Episode 14: Sacha Black on Big Goals

Hello, friends! I’m your host, Crys Cain, and this is episode 14 of the Write Away podcast, recording October 27th, 2020. I have done a scary thing this week. I booked an editor without knowing for certain if a book will be finished by the due date. Of course I will finish it on time, but I don’t know if I’ll do it with a minimum amount of stress.

I have two reasons for doing this, number one of course is to get the book done. But number two is more strategic. I’ve been really gentle with myself this year. It’s been extremely healthy and necessary as I deal with this ending of my marriage, burnout, COVID, but I’m finally getting to that point where the lack of productivity is frustrating. Not guilt induced, but more like that feeling after you’ve been sick, and all you want to do is get up and move. That feeling, but I’m terrified of throwing myself into burnout again. So I’ve hesitated to push harder, but I am giving myself a higher production and stress trial run.

My ideal goal through about June of next year is to write 60,000 words every six weeks from now until then. That gives me 40,000 on a solo project and 20,000 on a co-writing project. I thought out a few schedules for approaching this. And number one was 60,000 words, six weeks, 10,000 words a week, 2000 words a day. Totally doable unless I miss a day or a week, and I’m not a huge fan of that. So number two idea was 10,000 for two weeks for the co-writing project, and then 15,000 for three weeks for the solo project, and then one week off. And I really like having that wiggle room, but what I decided to go was option number three, which is 10,000 for two weeks, and then one week off, and then 20,000 for two weeks and one week off.

What I like about this is that it accepts that life is inconsistent and it builds that in, and so far so good. My max number per day last week was 4,000 with an average of 2300. Yesterday I wrote a little over 2000, so far today I’ve written 2,600. I don’t know if I’ll get more in today, but my goal is not to get 4,000 words a day right off the bat.

My goal is to ramp up my word counts. Just like if I were ramping up my weights in a physical exercise routine. I need an average around 3,500 per day, Monday through Friday including today. I’m not super stressed if I don’t hit that because the end of a book tends to be like riding a bike downhill down a steep hill at the end.  It tends to be really easy for me to knock out mad word counts the last few days, but I don’t want to have to depend on that so much. I’d rather get the words in earlier. It may be that the book ends up being shorter than I planned.

The first, I don’t know, nine chapters, we’re averaging about 2000 words a chapter, but then we got into a little bit more action. The word counts dropped a bit and so I averaged, I guess, about 56,000 words for this book. It may end up being closer to 50,000, which would be just great because then I’m shooting for more than I need, which means I might even get done early. So I’m working up to those 4k days.

After I finish this particular book, I’ll slide into finishing a co-written book that’s currently in progress. I just realized I won’t be able to slide fully into a real test of the six week schedule until January because of the co-write schedule until then. But step one is simply to test if I can write 4k a day comfortably at this point, or if I think I can work up to it. I have tentatively taken a break from pushing myself on science fiction and fantasy, simply because I need to get some financial stuff in order, and the romance will absolutely get me there. No questions.

My hope is in those off weeks, which are buffer weeks, they are, you know, vacation-available weeks, they are, I-can-do-whatever-the-hell-Iwant weeks, I-can-catch-up-on-admin weeks. My hope is that I will be able to slip some scifi and fantasy in there, starting in January, earlier maybe, but like, I’m not even putting that in my brain right now because I don’t want to build that expectation on myself.

For the interview this week, I have the wonderful rebel, Sacha Black.  We talked a lot about goals, and Sacha has some very, very specific goals and we dug into why do you want these goals? What do these goals mean to you? And I think that is one of the most important things that we need to consider when we listen to people talk about specifically monetary goals, sales goals, any of those. The number themselves are not actually that important. It’s what do those numbers mean? What do they mean for you? And I think if we talk about numbers goals without talking about meaning, then we are hurting ourselves. We’re hurting the people who are listening to those goals and comparing themselves to it, and you know, and everybody is in charge of themselves. We can’t make people not compare themselves, but I do think it’s very useful to draw attention to the whys.

So I hope you enjoy this interview.

---

Crys: So I’m going to start with a question that a lot of us writers hate. It came to me right before we got on the call–and it’s not one that I told you ahead of time, so I’m really curious to what your answer is going to be–but what do you tell people you do for a living?

Sacha: I tell them I’m an author. Yeah, no question. But yeah, I do. I usually say I’m an author and an entrepreneur because that’s what I feel like. I love the business side almost as much as I love the creative side. I’m probably like 55/45 or maybe 60/40. I don’t know. I suppose I swing. If it’s loads of admin, then I’m definitely on the creative side. I really feel like if you want to be a successful indie author–and not just on the creative side, but in terms of creating a stable future for yourself–then the most effective way to do that is to embrace the entrepreneur side as well.

Because whilst, you know, I’m sure for most of us, we all want to write eight hours a day. if we only have one income source, even if that’s books and we are independent, you are still not financially safe. So for me, I always say I’m an author and an entrepreneur. And then they raise  eyebrows and ask, “Well, how  can you be both?” And I’m like, “No, darling, come here and I’ll tell you.”

Crys:  Have you defined yourself as that from the beginning? Or was that a process you had to get to saying either of those things?

Sacha: I think that’s a good question. I think, well, I definitely didn’t define myself as an indie to start with. I have only ever published indie and I have never queried. But I didn’t know that when I started, so when I started, I was just like everybody else I knew.

I knew fuck all about the industry. I knew nothing about traditional publishing. I knew nothing about indie publishing. But as somebody who loves to learn, I was always going to educate myself. And as soon as I saw the numbers, it just made no sense to me to go traditionally published because I had faith in myself that, despite the number of people who want to and fail or whatever, and don’t succeed, I believed I could create a business.

From the start I did publish my first book as indie. Now that’s not to say I won’t try traditional. I do think the next book that I write is much more suited to traditional publishing. It’s a standalone for a start, which is a lot easier to pitch.

I think indie, traditional,  whatever–I think there are reasons to do each of them. And in terms of the entrepreneur, I definitely think that was a name I gained over time. I don’t think I felt confident enough to like embrace it. I don’t think I, yeah, as much as I believed I could be inie. I think that the entrepreneur definitely  came later once I started adding streams of income and learning actively learning about the business side. That’s when I started to embrace the entrepreneur side.

Crys: I love that. I have recently had this kind of realization in my head because I’m not just interested in one element. I’m with you on the writing, the creativity and the business side–love both. And that’s one of the main reasons that I went indie. I was like, well, why not choose the option that allows me to do both and have so much control when that’s something I love?

And recently I realized that I’ve been having trouble approving of my desire to have a bunch of other business, completely unrelated to the writing business. I mean, for instance, one of them is running some real estate property things, which has been a plan for a long time. And then another is, you know, we’ve been talking about possible coaching business, but I don’t know if I want that to be writing specific.

I realized that a block in my mind was simply that I didn’t know that I had permission to be super successful at everything I wanted. I realized just because no one else has done this particular combination of things successfully together doesn’t mean I can’t do it. Look at all the people who’ve been really successful at very disparate things in other realms. That’s really interesting that that’s kind of that same mindset.

Sacha: I love it. I’m going to tell you things. So the first thing is, I have a six year plan to buy a second house because I want to flip properties. So I am all over that with you. My wife is, super, super  amazing at anything DIY. She can fix literally everything. I can do all the painting and all the other stuff. So, that’s our plan because she would love to retire, cause she has chronic fatigue and stuff. I’m like, well, we need another business that will give her an income and she can, you know, redecorate slowly or whatever.

That’s the first thing. The second thing–I have a sticker on my computer, but both sides that says you have permission, because so often I forget that I have the power to do these things and it’s okay to have these desires. I keep those stickers on my computer to remind me that I have permission to do whatever the fuck I desire. So yeah, you, you need to post it as well.

Crys: I used to have, when I worked at my software development job, because I get so distracted, I used to have a post it that just said, “get back to work,” at the top of it.

Sacha: Oh yeah, I’m at work. I should do that. Yeah. I love it. Post-its are awesome.

Crys: So given that you have so many things going on in life, this is probably a complicated answer with many tiers. But what does success look like for you? We’re going to start with just right now, because we’re going to go into like how that might’ve changed. But right now, now, what is your vision of success?

You can pick a timeframe if you need to.

Sacha: So there’s a very easy answer, which I’ll give you first. And then there’s a slightly harder answer. The easy answer is I want a six figure business. And I want to be able to  have the knowledge that I have some kind of retirement pension fund that’s secure and big enough that I can look after my mum as well. And then there’s one other thing wrapped up in that–I would love to be able to take my son somewhere to a different country for six weeks. Every year in the school, summer holidays like that, that is my ideal. And it may be that that comes first because obviously he’s only going to be young for so long.

And then the retirement fund comes–.You know, I’m still pretty young. That’s one definition. The second definition is that I’m an asshole, and I’m very mean to myself, and I move the bloody goalposts constantly. So, I really struggle to ever feel pride or that I’m successful because, despite having, Becca Syme’s Achiever thing, I really, really struggled to acknowledge any success or any achievements.

I will finish a book and then I’ll just move straight on. There’s no stopping to celebrate. There’s no acknowledgement. There’s no, there’s no nothing. I just look to the next thing. I’ve always, since I was 12, I wrote, I remember writing it on my bedroom or I want a six figure business and, It’s completely arbitrary. Like what, who, why, why that figure? I don’t know. So yeah. There’s like, I don’t know how I’m going to feel when I get there. Will I still feel like a failure? You know?

I don’t know, but I spend a lot of time feeling like a failure, which is bizarre. And I don’t think I actually even knew that I felt that until I just said it, but yeah. I don’t know. It’s weird, but  those are my top targets.

Crys: What does a six figure business feel like for you? I think that when we have targets like that, subconsciously there’s a kind of freedom that that particular thing we expect to bring to us.

Sacha: Yeah. So there’s there’s probably three things wrapped up in that in my mind. When I’d reached that level, I will have no issues paying my bills, having a holiday every year and still having significant amounts of money that I can put away for my retirement might to be able to look after my mom. And to ensure that my son has some kind of inheritance.

The caveats are, well, not caveats, but the other sort of milestones on the way is I want to beat my old income. And then I want to beat the asshole who told me that my personality was a risk to my reputation. I know what he earned, and that is on the way to six figures. I am really like part of this fight, revenge. Like I have to beat this person because they crushed me and therefore I will feel righteous in having quit my job. I know it’s terrible. But yeah–

Crys: I had those goals, too! Yes. Okay. A hundred percent. I made just under six figures as a software developer. My first year publishing, I did not make that, clearly, but,my second year I did.

So that was awesome. And then also there is a, there is a person in my life that I can’t get rid of and it’s okay. But they’re a little snooty about like what they make and just… their idea of stability and all this other stuff. And so I definitely had it in the back of my mind–like it’s going to feel really good when I out-earn them and it totally did. It absolutely did.

I am not a big person when it comes to that. I am very petty. Of course I didn’t rub it in their face. All at all. It’s just my own personal accomplishment.

Sacha: I’m not even, I have no way of contacting this person.

Crys: You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna get there. You’re gonna love it.

Sacha: It’s amazing.

Crys: I think that’s hilarious that we both have those really specific goals.

Sacha: It’s so petty and I don’t even care. Like I am fine with it being petty,

Crys: It isn’t hurting us at all to have those goals or anyone else.

When you started writing, did you ever know that you wanted to be a writer? Like as a child?

Sacha: So I think if I had been more self-aware I probably would have known. I was a kid who always carried a notebook, I wrote stories, I read so prolifically that I basically read everything in my very small local library. And so my mom had to start taking me to the bigger town library because, you know, I know they could order stuff, but you know, you wanted to see the selection as a kid. So anyway, we went to the bigger library.

Like I literally, I consumed books.

Crys: Oh, man. I would have destroyed a Kindle Unlimited subscription as a child.

Sacha: I know! Exactly. It was like oh, those were the days when that was all we had to do with our time. And, you know, I was the sort of kid that my mum would be like, okay, you must go outside now. You need to put the book down and go outside. So what I would do is like sneak a book in my pants. I’d take the book outside, read in the tree house. Because then I was still outside, but I was still reading. And like English was always, always my favorite subject too.

Crys: I have a question. Did your mother ever ground you from going to the library or hide your books on you?

Sacha: No. She was a huge supporter. Like we had nothing really when we’re not, when we were growing up and she would spend her last penny on a book for me.

Crys: My mom was the same, but the only way she could punish me that worked was threatening to ban me from going to the library. At which point I would start sequestering spare books between my mattress and the box spring, in my drawers–everywhere. Just so that if she did go through and take my books because like, that was my punishment. I would have spares somewhere.

Sacha: That’s amazing. I love that. That is epic. Yeah. So if I had paid attention, I would have realized that English was my favorite subject. I loved my teacher. My teacher loved my writing. But, very rightly so, my mum told me to get a degree that would be a backup.

So I went off and did psychology. And then, I did a master’s in cognitive neuropsychology, and then I got a scholarship to do a PhD. So I came up with a whole theory around distributed cognition. And I just, I burned myself so low, that I did not go and do the PhD.

Then I fell into a–you know, cause you forget, you forget what your youth was about–I was following this “get a proper job” thing. So that’s what I did. I did like a graduate fast track management scheme, very boring in the public sector, local government. And I knew more or less instantly that I’d made a very big mistake.

Within six months I basically had clinical depression. I was told I didn’t fit in. I would never get very senior because I wouldn’t play the game. The politics–I was told my personality was a risk to my reputation. I remember literally breaking down and sobbing. And what happened was I drank wine and I started a blog under a pseudonym called SachaBblack.

So I basically started vomiting these rants about work, and they were hilarious because some of the things that happened was so ridiculous in this organization that, you know, I gained a following. Anyway, one thing led to another and I found the flash fiction community.

And all of a sudden, I remembered what writing was and how much I loved writing. I heard about NaNoWriMo and I went up in the loft and I got out some of my old notebooks and I was like, right. I’m going to do it. So I did, I did a NaNo and I have literally never looked back.

It’s like one of the only NaNos I actually finished because I didn’t know how to write back then, so I was just vomiting crap out. But, yeah, I just never stopped writing. Love it.

Crys: So how has this, because you have those moving goalposts, how have your goalposts moved? Where did they start? And what are some of the points that you hit along the way before today?

Sacha:  So when I started writing–if I set my mind to something–I always want to do it to the very best I possibly can. When I started the NaNo, I don’t think in my mind there was ever a doubt that I wouldn’t publish the book just because that is the finished– hat is the end. That is the completion. That is the goal achieved. So yeah.

I always knew I was going to publish the book. You know, when you first start writing, you don’t know that the whole indie world exists. You don’t know what it entails. So, you know, I moved the goalposts because I had no clue.

I was like, yeah, you know, I’m going to write a book. And then I’m going to publish a book with no clue the like eye-watering amount of work that goes into actually getting a book published. So, yeah, like originally I knew no better, so I wanted it traditionally published. Then I moved the goalpost because I listened to the likes of Joanna Penn and Mark Dawson and all of those guys and learned about indie.

So then I moved to the goalposts to being indie. Very rapidly after I finished the first book, I learned about the indie world. I knew that’s what I wanted. I knew I wanted to live a free life. I wanted nobody to be able to tell me what time I had to do stuff. And that correlated very directly with how much I didn’t enjoy my work.

So the more I hated my day job, the harder I pushed towards this in terms of moving goalposts. Though, like for me, it’s more that  I will achieve a goal that I’ve set myself and then I will tell myself some things are not good enough, or I could have done better or, I dunno. Yeah.

An example of where that’s not the case is a very black and white thing.  I just told you before we came on about me grading,  doing my martial arts, I either get an A-pass or I don’t. So, you know, like an A-pass is basically the full marks that you can get. And so every single exam I’ve got an A-pass, you know, and in my brain,  I’m like,tThat’s fantastic.

And then the other part of me is like, well, you did make a mistake, though, didn’t you? Like, you know, just like, Oh, shut up. You’re so boring, Sacha. But yeah. So that’s, that’s kind of how I moved my goalposts.

Crys: Yeah. And as you’ve talked I’ve heard you say a few goals, like finishing NaNo, publishing that first book, quitting the day job. And now it’s six-figure multiple streams of income. The goals grow for most of us.

Sacha: I think that’s okay.

Crys: A hundred percent. I think I’ve told you this story before, but in the StrengthsFinders, Sasha’s achiever is in her top five, which means it controls her.

Right.

It effects all of her life. Every single part. Mine is I think, down to six, seven, eight–it’s somewhere down there. So it still hits my life pretty strongly. And I didn’t realize when I started that I had the goal to be a fiction writer 100%. Like, I was going to make my money from fiction and fiction alone and nothing else. I wasn’t going to offer services or anything else–I was going to make it on fiction.

And I didn’t know that there was an invisible point when my brain might go, “Ding, ding, ding. You have achieved your goal!” But there was. And when I hit that point, I was like, “Oh, okay. Now what?” And I’ve been floundering hard.

I’ve had a couple episodes talking about figuring goals out for longterm, about what replaces that. Because that does drive you forward and just a higher number doesn’t necessarily do it. It has to mean something. Right? And that’s why I asked,  what does that six-figure mean to you?

Cause it means a lot of really good things.

Sacha: Yeah. So, okay. Now I understand. So, I have a slightly different answer because I really hugely relate to exactly what you’re saying about having achieved a goal. So my big goal was to quit my job. Okay. I’ve always wanted to earn  six figures. And I have genuinely, always wanted to earn six figures, but that was so distant and far off, the big goal was to quit my job.

And especially because I literally cried every day at work for weeks and weeks and weeks. I remember like where I very nearly had a nervous breakdown and I was crying in a tree. In the middle of winter and it was raining and I was just, I was absolutely hysterical. Like I couldn’t be talked down and, I just couldn’t stop crying and, sorry.

Crys: It is a very writer thing to do.

Sacha: Right? Like who does that?

Crys: Not in your room, you have to cry at a tree in the middle of winter.

Sacha: I know, right? I was literally in the middle of this tree. I think it was like maybe three trees that had sort of made it into what it is–irrelevant. And so when I quit my job, I spiralled so hard.

I shot up and I was hysterical with elation and joy… and then I realized I’d quit my job. And I was like, “Oh, goal achieved. “Now, I worked very hard, but there was something missing inside of me and I worked out–it was funny, on the podcast, I think with Damon Suede, and he was talking about character verbs and how everybody has a verb and it wasn’t until I chatted with him that I realized that my verb is to defy. Then I worked out what the problem was.

Whilst I was still in my day job, I was defying authority. I was defying the organization by writing, by building this business. And they were the big, bad monster. I used to talk about the organization like it was this big, bad monster, and then I defeated it.

And then what? There is nothing. So I really relate hard to that. And I think it was a process of time and a process of rebuilding myself to want more and finding something else to defy. So now it’s I want to defy the odds, and that’s what drives me now. And a little bit defying that asshole with his salary.

Crys: It can be hard when you accomplish that goal. You kinda gotta defy somebody else. Who can we get to be mean to you?

Sacha: Right. Someone be horrible, so I can defy you. Yeah. So I dunno. I guess I’ll probably have another mini collapse after I hit six figures and then I’ll have to find something else to do. Yeah.

So have you found your thing?

Crys: Which thing? Oh, maybe. Maybe. We’re seeing.

Sacha: Do you know your verb?

Crys: I don’t. if I had to answer like off the fly, it’s simply to create, because I do that in every way, shape and form in my life. I garden like a crazy person. I create order and I create chaos  and I get bored and then I go create something new. I joke with  my friends, that my spiritual gift is making money, because I can literally make money out of anything.

I look at everything and I’m like, well, these are the five different ways that you could create money out of this thing, like going in and finding seeds from the ylang ylang tree–cause everyone wants a ylang ylang tree in this town–sprouting them and then selling them for four bucks each after they’re these tiny trees out of $0 investment. Except, you know, maybe whatever container you put it in. Just to start.

It’s really hard, I think, right now between Corona and going through the end of a 15 year relationship to really know what my future is going–what I’m going to want my future to look like. So part of it is just accepting that I don’t really know right now, and that’s okay.

I’ve been setting smaller achievements. I haven’t  had a car for the majority of the last seven years because we have bicycles. Taxis are really cheap here. Cause you’re not going to go more than, like, four kilometers, okay? That’s how big our town is. I’ve realized–and this was actually in the Becca Syme’s intellection intensive class–that I really miss the car time.

I rented a car last month for the first time and then had the Becca Symes’ intellection class. And one of the questions was “Where’s your thinking time?”

I had one day in the car where I drove for nine hours by myself and I came up with the best ideas. I was like, I’m ready to go back to car life.

So one of my mini goals is make enough money to buy a car –and not a crappy car that I’m going to have to repair every month. It’s going to add more stress to my life, but a decent car.

I have that goal in my mind, and that is going to push me forward into some new writing projects specifically. There’s other things that are just kind of in that murky mess of amoebic ideas that have not yet crawled out onto land to become creatures.

Sacha: Creations. 

Crys: Yes, indeed. So that’s where I’m at. That’s where I’m at on the achievers-slash-goal thing right now. Today was interesting because I had a deadline for a book last week, and I don’t like having really intense deadlines where like, you start ten days before the thing is due when it’s a big project like this, but that’s what circumstances required.

And we did it. I kinda laid low Saturday, Sunday, and then today was my, okay, back to real life. I started organizing, and I took a really ugly mirror I have and I redecorated it to just create, and we’re going to put these plants in these pots. And just went into other creation mode hardcore this morning, which was cool.

And it’s interesting to see that pattern happen a lot.

You have, kind of a leg up from most writer businesses in that you have a really strong, example in your life of entrepreneurialship and building successful businesses in your father. So obviously that is has had an effect on you.

What would you say that you’re most grateful? For having had that relationship in your life and you’re in your businesses now.

Sacha: So the interesting thing is I didn’t have a relationship with my father until I was like 18. Yeah. So I lived with my dad until I was two. And then, my mom and dad split up and it was just my mom until well, forever.

And, so I didn’t see him. I don’t, well, I don’t recall seeing him until I was about nine and then I asked to see him. And so I’d spend, you know, the odd weekend with him, but we had a very fraught relationship. And I was a very fussy eater as a child, and that caused a lot of problems because my dad eats incredibly healthily and always has apart from his sugar addiction.

Yeah, so like we didn’t get on. And then he had a partner who I actually came to physical blows with. So then I didn’t talk to him for a couple of years. And then, I met my partner. Or, oh, I had a partner before and anyway, so there was like a very sort of loose relationship there, and then I met my wife and she is so family orientated.  It’s insane. They’re all off in each other’s businesses, but like literally as close of a family as you can get. And she pushed and encouraged me to rekindle with my dad. So I did, and we had a couple of sit down meals and we just got everything out in the open. I basically said everything that I needed to say, and that was it.

I’m a firm believer in moving on and letting go because I think when you don’t let go, you poison yourself. The only person those feelings and that anger was hurting was me. So I literally, I said what I had to say, and then I moved on and it was only in letting go that I was then able to develop a very close relationship with my dad. The crazy thing is I am so much like my dad it is un-fucking-believable for, for a girl who didn’t grow up with her father and did not spend a lot of time with her father, it’s actually a bit weird how similar we are. So just shows you sometimes how strong genes can be.

So, but with all that said, I am most grateful for my dad because he, of everybody, he was the person who said, “you need to quit your job. You need to quit your job.” He, two years out before I quit, he was telling me, every time I called him, “quit your fucking job. Quit your job, quit your job.” And I couldn’t, and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t let go.  And he was like, “you will find a way.” And he was, and don’t get me wrong, my wife also believed in me and you know, but of everybody, he had a way of talking to me that would give me faith in myself because he has this way with words, this way of describing things and giving you your own power. He was so resolute, and just when he believes something it is truth and that’s it.

He gave that to me, and, you know, it took a while for me to believe it. A while, you know, I had to pay off debt and stuff. So there were genuine financial blockages, that I would not quit my job until I paid off my debt. But, you know, he was the person that I called when I was crying in a tree, you know, he was the person and, I feel so sorry for him because the number of phone calls he had to deal with, with me, same shit over and over again, because I just hadn’t quit my job, you know?

But yeah, he was a pinnacle of strength and support, so I would say, you know, during the worst times in my day job. And you know, my mom also for other reasons, but if you’re asking about my dad, so yeah.

Crys:  He seems like a person who sees multiple paths all at once and positive possibility in all of them, where I feel like a lot of people will see, like this is the path I’m supposed to follow and feel like they have to stick to that. And I think that comes in with your rebellion against everything, your defiance, possibly inherited from him. And that’s one of the viewpoints that I have learned throughout life is one that that faith that he gave you, that you will find a way that, paths are all around us and we need to look for them because they’re not going to say, “Hey, I’m the right way,” because none of them are the right way. They’re just ways. And we make of them what we will.

Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. And he always, you know, he does not allow me to give him problems. He will turn it around very rapidly and ask me how I’m going to handle that situation. And I’ll tell you what, it is the most frustrating and fantastic conversation to have with somebody who will just not accept your bullshit.

And, yeah, so again, there’s that empowerment and because also he knows I will figure it out, whatever. You know, he doesn’t necessarily have the answer and he wouldn’t give it to me, even if he did have the answer, he’s very much no, go and research it yourself or go and, you know, whatever.  But I think it’s a fantastic way to be because you enable a person, and it’s, yes, we can help everybody, but it’s so much better to enable somebody to help themselves. And that’s what he does.

Crys: Awesome.

All right. Well, we have to wrap up, but I asked you to share something with the listeners, a fun resource for them.

So what do you have for us?

Sacha: So does it need to be a resource that I have created or a resource that other people? Like what should the resource–?

Crys: Anything, anything that you think is super helpful and that you love.

Sacha: Okay. There’s so many though.

Crys: That’s the learner problem.

Sacha: I know, right. I’m like, literally there’s so many things. Okay. So this one is, just a small thing, but it can open so many things. So if you are a podcast listener, which I’m assuming you all are if you’re listening to this podcast, then I have started to do a lot of listening to random podcasts. I say random, we’ll get to the point, but what I mean is like topical episodes.

There is a website called Listen Notes. And you can type in, like, let’s say you want to learn about writing dialogue, and you can type it in writing dialogue, and it will spring up a load of podcasts that are podcast episodes. Not podcasts to subscribe to, but podcasts, individual podcast episodes on that very topic. So actually it’s a bit like a Wikipedia encyclopedia, because there are so many bloody podcasts on all different types of topics. Let’s say you want to research Victorian murders, you know, whatever. You type in Victorian murders and there’s  eleventy billion individual podcast episodes from 5,000 different podcasts on that topic. So, yeah, I really like that because I love consuming audio for research. So that’s my resource for you.

Crys: I love that. And I have just recently, after Joanna Penn mentioned that she’d switched to Spotify as her podcast provider, I was like, okay, like my podcast provider, which is Podcast Addict on Android is literally taking up 75% of the memory on my phone, because I have so many podcasts I haven’t listened to. And I was like, I like that streaming aspect better. And it’s just too much work to make this podcast default to not downloading and it’s streaming sucks, so I’ll go to Spotify. And one of the things that’s been driving me nuts is that it doesn’t notify you with, “Hey, these podcasts have new podcasts,” like every morning. So I’m figuring out how to get around that. But what you just said was like, “Oh, I can create Spotify playlists on writing dialogue? What?” That’d be amazing.

So like, just when I’m like, I’m going to go on a learning binge on this specific topic, I’ve already got it put together.

Sacha: Yeah. I don’t know if it syncs directly to Spotify, but you could.

Crys: Of course do it manually for sure.

Sacha: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and I do do that, like when there is a topic, you know, sometimes like when you’re listening to podcasts and then you just, you go in a bit of a lull. It’s just like reading, like mood reading, and then I’m like, “Oh, I need something new, but I just, I don’t know what.” And anyway, yeah. So that’s when I’ll often do it then as well. I love it.

Crys: Okay. So where can people find you online?

Sacha: So, sachablack.co.uk, which is Sacha with a C, so S-A-C-H-A  Black.co.uk. And the other two places where you can find me most is in my Facebook group, so Rebel Authors. And, last, but by no means least, I’m most active on Instagram, so @sachablackauthor. Yeah, I mean, I do have all the other social medias, but yeah, they’re the best places to get me.

Crys: A hundred percent. All right. Thank you, Sacha.

Sacha: Thank you for having me. I absolutely loved talking to you.