108. How to Know When to Shift

That quiet, nagging feeling about your manuscript? It might be trying to tell you something important.

In this episode, novelist and writing mentor Nicole Meier gets honest about one of the hardest decisions a writer can face: knowing when it's time to set a manuscript aside, pivot your publishing path, or start something new — and how to make that call from a place of clarity rather than fear or desperation.

Nicole shares the personal story of shelving her own early novel after receiving rare, detailed agent feedback — a decision she credits as one of the most aligned choices of her writing career. Four published books later, she's here to help you ask the same honest questions she asked herself.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to tell the difference between normal creative resistance and a deeper signal that something isn't working
• The 5 questions to ask yourself when your manuscript feels misaligned
• What to do if you've been querying literary agents for months (or years) without success
• Why "switching it up" is not the same as quitting — and when it's actually the wisest creative move
• How to define your authorial identity before starting your next project
• What alignment really means for novel writers and memoirists — and why it changes everything

This episode is for you if:

• You're a novelist or memoir writer sitting with a manuscript that feels "off"
• You're deep in the query trenches and wondering whether to keep going
• You're considering alternative publishing paths like small press, hybrid, or self-publishing
• You want to write books that feel true to who you are as a storyteller

Whether you're working on your debut novel, revising a memoir, or deciding whether to keep querying — this conversation will help you move forward with intention.

For more on Nicole Meier, visit here.

Transcript

TWW EP 108 - Knowing When It's Time to Switch It Up

[00:00:00] Nicole Meier: The writers I admire most aren't the ones who finished every project they ever started. They're the ones who stayed true to themselves, who made space for growth, who are willing to say, "That was a season, and this is a new one." Who kept asking not just when will I be done, but what kind of writer am I becoming?

[00:00:22] Nicole Meier: If you're in that place right now, if that quiet nagging is getting louder, I want you to know it doesn't have to mean that something's gone wrong. It just means you're growing, and your writing life is big enough for that. Trust yourself, do the alignment work, and keep going

[00:00:46] 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 Meyer, 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.

[00:01:12] 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.

[00:01:33] 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

[00:01:46] Nicole Meier: Hi writers. Welcome back to a solo episode with me here on The Whole Writer. I'm so glad you're here with me today. I wanna start by asking you something, and I want you to just sit with it for a minute before you answer. Is there a manuscript or maybe a story idea that you've been holding onto for a while now?

[00:02:07] Nicole Meier: Something you've poured your time and heart into, but that comes with this quiet, kind of low-grade feeling underneath it? Not quite dread, not quite excitement, more like nagging, a sense that something isn't right, but you're not sure if you should keep pushing through or if the universe is trying to tell you something different.

[00:02:28] Nicole Meier: If you've just nodded, even a little, then this episode is for you. Today, I want to talk about one of the harder, quieter decisions a writer can face, and that is knowing when it's time to switch it up, whether that means setting a manuscript aside and starting something new or reconsidering the publishing path you've been on.

[00:02:51] Nicole Meier: And more importantly, I wanna talk about how to get there, not from a place of panic or defeat, but from a place of alignment, because I think that word alignment is really at the center of this conversation, and it's something I come back to again and again, both here on the podcast and over on my Substack.

[00:03:13] Nicole Meier: So let's get into it today All right, I'm gonna share something personal. I want to take you back many years, back to when I was still pretty early in this journey as a novelist, still figuring out my voice, still feeling my way toward the kind of writer I wanted to be. I had a manuscript. I worked on it, revised it a little and was excited about it, and I did a lot of what writers do when they feel like they've taken something as far as they can on their own.

[00:03:42] Nicole Meier: I sent it out. I queried agents, and here's where I got lucky. A literary agent actually responded with a detailed, thoughtful email about why the book wasn't working. It was firm, it was direct, but it was also incredibly kind, and I remember reading it feeling grateful, which is not the emotion you'd necessarily expect in that moment, right?

[00:04:08] Nicole Meier: But I was genuinely, deeply thankful because what she gave me wasn't just feedback on that manuscript. She gave me a lens, a new way of seeing what I'd written, and when I looked through that lens, I realized something that I think had been true for a while, even if I hadn't let myself fully see it. That manuscript was not the book I was meant to come out with as my debut.

[00:04:32] Nicole Meier: It just wasn't. I was still learning my voice. I was still figuring out what I was actually trying to say, what kind of stories I wanted to tell, what kind of novelist I wanted to be, and I wasn't there yet, and that book reflected that. So I made a decision. Quietly, without drama, I put that manuscript in a drawer, and I turned towards something new, a story that genuinely held me, that felt aligned with the kind of author I was becoming, one who writes character-driven, feel-good stories that explore the bonds of family and friendship and community.

[00:05:09] Nicole Meier: That's me. That's my lane. That's who I am as a storyteller, and that first practice manuscript, ooh, I was not living in that lane yet. I hadn't found it yet. Putting it down wasn't giving up. It was the most honest creative decision I could have made. Now, four published books later, I can look back and be so glad that that practice novel wasn't my debut out into the world.

[00:05:36] Nicole Meier: All right, maybe at this point, some of you are listening and can relate. So let's talk about that feeling, that slow nagging sense that something isn't working. I think a lot of writers misread it. They interpret it as weakness or inconsistency. They tell themselves, "Everyone feels this way. Every writer wants to quit sometimes," and that's true.

[00:05:58] Nicole Meier: Or they might say, "This is just resistance. I need to push through," and that can be true sometimes, too. Resistance is real. The middle of a draft is hard. Revision is hard. There are seasons of every project where you just have to put your head down and do the work even when it doesn't feel good. But, but, but, but there's a difference between that kind of resistance, the productive friction of creative work, and something else, something more persistent, a feeling that isn't just, "This is hard," but rather, "This isn't right."

[00:06:32] Nicole Meier: The question worth asking yourself is, what is this feeling actually about? Is it fear? Is it boredom with the work? Is it that you're in a difficult chapter and you want to escape? Is it urgency to keep up with author friends around you? Those are all hopefully passing things. You can work through those.

[00:06:55] Nicole Meier: Or is it something more foundational? Is it that the story itself doesn't reflect who you are as a writer anymore? Is it that you started this project as one version of yourself and you've grown, and now there's a mismatch between where you are and what you're working on? Is it that every time you sit down to write, there's another story pulling at you, one that feels more alive, more urgent, more you?

[00:07:22] Nicole Meier: Those are definitely signals, and they're different signals, and they all deserve to be honored, not suppressed. Okay, I also want to speak directly to a group of writers who I know are listening right now because this conversation lands differently with you. You're not just sitting with a manuscript that feels misaligned, you're deep in the query trenches.

[00:07:47] Nicole Meier: Maybe you've been querying literary agents for this book for a year, two years, longer. You've gotten rejections, maybe a lot of them. Maybe you've gotten some encouraging feedback mixed in a few requests that didn't pan out, and you're in that exhausting in-between place of not knowing whether to keep going or to quietly close that chapter.

[00:08:09] Nicole Meier: First, I see you. That is a specific and particular kind of hard, and it doesn't get talked about enough. Here's what I want to offer you. Querying a book for a long time doesn't automatically mean the book is wrong or that you should move on, but it does mean the question deserves to be asked honestly, not from a place of defeat, but from a place of clarity.

[00:08:34] Nicole Meier: Ask yourself, has the feedback across all those rejections pointed to something consistent? Not just, oh, it's not right for me. That's subjective, and it's part of the process, but something more substantive, something about the concept, the market, the execution. If there's a pattern in what the agents are or aren't telling you, that pattern is data.

[00:08:57] Nicole Meier: It's worth absorbing. Also worth asking, has the publishing landscape shifted around this book? Sometimes a manuscript that was right for a particular moment hits the market at the wrong time, and that's genuinely nobody's fault. The book isn't broken. The timing just wasn't there, and if that's the case, it might be worth thinking about whether there's another path, maybe a small press, hybrid, self-publishing, something else that better fits where this book lives.

[00:09:27] Nicole Meier: But here's the thing I really want to emphasize. There is no shame in deciding that you've given the book everything you had, that it taught you what it needed to teach you, and that it's time to take everything you've learned and pour it into something new. That's not quitting. That's a writer making a wise, aligned decision about where to invest their creative energy.

[00:09:52] Nicole Meier: The question is never, did I fail this book? The question is always, what does my writing life need right now? I want to talk about alignment a bit more because I think it's one of those words that can sound a little vague if we're not careful. So let me be specific with what I mean. When I talk about alignment in your writing life, I'm talking about the relationship between three things.

[00:10:17] Nicole Meier: The kind of stories you're meant to tell, the audience you want to reach, and the kind of author you want to be in the world. When those three things are in sync, when your manuscript is living inside that intersection, the work has a different quality to it. It still has hard days, it's still challenging, but there's an underlying sense of rightness, a feeling that you're in the place doing the right thing at the right time.

[00:10:44] Nicole Meier: When they're out of sync, even a well-crafted manuscript can sometimes feel hollow, and no amount of pushing will fix that because the problem isn't your work ethic, it's alignment. And this is what I want to be really clear about. The decision to step away from a project or change direction should never, never be driven by desperation.

[00:11:08] Nicole Meier: I've been there. Oh my gosh, it's not pretty. I also sadly see too many writers who are hungry to, quote, "make it." They're so fixated on reaching some external milestone, getting an agent, getting a book deal, getting on a list, that they start making decisions from that place. They pivot not because someone or something new is calling to them, but because they think a different kind of book will be more commercially viable, or because they're afraid of their current project and it won't sell, or because they want to speed up a timeline that isn't moving as fast as they hoped.

[00:11:43] Nicole Meier: And like I've mentioned, I have been there. I get it. The publishing world can feel urgent. It can feel competitive. It can feel like there's a window that's closing and you need to get through it. But when you let desperation drive the bus, you usually end up somewhere you didn't mean to go. You end up writing a book that doesn't feel like yours.

[00:12:06] Nicole Meier: You end up chasing a version of success that doesn't actually fit your vision, and that creates its own kind of misery. The pivot I'm talking about today looks completely different. It's not frantic. It's not reactive. It's quiet and intentional and rooted in self-knowledge So how do you actually know?

[00:12:30] Nicole Meier: How do you distinguish between this is just hard and this is genuinely not the right path? I've come up with some questions for you to ask yourself, and I invite you to sit with them. All right, the first question: When you imagine finishing this book, how do you feel? Question number two: Does this story reflect who you are as a writer right now?

[00:12:55] Nicole Meier: Question number three: Is there another story pulling at you? Question four: Have you gotten consistent outside feedback pointing to something fundamental? And finally, question five: What does your gut say when you're not in fear? I'll repeat those again. When you imagine finishing your book, how do you feel?

[00:13:20] Nicole Meier: Does the story reflect who you are right now? Is there another story pulling you? Have you gotten consistent feedback pointing to something? And finally, what does your gut say? Okay, so let's say you've sat with those questions, something's shifted inside you. You have a clearer sense that it might really be time to change direction.

[00:13:42] Nicole Meier: What do you actually do? Here are some thoughts. I would say first, give yourself permission to grieve it. This part matters. You worked on this project. You believed in it. Maybe you love it. Don't rush past this. You don't have to be fine about it immediately. Give yourself a few days. Just be in that feeling.

[00:14:03] Nicole Meier: And then I would suggest don't delete anything. Put the manuscript in a drawer, literally or digitally. Save everything because nothing you write is wasted. The voice you found in that manuscript, the scenes that work, the characters that came alive, they might come back again. It's an archive of all you've worked on.

[00:14:23] Nicole Meier: And then another thought is get clear on your authorial identity before you dive into something new. This is the alignment work. Before you start chasing the next shiny story idea, spend some time with those questions. What kind of stories am I genuinely called to tell? What themes keep returning to my work?

[00:14:44] Nicole Meier: Who's my reader? What do I want them to feel? Write it down. Make it concrete because this becomes your compass. This is what will help you evaluate not just your story idea, but your publishing path, your platform, all of it. And then I would let new things emerge. And when you do move forward, let alignment, not urgency, lead.

[00:15:08] Nicole Meier: This new project should feel like a yes for all of those things I mentioned. Don't rush into something that doesn't really fit just because you want to be in motion. Writers, I want to leave you with this. Switching it up, whether that means setting a manuscript aside or reconsidering your publishing path, is not the same as giving up.

[00:15:30] Nicole Meier: When it comes from the right place, it's actually one of the most courageous and honest things you can do for your creative life. The writers I admire most aren't the ones who finished every project they ever started. They're the ones who stayed true to themselves, who made space for growth, who are willing to say, "That was a season, and this is a new one," who kept asking not just, "When will I be done?"

[00:15:57] Nicole Meier: but, "What kind of writer am I becoming?" If you're in that place right now, if that quiet nagging is getting louder, I want you to know it doesn't have to mean that something's gone wrong. It just means you're growing, and your writing life is big enough for that. Trust yourself, do the alignment work, and keep going Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

[00:16:19] Nicole Meier: If this episode brought something up for you, I'd love to hear about it. Come find me over on Substack. That's where I'm living these days. All right, everyone, I'll see you next time on The Whole Writer.

[00:16:36] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers, visit nicolemier.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.

[00:16:56] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing, everyone