The Write Habit

The Four Thresholds You Must Cross When Your Writing Stalls

• Season 2 • Episode 2

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This episode is for experienced writers whose projects have stalled.

I introduce what I call the "4 authorship thresholds": the moment when beginner strategies stop working because your authorship has evolved.

I unpack:

• Why over-planning, fake deadlines, and accountability hacks backfire at this stage

• How subconscious evolution creates friction with outdated writing habits

• The four thresholds every experienced writer must cross to return to flow

• Why this moment isn’t a strategy problem, it’s an initiation

This is a conversation about authorship becoming something deeper than productivity. 

If your writing feels heavy, resistant, or blocked, listen closely.
You may be closer to your next level than you think.

🔥 Need help with this?

If this episode describes you, "The Awakened Author" (Jan 26th-March 6th) was created for exactly this moment.

This isn’t a craft or productivity program.

It’s an initiation into your next level of authorship — where the inner shift happens first, and the writing follows.

We begin Jan 26th.
Pre-sale ends soon.

Step inside here:
👉 https://www.thewritehabitplanner.com/awakenedauthor

Resources for you:


  • Join "The Awakened Author" LIVE for experienced writers with stalled projects (Jan 26-March 6):

https://www.thewritehabitplanner.com/awakenedauthor


  • Learn automatic writing with my FREE guide:

https://www.thewritehabitplanner.com/startautomaticwriting


  • Join my £33 self-paced program "Start Your Book With Automatic Writing":

https://www.thewritehabitplanner.com/automatic-book


  • Order "The Write Habit Planner" - your 52-week goal setting planner

https://www.thewritehabitplanner.com/

The Write Habit podcast is back. This is me, Nicole Janz, your host. Today we talk about what you can do as an experienced writer when your book or article is stalling. Most of us already are using tools that are well known, accountability, deadlines, goal setting, all these things that I also do in The Write Habit Planner and that I've been teaching and they work extremely well, especially for beginner writers just to get going. But there's something here where I get a lot of clients who are coming to me with a book that's been stalling an article or grants or papers, and they tell me that all those things that they know and they have been applying are not working anymore. And that's why since last year, 2025, I've been really leaning into more subconscious methods because I believe there is something under the surface, especially for more experienced writers, that is holding them back. I've been doing courses like Start Your Book with Automatic Writing or The Sacred Writing Circle. So I've been trying this out last year and it's been really successful for all the writers that joined me. Someone got their article submitted, someone got started on their memoir again, someone worked on their novel, pushed it forward. So these are all writers that aren't writing their very first article or have never done any writing before. These were all writers that needed more than the usual accountability, deadlines and productivity hacks that we all know already. So since then, I've been going even deeper because I always want to evolve in the way I coach, but also I'm an author. I want to evolve in how I write. And I've noticed that there's even more that we can tap into. So recently I wrote my own book. You are already free in 30 days, about 40,000 words by going even deeper into the subconscious and clearing up a lot of things that have been holding me back from writing and I realised, and you might now really listen up because this is where you might find yourself. I realised that as an author I had met an edge where everything I have done before that helped me and got me going didn't work anymore. There is something there where I, deep inside, probably have evolved beyond that and maybe even got to the point where it's time I'm ready to find out what subconscious is still tripping me up all the time. And I needed to get over that edge. I needed to pass that threshold. So these are lovely metaphors, but essentially this is a slightly uncomfortable state that you're in. And if you're an experienced writer with a stalled project, that might exactly be where you are right now. So I want you to listen because I have 4 thresholds that I can tell you that authors need to cross who are more experienced but who are not writing in flow because whatever they've done before isn't working. And So what I want to make very clear is that you don't have writer's blog. There's nothing wrong with you. It's not that the methods, the previous methods of goal setting are inherently bad or there is something that is going wrong in your life. Nothing is wrong. It's simply a state where you have evolved and you are ready for the next stage. I find that personally much more exciting than, you know, sitting there and getting frustrated because whatever I've tried before is not working. So there is a solution and it's wonderful because it's getting you to a next level of your authorship. So this is the good thing. I want to tell you that up front. Often at this point, you're subconscious and the way you want to show up as an author, including academics, has evolved and it's probably evolved faster than all the tools that are using now, and that's why it's not working. There is a mismatch. You have already evolved beyond what usually works for beginners and what has worked for you. And that is why you need something different. That is why the book, the article, the ground proposal, the memoir, the novel is not moving forward. So let's take a breath. I want to, I want to take a breath as well. If you feel like you're listening and you think like, OK, So what is it then? Let me tell you the four thresholds that I have found that authors need to cross to get writing again, but on the level that they are, the more experienced level. And by the way, I teach that in The Awakened Author starting next week on Monday and up until Monday, you can still get in on the presale price. It will go up after our first session because then usually I get a lot of amazing testimonials and everybody is going to want to come into the course and then watch the replay and then keep going. So the presale ends on Monday. Everything that I'm telling you now we are doing in depth in that course for six weeks. So The Awakened Author, look it up. Link is in the show notes. So here's the first authorship threshold that you need to cross to get back into writing again. I call it the authorship edge. This is where you start. This is where your relationship with writing needs to shift. So you will find out, and I can help with that, how you no longer wait for the right time or wait for clarity or wait to have your argument figured out on your whiteboard. Wait for the character to be clear, wait to know exactly how you write your introduction. But instead you allow yourself to receive the book. You allow yourself to start writing before everything is clear. And that's the hardest thing. Beginners might also have that problem, but experienced writers who know the complexity of what they're dealing with, the plot, the structure, the argument, the data, they get tripped up about this very easily. Being able to intuitively receive your book and letting it flow through you, letting it come to you, is one of the biggest shifts you can make as an experienced author. And we do that in my programme because I tell you how that works, and you start writing in the first session. You can also learn that in my other courses, the automatic writing courses, start your book with automatic writing and other things that I've done in the past. So look it up. Maybe there's something you can dig up in the Awakened Authors. We start with this specifically for experienced writers. The second threshold that you need to pass is releasing the fear and being able to write. Even though some of that fear is still present, you probably know that the fear that it's not good enough, you'd be judged. The agent is not going to like it. Your editor is going to give you bad feedback and in a not very nice way. Maybe you are afraid that reviewers are going to hate it. Whichever genre you're writing in, there's always this fear, and there are different fears for different people. I have some authors that are afraid that they are going to be very visible with the thing that they say, which might be quite critical. Maybe you are writing a memoir and what you have to say is going to piss some people off. Or if you're writing an academic piece, it might be more about not wanting to be judged. Everything has to be perfect. There should be no mistakes. You will need to find out what that fear is, and it's not on the surface. On the surface, you're probably saying I don't have time, but deep down there's something else where you need to learn how to find that fear, how to allow it to be present, how to heal and release some of it. And then even if there's something left, to get to the writing. And that is a threshold that is extremely important because the more advanced you are in your authorship, in your career as a writer, as an academic, the more you know the things that can go wrong and the more that fear will keep popping up. Beginners sometimes have some beginning fear, but they don't have that deep subconscious fear because they just simply don't know enough yet. And they haven't, you know, reached all these pressure points and pain points #3 tapping into your mission. That's the third threshold every more experienced author has to meet. And if you're listening to this, you are one of those. And probably you already know that your mission is bigger than just finishing this book. Writing a book, of course, is a big thing. But what's behind the book is you and your mission in the world, the impact you want to make. These are all big and fuzzy words, Mission, purpose, impact. But essentially, if you are someone who has a story, data, experiences, or memories and you want to write them up as a book or article, you are trying to connect to a readership, you're trying to be in a conversation that is bigger than you. You want to make an impact. You want to help people, you want to entertain people, you want to help people feel seen, which is something you as an author also love and need. So there is often a bigger mission behind the piece you're writing, and a more experienced author can see that. And that can sometimes be a bit scary because the book is not just a book. The book is who you are, how you show up in the world, and what legacy you want to leave. Again, these are big words, but this is a very practical thing as well that can trip you up this threshold. The mission threshold is something where you really fully step into your authorship. I had a client who recently had finished a book, published it and just after the launch she said I really feel like an author now, I better own it. And that is a realisation. And that is a realisation. When you connect that with your mission and why you are an author and why you want to keep writing, this will help you find your way back to flow. And there's a lot hidden in your subconscious that you might not even be aware of or you might be slightly scared of the 4th threshold that every experienced author needs to pass. And that's what we end The Awakened Author with. My programme that starts next week is the embodiment, the embodiment of your authorship. So this is where your authorship becomes truly your own. So you stop relying on external structure and external measures of how good you are. You stop asking others. Should I write it this way or that way? But you fully trust your inner guidance, and that is something you can develop with subconscious methods. I have a lot of writers who, you know, get all this feedback from others and they have forgotten that inside of them the answer is already there. And their unique specific voice matters. The way you are writing your book, your article, whatever it is that you're bringing to the world, it matters because it's you. And once you cross that threshold of trusting your intuition, making your own decisions, you will write again because you have that feeling in your body that you own this book and you can trust yourself. So those 4 thresholds are what we're going to work with in The Awakened Author. And you have seen maybe parts of this or glimpses of this in my more recent, more subconscious programmes. And I invite you, if you are an experienced writer who has written before but now called Setting Alone, Deadlines Aren't working, I invite you and I urge you to come into this programme. It's my best programme yet that brings everything together and in the sessions we write and we do the subconscious work. So it's not a therapy session and it's not a writing group, but it goes much deeper and it brings those two together so that you meet your threshold. You realise what for you personally needs to shift. You heal and release that. And from that point you write and you will realise in the session already that you can write, you can write this book, you can finish this article, you can bring this ground to the world. Your memoir is going to thrive when you do it this way because you have then become the author who can finish it. And This is why this work is so important. I would love to have you. The presale is on. We start next week. You can also join a little later and then watch the replays and then jump into the next live. But the presale price will be gone on Tuesday. So after the first session, that presale price is gone. Even if you think, oh, it's not the perfect time right now. You know all the excuses that come out that I know as well. If you feel hesitant, if you feel, oh, maybe I'm too stuck, maybe I'm not ready. This means that you're at the edge. This means that if you don't make that next step, that book is probably not going to happen this year. But if you're brave and allow yourself to reveal what's going on in your subconscious, you can be that author who finishes.