the eight also says, these are my people. I protect them. If you're one of the eight's people, you are under their protection, right? And so it's protection, slash, control, right, that we're seeing. So she goes. And then she, you know, spoiler, throws that bag of piranhas into the pool to attack, right? So that was like, okay, this is probably an 8, right? And then she's has control rested from her when she's sent to the school, right? She's sent to the new school. And so that's going to be a big trigger for an eight to not have autonomy, not have control. And we see that she acts out pretty immediately and is trying to push people away, establish dominance. The first thing she does, you know, or one of the first things she does is challenge domestic, the popular girl to a fencing match. And so that's that sort of dominance that we see of the eight, where they're like, okay, I'm going to go in and I'm going to go figure out where I am in this power structure and try and get in a position of power pretty immediately. So that's how the story starts. And I do have a lot more analysis in the book. So at one point, she's attacked by this mysterious thing. She is narrowly saved from this monster. And then her reaction is, I would have rather saved myself. And so that's, you know, those moments of that really strong independence of the eight. The eight does not like to be saved by anyone else because it's like, no, I wanted to be strong enough to do that. And so, yeah, and her story arc is also that of an 8 very much learning to go from the sort of walled off. I can do it myself, which kind of look like the self sufficiency that the five does. She's a little bit in that isolation, but she has to be in a position of power in all, all moments. She has to be in control of herself, which is more of that 8. And so she has to learn to rely a little bit more on other people if she wants to protect the people that she cares about, which is what the eight really cares about. Protecting. Protecting the innocent is a big, A big priority of the eight.

[A]

Okay, so let's say we've identified our main character and our protagonist. We've done that. One of the important things, of course, in any book is conflict. So can we use the Enneagram to kind of work out what would be the best other character or characters that would give us more conflict?

[B]

Yeah. So the character dynamics are complex and there are certain types that really all types are going to have commonalities and conflict between them. And so that works really well. But depending on how much conflict you need, there are certain types that are going to be better or worse for it. So let's say you have a character who's an eight. Well, if that's your protagonist, an eight, they're going to be creating conflict everywhere because it doesn't matter to them. Like they. You ask an eight, do you like conflict? They're going to be like. I mean, sometimes it's not, you know, but to everyone else they're gonna be like, wow, this person really comes in like a wrecking ball. And so the 8 tends to just go for what they want. They don't see the point in waiting for it. They want it, they're gonna go get it. And it makes them feel strong to be able to go do that and powerful. So there's. It's easier to create conflict, like external and really internal conflict with an 8 and other type of types. But that being said, the nature of the conflict is going to be different depending on who you pair them with. So for instance, let's say you have this type 8 and you pair them with a type 1, which is the reformer. And their core fear is being bad or corrupt. And so the reformer is really that person who wants to have integrity, the moralist. Sometimes they can get a little preachy. They can be a zealot. Right. If they're a little bit more unhealthy on that side of things. And so the 1 and the 8 are going to have a unique conflict because the 1 is going to say, well, let's do what's right. And the, the eight is going to say let's do what gets me what I want. And in the position of power I want. And so you can see how they may get along, especially in taking on injustice. Ones and eights will team up on that if they see the thing thing as an injustice. If they both see the same thing as an injustice, they will both take it on together. And then there may reach a point in this allyship where the choice is available to either do the thing that is right, maybe self sacrificing or moral versus the thing that will get retribution or put you in the power up position. And that's where you're going to have that conflict between the ones and eight. So you can grab any two types and they'll have a unique conflict. And I'm actually working on a project on Kickstarter for that that's all about character dynamics. So. Yeah, right. Iconic relationships is the next project.

[A]

Oh, because I was, I was wondering because I did. I did like a day thing with color palette and interior design type stuff which is. That's not usually my thing. So I was really challenging myself. And we did this color wheel and they were talking about how the opposite thing on the color wheel is. Is like the whatever color and blah blah, blah. And I was like, well, maybe there's something in Enneagram where it's just like a wheel and the thing that's opposite is the thing that goes together and that kind of thing that is. That. That's not true.

[B]

Well, there is a lot of that. So like the. There are a lot of types that are next to each other because it's usually depicted in a circle one through nine. And. And there's these pretty strong contrasts between types that are next to each other. So for instance, the eight which we've talked about and the nine which is the peacemaker. Eights and nines look like opposites in certain ways very strongly because the 9 is conflict avoidant and the 8 tends to be like, well, you get what you want through conflict. Right. And so there are some interesting dynamics like that. And then you have the four, which is the individual individualist. And that's very much the emotional, sort of artistic, heart centered type. And then you have the five, which you're familiar with the investigator that's very head centered and analytical by and large, very thinking based. And the four and the five kind of clash against each other. Right. It's the head and the heart. Battle of the head and the heart. So there are some like interesting contrasts that are right next to each other. Other but each one can kind of create something different. So, like, there are certain types that. Each type has its own conflict style.

[A]

This is.

[B]

We're going into the weeds a little bit, but each type has its own conflict style. And so you can play around with that as well. But there's one conflict style, which is the avoidant conflict style, sometimes called positive Outlook. And it's just hard to get those types that's a two, a seven, and a nine, into like a enemies to lovers romance, because they don't want to be enemies. So there are some different dynamics that you can play around with, which I. I can't wait to explore for everyone. Yeah.

[A]

Well, that's great. And of course, the Enneagram is just one of many tools people can use to figure out themselves as well as their characters. So maybe that's something people want to look at this year. And you've got other books that go into this and lots of information. But just coming back to 2026 now, because this will go out in January 2026 and peak people, I think there is a real fear of change in the community right now. And I wondered if that's something you have seen and also, what are your thoughts for authors on how they can navigate the year ahead?

[B]

Yes, there has been a lot of fear. I think just the rate of change of things online has felt very rapid. The rate of change in things, maybe on a larger scale, politically, have felt very scary to a lot of people. And so I think it can be helpful to look at your own personal life and really anchor yourself in what hasn't changed and what is universal. And then you can. From there, you can start to say, okay, like, we can do this, right? I'm safe. I can start to find creative ways to work within this new environment. And you can choose to engage with AI, you can choose to opt out of it. It's totally your choice. And there's not a virtue in either one. And I think that's important because sometimes the people who are anti AI or it's not that they're just not interested in it, they're antagonistic towards it. They can go after the people who like it, and then the people who like it can sometimes be antagonistic to people who opt out of it. And I think it's important to just understand that you get to choose what you're comfortable with. And one of the things that I see emerging for authors in 2026, regardless of what tools you're using and how you feel about the tools available, is, and I Do have a post on Substack about this, but it's trustworthiness, I think there's a big need for that because with the increased number of, of images and videos that are AI, which a lot of people who've been on the Internet for a while can tell are AI and are like, yeah, you know, kind of has that sheen to it that, that feels AI, but it may not for long. I think those people can kind of tell, but there are a lot of people who can't tell the difference. And so I think there's kind of a, a mistrust of our own senses on the Internet, like lately, and I think it'll increase. So as an author in that environment, really focusing on how do I build trust with my readers. So if that doesn't mean you don't use AI, but you disclose to a certain extent, right, There are things like authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, humility, integrity, transparency, reliability. Those are ingredients to this recipe of trustworthiness that we need to. Need to look at for ourselves. And so I think that if there's one thing authors can do, as far as the hard inner work for 2026 is asking, where have I not been trustworthy to my readers? And taking that hard, painful look and asking how you can adjust, right, where you need to change things or create new practices that increase trustworthiness with readers. Because I really think that's the thing that's starting to erode. And if you can do that now, now you can hold on to your readers through whatever comes up.

[A]

What's one concrete thing people could do in that direction?

[B]

I would say disclosing if you use AI is a start, or how you use it specifically. I know that it can lead to drama when you do that. But trustworthiness comes at the cost of courage and honesty. And so I think transparency is another thing that we could use. But also, if that's just something you're like, absolutely not, Claire, you can get lost with that authenticity, right? This is letting your messy self be there because people do still want some human, right? And so being authentic, being authentically messy, being vulnerable with your audience, you know, if you can't be reliable and put the book out on time, at least, least share with them what's going on in your life. And staying connected in that way helps build trust. And so people are like, oh, okay, yeah, I see why you didn't do. You know that? But if you're always promising books, you know, oh, it's going to be out on this day. Oh, I had to push it back. If you're always pushing it back, that's going to erode the trustworthiness of your brand with your audience. And so looking at those things and asking, how am I cultivating this and how am I breaking making trust is. It's hard. And there are ways that I know, I look at my business and I'm like, yeah, that's not a very trustworthy thing that I'm doing. I should spend some time getting real with myself and, and seeing how I can improve that.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, always improving, I think is good. But coming back to the personal brand thing, coming back to being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there, like we've, you and I have both got used to that over years and practice doing that. And there are people who may never have put their photo online or their voice online or done a video or they might not use their photo on the back of their book or on their website. They might use an avatar, they might use a pen name. They might be afraid of having anything about themselves. And I mean, I, I do. That's where I think it is a concern. Because as much as I love a lot of the AI stuff, stuff, I don't like hiding everything behind pen names and not, like you say, being vulnerable in some way and being human. Like, I say double down on being human. I think it's really important. So any words of courage for people who feel like what? I just can't. I don't want to put myself out there.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, there are legitimate reasons that some people wouldn't want to be visible, and I think that there are safety reasons. There are, are all kinds of factors there. But I do think that there are a number of authors who simply have not practiced the muscle of vulnerability. And you do it a little bit at a time and it, it's, you know, it does open you up to some criticism and some people, you're just not at a phase for it, and that's okay. But I do encourage you to step out if you're one of those authors that, that is hiding. This may be just my own sort of personal soapbox, but I don't think that life is meant to be spent hiding. And things may happen, but if you're scared. A lot of the times people I work with, they don't want to disclose their, their pen names because their parents won't approve. Right. Those kinds of things. And it's like, okay, well, then let's work through that because you don't have to do anything that your parents want you to do you? Like you're an adult now, right? So if that's the issue, maybe if you're like, they'll cut me out of the will. Well, we can talk about that. But you know, there's a lot of constricting feeling around hiding, and when you invite that in in one way, it tends to constrict in other ways. And so I would just say you don't have to put your picture everywhere. But even if you're not comfortable showing your face, communicate who you are and what matters to you through through the other ways, through your story, through your email list, through social media. Let your authentic self be expressed in some way because it's just. It's scary. But the reward is freedom.

[A]

Absolutely. Well, lots to explore in 2026. So tell people where can they find you and your books and everything you do online?

[B]

Liberated Writer.com is where all of my stuff lives except my fiction, which I don't think people are necessari interested in my fiction. But if you want to go find my fiction, FFS Media has that. And then I'm on substack and I write long pieces on Substack and so if you want to go subscribe, it's the Liberated Writer on Substack.

[A]

Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Claire. That was great.

[B]

Thanks so much for having me.

[A]

So I hope you found the interview with Claire interesting and that it helps you consider what's important important for you in the year ahead. Is social media really that important? I think that's a question lots of people ask at this time of year. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday I'll be sharing thoughts on the shadow in traditional and self publishing, as well as the shadow in money. Money and work to get you thinking about things as we move into the year ahead. And remember, if you want to transform your Author Business in 2026, I have one more January webinar left for Business for Authors Saturday 24th of January. [e-mail] live or if you're a patron, use the special link as you get that 25% discount. In the meantime, happy writing writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show [e-mail] podcast and you can get your free author [e-mail] blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram. Instagram and Facebook. Fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.