The Writer's Energy Map

A guide to understanding the 8 kinds of writer energy

Photo by Alessandro Bianchi on Unsplash

I love this time of year when there are so many programs, prompts, and invitations to start new writing projects, including the Blueprint Challenge from me and the #amwriting podcast and five seasoned Author Accelerator Certified Coaches, which it’s not too late to join!

Starting a writing project takes a huge amount of activation energy. It’s one of the reasons why so many of the “start it now and start it together” programs (the Blueprint Challenge,

Jami Attenberg

’s 1000 words, NaNoWriMo in its heydey) work so well and are so much fun for people. Leaning on the collective energy of other writers helps you muster the courage and the habits to go from zero to “I’m writing this thing!” It takes a big leap to start something — and it delivers a big rush.

Writers at the start of a project feel full of possibility, buzzing with ideas, nervous, excited, and ready to make something happen. But I just coached a writer through the end of a project — the final deadline for her to revise her manuscript before her publisher put it into production — and I was struck by what a different kind of energy finishing requires.

Diana was fierce and hyper-focused, jittery and sometimes panicked. It was exactly the kind of energy she needed to finish this particular project and to finish strong. The challenge I had as her coach was to meet her in that space and help her make the best choices she could given the time she had and the energy she was experiencing — and to do so without falling prey to the panic myself because no writer needs their book coach (or friends or family) to be adding panic to the mix.

Experiencing this finishing energy so close to the January start-up energy got me thinking about something that I think about a lot: the different kinds of energy being a writer requires.

And to give credit where credit is due, the whole reason I am thinking in this particular way about energy comes from Diana’s actual work. She is Dr. Diana Hill and her book (coming in September 2025 from SoundsTrue) is called Wise Effort: Why Your Genius Is Your Problem—and Your Greatest Gift—and How to Use That Energy Where It Matters Most. Diana talks about many forms of energy — physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral, among others — and her book takes readers on a deep dive to understand our own unique genius energy. I got the benefit of an early glimpse into her methodology and her thinking, and it inspired me to think deeply about energy in the realm of writing.

I realized how much of the time writers and writing teachers/instructors/coaches linger on the one kind of energy — the start-up energy, or what I often call activation energy. But we are shortchanging our writers if we only focus there. There are so many different kinds of energy that are required during the creative process. If we can better understand these energies, we can do a better job of helping our writers navigate them and leverage them.

The Writer's Energy Map: The 8 Kinds of Energy Required for Writing

I came up with 8 kinds of energy required for writing. I’m calling it a map but I am not yet convinced it’s really a map which is why I didn’t make a graphic. I am still noodling on that. Is it a matric or a grid? Because these kinds of energies don’t get used in a particular order all the time; sometimes they do (like #1 and #2 before everything else) but they also overlap, and more importantly, they recur. Stay tuned because I may come up with an illustration of this idea and change its name! But here are the 8 kinds of energy I am thinking about:

1. Idea Energy

This is the energy required to dream up a story or an idea. It’s imagination energy, what if energy. It comes before any kind of start-up or activation energy because before you can make something, you have to imagine it or visualize it. This is the space where my Blueprint method sits — and the part of the creative process I have been obsessing over my entire career. It’s the before you start to write energy. The I have a great idea energy. To me, it’s a sacred place of possibility — and part of my mission is to help writers recognize it as such.

Not everyone dreams up ideas. Not everyone sees in story. The people who do possess something special — and the people who are intentional about their ideas possess an incredible power. It’s the whole reason I made the Blueprint — to get people to stop for a hot second to be intentional about their ideas before they start to write.

2. Activation Energy

This is the energy required to start something — to go from what if or I have a great idea to I’m really going to do this thing. As I mentioned above, it requires a big leap of faith and motivation, and often a change in habits. You have to let something go from your life to make space to create. You have to want it more than you want other things.

3. Perseverance Energy

So many writers start projects and then stop. They write three chapters or 50 pages or an entire book, and then they lose their nerve or their heart or their habits or something. The energy is simply not there to keep going. In order to write a book, you have to execute your good idea, which means you have to persevere.

Knowing your WHY helps so much with accessing perseverance energy. So do writing communities, writing friends, and people who support your writing.

A writer does have to be careful about their universe of support and who they lean on when they need help. Download The Writer’s Universe of Support for a guide on how to think about that.

In my career as a book coach and as a person who trains book coaches, I have seen that you can help writers enormously with this part of the creative process. The simple act of holding someone accountable to writing their pages — of giving them deadlines that have teeth (because they are paying for them and have therefore already put energy into them) can work wonders in helping them to persevere.

4. Assessment Energy

This is the energy to evaluate your work — to step back and assess it to see if it is doing what you want it to do. So many writers are reluctant to activate this kind of energy. They may have voices in their head that prevent them from looking too closely at their work (I can’t write, why do I even bother, no one will care, someone else can probably write this better, I’ll never finish.) Or they may have internalized messages from their family or culture, or from negative experiences, about why they can’t or shouldn’t write what they want to write.

This is another place where a trained and caring professional can make a big impact on a writer. By creating a safe space and a process for receiving regular feedback, writers can learn how to better assess their work — and by assessing it, improve it.

Assessment energy is required throughout the creative process and the more a writer can separate it from the actual writing, the better. That might be:

• Write a chapter, then assess it before moving to the next chapter.

• Start each writing session evaluating what I wrote last session before writing something new.

• Write 25 pages and share them every two weeks with my critique partner or book coach.

Assessment energy might also take the form of reading the work of other writers you admire or who are working in your genre, and reading not just for pleasure but to assess why you enjoy the work and what they are doing that is so effective. You can then take this information back to your own work in order to improve it.

5. Revision Energy

People often get overwhelmed by revision energy, because it’s a very different kind of energy than activation or perseverance energy. You’re not creating, you’re assessing and then fixing — and you need a framework for doing this work or you risk remaining confused about how to proceed.

Revision energy is so specific to the work that it’s a hard part of the creative process to do in a community, so in addition to feeling overwhelmed, many writers feel isolated when it’s time to revise.

Revision energy requires assessment energy and also some activation and perseverance energy. There are some big demands happening at this stage. A book coach can be so valuable in the revision process because we can offer a framework, feedback, and direction.

6. Finishing Energy

This is that nervous, panicky energy of realizing that there is a final deadline for every book — a moment when you must call it DONE. It’s understanding that a book will never be perfect and you have to let it go. You have to put your pencil down.

There is grief associated with this part of the process — the creative process is over — and often panic, too: have you made the right call at the right time about the work being finished? Could you do more? Will you make it better or worse?

Diana, the client who got me started thinking about energy, basically did a whole-book rewrite in about four weeks before her production deadline. It is not something I would have advised (it was too late, there was too much to do in too short a period of time) but she was hell-bent on doing it — and there was no doubt that she was making it better. I could clearly see that. So I stayed with her, doing the best I could to keep calm in the face of her high-energy output and make sure she was improving, and not just revising because she still could.

There are a lot of emotions at play at the finish line, and an effective book coach recognizes the swirl of energy and provides a port in the storm for their writers.

7. Pitching Energy

Pitching energy something has a similar vibe to finishing energy — that nervousness about giving it your best shot and panic or fear about facing rejection.

There are a lot of courses and programs that focus on pitching because it’s the line in the sand when a work goes from private to public. It’s the moment the book is no longer something the writer made because they were called to make it, but something they wish to sell. It’s a big shift, and many writers mistake what is happening. They rush ahead without discernment or strategy, and that often leads to disappointment.

8. Connecting Energy

This is the energy needed to market a book, both during the launch and in the months and years afterward. In a perfect world, connecting energy was present from the very start of the project too.

This is the energy a writer needs to connect with potential readers, colleagues, and partners. It’s a very public, outward-facing energy, and many introvert writers freak out about this energy output. That freak-out often has them feeling like they are spinning their wheels, jumping on every bandwagon, moving ahead quickly with no plan or point — but it doesn’t have to be that way.

A book coach may or may not help their client with marketing, but they should be reminding them throughout the creative process that connecting is the point of writing. Connecting is where the joy happens. Connecting is why writers do what they do — and it often propels them right back to activation energy, where they start a new project all over again.

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