Author Diary Entries
Author Diary Entries (formerly known as the Indie Author Weekly podcast) features your host, Sagan Morrow, as she shares diary-style personal stories of life as an indie author and her behind-the-scenes journey of writing and publishing books as an authorpreneur.
You’ll learn more about the books Sagan writes, her insights and stories of being an author and a multipassionate creative, and a peek behind the curtain of a writer's life.
The Author Diary Entries podcast is hosted by Sagan Morrow, a Kamloops-based writer with more than a decade of experience as a small business owner. She is also a hobbyist burlesque dancer and performs on stage as Babe Maverick.
Sagan started out as a blogger and freelance writer (and editor) around 2008. In 2016, she began teaching other freelancers how to improve productivity and time management through her online courses. She is an internationally board-certified Success & Life Coach who specializes in personal fulfillment, solopreneurship, and anti-hustle productivity.
Sagan writes the Polyamorous Passions romantic comedy series, and has published several business books in addition to her work as a romance novelist. She published her first work of fiction in 2018.
RECOMMENDED STARTING POINT: "Ep 179: Author Update (one year later)" AND "Ep 140: Welcome back to the podcast!" AND "Ep 50: What made me start writing the Polyamorous Passions series" AND "Ep 53: Top 5 episodes from the first year of podcasting on Indie Author Weekly (and why I started this podcast)".
The first 12 episodes of this podcast were originally published on a “secret” platform only for email subscribers, but you can tune into all of those original episodes right here. Access bonus materials to go along with podcast (including cheatsheets and spreadsheets relevant to the episode topics), plus full episode transcripts, sample chapters of her novels, and additional resources, at https://saganmorrow.com/secretpodcast. This podcast was rebranded from "Indie Author Weekly" to "Author Diary Entries" in April 2025.
Learn more about Sagan’s published works and upcoming novels at https://saganmorrow.com/books/. Connect with Sagan on Instagram & Threads: @Saganlives
Author Diary Entries
033: Why write novellas instead of full-length novels? 7 reasons...
Learn 7 reasons why you might want to write a novella instead of a full-length novel for your next book...
If you’ve been following along on this book writing adventure for a while, then you’ll know that in the past year and a bit, I’ve written and published 5 novellas—with my next one in the Polyamorous Passions series coming out in a month!
So, today I want to talk about why I bother writing novellas in the first place, and some of the benefits around writing novellas instead of full-length novels.
First of all, what is a novella? A novella is a short novel. It’s about 20,000—40,000 words long, whereas a typical novel could easily be closer to 100,000 words. So, a good example of a novella is The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which clocks in at 37,000 words. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, on the other hand, is 111,000 words. So far, my own novellas are all 23,000 to 30,000 words each.
So hopefully that just gives you some context, moving forward for this episode.
Okay, so why write novellas instead of full-length novels? What’s the point? Why could it be a good idea for you to do this? Find out in this episode—7 reasons why you might want to write a novella, too, instead of a full-length novel...
Resources & links mentioned in this episode:
- Learn more about Sagan’s books at SaganMorrow.com/books
- Episode 16 of Indie Author Weekly: how to write a book series .
- National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) .
- Get the writing prompts cheatsheet at SaganMorrow.com/secretpodcast
- Access sample chapters of Sagan's novels, transcripts of each episode, cheatsheets and spreadsheets relevant to the episode topics, and additional resources, at SaganMorrow.com/secretpodcast.
- Submit your questions for future episode topics at SaganMorrow.com/question
Connect with Sagan (@Saganlives) on Twitter and Instagram. Feel free to use the hashtag #IndieAuthorWeekly to chat about this episode.
