Containment Lines: Managing Multiple Creative Projects Without Burnout

This Wednesday: What it's really like to juggle a book deal and newsletter deadlines simultaneously

Four minutes. That's how long it took between a lightning strike, a tree catching on fire and the first wisps of smoke rising across from our home. Ten minutes later, our small mountain neighborhood was filled with the sound of sirens.

Soon I could see small circles of light bobbing up and down — firefighters scaling the mountainside as the sun set, racing against time and physics. I thought of their lungs and wondered how they were even breathing while moving that quickly.

Inside our home, I was keeping an eye on the dancing embers coming from a pine tree, now fully ablaze, while I was also moving with the kind of focused urgency that an emergency creates — clothes in a bag, diapers, formula, bottles. What hotel would take us and our dogs? Why hadn't I made a go bag when Evagene was born? Would there be room for a portacrib?

I knew from living a few years at elevation: fires spread without warning and like most homes in Colorado, our home was surrounded by a paradise made of kindling. But these firefighters weren't just moving fast — they were moving with trained precision, following protocols they'd practiced countless times. I marveled when I realized they already knew which slopes to approach, how to read wind patterns, where to establish containment lines, if necessary. Without those systematic, methodical firefighters who understood how to work efficiently under pressure, everything we'd built would have been ash by morning.

That night offers a curious parallel when I talk to creators who are trying to build multiple things at once.

Creative projects, like dry forest, can unexpectedly compete for the same resources — your attention, your energy, your creative fuel.

And just as those firefighters needed systems to manage chaos, writers juggling multiple projects need their own protocols for when inspiration strikes in one area while deadlines loom in another.

How do you contain the spread when one project threatens to consume all your bandwidth?

Well, I think there's someone whose work and experiences can speak directly to these questions. At 9 a.m. CT this Wednesday, I'll be talking to former wildland firefighter and author

River Selby (they/them)

.

River’s book, Hotshot, will be released in less than a week, and we’re going to dive into how they balanced two demanding creative practices at once: how they nurtured and edited their book while also publishing their newsletters, Gathering and wilderness (while also pursuing their PhD, no less).

Together we'll explore how someone navigates the publishing world while maintaining the intimate, immediate awareness that newsletter writing requires.

⭐️ River’s book has already received a starred Kirkus review, a shoutout in the New York Times summer nonfiction previews and praise from

George Saunders

who called it a “sharply observed, beautifully researched, open-hearted book.”

Here's what River and I will be diving into during our conversation:

The Publishing Journey: What was it actually like pitching and securing a book deal? How did their editor show up during the process — were they supportive, understanding, flexible when life (and neurodivergence) required different approaches? We'll hear the real story behind getting this book into the world.

The Parallel Creative Process: Writing a book is a marathon; writing a newsletter is usually a series of sprints. How did River manage both without burning out or letting either go?

Practical Wisdom: For those of you thinking about your own book projects while maintaining other creative work — what actually works? What advice would River give their past self? And what stories from the book itself might inspire or caution other writers?

The firefighters near my house made it up the mountain because they understood that methodical preparation and quick thinking could coexist — that working under pressure didn't mean abandoning their training. And, thankfully, they put the fire out before anyone had to evacuate their homes.

There's something similar in the way successful writers manage multiple creative commitments. They develop systems that honor both the immediate spark of newsletter writing and the sustained burn of long-form projects. They know how to read their own creative weather patterns and establish containment strategies before any single project threatens to overwhelm the others.

I know River has learned some things about this balance that could shift how you think about your own creative work. Whether you're nurturing a newsletter, dreaming about a book or trying to figure out how to do both without losing your sense of spirit and creativity, I'm hopeful this conversation will offer both inspiration and practical insight.

Join us for a live stream on Substack at 9 a.m. CT, Wednesday, Aug. 6, for what I expect will be an honest, useful conversation about the reality of building inside two creative modalities simultaneously — and what readers can discover when authors are brave enough to do both intuitively.

Buy River’s Book & Get a 3-Month Comp to The Publishing Spectrum

To support River’s work, I’d like to offer a 3-month comp to The Publishing Spectrum for anyone who buys their book in the month of August. Please DM me a picture of your receipt for Hotshot (dated any time in the month of August), and let me know which email address I should comp. Thanks!

Did You Know? I work with mission-minded writers, media teams and creative entrepreneurs through one-on-one messages on Voxer. Together, we untangle creative blocks, revive broken and stale calendar/publishing systems and together we uncover a certain "magic" to understanding your audience and mission. Grab your first week of publishing support here.

What makes you magic? Can you see it? Amanda probably can — and she'll help you find it. There's no cookie-cutter advice here. She helps you go deeper, refining your ideas so they don't just work — they sing. —

Noha Beshir

, Letters From a Muslim Woman

Amanda is the intuitive business, Substack and life coach so many of us need. — Hannah Moore, CEO of Guiding Wealth and Amplified Planning