98. Coming Home to Wholeness (NEW SEASON!)

I'm talking directly to the novel and memoir writers who are exhausted, stuck, and wondering if they can ever find their way back to the page. If imposter syndrome has you questioning whether you're "really" a writer, or if burnout has made your creative dreams feel more like burdens, this conversation is for you.

Instead of another productivity pep talk or goal-crushing strategy, I'm offering something different: three gentle invitations to help you reconnect with your writing practice without the pressure. These aren't tips or tasks to add to your already overwhelming list—they're possibilities for approaching your creative work with intention, space, and self-compassion.

Whether you're struggling to start writing again after a long break, feeling depleted by the constant pressure to produce, or simply need permission to slow down, this episode will help you find a sustainable path forward. We'll explore how to distinguish between momentum that energizes and momentum that drains, why even good work can deplete you without adequate space, and how to create a writing practice that nourishes rather than exhausts you.

This is for writers who are ready to stop pushing and start listening—to themselves, to their needs, and to what their creative work truly requires to flourish.

Perfect for: memoir writers dealing with burnout, novelists experiencing imposter syndrome, writers seeking to restart their practice, anyone feeling overwhelmed by creative goals

Let's connect!

📚Dear Whole Writer Substack  

📚Nicole Meier Book Coaching & Developmental Editing

Transcript

TWW EP 98 - Welcome Back to Wholeness

[00:00:00] Nicole Meier: How many of you have a list of creative goals that all genuinely excite you, but together feel overwhelming? How many of you're running on momentum and passion, not realizing that even good work can deplete you if there's no space around it. So instead of giving yourself a pep talk about crushing goals and making this your year or whatever, I wanna offer you something different.

[00:00:24] Nicole Meier: I want to offer you three gentle invitations. Not tips, not tasks, just possibilities, ways to tread gently into this new year with intention and space.

[00:00:43] Nicole Meier: Welcome to the whole writer, a place where we talk about what it means to show up as someone who's grounded in their voice, in their community, and in their creative path. Even when the world tells them to hustle, compare, or conform. I'm Nicole Meier, a multi published author and book coach who believes that nurturing the person behind the page is just as important as refining the words on it.

[00:01:08] Nicole Meier: In each episode, we'll explore the terrain of writing life with honesty, warmth, and practical wisdom, creating space for you to write from a place of wholeness rather than depletion. Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or publishing your fifth book, you'll find conversation and companionship for the journey here.

[00:01:30] Nicole Meier: So settle in, bring your questions and your curiosity, and let's discover together what it means to write and live with authenticity and purpose.

[00:01:43] Nicole Meier: Hello and welcome back to the Whole Rider. We're actually in a brand new season. It's been a few weeks since we've been together like this, and I have to tell you, I almost didn't know how to start this episode. I sat down to record three different times in the past week, and every time I opened my mouth, nothing, not because I didn't have things to say, but because the way I needed to say them kept shifting.

[00:02:07] Nicole Meier: And then a few days ago I was journaling, which if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know, is where I do most of my actual thinking. And I wrote something that stopped me cold. I wrote, you can't build a sustainable creative practice from depletion. You've said this a hundred times, so why are you trying to do it?

[00:02:28] Nicole Meier: I know. Gut punch, right? Let me back up a little bit. November and December were a lot, but not in the ways you might think. It wasn't that I was doing things I hated or that I felt like I was too obligated. Actually, the opposite was true. I loved what I was doing. I taught extra workshops that energized me.

[00:02:50] Nicole Meier: I wrote Substack newsletter issues that I was genuinely excited about, and I said yes to projects that aligned perfectly with my values and my vision. The work itself was good, really good, but somewhere along the way I stopped leaving space between the good things. I was moving from one meaningful project directly into the next meaningful project with no time to process.

[00:03:14] Nicole Meier: No time to rest or just be, I was running on excitement and momentum, which felt sustainable because it didn't feel like drudgery. But what I learned is that you can absolutely burn out doing work you love. You can exhaust yourself doing things that matter. Depletion doesn't only come from resentment. It can come from saying yes to too many good things without creating any room to breathe.

[00:03:42] Nicole Meier: And that's exactly what happened to me. I was recording podcast episodes, but I wasn't giving myself time to sit with the ideas First, I was teaching workshops for large scale platforms that I loved, but I was teaching them back to back without space to reflect on what emerged. I was editing client work, creating posts, connecting with creatives, all things I genuinely wanted to do, but I was still doing them at a pace that left no room for the things that actually feeds all of that work.

[00:04:13] Nicole Meier: Stillness, and here's what really got me. I teach this. I literally made a podcast called The Whole Writer because I believe deeply, fundamentally believe that we cannot create meaningful, sustainable work when we're depleted. That creativity requires space, that rest is not optional. And yet there I was completely ignoring my own advice.

[00:04:41] Nicole Meier: So how did this happen? How did I let it happen so quickly? I actually do know the answer to that if I'm totally honest. I'm someone who deeply values hard work and follow through when people need something. When someone sends me a manuscript, when a listener asks a question, when an opportunity comes along, my instinct is to show up and to show up strong.

[00:05:05] Nicole Meier: This has served me well in a lot of ways. And look, I know I talk a lot about softness and nurturing on this podcast, and that is real. But I'm also the friend who gets nominated when someone's coffee order is wrong and they're too scared to take it back to the counter. My friends just point at me every time you do it.

[00:05:25] Nicole Meier: Have Nicole do it because they know I will. So yes, I can be soft and nurturing, and. I am the one who handles the uncomfortable conversations, who advocates, who steps up when something needs to be done. But there's a shadow side to that. It also means that when opportunities arise, that genuinely excite me.

[00:05:47] Nicole Meier: I say yes without checking in with my capacity. I see something I want to create or teach or build. And I think, yes, I can make that happen without asking whether I should given everything else I'm already holding. I can hold space for everyone's creative journey while slowly abandoning the spaciousness my own journey needs.

[00:06:09] Nicole Meier: And the truth is, I didn't see it happening until my body made me see it, until sitting down to record felt heavy instead of energizing. Not because I didn't wanna record, but because I hadn't given myself any space to arrive at the microphone with presence. Until my journaling session stopped being explorations and started becoming a process and exhausting until I realized I was creating from depletion, even though I loved what I was creating, that really hit me like a ton of bricks, because if I'm not walking this path myself, if I'm not actually living what I'm talking about, then what am I doing here?

[00:06:50] Nicole Meier: So I made a decision starting this year, 2026. The whole writer podcast is moving to a twice monthly schedule. We'll still have the same mix of solo episodes and interviews with incredible writers and teachers, but we're going to do it with intention, with space around it, not because we should have an episode every week.

[00:07:13] Nicole Meier: And I say we, because I think of you as my community, not because the algorithm demands it. Ugh enough with that, right. But because there's something genuine to explore, something worth sitting down with together. I read that 2025 was the year of the snake, a year about shedding what no longer serves us about transformation, about releasing old skins so we can grow into what's next.

[00:07:39] Nicole Meier: And that resonated deeply because what I needed to shed wasn't necessarily what I was doing. It was how I was doing it. The pattern of saying yes without pause. The belief that if I could make something happen, I should, the pace that left, no room for reflection or rest. This isn't about doing less, it's about doing what matters from a place that can actually sustain it.

[00:08:03] Nicole Meier: It's about building the breathing room that allows me to bring my full presence to these conversations. And honestly, I'm excited about this. I'm excited to come to these conversations with more space, more presence, more curiosity. I'm excited to let episodes breathe a little. To follow threads that might not fit into a weekly content calendar, but still matter deeply to have time between episodes to notice what's emerging, what questions are showing up, and what wants to be explored next.

[00:08:35] Nicole Meier: So here's what you can expect from me this year. My Dear Whole Writer, Substack will continue, as always, mindset posts that are free for everyone and craft and revision guidance for paid subscribers that's not changing. And PS, if you're not part of the creative community over there, I invite you to join at the link in the show notes.

[00:08:55] Nicole Meier: Also, this podcast, the whole writer will be here twice a month, exploring what it means to sustain a creative practice from a place of wholeness. And now I'll actually be modeling that instead of just talking about it. And finally, my one-on-one editing services are still available though. I do want to note that my Q1 calendar is currently filled.

[00:09:18] Nicole Meier: But if you're hoping for support in the spring, if you have a manuscript that needs developmental editing, or you're ready for some focused revision coaching right now is actually the perfect time to book an exploratory call. We can talk about your project, what you need, and find a timeline that works for both of us.

[00:09:35] Nicole Meier: All of those links are in the show notes, but let's get on to what I really wanna talk about, and that's you, because I didn't just have this reckoning about my own overcommitment and then decide to tell you about it. I had this reckoning and immediately thought if this happened to me, someone who literally built a platform around creative sustainability.

[00:09:56] Nicole Meier: And how many of you are heading into this new year already exhausted, and not necessarily because you're doing work you hate. Maybe you're exhausted because you love too many things and you're trying to do them all at once. How many of you have a list of creative goals that all genuinely excite you, but together feel overwhelming?

[00:10:18] Nicole Meier: How many of you're running on momentum and passion, not realizing that even good work can deplete you if there's no space around it? So instead of giving yourself a pep talk about crushing goals and making this your year or whatever, I wanna offer you something different. I want to offer you three gentle invitations, not tips, not tasks, just possibilities, ways to tread gently into this new year with intention and space.

[00:10:47] Nicole Meier: You don't have to do all of them, you don't have to do any of them, but even if one of these resonates, I hope you'll try it. So the first invitation is this, the Morning Pages reunion. I tack that word onto something we already know. Or if you've never tried the morning pages before, consider this your introduction.

[00:11:06] Nicole Meier: Most writers have heard of this practice. It's three pages of longhand writing, first thing in the morning from Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way. Some of you have tried it, some of you do it regularly. Some of you did it for a while and then stopped. My recommendation here is for one week, just seven days, write one to three pages every morning before you check your phone, before you look at email, before you do anything else.

[00:11:32] Nicole Meier: And here's the key. You're not trying to get anything out of this. You're not mining for ideas, you're not journaling through your problems. You're just giving your inner noise somewhere to go. All that mental static, the to-do lists, the worries, the random thoughts, the half-formed ideas, the complaints, the excitement, the resistance.

[00:11:53] Nicole Meier: It all gets to land on the page. And then you close the notebook and go about your day. You're not creating something. You're creating space just one week every morning. See what shifts. All right. The second invitation is the one thing week. It's simple, but not easy. For one week, choose only one creative commitment.

[00:12:18] Nicole Meier: Not one big thing, plus several small things, not one main project and a few side projects, just one. Maybe it's revising a single chapter. Maybe it's reading a book that's been calling to you. Maybe it's returning to a project you abandoned six months ago. And just sitting with it for 30 minutes a day to see if there's still spark.

[00:12:39] Nicole Meier: Whatever it is, it's the only creative thing you're committing to for that week. And finally, my third invitation. This one's a little different. The permission audit. This is more reflective. It's more about noticing than doing. I encourage you to sit down with your journal or blank document or whatever works and write at the top of the page.

[00:13:01] Nicole Meier: What am I saying yes to out of capacity versus what am I saying yes to out of excitement without checking my capacity? And then be honest. Because sometimes we say yes to things because they genuinely light us up, and that's beautiful. But if we're saying yes to everything, that lights us up without considering what else we're already holding, we end up running on fumes, even though we love all the work we're doing.

[00:13:27] Nicole Meier: And then ask yourself. If I could only keep three of these commitments right now, which three would I choose? Not which three are most important or most valuable? Which three would allow you to show up with presence, with energy, with joy, instead of just showing up because you committed to showing up? You don't have to quit things.

[00:13:48] Nicole Meier: You don't have to make a big decision. Not yet. Just notice. All right. Those are my three invitations for you as we step into this new Year, morning Pages reunion, giving you noise somewhere to land the one thing week. Remembering what focus looks like and the permission audit, noticing the difference between excitement and sustainable capacity.

[00:14:13] Nicole Meier: You don't have to do them all. You don't have to do them perfectly, but if something here resonated, I really hope you'll try it. I am returning to my own creative work with new boundaries and old wisdom. I'm excited about what I'll create for this place from wholeness instead of depletion from spaciousness instead of constant momentum.

[00:14:35] Nicole Meier: And I'm so grateful you're here with me walking this path alongside me. Perfectly humanly. Holy welcome back to the whole writer. I'll see you in two weeks.

[00:14:52] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers. Visit Nicolemeier.com. That's M-E-I-E-R. And if you like this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show and to get going on their writing journey.

[00:15:12] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy riding everyone.