Joanna Penn, one of the best-known self-publishing writers and advocates, will release The Healthy Writer later this month. It’s on pre-order now, and Penn has given The Hot Sheet an early look. At our standing desks.
Co-written with Euan Lawson, a UK general practitioner, the book covers a wide range of problems, from mental and emotional struggles to physical conditions. The basis for much of the book’s material is a survey Penn conducted at her site in August. While not a scientific study, the survey drew input from more than 1,100 writers who cited problems including:
- work-related stress: 62 percent
- back pain: 58 percent
- weight gain: 57 percent
- sleep problems: 56 percent
- anxiety: 55 percent
- loneliness: 37 percent
- repetitive strain/motion injury: 37 percent
Penn and Lawson’s book offers suggestions for tackling such issues, as well as eye strain, depression, headaches, digestive problems, and many more. However, they seem to have found the loneliness complaint as surprising as we do. Particularly in the age of the internet, the writing life has become so heavily socialized for many that some writers are finding it harder to “get lonely” and focus on their work.
But an element we don’t find surprising is back pain, where we have personal experience. After two years of progressive physical therapy and adherence to a daily exercise routine, Jane finally eliminated her chronic back pain, which was brought on mainly from too many years hunched in front of a monitor. While you can find some of her specific solutions here, no one solution works for everyone. Improving one’s health and fending off chronic issues involves some trial and error, not to mention considerable patience and persistence.
Bottom line: Health-damaging effects of the writing life—some of them obvious, some more subtle—aren’t to be taken lightly, and books like Penn’s can be helpful. Regular, serious exercise can be almost magically useful in this regard. The bitter pill we must leave you to swallow is that your personal health as a writer demands discipline, just like the writing work itself. The good news is that we can promise from our own experience that it’s worth the effort.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
