21: Bestselling Author Joanna Penn Explains How She Does It

In 2008, Joanna Penn was a highly paid but unhappy management consultant who felt the pull from her creative side. So she started a blog, a podcast, and then published her first non-fiction book about changing careers.

She quickly moved into writing fiction and published her first novel a year later. In 2011, she quit her day job to devote herself full-time to her new career as an author-entrepreneur. And she has never looked back.

Today, Joanna is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her tenth novel, Deviance, was just published last week. And she recently released a new book on how to make a living as a writer. Joanna is also a prolific blogger, podcaster, speaker, instructor, social media maven, and self-professed travel junkie.

I spoke to Joanna about how she made the transition from consultant to full-time author, how she loves to travel to conduct research for her novels, the rigorous scheduling system she uses to plan her work months or even years in advance, the process she uses to get into a state of flow and write more productively, how she uses Twitter to connect with readers and other writers, and much more.

Another topic that Joanna covered briefly was the need for an email list. She says this is something that all writers need to build.  In fact, it’s something all of the writers I’ve spoken to put at the very top of their priorities.

To help you get started with building your email list, or to help you take your email marketing efforts to the next level, I encourage you to take a free 9-part video course on email marketing, from the folks at Leadpages. Just click here and start watching the videos.  It’s free.