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Driving Into the Unknown: Carolyn Johnson on Writing, Self-Publishing, and the Courage to Begin

You just drive to the end of the headlights. Day after day.

Carolyn Johnson didn’t start out as a writer. She was a teacher. A reader. Someone with a knitting machine she didn’t really use.

And then she made a decision.

In this episode, we talk about what it actually takes to write and self-publish a book, from ZERO! No contacts. No roadmap. Just the desire to start.

Carolyn walks us through how she went from unfinished drafts and long summer breaks to releasing Adam and the Witch Queen and how the act of finishing that book made her revisit an older, messier manuscript with fresh eyes and sharper tools.

She shares:

  • How she moved past the blank page and into a real writing routine

  • Why she decided to self-publish and what she learned along the way

  • The unexpected ways her readers and stories are now connecting

  • What she's doing next (and how one story plants the seed for another)

This is a conversation about writing. But more than that, it's about fear, creative resistance, and the quiet discipline of showing up, even when you don't know where the road leads.

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