Maya Hughes can often be found sneaking in another chapter while hiding in the bathroom from her kids! She’s a romance writer who loves taking inspiration from everyday life. She’s the mom of three little ones, the wife to an amazing husband and also works full time. Some of her favorite things are cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, white wine, laughing until she can’t breathe, traveling with her family and Jeff Goldblum.
How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.
Transcript
Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.
Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 170 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.
So we’re pleased that you’re here with me today as we speak to the fabulous Maya Hughes. If you watch on YouTube, for various reasons, she can’t have her face on the internet, and, they are interesting reasons. So you will not see her face, you’ll just see her name flashed up there and let that be a source of wonder to you as you think about why I ain’t gonna tell you. So she’s talking about the wonders of Scrivener and all sorts of other wonderful things. So you are going to enjoy that.
My voice, if you’re listening and my face, if you’re looking, might sound a little bit different because I’m in a new spot, which I am so excited about that. I am going to talk really quickly about: I have joined a co-working space. I have done this in the past and I have not gone back. It has not been that- I have joined places that have not inspired me to make the track downtown. And, this one’s different. It’s called Sphere, it’s in Oakland. It’s a women’s co-working/wellness place, and it is amazing. There’s a quiet section and a talking section, and it smells like the spa and there’s living walls. It’s really, really inclusive, which is my favorite part. They do a very, very good job of, of attracting women of color and members of the LGBTQ community. In fact, they are the only people that they target with marketing, so that’s amazing. They have a bowl of beads that you can wear if you don’t want to be talked to at all. You’re in noble silence, which I probably won’t wear it, it’s not for me just to be quiet. But they have these podcasting booths and I’m in a phone booth doing this, and there’s a beautiful kitchen and there’s this swing. There is a fitness studio with Peloton equipment. One treadmill, one bike that you can book. They have yoga. They have fitness classes every day at noon that are all included in the price of being in the space. Dude, they have meditation every day at 10:35 AM for 15 minutes. You go into the meditation room and you meditate with other people. It’s amazing. They have a nap time, an optional nap time, which I haven’t used yet, but I plan on trying it. What else? They have all these community building and, networking event, and I’ve already met amazing people. And, and the best part of it is, is that, I’ve been riding public transit to get here. I get in the headspace on my way. I sit next to the window. I look out into downtown Oakland, right now I’m looking at this construction site and the buses going by and people walking and all the guys in hardhats, and I feel like I’m at an office. I’ve never been in an office before, so maybe that’s why I’m really excited about it.
Never worked in a, an office building ever at once in my life. And it makes me have a container for the day. I come here, I work all day, I go home and I don’t work, although probably have to work tonight to upload this podcast. But I’m trying not to work when I go home. And it took four years, but I think I finally grew out of my home office as a place to work all the time. I do. I did used to write a lot at, the mills library or in a cafe. But this is going to be better.
This already feels amazing and it feels like kind of a home. And I get to go outside and walk around and I’m downtown and there are people and things to eat. And, I walked to a recovery meeting at lunchtime today, that was my lunch break. I walked to it. And it was amazing. So I’m just really, really, really in love with this. And this is where I’m going to be mostly podcasting from, I hope. So, I hope it’s not too echo-y, too gloomy, let me know if it is, if it’s really distracting for you, and I’ll try to figure out how to, compress that out. And I will obviously always do that on my podcast. I always work on the sound quality, but let me know if it’s driving you crazy.
So, in other news, I’d just like to thank new patron, Whitney, thank you so much for coming along the ride, Whitney, I hope that you enjoy the essays. There is one going out, this week with a major confession and I’m not talking a minor confession. I’m talking about something that really kind of messed me up recently, and, I wrote an essay about it. So everybody in the Patreon community gets that essay. You can get that essay two for a dollar a month. You can always find the over at www.patreon.com/rachael.
And now let us jump into the wonderful interview with Maya. I know you’re gonna like it. Please come by www.howdoyouwrite.net. Drop me a comment. Tell me how you’re doing. Tell me how your writing is going, and thank you for being here. Happy writing to you.
Hey, how’s your writing going? Do you swing from word to word like the sentence monkey you are in the enchanted book jungle? or is writing a slog? Maybe you’re not even writing. Let me suggest this: The stronger your resistance is to doing something, the more important it is for you to do. You need a community, and I have one for you. Join my ongoing Tuesday morning writing group from 5:00 to 7:00 AM Pacific standard time. We get together and we write together each week for two hours, and we spend most of that time really writing. Yes, that’s hella early for you, west coast Americans much easier for you, Europeans. But you can do it. You write with company, you get to talk to your peers about what you’re working on, and having that kind of support is invaluable.
Go to www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesday for more information.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:25] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome this morning to the show, Maya Hughes. Hello, Maya. How are you?
Maya Hughes: [00:06:31] Hi! So happy to be here.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:33] Well, happy to have you. Let me give you a little bio before we start chatting about your process. Maya Hughes can often be found sneaking in another chapter while hiding in the bathroom from her kids. She’s a romance writer who loves taking inspiration from everyday life. She’s the mom of three little ones, the wife to an amazing husband, and also works full time. Some of her favorite things are cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, white wine, laughing until she can’t breathe, traveling with her family and Jeff Goldblum. I love that last one.
Maya Hughes: [00:07:03] Jeff Goldblum is great. He’s amazing. He’s like, I dunno. It’s like he’s a human who’s come to earth like, with an idea of how humans are supposed to act and interact and you’re so like, he’s so charming and you’re just fascinated watching him.
Rachael Herron: [00:07:19] That’s a really good point. He might be an alien that might actually like come out at some point. I would really like that. It’s hilarious. Okay, so you get a lot done and are juggling so many balls and those are the people I love best to talk to. How do you get it done? How do you get your writing done when and where and how does it happen?
Maya Hughes: [00:07:39] Generally less often than I would like. I try, I wake up very early for some reason, I just managed to survive on less sleep. I think it’s because of the children. They’ve just liked program me for the years, to not need my sleep. So usually most days I’ll wake up, even if I don’t want to, around 4?
Rachael Herron: [00:08:0h] Oh, it’s really, most people say really early and they mean 6. 4 is really, really, really early. Yeah.
Maya Hughes: [00:08:11] It was really, really early. So I’ll usually just lay in bed and go, please fall back to sleep, and then I don’t, so about 4:30, I’ll get up and then I’ll come into the office and I’ll try and write for about an hour. And then I’ll, get open, get, get everyone ready for school and all that, and we get into the routine and all that. And then I, I head into the office at work and I do my work stuff, and then, you know, afterschool activities and all of that jazz. And then once everyone is hopefully at least in bed, even if they’re not asleep by seven, seven-thirty and then, you know, my husband and I, we might maybe sit down and watch a show. If there’s something on like Westworld will be starting soon, so we will be watching that once that’s on
Rachael Herron: [00:09:01] Yes, that too, I love that show
Maya Hughes: [00:09:04] I love it. And then, and then I’m just in the office and I’m writing until -or you know, doing admin stuff, marketing, all sorts of other things usually from about 8 until 10 or 11 it’s really hard for me to stop. I kind of just could keep going, but I’m like, no, I need to actually sleep for some amount of time, so I’ve cut myself off.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:26] Wow. And then do you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow kind of thing?
Maya Hughes: [00:09:30] Yeah. I have been known to fall asleep mid-sentence, like my husband, we’re having a full on conversation, he’s just like, and then you stop responding. And then you’re asleep. And I’m up and yeah, I’m a, it is time to go to sleep now and then just power down like a robot.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:46] That’s an admirable quality, honestly. So how do you get through your books? Are you a plotter or a pantser…?
Maya Hughes: [00:09:53] Oh my goodness. So I, I have wanted to be a plotter where I could just write it down and have a solid outline and know every single in and out and just because I managed it once, and that book, it just flew, it like flew by and it was, there were no hiccups, no roadblocks, nothing. And it just, it’s amazing and I’ve never done that since. So, yeah, I tend to try and get the general idea, like I have an idea of the tropes and you know, the characters and their backgrounds and where I, you know, I usually know that ending and I know how they’re going to meet. So for me it’s usually about all the ins and outs and the ups and downs between those two points, which can be, you know, challenging.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:45] Yeah, yeah
Maya Hughes: [00:10:46] Yeah, yeah. So I do a lot of walking with one of my neighbors around the block and we’ll talk through things and I’ll, you know, I feel so bad because I do the same thing with my husband. I feel like half of the time when we’re, you know, spit balling things, it’s mainly them saying, what about this and this meagle, “No, but how about this?” Like, it’s like literally just me being like, that’s a great idea, but no and we’re picking something else.
Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] I love that you say that. Like, my wife is, I think my best plotting help along with a couple of girlfriends, but, she’s literally the best, but every single idea she has, she says, you always shoot it down, but I do go the, no, no, no. I know that’s not it. But that makes me think of something. Yes, that’s exactly right.
Maya Hughes: [00:11:28] Exactly. So it’s a lot of trying to talk things out with people and sort of just, you know spit balling things or writing down things, or I’ll hear someone, you know, while I’m walking somewhere and I’ll hear someone say something and I’ll think, oh my gosh, okay, that could be a great idea. Like right now, I’m a very, I’m like, I think far in advance, so I have my books sort of planned out in a way, in a sense, loosely till 2024
Rachael Herron: [00:11:58] Wow. Admirable.
Maya Hughes: [00:11:59] So, so I’m picking up these little bits and pieces of all of these stories that are floating around my head, and I use the notes file on my phone and it’s like, Oh, that would be an awesome thing for this character. Or this could be a really solid bit for this character, you know? So I’m just sort of like,
Rachael Herron: [00:12:21] So useful.
Maya Hughes: [00:12:22] Yeah. And then that sort of how I work, were. As time goes on, I’ve learned that’s one thing about me, I’ve learned that the longer I think about the characters and what they’re going through and their journey, the richer it is. And the more depths there is, and the more they feel like real people. And so it’s almost like I can sort of have a conversation with them and I know about that thing that happened in seventh grade that totally messed them up, even if it doesn’t end up in the book, but they really do become like real people. So it’s kind of like this ongoing ever evolving relationship that we have. You know, in my head.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:00] I love that. Would you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert?
Maya Hughes: [00:13:04] I think I’m an extrovert.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:06] Because I just read something and I used to think I was an extrovert until I really felt myself changing in the last like 10 years or so. And I’m more of an introvert now. And, but I just read something that says extroverts talk out their problems. They speak that they speak them out loud. Whereas introverts tend to like sit and write and think, very quietly and don’t talk them out loud. And it sounds like you have a really good practice of speaking these things aloud with people that you love and, and working through that.
Maya Hughes: [00:13:37] Yeah. Or by myself sometimes in the car,
Rachael Herron: [00:13:40] Yeah
Maya Hughes: [00:13:41] Sometimes in the car, I’ll do it to where I’m, I’ll do voice memos, either it’s dialogue. So what happens for me is I’ll almost like a scene will pop into my head and it’ll play like a movie, and I can hear the dialogue and I can see everything and I can, it’s an, and sometimes it’s really hard for me because as I’m writing the story, that first scene that sparked the whole thing will be something that doesn’t make it into the book. Like it just doesn’t work at a certain point.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:05] Oh, that’s painful.
Maya Hughes: [00:13:07] And it’s so hard cause I’m like, no, this was, this was the seed of the whole thing. How can I get rid of this? But I’ve learned that sometimes you can’t just shoehorn it in. So that’s the stricter-
Rachael Herron: [00:14:16] No matter how hard we try.
Maya Hughes: [00:14:18] No matter how hard, it’s like, nope, it’s just doesn’t work. So there are times where I’ve really just, I’ll be in the car and there’ll be a scene. And as stupid as I feel doing it, I’ll go in and I’ll just have to say it out loud. And I even tried dictation, it has not worked for me, but I’ll do the voice memos and then I upload it in my computer. I have a program where it’ll transcribe it so I don’t even have to listen to it. And then I just get the actual words and then I, I go, you know, I’ll just add those to my little notes document where I keep them for whatever story that was for.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] What program is that? You don’t have to –tap on your head if you-
Maya Hughes: [00:14:59] Oh gosh. Cause I haven’t used it in a while, It’s Dragon.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:03] Oh, okay, great.
Maya Hughes: [00:15:04] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:04] Great, I have that on my phone as well.
Maya Hughes: [00:15:06] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:15:07] It’s worth having it there for the transcription.
Maya Hughes: [00:15:09] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:10] Okay, so what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
Maya Hughes: [00:15:15] So it’s usually either one of two things. Either I’m stuck in the story, there’s something where I just know there’s something that’s not working. I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t, I just can’t place, if it’s someone’s motivation or something in their background or a piece of where they’re going or something is missing and I just, I have to sit and think about it. Which kills me because I want to be writing always because I don’t have much time, you know? And I, I try to space out my releases fairly consistently. So it’s either that or it’s I have the story and I know what needs to get done, and I just don’t have the time. You know, some days, like the 4:30 thing, I mean, I tried to do that at least three times a week. But sometimes, you know, you sleep in and you wake up with the alarm and its time, you know
Rachael Herron: [00:16:03] Cause you need to sleep, right?
Maya Hughes: [00:16:05] Right. I need to sleep. So those are the hard times when it’s like, oh no, so you know, we, I have to take the kids to a sleepover, or they’ve got an orchestra concert and they have something going on and it’s like, so I’m out all day and then we’re tired, you know? So those are, those are the two hardest parts. Either it’s the story and the clicking, or I literally just do not have enough hours in the day to sit down and write. And those are,
Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] Yeah, and those are two things. You just can’t sit down and fix.
Maya Hughes: [00:16:32] Yeah, exactly. So I’m like, try and type some on my phone, or I’ll try and type some on my iPad and like gets it. But I just, I’ve learned to just not tried it. Like if, if it’s just not gonna work, I just, don’t force it. Don’t force it. It’s like probably the biggest thing
Rachael Herron: [00:16:51] That’s a professional thing to do. Sometimes I just force it and then I’ll have 10,000 words that I wish I didn’t have that are not going to work because I’ve been forcing it by, I’m a big fan of beating my head against a brick wall, personally. Yeah. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?
Maya Hughes: [00:17:08] I think, well, it’s also one of two things. It’s actually, you know, finishing and like saving that file and just sending it to my editor and having a whole, like two minutes where there’s something that doesn’t need to be done because like the book is like 30% of what goes into actually publishing a book. Like writing a book, I feel like it ends up being such a small piece of what goes into the whole publishing process.
Rachael Herron: [00:17:36] Yeah. Yeah.
Maya Hughes: [00:17:37] But yeah, so, so that, that moment when I know like, okay, this first draft is done. And then I don’t have to deal with the horror show that will be when the edits come back, but I’m just like, I can drink wine, I can celebrate. That’s amazing. And then I think the other part is just when I start getting people emailing me or messaging me saying, you know how much a character in the story they identified with or they loved or, you know, spoke to them or, you know, move them or made them cry or, you know, something made them laugh, whatever it was, you know, that’s, those are the best.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:17] I love that. I love that so much. Can you share a quick craft tip of any sort with us?
Maya Hughes: [00:18:24] Sure. I use Scrivener to write my first draft. Sometimes I use Scrivener after I get my edits back. It depends on how I’m lazy I’m feeling because to copy and paste it back in is a little bit –
Rachael Herron: [00:18:38] Yeah. Yeah
Maya Hughes: [00:18:39] But one of the things that I love in Scrivener, and let me just make sure I’m getting the right name of it. It is, it’s a feature that allows you to isolate only specific parts of speech. So pull it up and it will show you all of the, what is it called? It’ll show you like highlight or it’ll gray out everything except like all of your verbs. So you can go in and you can see all the verbs that you’re using. You know, per whatever it is, chapter,
Rachael Herron: [00:19:12] I had no idea
Maya Hughes: [00:19:13] Whatever it is that you’re using. So you can sort of try and cut down on duplication that way. Also, it will allow you to isolate –
Rachael Herron: [00:19:20] Wow
Maya Hughes: [00:19:21] dialogue only. So you can go through and it’ll just show you all your dialogues so you can just sort of make sure it’s flowing. And I try and do that cause I break down my files, my, so I’ll have like a folder and then each, each chapter is a – I don’t even know what they’re called. Each chapters has its own document.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:38] Yeah. Yeah.
Maya Hughes: [00:19:39] So I try and I’ll go through and I’ll, I’ll select only all the documents for one specific character, and then I’ll go through and make sure that it reads like, you know, they’re not reading the same. Because two people aren’t gonna think the same way. So it just sort of helps me.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:55] That’s mind blowing.
Maya Hughes: [00:19:56] So I just use that to where is this thing is called? I need to find it. But yeah, so
Rachael Herron: [00:20:05] People can find it though. Now that they know it exists, they can find it. But-
Maya Hughes: [00:20:08] Yeah, and it’s amazing. I mean, I just love it because it helps me, yeah, a linguistic focus, that’s what it’s called. It’s under writing tools, linguistics focus. And you can say, show me all the direct speech so you can sort of see, “oh, is this way too dialogue heavy? Does this like chapter, have no dialogue at all?” You know? Or you can do nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, all that stuff. So you can just,
Rachael Herron: [00:20:30] That is brilliant especially the dialogue thing, because my problem is in first draft and sometimes second draft. My characters all speak exactly the same. They speak the way I speak, and that is a, that is a revision round for me. That’s a draft, that’s a draft pass where I go in and actually change it to be specifically theirs and that’s, I’d never thought of that. That’s, I never knew that existed on be using Scrivener since it came out. So, wow!
Maya Hughes: [00:20:54] I love Scrivener. There are so many things, like there are other things that like just other tool, like other features that it has. And I’m always like, and it took me, I had Scrivener for a year and a half, a year, year and a half before I finally like opened it and was like, okay, why is this a thing? Like, what makes this worth trying to figure out all of this stuff? Like why? And then I started like watching, the people who develop Scrivener, they have YouTube videos and things like that. And I just sort of started to play around with it and I was like, oh okay, I get it now. And now, like I couldn’t do my first drafts without Scrivener. Like it’s just the snapshot. Like, I love taking snapshots, like all of that.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:36] I like the sounds it makes
Maya Hughes: [00:21:37] Yes. That’s a very funny sound when it takes it and then, but yeah, being able to compare snapshots and see like, okay, what changed? What didn’t change? It’s just, I love it.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:47] I’ve actually never compared to snapshot. I take them because I’m scared and I like re-duplication of my saving efforts. But yeah, I’ve never compared them.
Maya Hughes: [00:21:54] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:21:55] That’s interesting. Oh that is good.
Maya Hughes: [00:21:56] I usually after edits. Because when I’ve gotten them back and to be like, oh cause sometimes when it’s with the editor I might go in and make a change and then I’m like, oh crap, I don’t want to lose that and make sure capturing it in the new, you know, new version.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:10] You’re really good at Scrivener. That’s amazing. That’s the, I’m really excited about that. I must hang up now and go in the Scrivener
Maya Hughes: [00:22:19] Play around with it and you know about the name generator, right?
Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] I do. And it took me a long time to find that. But as also underwriting tools is the name generator. It’s so brilliant, it’s just there. You can up the complexity and, and it’s fantastic, I use it all the time. Cause I don’t care about names, names I’ll just plug in. I’m not one of those people who really, really needs the best name.
Maya Hughes: [00:22:39] You’re like any name,
Rachael Herron: [00:22:40] The name that their parents gave them is fine. Okay, so what thing in your life, it can be from any area of your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Maya Hughes: [00:22:55] That’s interesting. I don’t know how surprising it is though. Music plays a big part I think in my writing.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:02] How so?
Maya Hughes: [00:23:03] So I, I usually start once I start – once a book is maybe three books, from now, like, so that’s, that’s what I consider a close book that’ll be coming out soon. I start making a playlist and building a playlist based off of those characters and sort of their journey and their story and what’s happening to them and how they feel about each other and how they feel about themselves. And so I’ll start sort of like, I’ll go on Pandora or Spotify. And I’ll put it on whatever mood I’m looking for at that time. Like whether it’s like acoustic pop or like ladies’ stuff or whatever it is, today’s hits, that kind of stuff. Or like 90’s music, stuff like that. And then I’ll just start, you know, as it’s playing, you know, I’ll go, Oh, Oh, I think that would be like a song this character would like, and then I’ll add it to the playlist. And then sort of once I’m writing, depending on what type of writing I’m doing or how deep I’m into things and how things are flowing, I’ll just like sort of put that playlist on repeat and just to sort of give me a sort of feel for those to those characters, so-
Rachael Herron: [00:24:05] Does it bother you when there are words in the music at all? Can you still write?
Maya Hughes: [00:24:09] I can still write. I mean, it depends on what type of scenes they are, but yeah, I can, I can write even with the, with the words.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:18] I used to do that more for some reason, I think I, I don’t know why I really stopped, but there are a couple of books that if I hear the particular songs now, it just throws me right back into the book and that’s a delicious feeling and it’s like a surprise to revisit those books suddenly when a, when a song comes on, it’s actually made me cry before, like a song will come on my, my rotation and like oh, I miss them.
Maya Hughes: [00:24:41] Yeah. And it’s also something fun to share with readers cause then I can share –
Rachael Herron: [00:24:47] Yeah
Maya Hughes: [00:24:48] with those with the readers. And it’s like another fun little piece of that world of those characters
Rachael Herron: [00:24:51] I did that once, never again
Maya Hughes: [00:24:55] I mean at least they found it. Now readers have found it and they’re like, Oh my God. Like they’ll go on my Spotify and they can see the same with my Pinterest. They’ll go on my Spotify, they’ll go on my Pinterest and they’ll start like, we’ll have like theories and there’ll be like this lyric said this thing about this person. Like, are you writing a book about that? Like they get, they get a bit into it.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:11] That’s awesome. That’s really, really awesome. You’re extending your fictional world to them
Maya Hughes: [00:25:22] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:25:23] And letting them participate. Oh, that’s so cool. That’s a really good answer. What is the best book you’ve read recently or not recently, and why did you love it?
Maya Hughes: [00:25:28] Okay, so it wasn’t recently, it’s an older book. But I love and I think this was maybe the first time I had read, I guess shifters, are they consider paranormal?
Rachael Herron: [00:25:43] Yeah, usually I think.
Maya Hughes: [00:25:44] Yeah. Yeah. Although there’s no shifting in this actual book, but, Theodora Taylor’s, Her Viking Wolf was I think, the first shifter book I ever read, and I was like, what is this? I love this book. And it was just, it was so fun and it was, has like time travel in it and all sorts of stuff. And it was just, it was a book that I, that I loved and I, you know, go back and I reread it every so often just because
Rachael Herron: [00:26:07] I have to check it out, I haven’t heard of that one.
Maya Hughes: [00:26:09] Yeah, it’s great.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:10] Oh, awesome. Thank you. Okay, now we talk about you. Tell us about your latest book or series a, the one that you want to direct listeners to and where can we find you.
Maya Hughes: [00:26:19] Yes. So I don’t know when this will air
Rachael Herron: [00:26:25] This will air a couple of three weeks.
Maya Hughes: [00:26:28] Okay. Okay. Well, I had my release then was today, so it will be on sale or it’s on sale now. It’s a, like a secret admirer, neighbor, next door neighbor, although he’s actually across the street. Friends, celebrities, type of book, and it’s in my, my series of standalones that I have right now. And yeah, I mean, they can, people can find me sort of everywhere. I’m probably more places than I should be. It’s like I’m, you wanna look at my Pinterest boards or Spotify or Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, like, you know, everywhere.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:07] Oh, you’re on TikTok? I was on TikTok for about 20 minutes and I realized that I lost all concept of who I was as a human being for 20 minutes. And I was like, no, I’ll do this for the next 24 hours. And I took it off my phone. I was so terrified. It was so great. It was such a good place to be.
Maya Hughes: [00:27:24] Yeah well-
Rachael Herron: [00:27:24] Do you love it?
Maya Hughes: [00:27:25] Well, I’m, I’m starting on it, so I’m not, so hopefully in three weeks I’ll have a lot more on there for people to, for people to check out. Yeah. But no, I have learned though about taking things off my phone. I actually, last year I took, I was like burned out. And I think part of the reason was I took candy crush off my phone. It’s very –
Rachael Herron: [00:27:43] Oh
Maya Hughes: [00:27:44] I was like I am spending way too much time on candy crush. I need to get this off my phone. It’s crazy. And then I sort of been working with someone, an author coach and I, we sort of came to the realization that I am, my brain is always going, like always firing. Like it is very hard for me to shut off and just like not be doing anything. So candy crush was kind of like letting my brain just like.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:11] Yes,
Maya Hughes: [00:28:12] Chill out for a bit like that shower time, like when you’re just standing in the shower and you get ideas and things are flowing. Candy crush, it was like, it took enough of my attention that I couldn’t think about too many other things, but it wasn’t so time consuming or so intensive that I couldn’t also have the background’s like wheels turning, so I totally put it back on my phone.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] I absolutely love that. That makes so much sense to me and I’ve never heard anybody say that. But that’s your shower time. That’s your spacing out time. And that’s when they say that the default mode network, that’s when the, that’s when it fires up in the brain and that’s when connections start to be made in your, in the back of your mind, not the forefront of your mind. So I think that’s genius. Who – was the author-coach Becca Symes?
Maya Hughes: [00:28:57] Yes, of course.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:00] So are you high intellection then?
Maya Hughes: [00:29:02] No. No. I am. I am restorative, focus, achiever, communication of futuristic.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:10] Nice
Maya Hughes: [00:29:10] So, yes. So the achiever focus can work against me because I can’t. Stop. Like I can’t ever stop. So, so sometimes I have to, I’ve tried meditation. I’m like, I’m going to be able to do, I’m going to do, I’m going to achieve that. I am going to do it. I have not been able to do it yet. But, so candy crush is like my meditation.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:32] I love that. And I love that Becca like really tells us what, what the things are okay. Like candy crush is okay on your phone because it’s doing a good thing for you. She told me that like my pain point in writing was just that this is going to be my pain point, but just going to be my pain point. I just need, it’s going to be painful to do this, and I thought, Oh, you’re right.
Maya Hughes: [00:29:51] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:29:52] I can’t make this easy.
Maya Hughes: [00:29:53] I can’t! I know. She told me I can’t plot. I still, I still say, you know, I reject that premise, but I’m like, I will continue to work at it. I won’t work myself up if I’m unable to, but I’m like, I would like to get to a point in my process where I am able to very clearly see the story and all the roadblocks that might present themselves as it goes so that I won’t hit them. But yeah, she’s, she’s, yeah. No, amazing. Amazing,
Rachael Herron: [00:30:20] That’s awesome. We’re all proselytizing about her, yeah.
Maya Hughes: [00:30:23] Totally. Totally.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:25] Well, thank you so much, Maya, for being on the show. It’s been a absolute delight to talk to you. So I wish you well in your writing and in your sleeping to may you get enough.
Maya Hughes: [00:30:37] May I get enough sleep. Thank you. That is like the best- the best wish that anyone could ever give. A mom. I feel like a – it’s like, may you get as much sleep as you need.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:48] Wow. May you get enough sleep. Alright, thanks so much Maya. It’s been a delight.
Maya Hughes: [00:30:53] Thank you. Bye
Rachael Herron: [00:30:54] Bye
Rachael Herron: [00:30:55] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/
Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.