Make Up Your Life is for writers, seekers, and deep feelers devoted to living creatively, even when real life is heavy, busy, or uncertain.
Here, I focus on process over perfection—on building a relationship with your creativity that can last through grief, change, exhaustion, and life’s many seasons. I believe our creative practices are shaped by our nervous system, emotional, spiritual, and energetic health.
Vibes here lean Julia Cameron, witches around a cauldron, nervous-system science, paired with a deep reverence for high literary craft.
This is a place to remember what you care about, and why you keep coming back to the page.
It takes a lot of courage to keep choosing your art. Let’s do it together.
What lives here
Inside Make Up Your Life, I write in two ongoing series designed to support your creative life from the inside out:
SELF-SOOTHE (weekly, for paid subscribers)
Short, grounding letters about the small, real things that help when life feels like a lot and you still want to stay connected to yourself and your creative life.
These often include:
beauty or wellness finds I genuinely love
simple body-based practices
rituals that bring a sense of steadiness back
reframes for creative doubt and emotional overwhelm
the occasional “reasonable retail moment” after a hard week :)
Think: gentle nervous-system care, creative encouragement, and human comfort delivered to your inbox on Sundays.
DEEP WATER (monthly, for paid subscribers)
Longer, intimate reflections on the emotional undercurrents of a creative life, including:
the long game of a writing career
grief and motherloss
motherhood and art making
ambition, depth work, inner child work, creative sobriety\
and more!
These reflections are meant to help you soften into what you’re carrying, move through creative blocks, and reconnect with the deeper current of what you want to make.
And sometimes…
I also share:
audio notes and gentle visualizations
guided journaling and creative prompts
behind-the-scenes reflections from the life of a working novelist and co-creator of The Fountain
Much of this work is about making art with clarity, presence, and emotional honesty, and learning how to stay with your life rather than numb out from it.
About me
Hi, I’m Chelsea. I’m the author of three books of fiction—Godshot, Heartbroke, and the national bestselling novel Madwoman. I’m the co-creator of The Fountain, a platform that helps writers build sustainable, emotionally aligned writing practices through courses, audio-visualizations, community, and more.
I have two kids, eighteen years of sobriety, and over fifteen years of experience teaching, editing, and coaching writers. I’m endlessly fascinated by embodiment, the subconscious mind, creativity, healing generational trauma, and the ways I chose to live brightly—sometimes through deep inner work and movement, and hey, sometimes through the perfect mascara.
Make Up Your Life is literary, intuitive, grounded, and honest with a serious devotion to craft and a soft spot for small, beautiful comforts that make living feel more bearable and light-filled. My aim is always to help you reduce the noise, interrupt the common mainstream stories about how writing must be hard and miserable, and get you back to the heart of why you wanted to write in the first place. I share authentically about the things that actually work for me.
💌 Free subscribers receive:
occasional essays on creativity and creative life
books and resources I’m loving
updates about my writing life and upcoming offerings
🔐 Paid subscribers receive:
Weekly Self-Soothe letters to support creative and emotional regulation
Monthly Deep Water reflections on the inner life of making art while being human
audio notes, journaling prompts, and creative practices
early access to classes and special offerings when available
This is for writers, seekers, and deep feelers who want to build a creative life that is deep, sustainable, and emotionally honest—not driven by burnout or comparison—and have some fun while doing it.
If that sounds like you, I’m so glad you’re here.
