Judy L Mohr | JUDY L MOHR

Woman in purple shirt covering their face at the center of a red target, surrounded by pointing fingers.

What to Focus on: Writing or Marketing?

For years, I have struggled with finding the balance between writing and marketing. If I don't do any marketing (of books or services), I find myself relying almost entirely on word of mouth… and I quickly find myself in a famine season. But if I spend my time focusing on marketing, then no fiction writing gets done… and the only writing that I seem to be able to do is nonfiction.

I often feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

And depression sets in because the joy of why I'm doing this gets sucked away in the money woes.

But there are a few things that I've recently heard (via podcasts, blogs, and accountability sessions with writing buddies) that have helped me to rationalize these time management woes and helped me to realize that I've never been one to follow the models of others.

I need to stop stressing about certain things, accepting that my brain works differently to others, and focus on what really matters to me.

It's time to give myself permission to embrace a simplistic style to marketing, leaning more into word of mouth and a long-tail to the marketing game.

A laptop and smartphone display code and a large yellow envelope as smaller envelopes scatter across a world map, suggesting fast, global digital communication.

The Importance of Whitelisting

Most of us don't think about whitelisting at all, myself included. An email has found our inbox, so we think that everything is all hunky-dory. And in an ideal world, that would be a fair assumption. However, the moment anything changes, communications that have been finding the inbox can suddenly be moved to spam… or some other folder that removes it from view.

And that's exactly what happened with the move of my email list to a different email management system in 2026.

I always knew that I would need to rebuild my "trust" with the delivery systems. This would have happened regardless of the system I moved to, simply because the email header information would have changed, and systems like Gmail need to reassess it. And this is where whitelisting plays a role.

In today's post, let's talk about the importance of whitelisting and why it's important to advise subscribers to your newsletter to whitelist your email address or domain even if they are getting your emails direct into their inbox.

My “mouth” filter is slipping

I'm not sure if it's my age, my confidence within myself, or something else entirely, but I've noticed that I'm no longer afraid to have an opinion on public channels about certain topics.

Maybe this is tied to my decision to self-publish. Or maybe I've just gotten tired of trying to be politically correct all the time that I'm losing sight of me.

Whatever the reason, I see this as both a good and bad thing.

It's good, because I'm being me and no longer hiding portions of myself that bleed into everything that I do. There are ways that I phrase things that always creep into my writing, because my writing is just my thoughts on paper… even if I'm writing in the voice of another character.

It's bad, because I'm opening up myself to the lynch mob. I could so easily say something that could be taken out of context, at which point, the "politically correct" mob would have a field day at my expense.

But that too can also be seen as a good thing, because I know that the people who get me will be willing to help me defend myself if a lynch mob ever attacks.

I can't please everyone, and I've stopped trying. Instead, I write what I feel needs to be said in the way that I feel my characters need to say it. I know that some readers might find the way I say things as offensive, but to quote my daughter: "That's a them problem, not a me problem."