I’m Sarina, and I’m a business nerd.

Hi, my name is Sarina, and I’m a business nerd. I was born this way. I can’t help it. I realize that not everyone gets excited about spreadsheets, but if you have any writerly income at all, I’m begging you to make 2025 the year you treat your writing as a business. There are actually two reasons to do this:

* First of all it’s centering. Treating your writing as a grownup activity helps you frame your goal-setting around writing. It holds you accountable to your goals

* Secondly, and more practically, it makes tax time is so much easier, and it might save you money

First, let’s do a little primer on how writerly income affects your taxes. Unlike a job, which sends you a W2 in January, writers are technically self-employed. In fact, the first time someone pays you for a book or an article, you have just become an entrepreneur.

So, congratulations on your promotion from artist to businessperson. Let’s go over what that means for you. I must offer a disclaimer here: I’m not a tax professional and I’m not your tax professional, so please ask an accountant in your state if you have actionable questions.

Most writers treat themselves as sole proprietors for tax purposes. That means you’re doing business as yourself, and you haven’t taken the additional step of forming a separate taxable entity. For the purposes of today’s episode, let’s assume that you’re in this category.

Depending on the dollar amount—and the professionalism of the people who paid you—a 1099 tax form may appear in your mailbox in January of next year. That 1099 will also be reported to the IRS, who will expect you to report it on your taxes. When done correctly, this income shows up on your schedule C.

It’s possible to deposit your writing income in your regular checking account, and many people do. But what if we assume that your writing business will continue to grow in volume and complexity? Then it’s time to consider treating your writing as a business in 2025.

The first way to do that is to open a second checking account. My tiny bank in New Hampshire offers this kind of account for free. Opening it was as easy as going into the branch and explaining that I wanted an account for my sole proprietorship. This is the where you’ll deposit any earnings you make as a writer.

The second useful account is an extra credit card that only gets used for business purposes. If you have any expenses during the writing year, they all belong on this card. Such as:

* Substacks you pay for to help further your writing career. (See what I did there?)

* Websites you join to assist in your work

* Transportation to writing-related conferences and research

* Printed materials you purchase for research

* Stock photography

* Your Canva subscription, etc

Every one of these things is a business expense. Any money you spend in service to your writing career is deductible from the income you made from your writing. When you’re just getting started, the legitimate expenses might well exceed your income. This all gets netted out on Schedule C of your 1040.

If you have this setup, you won’t have to scramble to figure out your business income and deductions at tax time. Your writing bank and credit card statements will tell the whole story.

Furthermore, if you’re self-published, the business bank account provides an added layer of security. In my publishing business, I have had to provide my banking details to countless publishing platforms. I like knowing that my banking information is separated from my family’s money.

This is also true of your social security number. There’s a fix for this, though. To avoid sharing your social security number with publishers and publishing platforms, all you have to do is request an EIN, or employer identification number from the IRS. It’s simple, it takes only minutes, and I’ll put the link in the show notes.

And there you have it. Your homework assignments are ready—you’re opening a couple of accounts and requesting an EIN from the IRS. It’s not the sexiest part of your writer journey, but don’t let that stop you.

Until next week, writers, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Links!

Your EIN can be attained here: https://sa.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp

Hi #AmWriters and subscribers to Jess’ content, Jess here, looking out my office window over a beautiful, snowy Vermont Sunday and thinking of you. We do these things called “Lahey Cafe” days in the Lahey household and we have one coming up this afternoon. Back when my husband and I were in graduate school and never got to spend time together away from the books, we would go to cafes (Caribou Coffee on Main Street in Chapel Hill, NC was our favorite) and spend time together while studying. We kept this practice up once we had kids and now our daughter (a college student) asks for them regularly when she has essays to write or studying to do at home. Today, I’m serving up a King Arthur chocolate babka I baked yesterday, the wood stove is burning, and we will all sit at the dining room table with tea and coffee and chocolate-stained fingers while we work on our respective projects. I’m still slogging away on a book proposal, so that’s my task at the Lahey cafe.

Before I leave for the cafe, however, I wanted to offer up a bonus episode of the #AmWriting podcast for you. Last week, for the final AMA of the year, I invited EVERYONE, not just subscribers, to ask me anything, and boy, they did. I love these AMAs because they get at the heart of our most basic intent when we started this podcast over four hundred episodes, which was to flatten the learning curve for writers. If we, or someone we interview, have learned something through a mistake or stumbled upon something useful, why make someone else repeat the effort. Also, AMAs are a throwback to my career as a teacher, which I miss very much.

So enjoy the podcast version of last week’s AMA as well as some pen recommendations recommendations for left-handed writers from Bungu (not sponsored, I’m just obsessed with their products and their TikTok, @bungustore). I’ve linked the pens here:

Zebra Sarasa Dry is their top choice, apparently because the ink dries so fast

Uni Power Tank (pressurized ink!)

Uni Jetstream

Pento Energel

It’s a working weekend, so I’m off to work on some annoying administrative details of my book proposal and play with my new kitten, Lila.

Thanks for reading #AmWriting! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This episode is about a #amwriting win!

Meghan P. Browne wrote to us a while ago to share her happy news: her debut middle-grade novel that she revised in the Blueprint Challenge of 2022 and that we reviewed in one of our First pages episodes had just gone under contract! Welcome to Heaven was acquired by Liz Szabla at Feiwel & Friends (Macmillan), and publication is scheduled for Spring 2026.

Meghan shared that this manuscript was destined for the drawer if it hadn’t been for the 2022 Blueprint Challenge. In this episode we discuss what the challenge helped her to do.

When she was finished with the revision, she decided to submit for our First Pages episode. “The First Pages submission leap was the test I needed to see if I cared enough to push through to the finish line,” she says. She submitted it, we reviewed it, and she tweaked the first page according to our response. The Booklab episode where we reviewed her first page can be found here: Redacted Kitty-Cat and Welcome to Heaven

If you’re a paid supporter and would like to submit a page for the First Pages review, fill out the form HERE. Include your title, genre and first 350 words. We’ll let you know if it’s been chosen and when to expect your episode to drop.

We’re just thrilled for Meghan and so grateful at the tiny part we played in helping her bring her book to life.

You can find Meghan at meghanpbrowne.com and check out her other books, including The Bees of Notre-Dame.

Join the Blueprint Challenge Next Week

If you have big goals for 2025 that include writing, finishing or revising a book, you’ll want to join us for the Winter 2025 Blueprint Challenge.

Starting January 5, we’ll be walking you through the 14 steps of the Blueprint over 10 weeks. Some of the steps are very short and we combined them into one episode.

Every episode speaks to fiction writers, memoir writers, and nonfiction writers. There are workbooks, and you will get a link to the digital download of the Blueprint book of your choice.

We’ll also be hosting weekly AMAs (ask me anything), write-alongs, and Zoom meet-ups with coaches—and KJ will be writing her own Blueprint, and Jennie will be coaching her through it in weekly episodes. For more about the challenge, check out these past posts:

* What the Blueprint is and why Jennie made it

* Introducing the winter book coach hosts

* Overcoming Pantsing Pitfalls: How the Blueprint Method Can Save Your Story

If you finish your Blueprint during the Challenge, you will be eligible to win a review from either Jennie or KJ. (If you missed the #AmWriting Success Story about the writer who won the Blueprint Sprint grand prize in 2022, give it a listen. It’s very inspiring! It’s right HERE.)

It’s going to be such a good time and we’d love to have you join us!

#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We cover last years’ goals, and which of us feel great and which feel… less great. (And the audio is also less great, because 3 of us gathered in our local library and the acoustics/HVAC system noise were less than ideal.)

We end up talking about the ways we feel we need to be as women (supported by some great men) in the coming year and years, the somewhat surprising bro-commentary some of us get around our work, and how we feel like sticking together is going to be the key to maintaining our sense of self in 2025.

It got pretty deep. Writer goals, sure, we have those. But we have more.

We also reviewed our Words of the Year, then announce this year’s. I guess I should make that a big reveal? But I just don’t have it in me, so here we go:

KJ: Inner Compass (which tells me that 2 words is FINE)

Jennie: Teflon (you’ll love the discussion around this one)

Sarah: Presence (she’s reserving the right to refine this)

Jess: Growth (and a surprising announcement about her return to student life! There, there’s your cliff-hanger-go listen.)

Links to things we discuss:

Pacemaker app

Five Year Lie audiobook

Blueprint for a Book Winter Challenge

Submit for First Pages Booklab!

What’s your word for 2025 going to be? We love discussing and brainstorming words, so lay it on us in the comments.

If you have big goals for 2025 that include writing, finishing or revising a book, you’ll want to join us for the Winter 2025 Blueprint Challenge.

Starting January 5, we’ll be walking you through the 14 steps of the Blueprint over 10 weeks. Some of the steps are very short and we combined them into one episode.

Every episode speaks to fiction writers, memoir writers, and nonfiction writers. There are workbooks, and you will get a link to the digital download of the Blueprint book of your choice.

We’ll also be hosting weekly AMAs (ask me anything), write-alongs, and Zoom meet-ups with coaches—and KJ will be writing her own Blueprint, and Jennie will be coaching her through it in weekly episodes. For more about the challenge, check out these past posts:

* What the Blueprint is and why Jennie made it

* Introducing the winter book coach hosts

* Overcoming Pantsing Pitfalls: How the Blueprint Method Can Save Your Story

If you finish your Blueprint during the Challenge, you will be eligible to win a review from either Jennie or KJ. (If you missed the #AmWriting Success Story about the writer who won the Blueprint Sprint grand prize in 2022, give it a listen. It’s very inspiring! It’s right HERE.)

It’s going to be such a good time and we’d love to have you join us! Plus, we have a sale on annual memberships until December 31, 2024 only—save 25% if you decide you’re in now.

Today, I'm so excited to talk to my friend, Rosa Kwon Easton, about her debut novel, White Mulberry.

Rosa holds a very special place in my heart and my history because she was at the first ever workshop where I taught my Blueprint framework, which is a method of inquiry for getting a book out of your head and onto the page before you start to write. At that time, Rosa thought that she was writing a true story about three generations in her family. She was calling it a memoir. And now ten years later, that story is being published as a novel. In this discussion, we talk about that long development process and the profound switch from writing a true story to writing fiction and how Rosa navigated the whole thing.Find Rosa at: rosakwoneaston.com, @rosakwoneaston on Instagram, or at one of her upcoming events.

Find out more about Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book method here.

Announcing the #AmWriting Blueprint Winter Challenge—bigger and better and more interactive than any we’ve done before.

The Blueprint method will be effective for you if:

* You have a new idea for a novel, a memoir, or a nonfiction book you want to pin to the page.

* You are stuck somewhere in the middle of a novel, a memoir, or a nonfiction book and can’t figure out how to get unstuck.

* You are planning to revise a novel, a memoir, or a nonfiction book and feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

In the challenge you’ll get 10 podcast episodes on the Blueprint steps, five Author Accelerator certified book coaches who will be answering your questions in live sessions and in our chat for 10 weeks (+ your hosts will be joining in on that, too), write-along sessions, a workbook to guide you, free digital downloads of Jennie’s Blueprint book, and the chance to win a full Blueprint review from Jennie or KJ at the end.

#AmWriting paid subscribers have the chance to sign up for all this NOW—and to help you out, we’re offering a December sale on membership. The offer will end 12/31/24—so give 2025 you a gift and sign up now!