A guide for authors and entrepreneur-writers who are running on empty — and what a summer of intentional renewal can teach you about your writing life
Writing a book takes energy. So does building a business around your expertise. So does showing up on LinkedIn, sending newsletters, hosting a podcast, serving clients, and keeping up with the ever-changing world of publishing.
What happens when you run out of that energy — and keep going anyway?
In this episode of Easy Peasy Books, Gillian Whitney — business book coach, podcast host, and author — shares what led her to intentionally step off the merry-go-round of her business life for a summer, and what she discovered on the other side. It is one of her most personal episodes to date, and one of the most useful for any author who has ever wondered whether they're heading toward a wall.
This is not a productivity hack. It is a permission slip.
When the Wheels Start to Come Off
A Perfect Storm of Exhaustion
Gillian's breaking point was not a single dramatic moment. It was the accumulated weight of several major stressors landing at the same time.
In the spring, she completed a cross-country relocation — sorting through five to seven years of belongings from two storage units in Las Vegas, loading two U-Haul pods, and shipping everything across to Texas. Anyone who has moved knows the emotional toll of sorting through stored possessions. Doing it in Las Vegas heat, after years of digital nomad life across 30 apartments in 3 years, made it exponentially harder.
At the same time, she was still running her business. Her weekly LinkedIn live stream — which she had maintained without fail every Tuesday for nearly five years, even broadcasting from libraries and train stations mid-move — was starting to crack under the strain. She was forgetting to check her microphone. Guests were missing. Technical issues multiplied.
"I was making mistakes. I was doing lives and forgetting to check my mic and all different things. I had problems with guests showing up, not showing up, technical issues. On and on it went."
On top of this, she was still straddling two businesses — her original video coaching brand (Video Easy Peasy) and her newer book coaching practice (Easy Peasy Books). When you try to ride two horses at once, she says, you end up confusing your market. And when you confuse, you lose.
The Live Streaming Load Most People Don't See
One of the most valuable things Gillian unpacks in this episode is how deceptively demanding a live stream actually is. From the outside, it looks like a 30-minute conversation. From the inside, it is a full content operation:
- Booking and confirming guests
- Writing promotional posts and scheduling graphics
- Scheduling the live event
- Moderating and responding to comments in real time
- Repurposing the recording into articles, clips, or show notes
For a solo business owner with no team, this is not a side task — it is a substantial time commitment that compounds week after week. Recognizing this is not failure. It is an honest accounting of what sustainability actually requires.
Gillian's Framework: The Four-Part Renewal
Rather than simply taking a break, Gillian structured her summer of renewal around the four renewal categories from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — a book she revisited and highly recommends. Covey describes this as 'sharpening the saw': the idea that a woodcutter who never stops to sharpen their axe will work harder and harder while accomplishing less and less.
The Metaphor: A man in the forest saws and saws at a tree and gets nowhere. Why? The axe is dull. The solution isn't to saw harder — it's to stop and sharpen the blade.
Here is how Gillian applied this to her own situation as an author and business owner:
Step 1: Physical Renewal
Get your body moving, even when it's inconvenient. Gillian committed to early morning or late evening walks to beat the Texas heat, joined a gym, and gave herself permission to sit on the patio and blow bubbles — which she describes as an unexpectedly powerful breathing and calming practice. If your anxiety is through the roof, she says, go buy bubbles.
Step 2: Mental Renewal
Read. Not just books about business — fiction too. Gillian worked through a mix of novels and non-fiction over the summer, including a re-read of Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, a book that carries particular resonance for any writer who has ever feared losing their work.
Step 3: Social and Emotional Renewal
Reach back out to people. Gillian made time for Zoom calls with contacts she hadn't spoken to in months, reconnecting with no business agenda — just human conversation. She also helped her family through a bereavement, a reminder that availability for the people who matter is not a distraction from your work.
Step 4: Creative Renewal
Do the quiet, organizational work when your brain can't handle the big creative work. Gillian used the summer to conduct a content audit — organizing her digital files, sorting through manuscripts in progress, and cleaning up her Dropbox. This became unexpectedly important for a reason she didn't anticipate.
Real Stories from This Episode
The Scrivener Manuscripts — and Why Backing Up Your Writing Is Not Optional
While doing her content audit, Gillian discovered that several of her manuscripts had simply disappeared. Not just any manuscripts — the ones stored in Scrivener, a popular writing software she had bought years earlier with the best of intentions but found too complex to fully learn.
When she searched for the original files, they were gone. What she found instead were the Scrivener backup files — stored in Box, an online file storage service — but to open them, she needed the Scrivener software itself. Which she no longer had, because two years earlier her MacBook Pro had crashed, been repaired with a new hard drive, and when everything was reinstalled, Scrivener had been forgotten.
After some detective work — finding her original license key, contacting the Scrivener team, reinstalling the software despite being several versions behind — she was able to recover the backup files, extract the manuscripts, and transfer them into Word documents.
"This kind of stuff needs to be built into your processes. You have to have time for backups and technical issues. You can't wait for a catastrophe."
For any author who has chapters, drafts, or book ideas scattered across platforms, software programs, or old computers, this story is a practical warning: know where your work lives, test your backup systems before you need them, and be thoughtful about which writing tools you commit to for the long term.
The Food Truck That Was Never Going to Happen
One of the more charming admissions in this episode: when Gillian was at her most depleted, she started seriously entertaining the idea of buying a bus, converting it into a travelling coffee shop, and stocking it with a small library. A mobile food truck. With books.
She shares this not as embarrassment but as evidence of just how far burnout can take your thinking. When you are running on empty, the fantasy of doing something completely different — something simpler, more tangible, more physical — becomes genuinely appealing. If you have ever wondered whether you should abandon your book project and just open a bakery, Gillian would like you to know: she understands. And she came back.
30 Apartments, 3 Years, and the Decision to Finally Stop Moving
Before settling in Texas, Gillian and her husband spent five years in constant motion — from Utah to Israel, back to the United States, through Nevada and Florida and Tennessee and Kansas City and New Mexico and multiple Texas cities, living in 30 different apartments across 3 years. They were looking for where they wanted to be.
The physical exhaustion of that lifestyle — never unpacking fully, always managing mail forwarding, always uncertain about how long they'd stay — ran alongside the professional exhaustion of building a business. Understanding that context makes her eventual decision to go all-in on Texas and all-in on Easy Peasy Books feel like two parts of the same commitment: choosing a place, and choosing a purpose.
In Her Own Words
"I decided I would give myself permission to step off the merry-go-round and actually have a summer vacation. I don't know when's the last time I took time off."
"Sometimes the most productive thing that you can do is to rest. Think of it like a cell phone — you have to plug it in and let it recharge. Most importantly, ourselves."
"If I'm not a happy Gillian, I can't help other people. I'm too tired and too drained. I can't be all things to all people."
Listen to the Full Episode
Hear the full conversation — including Gillian's thoughts on pivoting her live streaming strategy and launching LinkedIn for Authors as a monthly masterclass series.
Ready for the Next Step With Your Business Book?
Whether you're writing your book, getting ready to publish, or looking for ways to market and promote it, Easy Peasy Books can help. Visit easypeasybooks.com to explore our book writing, publishing, and marketing services — or subscribe to the Easy Peasy Books podcast for a new episode every week.
Follow the podcast | Book a discovery call | Browse the blog
About Gillian Whitney
Gillian Whitney is a business book coach and the host of Easy Peasy Books: From Author to Authority. She helps professionals write and publish books that build credibility, attract the right clients, and establish lasting expertise. Learn more at easypeasybooks.com