Natalie Saar joins Mookie for another episode of Ink vs Algorithm to share how she writes three books a year while also working, starting with the story of how her first published novel came out of a panic attack. She wrote her way through the anxiety, read back what came out afterward, and realized there was a psychological thriller in it: a stalker with OCD so compulsive about order that he fills exactly one notebook per victim and physically cannot bring himself to write a second page, no matter what he witnesses. That’s the origin story for a career that’s since spanned psychological thrillers and personal-development nonfiction, self-published since 2012 — most recently Fake It Till You Make It: The Science of Feeling Rich, with Let It Be Easy next.
Mookie and Natalie discuss how the comparison trap and a lack of “time affluence” is what truly makes people feel poor, wealth instead described as the freedom to spend your hours how you want. Natalie unpacks a genuinely useful reframe: satisfaction is a cheap emotion (a candy bar gives you satisfaction), but excitement is the signal worth chasing, and she now protects a chunk of every weekend for decisions based purely on what excites her, not what’s productive. They dig into resistance, too — not as a signal to quit, but as something to interrogate honestly: is this hard because you’re avoiding growth, or because it’s genuinely wrong for you?
The back half turns into one of the more candid conversations about writerly voice this show has had. Natalie has ghostwritten for celebrities, written financial marketing copy, and wandered through enough professional “voices” that she now deliberately writes throwaway pages — sometimes just to delete them at the end of the day — purely to stay in touch with what she actually sounds like underneath all the client work. Her own friends, when asked, consistently prefer her earliest, least-polished books, because they sound the most like her.
That sets up the AI conversation. Natalie’s framework is sharp and specific: she’ll let AI handle anything a computer reads — SEO headers, metadata, GEO optimization — but nothing a human reads. Research, yes, with primary sources double-checked by hand, because in her experience it’s right maybe 40% of the time. Actual prose, never. Her broader bet is genuinely optimistic: because readers invest real hours in a book, they’re better judges of quality than viewers or listeners skimming video or music, and as AI slop floods every category, human voice becomes the differentiator, not a liability.
They close out with hard-won, unglamorous marketing tactics: Goodreads giveaways, BookBub ads, reverse giveaways, and Natalie’s own backlink-building site for indie authors, plus a real warning about the increasingly sophisticated scam emails targeting self-published writers with fake agents, fake award nominations, and fake TV deals. Instead: be real, and keep writing!
The Guest
Natalie Saar is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles, California. She has been telling stories to anyone who will listen since she was able to talk. After years of consuming true crime content, she developed a love of thrillers. Her stories feature everyday situations — but with an added twist. “Becoming 1% Better” is her first work of nonfiction, born out of a love of general curiosity about how we can better ourselves and treat those around us better. It’s a finalist in the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) for Mind and Spirit Non-fiction. By day, she works as a marketing writer and content strategist; she also runs The Indie Authors, a site built to help self-published writers get discovered.
Her Websites & Books
The Indie Authors Project
https://www.theindieauthors.com/
Her Substack
