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JENNIFER LOUDEN is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book. Since then, she’s written six additional books on wellbeing and whole living, including The Woman’s Retreat Book and The Life Organizer, with close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. Jennifer has spoken around the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and has appeared on hundreds of TV programs, radio shows, and podcasts—including Oprah. Jennifer teaches women’s retreats and creates vibrant online communities and innovative learning experiences. She lives in Boulder County, Colorado.

Her new book is Why Bother: Discover the Desire for What’s Next – and GO HERE if you purchase it to enter a chance to win!

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 #178 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

[00:00:22] I’m thrilled you’re here today. I am talking to Jen Louden. She’s been on the show before. She is absolutely fabulous. I- fan girl all over her, it’s a little embarrassing. But I really love the way that she inspires people to do their creative work. She’s really a guru for me, really a mentor. She doesn’t really know that, but, I kind of told her on this episode, but she has a new book out that is a wonderful, and it’s called Why Bother? And, we are always wondering in our heads as writers, why bother? We don’t, like Jen says in the interview, we don’t always say it in that way, but it’s what we’re thinking a lot of the time. So, you’ll love the interview, something that we talked about right when we went off air is that if you listen to this interview and love it, like I think you will, and want to know more about why you should bother to do your writing. If you buy the book and send her team the receipt, you do get interred to win a free retreat spot. In one of the desire retreats, she puts on the best retreats and she, you’ll also get a brand new 5-day live online training program that launches in July. So, the URL for that is jenniferlouden.com/why-bother  and I will put it in the show notes at howdoyouwrite.net. So if you love it, do that. I can highly recommend this book. 

[00:01:48] What’s been going on around here? Well, still in lockdown. I have to say I’m still loving it. I am that embarrassing person who wishes this was not happening with all of my heart. The world is falling apart. Everything is a tragedy. However, right here in my seat, things are good and I am so grateful and I have not had a day off in 26 days, and I just realized that earlier today because I’ve been so happy in my work. I have been in revision heaven. I’ve just been living there, people I’ve been talking about it, but it’s been so good. And I did deliver my book to my editor yesterday, which is Wednesday. She actually sent me an email that says, you can have till Friday, I’m not going to read it, you know. So you have till Friday at 5:00 PM and I was like, no, I’ve got it. I’ve got to get this off my desk. Here you go. And I gave it to her. But the book, I have fallen in love with as I always do during the revision process. It is fun. It is exciting. It is definitely the most exciting book I’ve ever read. Even in revision, I was kind of flipping pages quickly because I couldn’t wait to read the next part even though I had written it and I was revising it. I think it’s exciting. I don’t know. It might be too exciting. She might get me my revision letter that says, you know, take a lot of the blood out gory, crazy woman, but it’s a thriller after all. And I’ve been having just the total ball with it. So that’s done. 

[00:03:26] I have been working all day, I’m trying to return emails that I just pile up when I was on revision book deadline, and I put this on Twitter, but I can just highly recommend an auto responder for any time in your life. You don’t have to go on vacation. You don’t have to be doing anything special. Anytime in your life that you want to make mail less of a priority, set up an auto responder. My auto responder simply said, “I am not really responding to email right now. I will after April 23rd when the book is turned in, if it’s urgent, respond urgent in the reply line and I will look at it.” And one person did that because it was a time sensitive thing nobody else did. Nobody else cares. It is really nice. I think it’s polite when somebody sends you an email and you send them an auto responder that says, I’m kind of out of it right now. I’m not going to get back to you quickly. If you have anxiety during this pandemic, set up an auto responder that says that dealing with anxiety during this pandemic, if this is urgent, reply with a subject line urgent. Otherwise, I will get to you when I can. People who care about you are going to appreciate that. I can hear you, business types who work at important companies rolling your eyes. You can’t do that. I understand you can’t do that. If you, if you’re struggling under the weight of email from your work, you can’t do that. But if you are a sole proprietorship like I am, do it! Do it. Email. The killer of joy, the soul sucking, suck it dude. Except of course, when I hear from writers, or fans or anybody like that, that makes email always, always worth it. And I have been getting some incredible emails lately from people who are writing, who are struggling to get their writing time, who are getting some done. And I always, always appreciate hearing from you. It always makes my day, and I’ve been getting some really, really cool ones lately, so that has been fabulous.

[00:05:26] What else is going on? Oh, I think I mentioned it last week that, Rachael Says Write, where we write together two hours on Tuesday morning, two hours on Thursday afternoon. Right after I record this, we’re going to be doing the first Thursday afternoon writing and honestly, it’s been making me so happy all day knowing that I’m going to see people and sit in a room with them to gather virtually. It feels like we’re together and write for two hours. If you have any interest in that, you can always go to rachaelherron.com/write and check that out. But it’s really fun. So there’s that. My book is turned in. I’m happy, I’m healthy, my family is healthy. I hope that your family is healthy. I hope that you are getting some writing done and if you are not, that you are giving yourself a gosh darn break. And I want to say, officially, ‘cause I don’t think I’ve said it in a long time. I’m really thankful for you all, especially if you’re listening to this right now. The listenership for podcasts has gone down a lot, as people just don’t commute anymore. Like I only ever listen to podcasts in my car, so I’m only listening to one or two a week right now because I am not listening to podcasts and I’ve also just been revising my ass off. But if you’re listening right now, thank you, thank you. Thank you for prioritizing this show. I hope that I give you what you need, and if I’m not, let me know. Tell me what you need. Ask me some questions. I am going to have a mini episode coming out sometime this week on MFA programs, and what kind of education you need to be a writer. So keep your eye out for that. For some reason, three people this week asked me intently. What I think about MFAs and I have some opinions to share with you, so that’ll be coming out soon. But right now I would like you to enjoy this time with Jen Louden who inspires me, and I hope that she inspires you to get your writing done. So I will talk to you soon. Reach out anytime. Tell me how you’re doing, and happy writing.

[00:07:35] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through, again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month, which is an amount that really, truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge at the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to, and if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically, I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/rachael R A C H A E L to get these perks and more. And thank you so much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:36] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome back to the show today, Jennifer Louden. Hi Jen!

Jennifer Louden: [00:08:42] Hello!

Rachael Herron: [00:08:44] It’s such an exciting week to talk to you. You had a brand new book launch, just came out. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:08:50] I did.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:51] I got a little preview of this book. I think it’s marvelous. Let me give you a little intro and then we’re going to talk about this book, which is why I put you back on the show.

Jennifer Louden: [00:08:57] Thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:59] Oh my gosh. Jennifer Louden is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Women’s Comfort Book. Think about that people launched the concept of self-care. Since then, she’s written six additional books on wellbeing and whole living, including The Women’s Retreat Book and The Life Organizer, with close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. Jennifer has spoken around the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and has appeared on hundreds of TV programs, radio shows, and podcasts–including Oprah. She teaches women’s retreats and creates vibrant online communities and innovative learning experiences. She lives in Boulder County, Colorado. And the reason I just love you, Jen, is that you are so authentic and I am a fan.

Jennifer Louden: [00:09:46] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:47] Like I am one of those people who follows you because you routinely inspire me and challenge me to be a better person, to take care, better care of myself, and to believe in myself and my own creativity. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:10:00] I’m so glad because you should. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:02] Yeah. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. So I’m so thrilled that you are back so I’ve got a bunch of questions for you, but first of all, I basically want to talk to you about your new book. It is called, Why Bother? And I have to tell you that, I was in one of your retreats, in one of your online retreats and, you were talking about, I think you were revising Why Bother at that point and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I can’t wait till it comes out. I need that book.” I would love to know what basically, what, Why Bother? is about, why did you write it?

Jennifer Louden: [00:10:32] Yeah. I’ll start with why I wrote it. I wrote all my books in a pretty short period of time, so I wrote a book every year or two years, and I really made my living almost primarily from writing, which we know is amazing. I didn’t know how amazing it was. But then is the book business changed and I started to teach more and develop, I developed more of a business around my books, but the real reason I did that was I didn’t have another book in me. And so it’s been 11 years functionally since I wrote a book. We’ve done new additions of books. I did a little sort of throw away kind of project for national geographic. It was a journal, so there’s been things that I put out, but I didn’t want to write another self-help book. So in that time I wrote novels that didn’t work because I didn’t really write them, not because there wasn’t a lot of good stuff in them, but which still remains a mystery to me. And I wrote a 500 pages of a memoir that failed as a memoir. And again, great stuff and it didn’t hold together as a whole, and out of that struggle came, this book. And out of that failed memoir in particular came that book and then after the failed memoir, and there was, other failed books in there, I did make attempts to write other self-help books. I would get an idea, send it to my agents, and that’s a great idea, write a book proposal, that I would never write the book proposal. Because there’s something about the way I’m wired, which I don’t particularly like, which is I have to really, I have to love it. I have to believe in it. I have to be learning about it. It has to be coming from someplace very deep in me. I could never write on assignment, for example. And so after the memoir fail, I hired Jenny Nash as my book coach. She’s a wonderful, wonderful person, a wonderful book coach. And she coached me, she was like, Hey, let’s take scenes from the memoir and you’ll write, she came up with the title lessons, the self-help guru had to teach herself. And I wrote a great book proposal and I said to my agent and this, could I just say major complaint here, so when my sign with my agent, she was, she was starting out, she was young. She’s since become a super powerhouse agent, and so she took –I believe if I remember it was five weeks to tell me that she couldn’t –she no longer represented self-help books. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:55] No, 

Jennifer Louden: [00:12:56] She only represented fiction now. Now why, she couldn’t have told me that? Let’s say a week, you know, I know everybody’s email boxes are full. So she said, but I’ll show, I’ll give it to other agents in the agency. I’m like, they’re going to be like, oh my God, I couldn’t have Jennifer Louden’s. They all turned it down. They all turned it down, but I was like, no, who cares? I don’t care. I’m going to write the book, I wrote, I’ve worked on it for maybe another six, eight weeks, and I realized it wasn’t working and it was really a blessing that they turned it down because I was trying to force the material into Jenny’s idea, which was a good idea, but it wasn’t my idea. You’re shaking your head, yes, you’re nodding your head. I get itchy and scratch mixed up too. So then out of that, Jenny was, you know, kind of like, wow, alright, great. What do we do? What would you write? And that’s when this book came out in a month, and I think I’ve been trying to re-write it Rachael for maybe 15, 18 years. I found pages that I sent my first agent. I felt, I found like 40 pages that I sent her that really has some of the same themes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:03] That’s so fascinating. And the thing is that when I first started talking about the Why Bother book, it seems like the book that should have always been out there,

Jennifer Louden: [00:14:12] I know, it has that feeling

Rachael Herron: [00:14:13] or maybe walking around this idea, but you really nailed this thing that I think so many of us struggle with this idea of why bother. How long did it take you after you decided to write it, to write it? It doesn’t seem like it took you very long. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:14:29] It didn’t, and that’s only happened to me a couple times in my life. I think I wrote it, I mean, I’m terrible at time. I’d have to go back and look, but I want to say like maybe seven months to write in six months, and then the first, the first you know, two drafts that I gave it to beta readers, then I did another rewrite and then I gave it to my editor. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:47] That’s fantastic. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:14:48] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:49] So, speaking of this book, what are, there’s some questions people should ask themselves if they want to see if they need to bother, basically.

Jennifer Louden: [00:15:01] I think-

Rachael Herron: [00:14:52] Do I need to bother?

Jennifer Louden: [00:15:03] Yeah. The thing that I really don’t think I got in the book enough or maybe it’s just become more clear to me after, I, this is the part I know I didn’t get in the book. You’re probably not going to use the words, Why bother? You’re probably

Rachael Herron: [00:15:14] Yeah

Jennifer Louden: [00:15:15] You’re going to say something like, there’s no point. It’s already been done. She can’t change. She will never listen to me. My boss sucks. I’m not even going to show up for that. Why? I was doing a podcast earlier today and the author was like, I have you in my head, Jen Louden, as why I shouldn’t bother to write self-help books. And I’m like, no damn spot out. So it’s gonna show up for all of us, but we’re going to language it in our own way. And so the thing that I really just the main idea to take away is start noticing where are you doing it because you’re not actually answering the question. You think you know the answer. Rachael has already written it, so there’s no point for me to write it. Spanx started spanx so there’s no point for me to start my business. Please don’t start a business with spanx.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:05] We’re not gonna do that, these are signature writers. Yeah

Jennifer Louden: [00:16:08] Exactly 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:09] I think there are- the biggest why bothers though that I hear from my students and that I honestly feel in my heart over and over for every single book are, are two things. I’m not good enough, 

Jennifer Louden: [00:16:24] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:25] And who is going to care. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:16:28] Yes. And those are actually amazingly positive questions to ask when you connect them to your desire and to a growth mindset.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:38] Talk to me about that. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:16:40] Well, okay, because when you’re asking him the way that you and I have asked him and everyone else, at some point in your life, again, you think you know the answer, I’m not good enough. Well, maybe you’re not good enough yet, but why couldn’t you become my friend when I wrote my first book Goldman’s cover, my editor will tell you, you could call her up and she will say, Jennifer couldn’t write. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t spell. I’m dyslexic. I have serious learning disabilities. It didn’t stop me. Right? And then I had to keep learning to write. I think that’s like when I learn to write. I’ve been making my living as a writer for nearly 30 years, and how much time would I have saved myself if I hadn’t felt ashamed about that? This is a fixed thing that can change. Of course you can learn and grow, but why do you want to learn and grow? Do you want to learn and grow because you love language? Great. Go for it. My friend will come over here when I’m done and we’re going to sit on the front porch of social distancing of eight feet away. She loves lang – she’s an amazing natural writer. She loves language. She loves description. She writes to go into our alternative worlds. Great, that would not motivate me. That is not a desire of mine. I like to read it, but I don’t want to – I’m not motivated to create that. Are you motivated to create incredible suspense? Are you motivated to, you know what, what is your desire and then how do you break it down where you can actually learn it and practice it? Why couldn’t you? If people can learn to play tennis or golf or sing opera, you can learn to do this. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:12] Yeah

Jennifer Louden: [00:18:13] Why should people care? Well of course, you have to ask why should people care.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:17] Yeah.

Jennifer Louden: [00:18:19] But why do you think you know the answer is no? They won’t care. That is absolute silliness! 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:26] It comes out of fear though, right? I mean, fear is at the, at the root of all of this, when we think that people won’t care because we’re talking about it or because we can’t. For me, I feel like everything comes down to fear and love. And fear is oftentimes the opposite of love. And, and when I’m stalling on something, or when I see students styling, I like to ask what portion of fear, where is fear in this? Where is that fear sitting? And with your book, I just think you’ve done such a good job of breaking down some of these ways to get into, Why bother? Why, why should I do this? How do I do it? And if you don’t mind, I would love you to tease a little bit of about the six session- sections. This will, hopefully, this will not prevent anyone from buying it. You will make them need to go buy the book, Why Bother? But you have leave behind ease and settle desire become by doing. Can you say a few words about leave behind? What do you mean by leave behind? 

Jennifer Louden: [00:19:23] Okay. Well, we just talked about two stories that you writers have to leave behind. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:27] Yeah. Yeah. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:19:28] You have to. And I’m not saying it’s permanent or immediate or magical, like, Oh, if I could do that for you, baby. But it is actually, you have to actually say, what if I didn’t hold onto that so tightly? Because we hold on these beliefs stories about where it’s too late, I don’t have the talent, nobody will care, because they keep us defended. They keep us defended. Just like we wanted to stay defended when something was going to eat us. It serves the same process in our brains and purpose. Excuse me. So leaving behind is beginning to go, what, what about my present? Am I selling out? Am I blocking? Am I giving up on because I’m holding onto that, that, that I had or that that I think I can’t have or I’m not capable of? And just getting a little bit of help. That’s the first step. The second step is ease in and really it’s some different tools to begin to get a connection to desire again. It’s just beginning to warm up a little bit. So one of them, for example, is I matter. And I think this is a huge part of what you’re talking about, that we need to do as writers. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:43] Yes and honestly, Jen, you are so, this is one of your super powers, is helping people believe I matter. So talk a little bit more about that.

Jennifer Louden: [00:20:52] You know, at its core when we decide not to think we know the answer to our false why bother questions, we’re making an act of sovereignty and agency. When we believe that there’s, nobody’s going to care. We’re saying, I’m getting my, my chance to get people to care about my writing away. I’m giving it away to They, capital T, right. Wherever they are. I used to do that. I used to say I’m not a real writer. I write self-help. I’m not, the New York times will never review me, so I’m not a real writer. Oh my God. Talking about giving away my agency, I matter. And then, then I don’t have to actually do the work of learning to write better, of developing my ideas of saying, here’s what I think. Here’s what you think. Not agree with me. Oh my god, what if you don’t agree with me?

Rachael Herron: [00:21:48] That is why I, I honest, I, I think I only learned this in the last, I’m only realized just in the last few years, but the reason I spent seven years not writing before I really, really, you know, after I got my degree and just couldn’t write was because it was so important to me and I was worried that the one thing that was most important to me

Jennifer Louden: [00:22:05] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:06] I would say, left. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:22:07] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:21:08] If I really tried it, I never could have verbalized that.

Jennifer Louden: [00:22:10] So here, I know we’re doing the steps, but I just, I want to respond to that if I can

Rachael Herron: [00:21:15] Yeah

Jennifer Louden: [00:22:16] Freeze it for a second step there, everybody for a second. And have really been experiencing a bit of a cluster you know what, around this book launch, because it’s happening in a pandemic. And by the way, if one more person tells me it’s the perfect book for a pandemic, I may have to scream, which is a perfect book for a pandemic, requires people to know that it exists. Like, you know, it’s very, very loud out there right now with the geo and chief. And so I got really depressed. And really disappointed and really frozen because I’ve had to cancel my book tour because all of these things, I was planning all the media attention I thought I would get none of it. Zero, it’s nothing we were doing. Meeting in my email list hasn’t been responsive in terms of sales. I was heartbroken and pissed and then I had to take my own advice, which is comes to your being stuck for seven years, is that care in that I put into this book, that’s my desire. Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody can take away that I showed up over and over again for all those years until I squeeze this out of myself.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:22] Wow

Jennifer Louden: [00:23:23] Nobody can take that away from me. And if nobody reads the book in the numbers that I hope, I’ll be disappointed and sad, but that doesn’t change that I did the work and I showed up. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:34] And the product exists in the form that it does in this cordless way that is going to continue. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:23:41] Exactly, It’s not a loaf of bread. As I say, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:43] It-it’s not all that. I didn’t read your women’s comfort books, you know, took years after it was 

Jennifer Louden: [00:23:50] Yeah it’s still in print that book, 1992 I still get these little royalty checks. I get like these $400 royalty checks 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:55] Yes!

Jennifer Louden: [00:23:56] Every time I’m like, Oh, that’s so adorable. Anyway, back to the steps. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:00] Okay. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:24:01] The next one is settle.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:02] Settle. Yeah.

Jennifer Louden: [00:24:04] And not settled for, but settled down. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:07] I love this.

Jennifer Louden: [00:24:08] You know, we just can look at your life and you can, how many days can go by and you feel like, I was, all I spent those days doing was being distracted was, was, was this news alerts coming across my phone or my computer or somebody texting me and when was the last time I settled and calm my nervous system and really just let myself be the discipline of being. And there’s nothing that you get out of this. It’s not because, Oh, and then you’re going to be elated or enlightened, or then you’re going to know what’s next. But without it, you can’t get your ball on. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:42] Yes

Jennifer Louden: [00:24:43] So, you know, it’s almost like negative space in a painting. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:46] Yeah. Oh, what a beautiful way to put it. It’s not something that people notice, but it has to be there. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:24:52] It has to be there.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:53] Yeah. I talk a lot about meditation to everyone, and you know, is that, is that how you get your settle on? 

Jennifer Louden: [00:25:00] You know, I have had an on and off meditation practice since I was very young. I’ve had, I had a dedicated Austin practice for a long time. A lot of times now, believe it or not, I do it when I’m running.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:14] Yeah, totally, totally. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:25:15] Or I’ll run up this trail, which we’re not going up right now because it’s too narrow and you can’t get away from people. And I’ll do the half at the halfway mark there off the trail a -ways is a rock that no one can see me on, and I’ll go and sit there. That’s what one of my favorite settle places. I really, really am craving that time right now. And it’s even though we have a whole house with just the two of us and the dog, it all feels like home space and workspace, you know? 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:42] Yeah

Jennifer Louden: [00:25:43] So I really, I’m really missing that now. I often seem like I need to get away to find it, but I definitely found it in meditation, Yoga and hydra. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:51] Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I’m going to regret, I’m going to regret admitting this, but the other day I was out in the backyard picking up dog poop. I turned it into an Asana. I’m just like, what does it feel like when I stretch my arm this way and I crouch? 

Jennifer Louden: [00:26:06] I love it

Rachael Herron: [00:26:07] It was really beautiful. It was the best time I’ve ever had.

Jennifer Louden: [00:26:10] I can do it. I can settle dancing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:13] Yes, yes. Okay. What about desire? 

Jennifer Louden: [00:26:16] Desire is really the core idea of the book, and the subtitle is discovered the desire for what’s next, and it’s almost as if there needs to be a – it’s, it’s almost a coding, you know? It’s almost, it’s where our minds go is what’s, okay, great. Tell me what’s next. Tell me how I’m going to care about my writing. Tell me how I’m going to sell a lot of books. That’s not what it’s about. When we find ourselves in whatever flavor or intensity of why bother, we’re in, what we need is a relationship, a new, fresh innocent, trusting relationship with our desire. It is not about figuring out what’s next. It is about discovering the desire for what’s next. So this is really the core of the book. What is it that you will have about writing? What is it that you desire about writing? There’s probably a stickiness and a heat to it and a feeling that you, like you, kind of touch it and then it gets away from that desire. Can you let the energy flow? Can you work through some of your fears and restrictions and stories about why it’s not okay? Because we all have those, especially women, right? The Juno create Christian culture has told us that, “Hey man, we’re the root of all evil” the women’s desire is the root of all evil. So it is so common for women that I’ve worked with for all these years to say, I don’t want anything. I don’t know what I want. I’m okay with want though, I mean, they won’t even say that. They won’t even say it’s not okay to want. I don’t want anything. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:40] I don’t think they know it. A lot of times. It’s something they have to learn

Jennifer Louden: [00:27:43] Absolutely. Absolutely. You have to learn to have a relationship with desire and even see how all these things fit together, right? And then after desires become by doing, it’s not figured out. It’s not like a plan. It’s not a, you know, start to have experiments, start to expand your emotional immune system and start to see that it’s safe to desire and taste it, and, and, and take action on it in small ways. And then the last one is be seen, which is a huge one for writers, right? It’s huge. Can I believe that because we’re social creatures that we cannot continue to get our bother on, if we don’t share it in some way

Rachael Herron: [00:28:21] Yeah, 

Jennifer Louden: [00:28:23] And I believe that about writing. I believe writing needs to be shared. When people come to me and say, I’m writing for myself, I always get a little like, oh really?

Rachael Herron: [00:28:31] I actually, I’ve never seen anybody stick to it. They say it and they believe it. After, after, after it’s written and revised, then comes that expansion into some people can’t get past that thought until it’s revised, 

Jennifer Louden: [00:28:44] You’re so, right. Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen so many women. I’ve seen so many people do this, 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:50] But I also never argue with them. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:28:51] Oh yeah, I was totally fine. You want to write just for yourself, great! But then I have this concept and when I teach you under stretch to connect, to like, well, just imagine that you’re stretching for someone else to understand. They wouldn’t actually know what your dog looks like. So you don’t have to bring us in a little bit more, but just for you, nobody else, never going to read it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:12] That’s really awesome. Okay, so what is, where do you get that spark every day to continue doing this work? 

Jennifer Louden: [00:29:21] You know, some days I don’t. Some days I get it from toast, 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:28] From toast today

Jennifer Louden: [00:29:30] We’re singlehandedly keeping the bakery in our neighborhood for snacks. I’m like, okay. My rule was the day the bread came in the house I would have a feast. Now it’s like the rule is three times a day. Welcome, Covid-19 So, you know, for me the big issue right now is two things. I got really burned out at the end of last year. I worked really hard last year to make the money to pay for this book because you don’t know, when you look at it, but it’s actually self-published. It’s called a bespoke come up with it. So they act like a publisher. They pack like a publisher. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:12] The hybrid model, yeah.

Jennifer Louden: [00:30:13] No, they’re not a hybrid model. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:14] Not Hybrid? Okay.

Jennifer Louden: [00:30:15] No. They’re really like, you pay the bills, they have a great, they get distribution. I mean, it looks exactly like a book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:22] That’s what you need it’s for the distribution.

Jennifer Louden: [00:30:24] Yeah, so it looks exactly like a book. It was exactly the same process out of all the big five and everybody, else except, I pay the bills. So that was scary. It’s been a shit ton of money and so I worked really hard last year to make most of that because I knew, you know, this is a gamble. This is a financial gamble I’m taking, and we’ll see if it pays off or not. Stay tuned. So there’s still some of it that I have this year, unfortunately, which is like, it was all going to be fine. And 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:53] Yeah, yeah. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:30:54] So I got really burned out in the last year. I took a few weeks off. I thought I was better, but it’s really hard for me to put myself out there. It’s hard to be bugging people to share about the book, bugging people to have me on their podcast. No, all of this, it’s really draining. So right before the pandemic I was kinda like I’m really burned out again. So I’m having to really sink into what do I want promoting this book to look like? What are, what do I desire? What do I do? So I’m having to walk my own talk and, so that looks like not sitting here in front of the computer too much. It looks like not, it’s a big unknown right now, but I’m listening really closely. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:38] I really have a very firm belief that this book matters. And this book was meant to be out there, and this is the book that people have been looking for, and there are many books that people are looking for, but this is the one that I have been looking for. You know?

Jennifer Louden: [00:31:50] Oh, thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:31:51] It happened to write it for me, so thank you

Jennifer Louden: [00:31:53] Thank you. You’re so welcome. I still, I do in mind. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:38] It is available everywhere. It’s called, Why bother? What’s the subtitle again? I forgot again. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:32:01] Discover the desire for what’s next. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:04] Oh, and everybody just go grab it. Honestly, it is such a treat and a joy to talk to you, and I just want to thank you again for being, you know, you’re, you’re this like spiritual mentor that you don’t know, you know, we don’t know each other well, we’ve talked a couple of times. But just I hope that you know that when you send things out there are people like me, like “Oh boy, oh boy.”

Jennifer Louden: [00:32:25] That’s so, you know how important that is to tell another writer. So thank you so much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:30] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:32:32] Oh no, thank you 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:33] Alright. Hang in there. Have a lot more bread. That sounds wonderful and everything to you may have fly from the shelves. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:32:41] Thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:32:42]. Bye, Jen. 

Jennifer Louden: [00:32:44] Bye Rachael. 

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.

Rachael Says Write! JOIN HERE!

90 Days to Done

90 Day Revision

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: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron, and this is a bonus episode brought to you directly by my $5 Patreons. If you’d like me to be your mini coach for less than a large mocha Frappuccino, you can join too at www.patreon.com/rachael

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #177 of “How do you Write?” This is a mini episode, so no interviewee, just me talking about some stuff right here. I’ve got a couple of questions to answer and I’m very excited to do that. 

[00:00:31] First of all, I must say that revision is divine and I rest in that divinity. I’m loving it so much. The book basically is done with the big major revision. I always leave the very, very last scene or the epilogue to write later, and I will probably write that tomorrow and it’s not due until next Wednesday. So then I’ve got another four or five days to play with some passes at this revision and that was actually one of the things that a bunch of you asked, said that you would like to hear a little bit more about. So I’m going to talk about that right now, and then we’ll go into a couple of other things. 

[00:01:18] But for me, so revision when I’m talking about it, revision is a scary word, and you know that, you’ve heard that, you feel that. If you have a book or if you’re in the middle of writing a book and you’ve never done revision, it feels terrifying. How can you take a book apart and put it back together again? How can you even see what is wrong with the book? Because it’s hard dizzy when you’re inside the middle of the book. So for actual details on how to do the first big, take apart put back together revision, there’s a whole episode for you, my friends, How Do You Write episode number 108; it’s the audio chapter from Fast Draft Your Memoir, it’s everything I know about revision, put together in a very, very small, tight space. So I won’t go into that here, but, what I do for a book like this that is contracted, so I have an editor already. I don’t have to go find one and hire one, like I would if I were self-publishing this. This one is contracted to Penguin Dutton and my editor is going to read it and she’s going to help me with it. So I do not have to pass to her, perfect, polished, ready for publication draft. And here’s why, I couldn’t write it. I could not write that. No one has laid eyes on this manuscript. Except me, no one. And not one single one of us, no matter how many revisions we do on a book, we cannot see our failures, our flaws, the places where we dropped the narrative where the story doesn’t make sense, where the character acts completely out of their character. We can’t see it because we built it. We will never be able to see that. We must have editors to help us. 

[00:03:05] So I’ve done my first big pull apart-put back together draft, we called that the make sense draft. That’s the biggest, hardest draft and now I want to talk to you a little bit about the passes that I’m going to do before I send it to her and I could do passes usually throughout a whole book, you know, in a couple of hours for each pass.  I will also do a bigger pass, before I sent it to her also, which is really looking at each scene to see if I can make it cleaner, sharper, crisper, more beautiful, more lyrical. I can clean up some of the language. I don’t want to make a totally perfect, like I said, because she may come back to me and say, wow, that entire story, that subplot needs to be lifted out. It doesn’t work at all in this book. And that would be hard for me to do if I loved every single scene. I want to leave a little bit of room for my editor to do her job. That’s what she loves to do. So it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be as good as I can get it at this point. 

[00:04:07] So, the little passes that are going to do, not that lyrical pass, but the little passes I’m going to do, they really depend on the book and what the book needs. So I’ve been keeping track of all my post-it’s as I go, you know me and post its. I have a page right here in my book. These- if you’re watching me on the video, it’s probably 10, 14 post-it’s that have not been solved with the make sense draft. They are things that I need to go back through another full pass and make sure is in there. Like this is a big one, she needs to doubt herself as a mother because of her own mom. I know that my main character needs to doubt herself as a mother because of the damage her own mom inflicted on her. I know that in my heart, that’s where her character motivation is. I also know as a writer, I have not seeded that in enough. I need to go drop a couple of more instances. It might just be, four to eight sentences that I add throughout the book. Maybe 12 sentences, maybe a couple of paragraphs. It doesn’t need to be much, but it has to be in there for this book to make sense. So as I’m doing revision, the big make sense revision, I won’t always go back actually, I usually never do, go back and fix things as I think of them, that are in the past in the book, I put a post-it and then I’m going to fix it. So that’s the past is fixing all of these post-its, and then I keep another little tiny pile of post-its, which are for the fast passes. These are things I don’t worry about at all in the first draft. My main character for this book, Jillian, she’s very helpful. That is a strength of hers, and it is also her flaw. She believes that she could only be loved if she is helpful. She’s helping, and so you know those people. I’ve been that person. It’s super annoying. Those people are awful. So she’s going to eight- every single chapter is going to begin with a helpful text that she has sent someone helping them. I haven’t written any of those texts. Those are all going to be written in about an hour. I’ll write a text for each chapter, I’ll kind of link it to the chapter somehow she’s sending them to her friends, to her patients, to whatever. I’ll figure that out. 

[00:06:14] I have one called settings pass. I just hate settings. So I do it in one fell swoop, I’ll take an hour and a half to go into each scene and make sure I have at least a couple of three sentences describing where they are. I get in as late as I can with that, and I get out as early as I can. I do as little as possible. I’m not a visual person. If I tried to force it, it reads as force, but we really need to know where they are and what it looks like around them. So I’ll do that altogether. Here’s a- here’s a more complex, post-it, but just cause it’s got a lot of words on it. It says add visceral to others. So I’m pretty good when I’m writing, I know this about myself, that when a character is feeling something, I give them a visceral feeling inside the body, which shows their emotion in a much deeper and more resonant way than saying she felt sad or she felt scared. I don’t want to say she feels scared. I want to say that, her hands get clammy and there’s ice in her veins, but I’m going to say it in a more creative way than just pulling it out of my head right now. But this is actually something different. I know I do that on a first draft very well. I do it in the second draft pretty well. I add those things, but what I don’t ever do is, sometimes other characters that our main character is watching, will be having emotions and we can clue our readers in by giving them physical act, physical motions that give clues to those characters.

[00:07:49] Internal emotions. I love, you’ve heard me talk about this before, I love the Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becky something. Go buy it. It gives you all of these things, and we don’t copy it word for word. It’s not a cheat, but you lift out, you go, Oh right. People do- I’m doing it on the camera, people do put their fingers on their chins or near their mouth while they’re thinking, right. I’m going to show that, and my reader will understand that that character, that my main character is looking at is pensive, is thinking, so that’s a pass I’m going to add a few of those. They’ll have to do a lot of that. I’m going to, here’s, here’s a pass as much like the setting pass, this is a person description pass. I just need to make sure that every single person in the book is described in two or three very clear and unique sentences. What they look like, not brown hair, blue eyes, and nobody’s going to remember that, nobody cares. But, what does their body look like? How do they hold themselves? What kind of clothes do they always wear or do they, does their perfume reach the room six feet before they do those kinds of things? So that when the reader reads that person later, they will remember something very big and complex about them and kind of gives them a short hand to know this character. Haven’t edit, any of that yet. That’ll take an hour. This’ll take 15 minutes. I just need to change the cars, they own two nice cars because the only nice car I know in my head is like Mercedes and Cadillac. I don’t have anything else and these people are rich, so I need to figure that out. Those are a couple of the little passes that I will do next week before I send this to my editor. 

[00:09:28] So what else did I want to tell you about that? Oh yeah! So Mariah, here’s a question, is awesome. I had tweeted last week, about skeleton-ing scenes. Sometimes when I’m writing a first draft, I will skeleton a scene, sometimes when I’m writing this, when I’m doing the revision, I’ll skeleton a scene if I am not quite in the feeling of writing it out. The thing I use skeletons, and I’ll explain that what that means, the thing I use skeletons for most is when I sit down to write a scene from scratch, first draft, I skeleton it out first. I just put a few beats of what’s going to come in that scene. Kind of like my, my glimpse into it. So this is what Mariah says. That’s- she’s talking about the tweet that was so inspiring. You mean I’m allowed to do that? Just plunk down on words like physical sensation here and move on. I’d love it if you could talk about this process in the mini episode. Since now I realize I don’t have a clue about what it means in practice when you say, write a bad draft. I really hit me morale. I’m always talking about writing a crappy first draft and I don’t show what I mean. So I really appreciate you asking this. She goes on seeing that one tweet makes me think it’s not so much writing the ugly wrong words, as rapidly putting down the first incomplete glimpses into all the scenes. Sort of like very rough storyboards or something. But tell me more about it. Exactly, Mariah. Except I will add that I also write scenes with the wrong ugly words that are just awkward and fast and repeat the same words 12 different times. Like I have those scenes also, but what I do when I sit down to write, a first draft of a scene, I skeleton it out. And what I mean by that, I’m just going to read you one that I shared with my students in the 90 Days class. 

[00:11:24] This is a whole scene right here. It’s told with a first person narrator; I took a nap. Maggie comes by. I’m really good at the internet. I just finished baking brownies. What do you want? Someday I want Isabella to know me and my daughter. Then you’d better make friends with Lucy. In Lucy’s kitchen. Talk about the gifts and her offense at them. Back home house is ransacked. That makes sense to nobody but me, but in it, I know exactly all of the beats of action that I want to happen in there. And I understand implicitly the emotion underneath them. If I didn’t understand the emotion, I would leave myself a couple of clues as to that. That scene fleshed out, will probably be, I mean, I think it turned out to be, I thought it was going to be about 2000 words. I think it turned into more like 2,500 words, but that was the whole skeleton of the scene. If I skeleton it out before I first draft, I am much faster at writing that first draft scene. I got that tip from my name doppelganger, Rachael Aaron, grew up to 2K to 10K. That was her biggest tip that helped me. 

[00:12:33] However, sometimes, and this is kind of what I’ve been referencing, is that I get to a scene and I skeleton it and I’m just not sure, I’m just not sure. I feel it. Maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m fighting a migraine. Maybe I can’t quite bear the emotion that is in there and I’ll make the decision to go onto the next scene. Leaving that skeleton in place, knowing that either I’m going to expand it in my first big revision or I’m going to move it or take it out. Oftentimes when I get to the very end of a book, like this particular book, I had not written the very last scene. I had just skeleton it out because I couldn’t bear to not be done with that book. I skeleton it out and then I wrote the end and then I took the weekend off. Because that’s what I needed to do, emotionally, skeleton-ing really; I know that’s not a verb, but it should be. It really helps take care of me while I’m writing. So those are some of the things that I do in and around my revision process. Yes, write terrible, ugly, crappy first draft words. Also, if you need to cheat to get to the end, it’s not cheating. No one is going to accidentally publish your book with a skeleton draft or write in the middle of it, nobody will understand. It’s not going to run out and just jump up onto the shelves of Barnes and Noble. You’re going to have to deal with that scene at some point. You’re just putting a marker and saying, this is kind of what I feel like it’s going to be, I don’t know. I’m either going to write it now or later. I’m not going to deal with it right now though. So feel free to do that. 

[00:14:05] In my 90 Days to done class, I never tell them about this process at the beginning of 90 days to done, I normally drop it in in the third month when they’re like, I’m never going to finish! I’ve got 24 more scenes, and I’m like, well skeleton 19 of them then. Like write them out, write what you want to have happened in them. It’s still a skeleton draft. It’s still first drafting. It’s just not very complete. You can still make it to the end all the way by doing this. God knows I’ve done that.

[00:14:35] So what else did I want to talk about? Oh, here’s something that is brand new. I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes. Number one, because, my number one got a lot of number one, my number one motivation in my job is to write books that make people feel something that, makes me connect with them. That is my job as a writer. My number two biggest joy is helping writers, write, you know that. That’s why this podcast is on the air. That’s why hopefully you’re listening and I want to do a little bit more of that. And something that I’ve been having fun with in the last few months is, the Tuesday morning write-in, where people come and we write together for two hours, and it’s hella early in on the West coast. We do it five to seven in the morning on Tuesdays. So I’m opening a new slot because I want to open this and make it bigger. I want to make it into an accountability group because I realize that people before they have book contracts or before they, you know, hire their editor and give themselves a, a real true deadline. It’s very hard to finish books. So I was going to try to start this whole business of being like a deadline bitch. And collecting people’s money and giving it to their anti-charities of choice if they don’t finish their books. And then I was like, number one, I’m not a bitch. I can’t be. I’m a cheerleader. That is, it’s in my DNA. I was never a cheerleader in high school ‘cause I was not popular and I was a big nerd.  But I’m a cheerleader in my soul for writers, so I can’t be a deadline bitch. But what I can do is help with accountability.

[00:16:25] So that’s what this is going to be. It’s not going to be the write-ins anymore. It’s going to be called Rachael Says Write. And Rachael Says Write, is going to be a group that, we are going to write Tuesday mornings if you want to, from five to seven Pacific standard time, or 8 to 10:00 AM Eastern standard time. This slot works really well for the Europeans because it’s in the afternoon for them, but I’m opening another slot that might make it more accessible to a lot of you. That’ll be Thursdays, a 4 to 6:00 PM Pacific standard time. So that’s 7 to ni9ne Eastern time. New Zealanders and Australians, this might work for you. So it’s going to be two sessions a week, for two hours each and basically what happens is we get together, you set your goals, you’re going to put them in chat and like we are going to know your goals. This is how it’s changing. If you’re already in this group with me, this is how it’s changing. Each week you will come and put in the chat what you’re working on and what your goal is. I’m working on a novel and I want it finished by November 1st whatever your goal is, I’m working on an essay and I need to be done by Tuesday. You put it in the chat. We all witnessed that and then we work for two hours together on zoom. It sounds weird if you’ve never done it, it is the most heartening, inspiring, lovely thing to do. Sometimes I just sneak over and look at people just to see it, cause they’ve all got their writer faces on. I was killing, I was trying to kill somebody in a manuscript the other morning and I glanced at myself and my face was like in killing mode. It was crazy. But nobody’s looking at you except for me because sometimes I sneak a peek. Nobody’s looking, we’re writing together. You’re working on your document. You got your headphones in. You can hear me when I say it’s time to take a break and you can hear me when we’re done. If you need any kind of writing prompt, I can help you with that too. But what this is really going to be is Rachael Says Write, accountability you show up week after week and we work together. So we actually work together. I am also writing with you. 

[00:18:24] So that’s going to be four hours a week. If you sign up for Rachael Says Write, it’s going to be $39 a month, that’s 16 hours a week. You can be writing with friends, finding your community and actually writing with people. So that’s like two bucks an hour. So I think that’s kind of worth it. I think that if you have any interest in trying this, especially while you might have a little bit more time for writing right now, you might not, Covid might not have, affected you that way. Sorry, my little dog is making lots of noise behind me. But think about that. You can just go to rachaelherron.com/write  for, and then look for on the page rachaelsayswrite and try it out. You can come to two hours a week. You can come to four hours a week and come to every single hour that I offer during the month for the $39. So I don’t know, I think it’s going to be super fun. We’ll give it a shot and I would love it if you came along and try it too. 

[00:19:20] Just to note to people who already signed up for my 90 Days classes starting in May, this will be free to you. This is also a new thing where you can come and write during those 16 hours and you can write on what you’re working in class, that’ll be free to you if you’re in 90 Days Done. 90 Days to Done still has like four slots and, 90 Day Revision has, I think, two or three slots. It’s actually selling out more quickly than 90 Days to Done, first time has done that. You can still join us there. Again, go to rachaelherron.com/write if you’re interested in any of these things.

[00:19:54] Just another tiny little bit of business, I just want to thank new patrons. Katie Forrest, who was on the show last week, got a huge response to her book, Time Management for Writers. Thanks Katie! and new patron, Tenisha Dezrine, thank you. Thank you, Tanisha. And to new patron, Azadey Tataiona. No, wait, I’m going to try that again, Azadey Tataioney, thank you, thank you. Thank you to new and current patrons. It really makes the difference in me being able to sit here and talk to you about these things on the big full interview episodes and also on these mini episodes, which I really love doing. 

[00:20:30] So thank you all! Happy writing. I hope you are getting some of your own work done. Come tell me about it, howdoyouwrite.net or rachaelherron.com or anywhere you can find me. Now I’m going to go collapse ‘cause I’ve spent about nine hours revising today and my brain is toast, but it feels good. It feels god toast. Tasty toast. All right ya’ll, I’ll talk to you soon. 

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.

Katie Forrest is the author of Time Management for Writers, a tried and tested system that introduces the Three Zones of Focus and the ADAPT Framework for Productivity. She is the author of 16 fiction books split across two pen names, and is a fan of cacti, curry and cuddles. She lives in England with her husband, daughter and puppy.

You can connect with Katie at katieforrest.com or join her Facebook group, Time Management for Writers with Katie Forrest.

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.

[00:00:16] Well, hello writers! Welcome to episode #176 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I could not be more pleased that you are here today. How are you? There’s no good answer for that. Now, one thing that I have actually enjoyed seeing is that people have given up saying, fine, good. There’s a little bit more honesty in the world, just like there are fewer showers. There is more honesty. Let’s face it. A lot of us are taking fewer showers. I know I am. You might be too, and a lot of us are saying to the question, how are you? A lot of us are saying, I don’t know. I actually can’t tell. Let me get back to you in a month or so.

[00:00:58] I’m so pleased that you’re here because today I am talking to Katie Forrest. I had already talked to Katie a while back on the show. She was a marvelous interviewee, marvelous guest, and she had this book come out a few months ago called Time Management for Writers, which I loved, and I’ve been meaning to get her on the show for forever and between Coronavirus and deadlines and her life and my life, we just kept missing each other, crossing. We would have plans and then one of us would get sick or the other one would get sick. So it was, but it was fortuitous because that means I had her talking about time management or writers during a global time of crisis. So if you have been struggling to get your writing done, struggling thinking about this, this episode is for you. So I hope you enjoy that. I know that you will. 

[00:01:53] What’s going on around here? This will be a very short intro because I am deep in revision. I did have to ask for an extra week, which I hate doing, but hey, your book is not late. If you have an extension and you meet the extension, you got to ask for it ahead of time. So I asked for a week, I got a week. That means it is due in 12 days from now, which is totally doable. What I really wanted to do was finish this revision and then have time for about four or five very small passes like a day long pass, looking at specific things in the book that I need to fix. And if any of you are interested in hearing what those passes look like, I can do a mini episode on that sometime, so let me know. So I’m deeply focused on that. I’m incredibly happy to be so deep in revision, you know, six to eight to ten hour days of revision leave me exhausted and overjoyed. And here’s why; Cheryl Strayed has a new podcast, can’t remember the name of it, but on her first episode, she talks to her friend and mentor George Saunders and he talks about writing as kind of this ultimate form of meditation, you’re super focused on what is in front of you. You’re taking the time to look at it very carefully, it’s very detailed and you’re paying attention. Your focus is not being broken, and if it is, you gently lead yourself back to the page. And when I am in revision, that is how I am. When I am in a first draft, I am very surface. I’m, I am distracted by everything in every, anything and everything. But when I’m in revision, I love it so much that I go very deep and therefore I come out of like a two hour or three hour writing session before I go back in for another one.

[00:03:40] I come out almost feeling like I have been meditating for that long, so it’s fantastic, can’t say enough about it. It’s great. The only other thing I do want to tell you about is that, I’m recording this on April 10th, 2020 and 90 Days to Done and 90-Day Revision have just opened last night. I let everybody who was on my, pre alert list know, and I let all my current students know that this is open. I have not yet sent this out to my email list. You guys come first. So if you are interested in writing your book in the next 90 days, we start on May 1st and we go through July 31st people get their books done whether it is your first or your 20th book. Write it in 90 days with me, you can go check out all the details on that at rachaelherron.com/90daystodone, 90 is a number, 90 Days to Done, and the 90-Day Revision course, which is kind of a masterclass of a masterclass. That’s when you take your book, whatever, in whatever horrible shape it’s in. Hopefully it’s horrible. Hopefully it was a crappy first draft and we get you to a revised makes sense draft by the end of those 90 days, you can look at that information at rachaelherron.com/revision. Those always sell out super-fast. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have to be honest with you. It’s either going to sell out even faster than normal because of Covid-19 or no one will want to write in the next 90 days, so it won’t tell. I cannot tell you what will happen, I’m in the dark here, but if you are interested in it, go to rachaelherron.com/90daystodone or rachaelherron.com/revision. Yes, those are the links or you can always go to rachaelherron.com/write  I think I have both of the links from there, so that’s available. 

[00:05:36] I also wanted to thank really quickly, new patron, Ellen McCoy Beaty, it is a delight and I hope that you enjoy the essays that you’re going to get now at patreon.com/rachael. And, enough advertising, what you really are here for is to talk about time management for writer in the writers in the time of crisis, and I’ve had too much coffee and I’m talking too fast. Anyway, so enjoy the interview with Katie, I know you will. Let me know what you think of the show at howdoyouwrite.net or anywhere else I can be found on the internet. Take care of yourselves. Be kind to yourselves. Give yourselves forgiveness and love and care, this is a difficult time. We need kindness more than ever. So happy writing to you my friends. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:27] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome back to the show, Katie Forrest. Hi Katie! 

Katie Forrest: [00:06:25] Hi, thanks for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:27] I’m just thrilled to have you. You could not be here at a more, at a better time and let me give you a little bit of a bio, which will speak to what we’re going to talk about today. Katie Forrest is the author of Time Management for Writers, a tried and tested system that introduces the Three Zones of Focus and the ADAPT Framework for Productivity. She is the author of 16 fiction books split across two pen names, and is a fan of cacti, curry and cuddles. She lives in England with her husband, daughter, and puppy. 

Welcome back to the show. So the last time we talked, we were really doing the normal, “how do you write?” format I asked you all the same questions that I ask everybody else and we are throwing that out the window today, because you wrote this wonderful book that I really loved reading, and I read it when you first sent it to me, which was about four or five, four months ago, something like that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:07:22] Yeah, yeah. Perfectly.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:23] So we’ve been trying to get together ever since, but I’m actually, this is what I was saying just off air a second ago. I’m so thrilled that you’re here now that we finally found the time to do this now, because I think never in the time of modern contemporary writers, have we had a time when it is more difficult for writing to get done. I’m currently teaching two 90 day classes and, I just keep saying to them like, distraction is always a real thing. It’s always a struggle. And life and grief and happenings are always a real struggle for writers. But add to that a global pandemic, like there’s so many of us just going, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to handle this. So I kind of wanted you to tell us first a little bit about the book and how you came to it because you and I are kind of time management junkies and then we’ll kind of dive into some of the tips that you might have for us right now. 

Katie Forrest: [00:08:19] Yeah, sure. Thank you. Yeah, so it’s exactly that, total time management junkie. I say in the book, I’ve never met a time management book, where I haven’t fallen in love with, I am just obsessed and I was quite prolific in my first year, especially ever writing fiction. So lots of people were asking me how I did it, and, and what I was finding was there are so many excellent time management books out there, but a lot of creatives tend to imagine that most books are for professionals and executives, so that they’re maybe not kind of jelling with the voice of some of those books that I love. And I thought maybe I could add another voice to the conversation and hopefully help some people with it.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:02] And let’s point out the other thing is that when you read those time management book for, you know, businesses or corporations or stuff like that. You are part of that. You’re also a practicing lawyer, right?

Katie Forrest: [00:09:15] Yes, yes. I have a law firm as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:18] Not even a lawyer, you have a law firm? Yeah.

Katie Forrest: [00:09:20] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:21] And, and one child. So, and a puppy.

Katie Forrest: [00:09:25] Yes!

Rachael Herron: [00:09:26] So, this is, this is, this is my thing. I lead groups of and talk to a lot of I, I don’t think I have any dads right now. I have all mothers in these groups who are coming to me saying like, I have one writer who’s about to finish her book in the 90-day program and she has – no joke, three jobs, three teaching jobs, plus kids. Plus, she’s writing this book in 90 days and she’s really done it. But, but she keeps saying, how, how do I keep this up? How do people balancing those kinds of lives? Because I don’t have that, this is my first time, full time job and I don’t have kids, so I always feel particularly unqualified to speak to this? 

Katie Forrest: [00:10:07] Well, there’s the saying that if you want something done, ask a busy person. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but I think there’s also an element of danger in that because we are kind of worshiping busy-ness in our culture. And I think that’s something that we need to kind of take a stand against and say, actually, that isn’t necessarily something to aim for. So, yeah, it’s great if you’re somebody who likes to be busy and is energized by that and you can kind of handle lots of plates spinning. But you do also have to realize you can’t do everything. I really believe, like I say yes to a lot of things, but I say no to a lot more. There’s plenty of stuff I’m not doing. I’m not cleaning my own house. I’m not washing my own car. You know, various stacks of things that I’m not even trying to do. And I think that is the key. Rarely, like choose the things that are important to you, and you can have two or three or four or however many your number is, but you can’t do everything.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] So talk us about the zones of focus. I’m –

Katie Forrest: [00:11:10] Sure.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] I would love to hear about that again, because I actually liked that, it’s been a bit since I read it, because my brain is a sieve and I get to re-reapply all these things. 

Katie Forrest: [00:11:20] So the zones of focus, I say there are only three things that you should be doing, and they are things that fall within one of the zones of focus. So your mastery zone, your passions zone, or the essential drudgery zone, and, and they’re kind of fairly self-explanatory. The mastery zone is what are you the best out? So what can only you do? The passion zone is this is what lights me up. This is what I get so excited about, so I don’t want to hand this over to anybody else because this is the stuff that I get out of bed today and the essential drudgery is the boring, routine stuff that we’ve all got to do. But the key with essential drudgery is, it’s essential drudgery. So I talk a lot about if there are people who are keeping really, really perfect, impeccable homes, that’s not essential. So, you know, the essential drudgery is making sure you’ve got clean clothes, but do they really need to be ironed? So yeah, the book kind of brings down each category and takes you through a list of questions to find out what falls into each of your zones. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Could you, if you don’t mind going into the personal a little bit, which I really loved about your book, because you do go very personal in it, which I love. I love a mix of a how to plus a little bit of memoir. That’s just my favorite kind of book. Will you tell us a little bit about your mastery and passion zones and what falls in there? 

Katie Forrest: [00:12:47] Yes. Yeah, and thank you for that. One of my favorite reviews on the book to date is, and I don’t remember who, who wrote this, but somebody said there’s a lot of Katie in this book.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:58] Yes! That’s why I loved it. I get very bored with the very masculine CEO voice of the business and the corporation. I want to know the personal, so thank you for that. That’s a great review. 

Katie Forrest: [00:13:14] So, my master zone, I think what falls into my mastery zone is, is the words, because the words are my voice and if you’re choosing to go straight, then that’s absolutely fine. I’m not against that, but I think for most writers, the actual writing of new words is going to fall into either their mastery or their passions’ zone, or maybe both. So it’s definitely probably more in my mastery zone for my passion zone, because I find sitting down at a computer and writing most new words, a bit of a slog a lot of the time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:48] Yeah, me too.

Katie Forrest: [00:13:49] Yeah, my passion zone, is probably engaging with readers and that’s one thing I would never outsource. I know you can get all of these people who will manage your Facebook groups and things, but I absolutely love being in there and connecting with people. I reply to reader emails, and again, you could get an assistant to do all that but I love that. So yeah, the kind of two of my big things.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:15] It’s so funny when I get emails, I just go on today that said, you know, you probably don’t read this email, but I wanted to write to you. I’m like, are you kidding? I would not let anyone else touch my email. And email is one of my, it’s part of my drudgery, most of it, the essential drudgery and I can’t outsource that, I have an amazing assistant, my friend Ed, and, he can do basically everything for me. But the email to me, the fact that fans connect with us or that readers connect with us is so incredible that we get to respond back. That makes email worth it for me.

Katie Forrest: [00:14:50] Absolutely. And it deepens relationships so much. I remember recently, I had an email from a company and I don’t remember who, and I wouldn’t name them anyway. But the CEO of this company emailed out, but they asked for a personal response. So they said, why are you using this product or service? Hit reply. So, so I can read this. So I did reply, and then I got a response from a different member of staff. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:16] No. I don’t care.

Katie Forrest: [00:15:17] And I replied to him and said, I was opening up to you as a named person, and you’ve actually broken some trust here now because of that. So yeah, I don’t have any issue with assistance of things being involved, but I do think you’ve got to be quite open about huge bonding 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:33] And you have to manage those expectations. If that CEO had said, please reply, one of my trusted staff will respond to you and get me everything that you say that is, you know, then you would have been 100% fine. But it’s managing those expectations. 

Katie Forrest: [00:15:47] Absolutely.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:48] So let’s go to the drudgery. Let’s talk about that in terms of writing, for me, 75% of my email is drudgery and 25% is really thrilling and wonderful, but I only, I can sort through that and see that. Are there any other tasks that you as a writer are able to outsource or not manage, because they are part of drudgery or are you very much a hands on person with your business? 

Katie Forrest: [00:16:19] Yeah, I don’t outsource that much, really with my writing business. I think you can pretty much outsource everything. I’ve, I’ve tried to outsource ad management because that is drudgery to me. But I’ve never really got the results, that have made it worthwhile. So I have stopped doing that, I do have an assistant and she helps me manage my reader group and she interacts in there, she manages my review team. So she’s brilliant at doing those kinds of things but she doesn’t replace me in the group. I’m still going in there and doing that. So yeah, I’m probably not outsourcing as much as I could.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:02] So let’s go to the difficult, difficult part. I have these mostly women saying, how do I get it done right now when I’m you know, everything has been brought in. Like I also don’t clean my house. I have a cleaner that does it and my cleaner can’t come right now. So, you know, these, these added things are kind of piled upon us. Plus, we have the weight of the world. Stress-wise you know, looking at social media or news. What would you say to the, to that person in particularly thinking of who has three jobs, kids and is writing her book for the first time? And she says, where do I find- how, she actually has said like, how do I balance sleep versus writing?

Katie Forrest: [00:17:45] So always choose sleep.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:48] I agree. No one says that so clearly, but yes. 

Katie Forrest: [00:17:53] Yeah. But I think also we are in a time of crisis at the moment and I define a crisis as being something that is usually unexpected and short term or temporary. So there is every towns that the lockdown situation will stop becoming a crisis because it won’t be short term, it will move on to medium term. But I think most people are still very much in the short term, responding a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. And I’ve seen the means going around about how this is the time to learn a second language, and no, absolutely not. This is the time to honker down, make sure you feel safe and stop putting yourself under so much pressure. So that would be the first thing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:35] So important to be said. Yes. 

Katie Forrest: [00:18:40] And then the second thing would be, again, you can’t do it all. So you haven’t gained extra hours in the day. I mean, I think some people have because we’re not working and they’re at home, but I’ve not gained extra hours in my day and I don’t think many people have, so there is no magic here. If you’re still going to choose writing, you’re going to have to say no to something else. And that might be really reducing expectations. So it might be plenty of screen time for children, it might be your house is going to be dirty, whatever it looks like, but you’ve got to kind of define what other priorities of this short term-medium term crisis situation and what do you have to give up to be able to meet that.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:24] Yeah. My house is actually dirty right now because I am on deadline as well. So I am doing that whole prioritization of what can stay and what can go. And right now, cleaning is not part of it. And I love my wife. She’s not the best cleaner in the whole world. She has every other strong, incredible point. 

Okay. So what about goal setting at this point? What about when people are looking to find the space in their days and say they can find, maybe they can find that 30 minutes that they need to do a little bit of writing. What do you think about planning days?

Katie Forrest: [00:20:05] I think it’s really good to see this as a window of time and try to decide what you want to get out of it. I’m thinking in my head versus probably going to be a six-month situation, which is based on nothing at all, but it helps my head. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:21] I kinda love that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:20:22] -Information I’m revealing

Rachael Herron: [00:20:25] Yeah, no, that’s great. 

Katie Forrest: [00:20:26] It helps my head if I can think, what is the time period here, because I’m a planner. So I need to know what is going to be the end date. So I’m thinking six months, what do I want to do if this carries on for six months and then hopefully I’m not going to get to the end of this period and have frittered it away because I was always expecting it to resolve next week. So maybe thinking this is a frame of block or a six-month block, and then deciding what to do with that time might be helpful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:56] And right now we’re specifically speaking about your writing goals, what, what you have as your writing goals in the next three to six months, which is really a great thing to think about. And I like what you’re saying about instead of thinking that now is the time to do everything I’ve always wanted to do, perhaps now is the time to not try to write your next book in four weeks. Because you’re at home. And perhaps you’re one of the people who has a little bit more time. They’re all also people we have to mention that have lost jobs. So yes, they have, they have a lot more time and they have exponentially more stress. That’s not the best time to put any kind of pressure on yourself to be the creative genius you’ve always wanted to be. 

Katie Forrest: [00:21:37] No, absolutely. There is so much anxiety, I’m you know, relatively blessed personally, I’ve got the stress of having to pay for my team’s wages with a business that is not running yet, it’s normal. Healthy everybody I know is healthy. But everybody has got their certain levels of anxiety going on right now. So to imagine that you’re going to have those and yet be more productive than you were before, it’s not going to happen. Just don’t even expect it. You’re setting yourself up for failure and if somehow you turn out to be a person who just blooms in this situation, well that’s a bonus but don’t try to expect it.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:16] I really liked what you said about lowering your expectations. That is something that I talk a lot about in 90 Days to Done, is like the- every first draft, you should lower your expectations to the floor and dig a hole and lower them further. You know, it should be the worst infrastructure you’ve ever written or you’ve ever written of anything. But I think along with lowering expectations in this time, it might be a good time to also increase our, how do I say it? Self-compassion, just self-forgiveness. 

Katie Forrest: [00:22:47] Yeah. Absolutely I love that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:50] So how do you track your days? I think we might’ve talked about this on the- but you know, there’s something in the- are you a bullet journal-er? or are you a…

Katie Forrest: [00:23:00] So I, I’m the girl who’s tried every single planner and 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:03] Me too! The only one I haven’t tried is the passion planner because it’s so expensive. I keep saying, no, no, no. I’m not going to do that one.

Katie Forrest: [00:23:10] I’ve tried the passion planner. I think it was, was it a Kickstarter or something

Rachael Herron: [00:23:13] It was, yes.

Katie Forrest: [00:23:14] –it came out? Yeah. I think I supported, like the very first version of it and it didn’t quite meet my needs. But I’ve, I’ve got stacks of different planners. At the moment, I’m in Hobonichi, which is-

Rachael Herron: [00:23:28] I love Hobonichi

Katie Forrest: [00:23:29] So I’ve got a Hobonichi, and I’m absolutely hoping that it’s got really thin paper, so it’s page a day for the whole year and it’s not super bulky, so yeah. You have to order them from Japan or I do here in England. Anyway, I, I don’t know if you’ve got, you know, US stockists I feel like quite a geek, so I have to order my diary from Japan so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:52] You are!

Katie Forrest: [00:23:53] Even if I was like you know, a stockist in the city nearby, I wouldn’t go and get it from there because

Rachael Herron: [00:23:59] It’s very, very cool to have it come from Japan. I also use Japanese. I use the Midori Traveler’s Journal, and I have recently discovered the narrow, if anybody’s looking at the narrow one, this is just what’s the inside of mine looks like it’s. A page a week and then an empty page and you can buy them with, you know, like for the first half of the year and the second half of the year. But I found they have them as blank and you can fill in the dates. So I just buy a whole stack of them. And then I do a week, a week, a week. But if I go, you know, like, here’s where I was on a retreat and I was just journaling so you can use them kind of like a bullet journal, but it also doesn’t have very much room. So for me, one of the takeaways that I really got from your book time management for writers was not to over plan. And I know that if I can’t, if I can’t fit everything I want to do in this little space, I can’t do it anyway. 

Katie Forrest: [00:24:54] Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:56] So, what else would you like to add to this conversation that might help in today’s time or something that I might not have hit about the book.

Katie Forrest: [00:25:08] I think you’ve hit the important points really well. I think. Well, I would really like people to kind of come away from this conversation where there’s just kindness to themselves because this is just an a completely unprecedented time. So if you feel like you’re making it up every single day, you are and so is everyone else, and just do the best you can. Yeah, I think that’s the most important message. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:35] The kindness to yourself. I, I realized the other night that I believe that everyone is doing the best they can most of the time, like 99.5% of the time. And I realized last night that I believed that, I believe that everyone is doing the best they can, especially if they think they’re not.

Katie Forrest: [00:25:52] Yeah. The ones who are worrying about that. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:55] That means you’re already pushed up to your edge and give yourself that kindness. And I know that I’m a kind of person, I think, I don’t know if you don’t mind answering this, I think people who are obsessed with time management, we might be a little bit more rigid and beat ourselves up a little bit more for not getting everything done that we want to do. Would you say that’s true? 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:12] Yes, definitely.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:14] So then we deserve more kindness? So we have to really think about it as one of our jobs to give ourselves 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:19] Yes, definitely yeah. I’m saying like kindness for all of you guys but not me.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:24] Always, 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:25] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:26] Always. Yeah. Oh, what a wonderful note to leave on. Okay, so tell us where Time Management for Writers can be found, and where you can be found. 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:34] So it’s exclusive on Amazon. So, it’s in Kindle unlimited, so you can grab a free copy if you’ve got a Kindle unlimited membership. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:44] Oh, I didn’t know that, that’s great! 

Katie Forrest: [00:26:46] It’s out in paperback. The workbook, are coming, I’m going to record the audio book myself if I ever get a quiet house, which isn’t looking likely at the moment. But, so yeah, Amazon is the best place. I have a free Facebook group as well, which is Time Management for Writers by Katie Forrest. And I answer questions in there you can kind of, you know, come in there and make a post about your particular situation and the members will kind of give you some advice and I’ll give you some advice and we’ll try and work it all out together. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:18] I am very excited about the audio book that will be coming because your voice is beautiful and I will order it immediately and then I will have your ears, your, your, your voice in my ears. And I love that. 

Katie Forrest: [00:27:26] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:27] I love consuming nonfiction that way and I often like to, if I’ve loved a book, I often like to get the audio book to replay it.

Katie Forrest: [00:27:33] Me too, me too.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:35] Katie, it has been wonderful to talk to you and it couldn’t be more timely, so thank you, thank you so much.

Katie Forrest: [00:27:41] Oh, thank you, Rachael. 

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.

Transcript

Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron, and this is a bonus episode brought to you directly by my $5 Patreons. If you’d like me to be your mini coach for less than a large mocha Frappuccino, you can join too at www.patreon.com/rachael

[00:00:15] Well, hello writers! Welcome to episode #175 of “How do you Write?” So glad that you’re here with me today. I’m sorry that I missed a week last week. It’s just been a rough time all around, hasn’t it? I’ve been fighting some brain stuff and some medical stuff. So I am here today to talk to you a little bit more about going easy on ourselves in these times. That does not mean letting go of creativity and I just wanted to reassure you that if you are feeling shell-shocked, if you are really having a hard time getting to the page, that is okay. You’re not doing anything wrong. I just sent out a Patreon essay, a couple of days ago and it was about using creativity in very small pieces where we can fit them into our lives to increase and better our, our mental health. I realized this a long time ago when I was battling some depression, the stories in the Patreon essay, one of the stories in there, and basically I ended up painting a small coffee table. I painted the top blue. I didn’t even paint the legs. I just painted the top blue. It was the very least I could do. And I- I did it because I can’t remember how I made myself do it really. But when I was doing it, as the paint was going onto the top of the table, I started feeling better and it was such a momentous occasion, me noticing that putting blue paint on a correctly thrift store table actually made me feel better for a little while, was something that affects my every day now. Putting blue paint on a crappy table is not going to fix depression. There are a lot of things that you have to do if you’re depressed and isn’t that the worst thing ever, that you have to do things while you’re depressed. That’s the hard part. 

[00:02:20] So of course, you know, being creative will not fix depression. We need to talk about therapy. We need to talk about perhaps medication. If you’re a person for whom that works, which I am, but being creative and bringing it into our lives and letting it out in really little ways, is helping me a great deal right now. And when I say little ways, I mean little ways. I don’t mean working on your Magnum Opus. I mean, preparing beans in a brand new way. Cooking that broccoli, a little bit differently. Getting out an old knitting project that you’ve neglected for years. Deciding to paint the garage, things that we can do at home, things that might only took, take a couple of minutes to do the increase. How we feel about the world around us in a really positive way. So if you’d like that essay for just a buck, you can go get that over at www.patreon.com/rachael R A C H A E L, that helped me to write because I have been looking to find my own inner creativity. In the essay I talk, I talk about picking up the guitar, which if you’re on the video, you can kind of see behind me.

[00:03:35] Writing books is my job, and I just do my job. I just go to work. But I really like to have creative outlets and that are not writing, that are not writing, that are total totally different from and feel different. So the guitar has been great for me right now that has been helping me. So I just wanna encourage you to think about little ways that you can help yourself by doing something maybe a tiny bit fun, even if it is just a 5-minute break for fun. Perhaps you were having a fantastic time, in your house. Doing all the things, and I hope that you are, but if you’re struggling just a little bit, try a little five minute, make something that didn’t exist before, or put things together in a way that only you can compile them, curate them, collage them. I don’t care, do something like that. 

[00:04:25] Moving forward, today’s episode is a little mini episode because honestly, I have been too busy on deadline. And when I’m not busy on deadline I’m busy in my bed watching Real Housewives, cause it’s, it’s hard out there, to even go out and get podcast guests. I have a couple in the can for the later when their books come out. But this is just going to be a mini episode and a reminder of what a mini episode is. It is me answering questions that you all have sent to me. If you are a Patron at the level of $5 or more, you get to ask me absolutely anything you want. I am at the end of my questions here, people. So I am going to read my last one in the can right now and that’s from Alex W. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Next week I will either have a guest or we’ll do something from one of my books, but I want to encourage you, if you have questions about any part of creativity or writing or really anything else, I’m very qualified to speak about, cadre pre-mix. Little bit qualified to talk about Tarot. I’m quite qualified to talk about how cute my dogs are. So just, you know, ask me anything and that’s what we’ll do. 

[00:05:41] But let’s get to Alex’s excellent question right now that has been sitting here for a long time. Sorry, Alex. But it was, it’s a nice big long one. So I wanted to spend time on it. Alex says, “I’m plotting a story out, and I had a question about romance series in particular; How to extend the story beyond one book and still keep it in the romance genre? I know that it can be done successfully by starting in one book with two characters and then with the next book, making two supporting characters into the main characters of that book. So the romance series might follow the romances of a family of siblings, all the firefighters in a firehouse, et cetera. But what if you want to stick with this same main characters through a trilogy or longer, can the first book end in a happily for now, they’re dating, yay. And then the second book increases the commitment, they’re getting married, and then the third book increases the intimacy. Perhaps they’re having a baby adopting a kid or building a house together. Would that satisfy reader expectations for the genre or would it be out on a limb? Are there other ways of doing it? I’ve seen several examples of series with romance subplots that extend the romantic tension, particularly a romantic triangle over several books, but I’m not familiar with any books or movies with romance main plot that do this successfully. Is this a thing in romance? Are there any success examples of successful romance? Main plot series that keeps the focus on the two or three main characters.”

[00:07:09] This is such a great answer- a question. I wish that I had a great answer for you. It is not something that we generally see on a regular basis within romance itself as a category. It does exist. I’m not that well educated about it and I’m hoping that listeners will come over to www.howdoyouwrite.net and maybe leave you a few better answers at, as to where you could find that one great way to find more of that would be writing to the ripped bodice. If you look up their website. I bet they would be happy to answer that and perhaps sell you, one or two of those kinds of books in which they exist. The ones that are coming to mind for me, really aren’t romance, they are more mystery/suspense. They are the JD Robb, In Death Series. There’s a lot of, that couple staying together. Even Eve and Roarke, I believe his name is. It’s been 15 years since I read one of those, but those are great. She’s still going with that couple. But there is other tension they are solving things in the future, right? So, they’ve got other bad guys. Romance itself is hard to write because our really powerful love interests need to be each other’s antagonists in a very real way, but still be good enough to, for your reader to believe that they can be forever together. So, it’s a lot easier when you have an exterior antagonist. What’s her name? The funny, funny one. Oh, you know, Stephanie Plum, the Stephanie Plum books. She has a romantic triangle like you mentioned, and she’s always trying to figure out which guys who’s gonna go forward at the end of the book, and it changes from book to book. I kind of thought that got a little old in my way. I actually preferred the even workbooks where we are following one couple through this kind of intensifying relationship and it happens just like you’re talking about. It gets more intense. The thing to think about with trilogies or more is you’re doing exactly the right thing when you talked about upping the stakes as a book goes on, oftentimes in fantasy or science fiction, the first book is about the character learning about herself and really saving herself. The second book is about her helping to save her community. And the third book in a trilogy is often hers helping to save the world that’s simplified, but it is a trope that we see over series. So what would that look like in a romance for you? How do our main characters save themselves with each other’s help? Probably. In the next book, how do they move apart but still save their community, perhaps and then in the third book, they might not be saving the world if this is a contemporary romance, but what else, can really, really push them apart really far apart. I like your ideas of having a kid, adopting a kid, building a house. Those things would push people really far apart. How do you bring them back together? The challenge in romance is always to have that bringing back together, be new and unique. You don’t want them to solve each other’s heartaches and burdens the same way every time, which to be honest, is what people in long-term relationships do a lot. I have been married 14 years as of yesterday, and, I kind of know the process of helping my wife through her hard times and she knows the process of helping me through hard times. God knows something could change tomorrow and we’ll have to help each other out as something that we have no idea how to handle. But when we break apart, we break apart in a really- our, our way, and we know that way, and then we get to gather again in our way. So I find that really interesting, but to deepen it and broaden it and make it bigger, for your books as they go on, will be a challenge. And also, I think you can absolutely do it and it can be riveting.

[00:11:26] So I would encourage people who know more about some books that do this than I do, come over to www.howdoyouwrite.net leave Alex a comment. Alex, I also wanted to mention the, don’t laugh. The Ethan Hawke slash what’s her name? Vehicles before sunrise, before sunset, and before midnight, I think is the last one. If you have not seen those, if any listener has not seen those basically two kids meet in Europe, they’re my age. They’re super gen X, so I really love these movies. But they meet in, you know, while they’re traveling, backpacking around Europe. And the first movie is about them talking until dawn and kind of falling in love, and then we see them again 10 years later in the next movie, and again, 10 years after that – ish, in the third movie, and it’s always the same two characters, and it’s still their relationship that these stories are about what- I’m getting goosebumps I want to watch all three of them all over again. I think they’re beautiful and they’re beautifully, beautifully done. And they look at relationships from totally different angles as people are becoming themselves and changing. So I would recommend that. I hope that helps. 

[00:12:37] Please, people who are in the Patreon group, $5 and above send me questions to answer. I really love doing these little mini episodes and thanks for forgiving me for not being around last week ‘cause I was not around for anybody. I was struggling with migraine and some tummy stuff and some body stuff and definitely some mental can’t-get-out-of-bed stuff. So the world’s going to hell, which is, you know, a phase, and it goes away an hour later, we’re riding these waves. I saw somebody call it the dip, earlier this week where she’s writing, writing, writing, doing her work, doing her work. Everything’s okay. She’s holding it together, and then she hits the dip and the dip means everything is bad, everything is wrong, we’re all doomed. And just knowing that that’s part of the dip and then getting out of it and doing what we do every day, taking care of our families and loving each other the best we can and being as kind as humanly possible, sharing resources and information and excitement and hope and joy, and also sharing our fears and anxieties. All of that stuff are these waves that we are riding right now. So, welcome to your surfing lesson, you’ll be surfing with me. Definitely a person who is not good at surfing, but when this is a little bit lessened, when we can go out again and do things, I’m going to take surfing lessons because I’ve always said I would, I learned how to swim in order to take surfing lessons and it’s ticking me off right now that I can’t just go and learn.

[00:14:17] So, yeah, that’s my, that’s my goal for when things calm down a bit in this world.  I would like to thank really quickly new Patrons, Clarence Chroma. Hello, Clarence! I know why you signed up. You were in a class of mine, and I told you to, you didn’t need to pay. You can always unpay now, but, thank you. So nice that you’re there. Sasha White. Hello, Sasha. May Marrow, pretty name and Leah Stevenson. Hi, Leah! So, thanks to those new patrons. Thank you to everyone who supports me on www.patreon.com/rachael.  Right now, that is giving me some peace of mind. I know that I have Patreon as a buffer, we’re all really scared about finances as we move forward. Most of us are, a lot of us are. Perhaps you weren’t, and I hope you’re not. But those of us who live as a freelance writer’s, definitely, definitely worried, so Patreon is something that really helps me sleep better at night, and I thank all of you for that. So I hope that you will get a little bit of writing done, and if it’s not writing, that feeds your creative soul right now, I hope you do something else that feeds you, even if it’s just for a few minutes and makes your brain relax and remember, “Oh yes, I am a person” To whom creation is important, and I believe that you are that person. So please do something for your creative soul. It can help save your life. I do not think I overstate this at this time. So, take care of yourself. Take care of your lovies. Stay warm and healthy, and we will talk to you next week. Bye.

[00:15:59] 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.

Ep. 174: Rachael on Getting Your Writing Done When Life is Distracting

Crazy times call for crazy (or totally sensible, whatever) solutions.

The Roost laptop holder (way more expensive than I remembered, but still worth it): https://amzn.to/2J2af3K

Transcript

Rachael Herron: 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 #174 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

[00:00:20] I am so pleased that you are with me today in these end of days, also known as The epoch of time when women stopped wearing bras. Cause we never have to again cause we’re never leaving the house. But honestly, this podcast is not about Coronavirus ‘cause you know what? Everybody else is talking about it and you’re tired of hearing about it. I know I am. So today we’re going to talk about writing and we are specifically going to talk about how to get it done. When times or your life might be a little bit rough for whatever reason, there’s a lot of people going through rough things that have nothing to do with a virus. And we are creators, we are still writers no matter what is going on in our life. And we have to have tools to be able to get our work done. 

[00:01:11] So we’re going to talk about that today. No guests, just me. So getting into that, but before we do that, I just want a little bit of a catch up of what’s going on around here. I am still on, incredible deadline. Boy, it is not going to be easy to finish this book in time. The good thing is, I don’t think my editor listens to the podcast and I bet I could get an extension if I wanted one. However, I don’t want one unless I get one at the very, very last minute. I have never turned a book in late because I believe that if you ask for and receive an extension, it is therefore not late. But I hate asking for extensions. I’ve only done it a couple of times, but if I asked for one today when my book is still three and a half weeks away from being due. If I asked for like a week extension, then I would somehow fritter away a week. I know I would do it. I know myself that well, and I know that in a week I would be three and a half weeks away from getting the book done and still in the exact same position. So if I am going to ask for an extension, it will be at the very last minute. So I will keep you updated on how I do. But honestly, work has been going great.  I have been writing a lot. I have been really diligent about getting the words done and yes, I’m on deadline and that helps me a lot. However, I have had to come up with some focusing tools because I have never been able to write first drafts in my home. Probably, I don’t think I’ve written a first draft in my home for 10 years. I’ve always written the first draft outside of my house, any part of it, and a lot of their revision usually I do most of the revision out of the house too. That’s always been either a coffee shop or mills library. I got a co-working space just a few weeks ago, which I have now cancelled for the time being anyway, because I can’t use it. So I’m really back in the house and I have to be doing this dedicated writing time that I’ve never done in my home. I’m very comfortable doing everything else in my home. All the business stuff, but not the first drafting and usually not the revising either. So I’ve had to figure out some hacks and workarounds to get me to a place where I can do that ‘cause I don’t have a choice right now, and I wanted to share those with you, so that’s been going awesome. I will share those things with you. 

[00:03:35] What else has been happening around here? Well, that’s kind of about it. I do have a new Patreon supporter, Michelle White. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining the Patreon, you can always look at that @ patreon.com/rachael. She is now going to get all of the essays that I write and don’t go anywhere- they don’t go anywhere else. They will eventually all be published in books, and I have never done that with any of them. So there’s more than 30 essays. There’s more than 150,000 words that is some of my best work I’ve ever done, over in the Patreon file that you could get, you could technically get for $1 for one month, read them all, and then unpledged but that’s just a dollar worth of 150,000 words of, non-creative nonfiction that I’ve thought really deeply about a lot of memoir pieces, including me talking about my relapse a month and a half ago that I’m really not talking about anywhere else. So, I just reread that essay actually, and I’m proud of it. So that’s over there. If you’d like to join, you can. I actually suckered her into it. She wrote me an email and said that she read my book, A Letters to an Aspiring Author. I think that’s what it’s called. My amazing assistant Ed, talked me into changing the title of that book. So I think it’s called Letters to an Aspiring Author, and she read that, and then she got, she told me in an email that she got suckered into joining my Patreon. So yes! So you should go get letters. There is a free preview available on all platforms right now. The free preview is available for letters You can download that to any device, and if you click on the paperback version of the book itself, it shows a jacket. I think we finally got it fixed, but on Kindle, everything was right except for the picture of the book, which showed a rain jacket. And I have to say that this is not the first time that our rain jacket has shown on the paperback version of my book. It happened on another book. It was a romance, a couple of years ago. Amazon didn’t understand it this time and they didn’t understand it then. So, my books don’t just have jackets. They have rain jackets is what I’m going to say from here on out. 

[00:05:53] So I don’t think I’m going to do any kind of middle promo to stick in the middle between me doing the catch up and me doing the talking portion. So we’ll just jump right into it. So the things that have helped me honestly, something that has really helped me the most recently is to let go of my incredible, aspirational morning routine, which looks like a lot of meditation. It looks like a bunch of yoga; it has eating good foods. It has getting up very early. It often has going to a recovery meeting, can’t go to any recovery meetings, they’re all canceled. So, all of that is kind of out the window and I am kind of looking at myself as a new person and what, what does work for my body? I’ve always said that I’m a very, very early person, early riser, but I’m not naturally, like when my alarm goes off at 5 or 5:30 or 4:30 on Tuesdays. I am not happy. It’s not an easy feeling, and I wake up feeling out of sorts. So recently I’ve been letting myself sleep until I need to, which has been more like around 8:00 AM, which is kind of great. If I would like to eventually narrow my work window to – from 9 to 5, I would like to work from 9 to 5, without a lunch break ‘cause I never take a break but no more than that. Usually I’m working something like 7:30 or 8 until 6 or 7 at night, and I want to narrow that to 9 to 5. So why shouldn’t I get up at eight o’clock? So my routine has changed from self-flagellation trying to do all the things and be the perfect human being to these simple steps, which I stole from my friend Jay Wells. Because they’re simple and they’re doable. I drink a glass of water. Because I’m dehydrated, when I wake up, everybody is, I drink one glass of water, I’ll make a cup of tea. I take it into my office and I sit down and this has been key for me. I have gotten back into doing morning meditation every morning and I sit down. And I meditate for 20 minutes. You, if you’re going to try this, you might want to try it for 5 minutes or 10 minutes. 20 is kind of long, I think 30’s heck a long 45 is crazy, but 20 for me is a really nice amount of time and if you are listening to this and saying, I don’t meditate, I can’t meditate, my brain is too busy. I’ve never been able to do that. Welcome to the rest of us. We all feel that way. Our brains are all too busy to meditate. There’s no such thing as finding calm in the brain. Well, there is a little bit, but- but there’s no such thing as quieting your brain in sitting down and being able to quiet it. That’s not what happens. 

[00:08:42] Here is my breakdown, I’ve done it on the podcast before, but I’ll do it again. My very quick three-step breakdown of meditation. You sit or you lie down in whatever position is comfortable to you. That’s step number one. Step two, you focus on something. A lot of people like to focus on the feeling of the breath because it’s always there, it’s always accessible. When I think about my breath, I usually think about it right about the solar plexus and just kind of feel my, the upper part of my abdomen moving in and out and just kind of, just kind of think about what that feels like. Other people concentrate on what the breath feels like at the tip of their nose, or the back of their throat. Sometimes mind moves around. Oftentimes I will count it to 10 and then start over. So I have something kind of to hang on to. But you focus on something, you can focus on a candle, you can focus on the way your butt feels, where you’re sitting.  Just focus on one thing. That’s step two, focus on one thing. And step three is get distracted. Step three, normally happens within about a quarter of a second for a lot of my meditation, I will focus on my breath. Then a quarter of a second later, I’m out again. I’m thinking about something else that is part of meditation, that getting distracted. The real magic of meditation is the place between getting distracted and coming back to your focus. That realization that you have become distracted, and the moment of focusing on your focal point, that is meditation. The memory of coming back. And what that does, it is mental gymnastics. It doesn’t have to be spiritual, it doesn’t have to be anything other than agnostic mental, pushups. You are getting stronger at being able to stay at your desk, writing for longer periods of time without getting distracted. So I’ve been doing that. 

[00:10:32] But the other thing I’ve really been doing that has been working so well, and it’s so obvious, a 27th book, I should know these things by heart. Eliminating distractions is something I have to do, and apparently, oh my God, it’s so obvious, so obvious. This is what I’ve been doing. But this is what I’ve been doing when I go to cafes or mills, I am eliminating distractions, not always visual distractions, because I like being at cafes and being able to see people or look out the window at mills and see people walking by. I enjoy that kind of distraction. But at my house, I never really understood how many distractions there were, really, especially the animals. We have two dogs and two cats and the cats basically just go in a round Robin of jump on my lap, jump off, jump on my lap, jump off. The dogs are always wanting to come in and out and managing those distractions- Oh my God, if you have kids, Jesus, especially if they’re home right now. Wow! Managing distraction is our number one job when it comes to getting our words done. And guess what? I am in the privileged position of owning a door. If you’re watching it on YouTube, it’s right behind me. That door does not shut. It never has, never been, you know, level with the house or something. I can’t shut it and the animals let themselves in and out at well. So this week, I have just taken to shoving this piece of wood that I don’t even need to explain. It’s like a balanced board. I shove it under the door and I lock out all the animals and it has been a life changer. If you do not have a room with a door, to do your writing is, guess what? You have a bathroom. And if it takes putting your kids in front of the television with extra TV time and lying to your husband and saying, honey, I’m going to go watch an episode of Vander Puff Rules in the tub, actually I don’t advocate lying. I can’t even lie well, so- but some of you might have to going to the bathroom and closing the door and getting 15 minutes of writing done, 30 minutes of writing done as fast as your little fingers can type. That works too. I think we have to be behind a door. I’ve always thought and said that I think I can work well being distracted and I just can’t because this week I have been at home. I have been closing the door. 

[00:13:00] Another thing that keeps me away, keeps distraction away from me, is the sound that I put into my ears. And I use a Mac and I use an app called White Noise, and I’ve talked about this before too, but I’ll bring it up again. I like it because I can play it through my headphones at the same time and playing other things. So I use the pink noise, mixed with rain, which is a really pleasant sound. So that’s always going at a low drone when I’m writing and not when I’m doing anything else. As soon as I start to do email, if I’m done writing, as soon as I start to do email and make sure I pull my headphones out and I’m not listening to these sounds, I want these sounds to be associated with my writing and that only I have been listening. Also at the same time to Spotify, I’m making a playlist out of songs for me, they have no words. And what I’ll do is, I’ll find a song that I love. I’ll make a song radio out of it. And then I listened to it when I’m writing and the moment I realized that a new song has started that I hate and it’s taken me out of the moment, it’s kind of like meditation. I go back to the song right before it, I play it again and make sure it’s one of those songs that I can just go really deep and focus while it’s on, and I drag it over to the permanent playlist for that book. The permanent playlist for the book I’m working on right now only has four songs, and I can loop those songs over and over and over and over again. And I don’t get tired of them because I’m not listening to them. They are songs that have proven themselves to be a place where I get lost, so I put it in my pink/rain noise and that particular four song playlist that works for this book in this book only. And now I have locked out any sound from the rest of the house with the dog barks, or if my wife walks by the door grumbling. She doesn’t actually grumble. I’m the grumbler in the family. I have to say that. I don’t hear it; those distractions have been blocked out. 

[00:14:57] And another woo-woo thing, is just straight up woo-woo y’all, that I’ve been doing, is I’ve been making sure to light a candle. I have a friend who makes these incredible, I like the tall votive candle. She, this is, if we’re watching on YouTube, it’s covered with angels, has gotten glitter inside, and I just light it only when I’m writing. If I take a half an hour break or an hour break between writing sessions, I blow it out, I snuff it out. And then I light it again when I start writing again. And I only do that when I’m writing or revising. And I literally light it and say, Hello muse, ‘cause I do believe in creative energy and allowing it to come to us. And I know that’s woo-woo! It’s okay though.  I’m not praying to any kind of goddess to come visit me because I believe that the muse is always with us when we’re working. For me, all of my inspiration and ideas and great sentences only happen when I’m writing. I don’t get good ideas when I’m just sitting around hoping to get good ideas. I get them when I’m doing the work and I’m failing and flailing at doing the work. Ideas start to come that will later help me fix this book. So I now have a closed door. I have a candle burning. I have the music in my ears. I have done my meditation. So I am centered and kind of calm and ready to do exactly what I do in meditation, which is I think about the words, I may get a little distracted for a second and then I think about the words, because my brain has been practicing, getting distracted and coming back to the focal point, which while I’m writing is doing the writing itself. And this has been working so, so, so well for me. 

[00:16:49] One other thing that is on my list here that I wanted to make sure I talked about is that my desk, I said at this roll top desk. It’s fabulous for doing all my work and my podcasting and everything else like that. It is absolutely wrong though, for doing the writing work. It’s good for the business work. It’s not good for the writing work. It’s completely ergonomically incorrect. And so I have just been manipulating that because I have to, right now, there’s nothing else I can do. So yesterday I sat on three pillows and put pillows on the floor so that my feet were supported underneath me. That’s what I’ve been doing. This week and part of last week. Today though, my wife found this little laptop desk thing that is from Amazon, I think. And you can kind of pull it onto the chair where you are. And I have a perfect place in my office for it, and it is low enough that. All of a sudden, I’m completely ergonomically correct and I was starting to get wrist pain from writing on at the wrong level, and that’s just taken it away. Plus, I get to look out the window while I’m writing, which is something I very, very much like to do. Like I said, for me, that is not a distraction. If it is a distraction for you, then face a blank wall, but make sure that your elbows are at that 90-degree position. I have a real cheap, well, such wasn’t cheap, maybe $30 or so, this folding collapsible umbrella of a laptop lifter. I will try to remember to put the link for it in the show notes because it’s fabulous. It folds up and I, I fit into my tiny little backpack that I take with my tiny little computer, and that’s my whole office, but that’s why it’s raised right now because I’m always using, a detachable keyboard and mouse to work on my laptop, which is raised perfectly. My dog is chewing on something behind me. 

[00:18:36] So getting the ergo right, wherever you’re writing is really important too. And getting those things dialed is part of your getting your work done. You have to get these things dialed and 24/7 books later, I am still always trying to get things in the right way to make them work for me. But these have been working for me, so if you try any of these things, let me know. And remember, I didn’t even say this, but it’s probably the number one thing. Definitely just click your Wi-Fi off when you start to write, if you are of strong- if you’re just used to doing this work, you don’t have to. I don’t have to anymore ‘cause I do not look at E-mail or Facebook or Twitter or whatever else I could look at. I’m trained not to, but if you accidentally click over and see something, turn off the Wi-Fi just for the time you’re writing. You do not need to look up anything when you’re writing. You can look it up later when you’re done with this thousand words or these 500 words or whatever it is your work writing at that moment.

[00:19:37] So try these things out and let me know how it’s going, where you are, where you are finding yourself writing, because a lot of you might be having to write at home, in a place you haven’t written in a while, or you might be struggling to write around your entire family who is suddenly home with you. So I would love to know how that is working out for you and what some of your hacks might be. You can hit me over www.howdoyouwrite.net and if you go into this particular show, which will be the latest one, I will put the holding keyboard holder, sorry, holding laptop folder that I love so, so, so much and I wish you all very happy writing and very good health and happiness and I hope that you are getting some of your work done and that you’ll come and tell me about it. Okay, my friends. Bye. 

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.

Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent studying in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics & Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. 

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 173 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today. 

Today we are talking to the awesome Chanel Cleeton and she was wonderful. I loved her book Next Year in Havana, which you might’ve read. It’s pretty big book and I really enjoyed how she talked about planning her life, but maybe not her writing. So I know that you are going to enjoy listening to that. This will be a very short intro because, I have so much to do. I’m a little bit behind in everything and the news is big. The news is bad. The news is scary. So I want to remind you to get your writing done. Writing is a very true and real place where we can lose ourselves and kind of walk away from what the world is shouting. I urge you to put down the phone, stop reading the headlines. Take some really deep breaths, maybe do a little bit of meditation sink into that book that you have been putting off reading. That is what I’m doing right now, and it’s been marvelous and honor yourself as a writer. Maybe read one of those writing books that you have up there on the shelf.

As we are practicing social distancing, yeah, that’s a great time to be purchasing. Reading and telling other people about books. So we are going to continue to do that on this show. I’m going to tell you about a book right now that you might not know is out there because I’m very bad at self-promotion. It is called Letters to A New Author, and basically it’s a compilation of a lot of my emails that I have sent encouraging writers, and right now you can get a free preview of it just to see what it’s like I think it’s probably the first 30 pages or so of those letters, and it’s a great thing to do. To read if you are social distancing, which for me is hard to pronounce, social distancing, you can get a- it free, by going to www.rachaelherron.com/letters, totally free. Or you can just go to any of your favorite E-book tailors and look for Rachael Herron letters to a new author. And I hope you enjoy that. 

All else as well around here, I’m working at home, which makes it very hard to write my words. I’m just such a terrible first draft writer at home and I just have to suck it up and do it. Just like you do, just like writers have to do. It’s part of our job to get it done when it’s hard. So I’m experimenting with different places in the house for me to try writing. My next spot is going to be the corner of the kitchen table. I mean the dining room table, which I’ve never sat at before. So that can also be really helpful to just change perspective a little bit. I am also, oh, I’m teaching a class at Berkeley this weekend. It is now switched to zoom, so I must kind of change my teaching outline, which I need to do right after this. I’m very much looking forward to teaching that one though. It’s one of my favorites on preparing to publish. What do you need to know about traditional publishing versus a- indie slash self-publishing, and how do you decide which way to go? So I’m going to be working on that, and I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done and I hope that you are finding some peace. Somewhere from all of the noise. It’s important. Take care of you. That is what I’m going to urge you to do right now, today and tomorrow and the next day. Take care of yourself so that we can take care of everyone else. It’s really important. So I send love and hope and fun and get some writing done, and then find me wherever I am on the internet and tell me how it went, okay? I’ll talk to you soon, my friend. 

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: [00:05:12] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Chanel Cleeton. Hi Chanel!

Chanel Cleeton: [00:05:18] Hi!

Rachael Herron: [00:05:19] I am thrilled, thrilled to talk to you. I loved the Next Year in Havana, and I just was like. that was one of the brilliant things about doing the show is I get to bring on writers that I love. So, fantastic. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London, and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. That is very fancy sounding. Chanel also received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Southern South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Well, welcome. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:19] Thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:06:20] So tell me a little bit about what your life looks like right now. Are you writing full time or are you, yeah?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:28] I do. Yes. So I’m writing full time, I’ve been writing full time for a while which- which kind of helps, keep up with everything, so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we had to push this episode because illness has been going around in, and you’ve got at least one child. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:45] I do. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] Yeah. So that’s, I love talking to mothers cause I do not know how you do it. So, and that’s why we’re going to be talking about process, which is my favorite thing to chat about. How do you get it done? What is your personal writing process?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:59] It really varies by book and I will say, you know, it changes in terms of all the other obligations. I think that’s one of the things I didn’t really realize when I started writing is how much time goes into marketing and publicity and social media and everything else. So really it just depends on the book and kind of where I am in my life. If I have a release coming up, I kind of know that I’m not writing very much cause I spend quite a bit of time promoting the released or if I’m an edits, you know, sometimes they’ll push the book, that I’m drafting to just focus on editing, the one that, that I’m working on with my editor. So it’s really, I think kind of about flexibility, you know, working with the schedule, working with what your publisher needs, and also what’s above needs. I mean, every bump is very different for me. Sometimes I really front load my research, other times I kind of research as I go. It really just depends on, how much kind of background information I have on the story and, the time period or how much I really have to kind of get myself up to speed.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:58] And where and when do you do all that work? Are you a morning person? Are you a fit it in while the kids at school kind of person, or?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:06] I just kind of write as I need to, it really depends. You know, I was on, traveling and so my editor needed something and so I was late at night kind of working, getting up early the next morning. Sometimes I work during the day. I mean, it, it really just depends on kind of where I am. So it wasn’t really consistent with my writing process, I would say, I write in Scrivener, which I find really helpful and that’s, that’s probably the biggest thing I would say that kind of carries me through the different thoughts. But beyond that, it changes quite a bit. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:41] What is your favorite thing about Scrivener? And I also use it and love it. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:45] Yeah, I think for historical fiction it’s really helpful. I like that I can have all of my research there, so it’s easily accessible. I liked that I can kind of shift POV use, I do a lot of dual timelines or multiple POVs in my books and I like it you can kind of keep the scenes and then move things around quite easily when you’re going through the revision process. And I just feel like I really get a very comprehensive kind of macro look at the book I’m using Scrivener cause it’s all right there. You know, you can drop all of your research links in, and so everything is very easily accessible. Microsoft word, I use when I edit with my editor, but I feel like I don’t get as much as the high level view of the book when I’m in that. That’s really more what I’m kind of city and on the little details. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:31] Yeah, I totally agree. I color code my points of view characters. That is the best trick! 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:37] It helps so much. Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:09:39] Because you’re like, oh! I’ve been in her point of view for five scenes and not in our point of view for, you know, forever until we had one, 10,000 pages ago, you know, or 10,000 words I go, not 10,000 pages. That would be too much. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:51] Yeah. No, it really does make a huge difference, to kind of have that, that ability and – and it does I think, give you like you’re saying, that idea of okay, this isn’t balanced here, I need to kind of balance this out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:03] Exactly. And you could color code, like the things you have to keep an eye on. I have a color coded empty scene right now that says, change plot completely to here. And then I started writing forward with what I knew the book was going to be. And I know that everything behind that, you know, before that red line is that that’s going to be a lot of revision. Yeah.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:28] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:31] I think all the other stuff you juggle. Definitely, like I said before, you know, when I started writing, I just didn’t appreciate how many different hats you kind of wear as an author. You can be a graphic designer, you can be accountant, you know, bookkeeper. It kind of goes all these different gamuts and a lot of times it’s stuff that you might not have a background in, so you really have to kind of get yourself up to speed. So I think it’s just juggling the time commitment of where do I invest my time? How do I kind of keep balance? And when you kind of get those last minute things that come on, you know, how do you shift that with the deadline you’re working on.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] How does that feel to you to juggle things like that? Because I find myself very resentful. When I’m like, Oh God, I actually have to spend time on these copy edits. You know, I really- I just, I, I forget over and over and over again that, okay, copy edits, you’ll get all these things coming in. How did, how do your emotions handle that?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:24] I think I’ve gotten pretty used to it now. And I think it’s just kind of figuring out, like I’ve learned that when I get copy edits, I cannot do two projects at once. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:34] I know. I hate that.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:35] So I know some people that will try to draft

Rachael Herron: [00:11:36] I can’t do it.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:37] My brain doesn’t work that way, so I have to basically clear my schedule, push through the deadline, and then I can go back to whatever I was working on. So little things like that have helped, my editor is really amazing at communicating and I think earlier in my career, I was very much like a people pleaser and I always wanted to be like, oh no problem, I can do that. You know? But I’ve kind of learned now they really want you to turn it in your best book. So if there’s something going on, I’ll just be like, Hey, you know, I need an extra few days and they’re really great about working with me, or, you know, I think I have a better handle of what time I actually need and my process for copy edits. So I can look at my schedule and be like, okay, this is a little tight, but I know I can do it cause I’ve done it before. So I think it just kind of is more about getting comfortable with it. I’m a really big planner person. I have a day planner, I like the paper planner. And so I really just am very careful about scheduling and I always kind of leave, probably about a month, I would say, in my drafting process that I know it’s kind of free days there are, are free days. Because I know I probably get proof, so I’m going to get copy, it’s on the book before it, and so I can kind of build in that time so I’m not scrambling. So I think it’s little things like that that helped 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:50] You are much more logical than I am always scrambling at the last minute. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:12:56] Well, it’s not always perfect. So every day it sounds great. Sometimes life happens, but you know you could do it. But yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:03] Yeah. Are you with Penguin? Is that what I’m remembering 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:05] I do. Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:05] Which in print?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:07] Berkeley.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:07] Who’s your editor? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:09] Kate Seaver. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:10] Oh my gosh. Okay. Here’s something that I’ll admit because I know she’ll never hear it. But I have been wanting to work with Kate for so long. She almost bought a book of mine a long time ago. I was with Danielle Perez when I was at Berkeley. Yeah. I love Danielle. I love, I love all my editors, but Kate Seaver is my dream- dream editor. Someday. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:29] I have to say, she’s like one of my favorite people. Like she’d just been amazing. And I’ve been with her for five years now. We’ve been, no, I guess six, almost six. So she’s just like so supportive, really wonderful to work with. And I think it’s so nice as a writer when you kind of get into sync with an editor, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] Yes.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:47] You know, you have that kind of history and you know how each other works and it just helps a lot. So, yeah, she’s, she’s amazing. I, I highly recommend her. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:55] That’s awesome. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:00] I love the everyday really feels like an adventure. I mean, I’m, I’m not at all a plotter. I really start with like the shell of an idea 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:07] So you’re a planner. You love planning like life, but not-

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:11] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] Okay, that’s really interesting. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of the combination. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:15] Yeah. It’s really odd with my personality and it’s kind of funny cause like on the business side, like I’ll come to my publisher with like spreadsheets with, you know, ideas for promotional plans and stuff. But on the writing side, I’ll give them like a paragraph and Kate’s really wonderful. She’ll just, she’ll be like, yep, yeah, she knows how I work and she knows I’ll figure it out as I go. But yeah, there’s something about my brain when I write. It’s kind of making my only like real creative outlet. Like I’m not artistic or musical or anything like that. So it’s like the one place I kind of, get to be a little bit free. And so, yeah, I think I just loved the adventure and kind of the unknown. I mean, my characters really surprised me and, and take me on journeys. So that’s, that’s really definitely the interesting part of it.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] That is beautiful, I love that. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:02] So I think because I don’t do as much planning on the front end, I’m a really big reviser. I love the revision process. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:10] Me too.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:11] Yeah. It’s, I feel like that’s really when I get to just polish the story and probably where I try to step back and not be as free and be really critical of myself. Then try to kind of think of what would a reader pick apart? I really liked the print out my drafts. So I usually do, I do a lot of revision rounds. My first round I do on the computer and that’s kind of like a high level of, you know, really cleaning stuff up. And then I do a round where I printed out and I added my hand with like a red pen. And I find that you really find, new and different things when you look at your book in a different medium. So that’s really helpful. And then I also like to read it on an e-reader cause I feel like that kind of gives ’em another different perspective and I really do catch different things. I’ve heard other people do like text to speech. So I think really kind of changing up the way you look at your book, whatever works for you definitely helps because it gives you kind of a fresh eye, which is hard when you’re so deep in your revisions.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:09] I love that. And I have this day right before I ever send a draft to my actual editor, not my agent or anybody else, but, my, my revised first draft -ish, and then my, the last time I’m going to touch it, I reward myself with like five or six hours in bed on the Kindle, just reading it as a human being –

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:29] I love that. Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] – reading a book and it’s so fun. And you’re also using the highlight feature of Kindle to like mark everything that you would change, 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:35] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:16:36] But it’s just a fun to lie in bed and read your own book for the first time, you know, front book, you know, so, yeah, I love that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:41] You know, I think, and I kind of mentioned this, but I just think writing is, I’ve been really fortunate that I kind of wall it off as like my little haven. So I do feel like it kind of is imperishable to my life. No matter what chaos is going on, 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:01] That’s awesome.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:02] It was really nice for me that I can like disappear into a book and, and that’s just really helpful. I think it writing has definitely been like a sanctuary. If, you know, I’m stressed about something or I’m busy, you know, I can just kind of zone into my manuscripts. So I would say it’s almost the opposite that like it kind of is it affected by things, which has been definitely nice.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:23] I think you’re a novelist in that. Cause most writers I talked to their life is what gets in the way and freaks them out and then they can concentrate on your book, on their books. So you being able to do that I think is kind of a superpower. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:35] Well, and I think what I find too, that, and so maybe I should rephrase a little bit. I think that when there are things going on in the world that I have a reaction to, I’ve really been able to put that into my books, and I don’t know, just been kind of serendipitous that it’s lined up with the book I’m writing at the time, tends to be something that kind of lines up with something I feel strongly about. So it really can kind of come through in the writing. And I think I get to kind of use it almost cathartic leads to, yeah, talk about my feelings through my characters and have them kind of look at similar situations. So I think that part too, I mean, I wouldn’t say it kind of affects it in a negative way, but it definitely kind of opens up. For me to express myself, I think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:16] Do you work at home or do you go out to write? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:18:20] It really depends. I, I will say my productivity is usually better when I’m not at home. Like if I go to a coffee shop, I tend to do a little bit better. Honestly, though, then it gets into like, I’m at a coffee shop ordering lots of coffee and, you know, it gets expensive. So I don’t do that often, but if I’m at a, like a, a crunch time where like I have to finish the books, sometimes I’ll just go sit somewhere for like 12 hours and write. So yeah, I really take it up. I mean, I was, I meant to know about prep and I was editing at the park, like I printed out my book and I was just like editing as I went, I was like, okay, this is good you know, well, we were like on vacation and I was in an arcade editing. Like it’s just, you know, you kind of do what you have to do. So it’s not always a pretty, like. Yeah, a vision I think I had of what being a writer was. It’s often just kind of messy and you have to, and

Rachael Herron: [00:19:12] Yeah, in an arcade, that is definitely the first time I’ve ever heard that.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:16] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:19:17] It’s kind of amazing.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:18] It was actually, not that. I mean, I was like, there could be worse. So yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:25] Okay, great. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? Why did you love it? 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:30] So I always have a lot of books I have a read. So I’m going to give a few, I just finished Long Bright River by Liz Moore, and it’s amazing. It was a thriller- it was kind of a mystery thriller, but set, against kind of the backdrop of the opioid epidemic. And it was just a really interesting angle that I hadn’t seen being done. She’s kind of a very literary mystery writer, so it was really lyrical and beautiful. Reminded me a lot of ton of friends who’s a favorite of mine. So just really, and it really made me think about a lot of different things. So really enjoyed that, that was really surprising. And then one that’s coming out on March 10th is, And They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton. And that’s a historical fiction about Jackie Kennedy. And I read it as an arc. It’s this phenomenal. I’m really excited for her. I think readers are really gonna love that book. That one’s out on the 10th. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:22] Oh, that is very exciting. Thank you. I’m going to put both of those on my TBR pile. Speaking of TBR piles, can you tell us about your most recent work where they should put on their TBR pile. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:20:34] Oh, thank you. So I have, my next book is coming out June 16^th and it’s called The Last Train to Key West, and it’s set in Florida in the 1930s and it’s Labor day weekends, and one of the deadliest, the most powerful storms in US history hit the Keys then and destroyed Henry Flagler’s railroad and kind of reef a lot of habits. There were a lot of world war one veterans who were down in the region working on, building a highway. And unfortunately, they perished, due to kind of insufficient mornings and they were supposed to be evacuated then there were issues. So it’s this really kind of a tumultuous time in US history. And I didn’t know that much about. And so it was really interesting to kind of research it. And I have three heroines that were down there. One of them is related to my friends’ family from, Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba and their lives sort of intersect, as the storm is coming.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:26] That is amazing and it addresses something I really, really love about historical fiction, is real events that I know you’re from Florida, so perhaps you’d heard of that. But I am from California. I’ve never heard of that storm and never heard about those men who perished. And that is fascinating to me.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:21:43] Yes. Yeah, I mean, I even being from Florida, I really hadn’t heard about it, and it was just hurricane season. I came across an article that mentioned it, and you just get that kind of spidey sense of like, I need to know more about this and that’s what I love about historical fiction. I’m constantly learning, and constantly exploring periods of history that I’m surprised I don’t know more about but it’s fascinating to learn about them. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:05] I cannot wait to read that one. I really looking forward to that. I love your writing. Tell us where listeners can find you.

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:14] I’m on Instagram, @chanelcleeton. My website is www.chanelcleeton.com, and then I’m on Twitter, with my name and Facebook as well. (ChanelCleeton)

Rachael Herron: [00:22:24] Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this and I am just so thrilled to talk to you. Thanks for inspiring my listeners. So 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:32] Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is absolutely wonderful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] Yeah. Take care. Bye. 

Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:37] Bye. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:35] 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.