Sustain Your Author Career: Using the Enneagram to cultivate our gifts, deepen our connections, and triumph over adversity

by Claire Taylor

Reignite your writing motivation and develop creative resilience in your author career.Have you lost touch with the ease and enthusiasm for writing you once had? Does the process of writing stories feel tougher than it used to? Do you find yourself thinking about giving up more and more frequently? Claire Taylor is bestselling fiction author of both off-beat and on-market fiction, a trained and experienced Enneagram instructor, and has coached some of the biggest names in the business. And now you can learn her process for tapping back into your motivation, cultivating resilience, and creating a meaningful author career for the years ahead.

In Sustain Your Author Career, you’ll

Troubleshooting techniques for writer’s block, anxiety, and distractionsBlindspots that are keeping you stuckIn-depth examples from Claire's work with authorsDaily practices to connect you to yourself and your workResilience tools for a changing industry, and much, much more! Sustain Your Author Career is the groundbreaking guide every author needs to cultivate their gifts, deepen their connections, and triumph over adversity. There is a reason you're called to tell stories. It's time to reconnect with that inspiration.

Buy Sustain Your Author Career to get started today!

Genres: Nonfiction

324 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 13, 2024

Reviews

[Nita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book! As an Enneagram 9 (the Peacemaker) and a published author who needs a public presence, I struggle to show up as my authentic self in the world. Claire's offering enlightens and enlivens. She urges each of the Types to be brave in the way they need to be brave while helping us to recognize the unique gifts we bring to the publishing table. I'm so happy I discovered Claire and her incredible work. (HT Becca Syme.) While this book is tailored toward authors, the lessons and suggestions—including powerful emotional-regulation tools—will help anyone face their demons and awaken to their strengths. It's a perfect gift for the writer or the loved-one in your life.

[Stephanie A. Cain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an unapologetic Claire Taylor fangirl. I've read her Reclaim Your Author Career book and taken a couple of her classes. This book continues her important work of helping authors use the knowledge and practices of the Enneagram to rediscover themselves, reclaim their power, navigate through the lenses of personality to truth and liberation.

Sustain Your Author Career builds on the alignment work begun with Reclaim Your Author Career and helps the reader learn to ask questions and create practices based on their Enneagram type. A quote from early in the book resonated with me: "We're at our best when there's coherence between our thinking, feeling, and doing. This is what's described as alignment." This book helps you learn how to reach and sustain that alignment.

There are sections about motivation, blocks and how to break through them, building author resilience, and how to grow. She discusses building mantras and how to begin noticing our blind spots to fix what's broken in our practices and beliefs.

I got this book a little ahead of release date because I was a Kickstarter backer, and it's taken me almost two months to get through the book because it's so full of useful information and mindset shifts. I had to slow down and take time to really integrate what I was reading. Now that I have, I'm confident that putting into practice what I learned in this book is going to make a big difference in my author career.

It's not an easy read, but Enneagram work is never easy, and Claire Taylor is a gently frank guide through that work.

[Melissa McShane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book more immediately useful than Reclaim Your Author Career, probably because I learn well from examples and Taylor provides many illustrating vignettes, disguised to protect the privacy of the real-life individuals. Again, knowing my Enneagram number (3w2) has been helpful to me in identifying why I sometimes react to situations in ways that at first seem irrational, and here Taylor ties those reactions to an author career in ways that are helpful. I can't say I was blown away by everything she says, but I enjoyed exploring the paths she describes.

[Garrett Hutson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book from Claire Taylor for authors who want to keep writing and publishing for the long-term. This book builds on the concepts Claire laid out in Reclaim Your Author Career, and it takes things much, much deeper. Taking the actions she suggests (and this work does require some action) can transform our lives in many ways beyond just our writing and publishing, though the book focuses on our author careers. Highly recommended for any writer who has experienced doubt, burnout, or struggles of any kind.

[Belinda Kroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took a while for me to chew on, mostly because I was reflecting between pages and chapters. As 4w5, I've learned to learn into my creativity, but it was also helpful to set where my growth opportunities are, in and out of the writing world. I tabbed my book, and plan to copy out the 4-related bold text insights into a personal worksheet and reminder set

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I will get more out of this later. I did love all the examples for each type. I took lots of notes!

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one, and can tell I’m going to come back often to review parts of it as I move forward in personal-development work. While technically this book is for authors, it’s really a book about the Enneagram. It’s focused on authors, but even non-authors can get a lot of value from it. I know a lot of people view the Enneagram on the same level as, say, astrology or the MBTI, but one of the things I really like about Enneagram work is that it’s about GROWTH. It’s about taking a long, hard look at ourselves, asking “based on my type, what are some of the problematic patterns and blind spots in my life?”, and then working to move past them. I’m still at the very beginning of my Enneagram journey (I’ve been exploring it for a little over a year), and found Claire’s book extremely helpful to go beyond the 101-level stuff I see around the internet a lot. As Claire says in her last chapter, learning about the Enneagram is 20% of the work, and the other 80% is putting it into practice: connecting with our head, heart, and body centers; paying attention to our blind spots; interrupting unhelpful patterns and replacing them with new ones; etc. I already have a few ideas for myself, and look forward to pursuing them as I move toward a new and hopefully better me.