Intro
In my weekly update, I’m making good progress with a cozy mystery, which I’m extremely excited about. I’ve been spending loads of time researching herbal magic as my character is a green witch—I was going to say entirely too much time, but I don’t think that’s true. It does slow my writing down a little, but it’s enjoyable and it doesn’t stop my writing and it adds to the story.
Yesterday felt like a particularly slow day. I’d taken a few days off and that back to the computer that first day is always a little more difficult. I was writing in 20 minutes sprints with some friends when I normally do 10 minute sprints. And then with the research, I was getting lower word counts than normal for me. But at the end of the day, I was surprised to find that I had just under 2000 words with about two hours, a little less than, of butt in chair, hands on keyboard time. All I needed was 88 more words to hit 2000, but I’m not a night person and it was past nine o’clock in the evening, which meant I was an absolute pumpkin.
I want to move on to the interview, with my dear friend J Thorn, but I wanted to note that J mentions a couple of upcoming projects. We recorded this a few months ago and those projects, an amazing podcast called Writers, Ink with JD Barker and his book on story craft with his partner Zach Bohannon, which is called Three Story Method, both of which are live now.
Interview
Crys: I would like to welcome my dear friend and mentor, J. Thorn, to the podcast today.
J: Great, Crys. How are you?
Crys: Pretty good. For those of you who aren’t familiar with J., he is the author of many post-apocalyptic novels and podcasts as well.
J: That’s true, yeah.
Crys: With three that you’re currently doing every week.
J: Yes. And one more on the way. Fairly soon.
Crys: Ooh, exciting. Currently, it’s The Career Author, The Writers Well, and The Author Life. The Author Life is also connected to your blog and your mastermind, which I am a happy member of.
J: Yes.
Crys: With your partner, Zach Bohannon. You’ve got a book on craft and everything story called Three Story Method that will be out in this coming year.
J: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I love creating stuff.
Crys: You have been in the writing life for quite a while now.
J: Yeah. Depending on when you start the clock. I started dabbling in my first long form writing in around 2007, 2008 and published, I think, around 2009 was the first thing I self published.
Crys: So a decade in.
J: Yes.
Crys: So when you published your first book, where were you in your life?
J: Ah, let’s see. 10 years ago, so I had a, I had a day job. I was in education, have a wife, two kids, a mortgage. My kids would have been about seven and five or six and four about that time, so they were still demanding quite a bit of attention.
They’re teenagers now, so they require a different kind of attention, but not the kind that makes me have to sit on the floor with them and play, which I miss, but I don’t have to do that anymore. And I was, you know, being an educator. I think it’s not like having a bank teller’s job or it’s not like clocking in and clocking out in shift work in that you take a lot of work home with you, and you take a lot of emotional trauma home with you when, especially when you’re dealing with young kids. They almost become your kids.
You know, it’s a parenting process in a way. And so it makes it really difficult I think for teachers and educators in general to do anything but that, because you’re just so emotionally spent by the time you get home, not to mention physically exhausted. So I think for me writing was, has always been, an outlet.
And it was something that I knew I should be doing. I felt this compulsion to do it. So even though I would be exhausted and, you know, I’d help my wife get the kids to bed and you know, finish up cleaning up the dishes and then I wanted to go to sleep, or I wanted to turn on the TV, but I would force myself to sit in the chair and work on the marketing and the the email list building and that sort of thing. And then the next morning I would get up an hour to two hours before the rest of the family and try and get my words in for the day. I did that for years.
Crys: Yeah, that was a lot going on.So when you were in kind of a long-term overload, what was your definition of success at that point in your career?
J: I don’t, I don’t even know if I was thinking about success at that point. I felt like I was so green, and I was, I was so at the beginning of the journey that I was just trying to keep myself in it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was reading a ton of books and I was listening to a ton of podcasts and reading blogs, especially in the independent publishing world.
You know, Joe Konrath’s blog was just a gold mine. He was a guy who had dozens of books, traditionally published, kind of crossed over into indie publishing and was documenting that on his blog. And I remember that being incredibly helpful. Konrath was one. Scott Nicholson was another one who at the time was doing a lot for writers, and I was just trying to keep my head above water.
So I think for me, success was as simple as just not giving up.
Crys: And a lot’s changed since then. We’ve talked about success quite a bit, and I know that you have a much clearer definition of what success means to you now, when before it was just to feed your creative side, it sounds like.
J: Yeah, you develop your own metrics as you go along. At least I think you should. I think if you let other people define success for you, that’s a very dangerous place to be. And I don’t think I’ve ever been there. Luckily, I’m quite a minimalist and essential just by nature. I don’t require a lot of anything really in my life. I have a few guitars, and when I was a teenager, I bought a lot of music. So I have a CD collection, but that’s sort of by default. I didn’t collect the CDs to collect them. I collected them because I liked the music, which I think is different than being a collector these days. So I don’t require much.
For me, what’s really important is freedom and that’s how I define success.
Do I have agency over my life? I can’t say that I do in all aspects. There are certain parts of my life I just continue to work on. And I think that’s the case for as long as you live. But for me now, success is being able to decide what I do from the time I get up until the time I go to bed. And not in a hedonistic sort of way. Not, you know, that I want to be laying on a beach on an Island all the time. Or that I want to be jetting around with rock stars and partying. Not that sort of freedom, but just the freedom to be able to decide what I’m going to do with my time and then have that time, fund my lifestyle, and take care of my family.
So for me, success is all about finding that level of independence. I’m not quite exactly where I want to be yet. I want to be in a place where I don’t have to worry as much about that. But then again, I talked to other people who are a little further down the road from me on the journey, and they say that feeling kind of never goes away.
You could have a blockbuster movie that’s optioned and turned into a Hollywood film. And you worry that the next thing you write isn’t going to be as good. So it might not ever go away. But I think for me, I would like to be able to not have to worry so much about some of the financial aspects of being an independent creative.
Because as you know, Crys, when you’re an independent creative, there is no salary. There’s no 401k. There’s no safety net. You’re kinda on your own.
Crys: Yeah, absolutely. I know you’ve gotten into financial independence and, and the FIRE kind of stuff lately because of that, which is, I think, a really smart move for any kind of creative to do when freedom is your goal.
Crys: Yes, that’s true. And I wish FIRE, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. I wish that had been more of a prevalent thing when I was in my twenties and thirties as opposed to finding it in my late forties, because the magic in that, whether you think FIRE or FIS is a worthy aspiration or not, it’s all about saving and compound interest.
It’s simple math, and with compound interest, the earlier you start, the more it works in your favor. So there’s nothing I can do about the years I wasn’t contributing to my savings the way I should have been, but I think it’s an exciting time for millennials or for people who are in their twenties and thirties and have a longer runway than I do towards that retirement age.
Because if you start putting away some money now and do it in a wise way, it can have tremendous positive impacts down the road.
Crys: Absolutely. So I know that you are a creative in more ways than one. You are also a musician, even if you don’t practice or participate in that as much as you used to. Did you ever feel like you had to choose between your creative urges in the different paths, and what led you to be more focused on writing the music per se?
J: I would like to say no, that you don’t have to choose, but I did. Other people’s experience might be different, but I was getting to a point where there’s only, there’s only so many minutes in the day and there’s only so many hours in the week.
I hate the busy as a badge mentality. I’ve never bought into that. We all have 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s what we all have. So what we have to do is, we have to decide what our priority is and we have to make decisions based on what we feel is most important to us. And I was at a moment in my life, I don’t know, this is probably going on, three, four years ago, something like that. It’s the last time I was in a band. I had this moment where I was still working full time and the writing business was picking up and the band… Band commitments are… they are a commitment. We were practicing maybe three hours a week on one night, and then we would try and have a show or a performance at least two or three times a month.
So I kind of got to a point where I just didn’t physically have the minutes to fit all of that in. It just wasn’t logically possible. It wasn’t necessarily a shortage of creative juice or anything like that. It wasn’t as though the band was stealing money, the creative energy from my writing, it was simply a matter of logistics.
And then when I looked at it, I realized that, and I think, most musicians would agree with me, the path to making money as a musician in this day and age is extremely difficult. It’s not easy in publishing, but I think it’s even more difficult in music. And so I think when I looked at what the potential was and what, and also sort of what my skill set was. I’m not even an average guitar player. I’m not even an average singer. I happen to be in a band with guys who are way better than me. But I like to think I’m a pretty good writer and I had to be realistic with myself and say, okay, one of these is probably more like a hobby, you know. As much as it pains me, because I think being in a band is a lot easier than being a writer.
You can kinda just show up and you play and you have fun and that’s it. And sometimes you record that. I think writing is a lot more “work” than being in a band. Depending on the situation, but I just… yeah. You have to have that moment where you realize, okay, what am I really good at? And you have to be honest with yourself. Not what you want to do, but what do you think you can do? What has the most potential? And I think for me it became clear that that writing was really where I had the most potential in a form of a creative output.
Crys: That’s interesting that you say that being in a band is “easier,” at least it was a little bit for you. Because I know that you’re huge on collaborations, and a band is a huge collaboration. Do you think that that experience is why you have been so active in pursuing collaborations as a writer?
J: I think so. It probably has been. I’ve fought collaboration my entire life and, and I still do too, to a degree. I like to think of myself as a lone wolf, which is such a fantasy. I like to think like that I’m in complete control of my own destiny and that I’m the one that’s gonna make things happen for myself. And no one else is gonna do it for me. And to a certain degree, that’s true.
But I also have come to realize, especially over the past 10 years, that it’s almost impossible to do anything like that by yourself and, and whether the collaboration is a creative collaboration with a partner, whether it means you simply have a freelance team that works on your behalf— that’s collaboration.
There are so many different types of collaboration, but you’re right, there are very few, at least there were in my life, very few musical opportunities that did not involve other people. And when you’re in a band, you have to learn how to compromise. You have to learn when to lead. You have to learn when to follow. And it’s contextual. It’s never the same thing twice. Then you add in the personal dynamics of being in a band. When you’re in a band, we all joke about band drama. There’s always band drama. So and so doesn’t like this person or doesn’t like this person, doesn’t like this person.
And I just watched the new Netflix documentary, Nasty Cherry, which is so entertaining. It’s sort of like a, a Big Brother, Real World, making the band kind of show. But like all the drama that was in it was just so—I could still relate to it, you know? And I think you have to learn how to deal with that.
If you can, that skillset, whether it’s in a band or in a corporate setting, or if you are in a group of people with a like minded passion, you learn that skill set and it transfers across everything. So it’s not a direct correlation. Songwriting is not the same as writing a story or long form storytelling, but I think the collaborative nature and the skills you develop and learning how to work with other people are skills you can use in all aspects of your life.
Crys: That makes a lot of sense. I’ve done quite a few of collaborations myself on my pen name, and I’m slowly working on one with my dear friend Tami Veldura for an epic space opera. Sie’s an amazing world builder and I’m a very fast drafter, so we’re hoping that it’s going to be a really good match.
I guess my only correlation would be, when I was a programmer, when we would code pair, and even then I was not super excited about that, because I’m the same as you. Like I like being lone wolfish, but I also desire that connection and that community, and I get a lot of energy out of being around people who have that same mindset.
J: Yes.
Crys: And the mastermind that you’ve started, that I’ve been a part of from the beginning, has been a really good, different element of that same kind of energy. One of the things I like, and you and I talked about this quite a bit before you started it, it’s something you’ve continued to consider as you’ve been iterating over, as we’re close to completing the second round and you’re going into your third, is the group is different genres. It’s different skill levels. And there’s a lot of energy because of the gaps between it that, I think.
J: Yeah.
Crys: And you’ve been a member of masterminds before. How did you get started in being part of masterminds?
J: Well, I think because I had a career as an educator and I’ve a master’s degree in education, I spent a lot of time studying educational theory and, and modalities of learning. I’ve known since I started my career in the early nineties that that idea of collaboration is a great way to learn. And for a lot of people, it’s the best way to learn. I always incorporated some element of collaboration in all of my teaching assignments over the years.
I think for me it was simply a matter of tweaking what has been proven to work for me over years and years and years and just implementing that into a different space where I didn’t see a lot of that happening. I think if anyone pays attention to, especially the independent publishing circles, you’ll see a ton of things like webinars and online courses and big events.
And those things are all great and they’re really valuable. And I’ve learned a lot from them. But I also know that it’s the things that don’t scale that are the best for the people who attend them, which is opposite for the person who’s creating them. For the person who’s creating the support materials or the educational materials, it’s best to scale, but that’s not what’s in the best interest of the person who’s attending them.
That’s where the rub is. And I think that’s why. I like to think my program is different because I’ve said a number of times, the mastermind model doesn’t scale. It’s 12 people. It’s me on a call with those 12 people from week to week, you know? Yeah. I could do several sessions, but II can’t do a hundred of them.
And I wouldn’t. The mastermind model was something that not only did I teach, but when I started getting into the publishing industry, it’s what I sought out. I joined several masterminds over the years because I knew firsthand as an educator how effective they were.
At the bottom end of that learning curve, I was like, well, if I can get into a mastermind with other people, that it’s going to help me. And your point about the diversity of experience is something that I really wrestled with when I started mapping out what this experience might look like, because you can kind of, there’s kind of two branches. There’s two paths you can take, and they’re somewhat exclusive. They’re somewhat mutually exclusive. You can have a mastermind group or a gathering of people who are very tightly niched. They are within the same circles. They’re writing the same genre. They have about the same amount of experience.
And there’s some power in that. There’s a shorthand that develops, and then you almost get a “scene” where you get people helping out each other, but I think there’s a ceiling on that, which is why I went the other route. The other route was I want to get as many diverse opinions and experiences in the group as I can, which means, as you know, Crys, there are people in there who’ve never published. There are people in there who have published dozens of books and are full time writers like yourself. There are people who are writing fiction, people who are writing nonfiction, people who are younger, people who are older. Living in all different parts of the country, in the world. And it’s all of that diversity that I think is the strength and the glue that holds the group together.
And you called it an energy. I think that’s a nice way of putting it. We have situations where people bring their own life experience and they don’t realize how valuable it is to, to other people who don’t have it. And when you get into the mastermind, that’s where that fertile ground is to create those types of connections.
Crys: Yeah, absolutely. And each of the people, even if they were only in for one session, each of those people has become a friend of mine now, because of the time we’ve spent being really open and honest about our fears, our problems, and our hopes.
J: And I think too, that’s a, that’s a little harder to pull off when your group is very homogenous, because everyone’s worried about where they are in the strata, you know, where are you in the hierarchy?
If you’re all very similar, but if you’re coming from very different backgrounds and experiences, I think people are much more vulnerable. They don’t feel that comparisonitis as much.
Crys: That makes a lot of sense. I’m also in a small group of my pen name’s genre, and I can see that playing out on a small scale, because there’s not many of us, but it’s still, yeah. I can definitely see where that’s caused some tensions between different people at different points.
I asked you to share something, whether a craft tip or business tip or a book recommendation with the listeners. So what do you have for them?
J: Well, I think as I look back over many of the books that I’ve read this calendar year, and one of one of them that has probably been the most significant for me. It validated a lot of what I knew. And it also taught me a lot of things, filled in a lot of gaps for me. And that’s the book recommendation I’m going to make, which is Atomic Habits by James Cleary. It’s one of those very simple concepts in that the premise of the book is that you don’t get motivated and then create, you create, which then keeps you motivated. That’s a paradigm shift for a lot of people. A lot of people, especially writers, like to think that they have to create some sort of magic so that when they sit down on the chair, the muse will then sprinkle story dust on themand they will get inspired and they’ll write great words.
But the truth is you’ve got to write shitty words, and then then they become great, and then you become more inspired and motivated as you go. It’s the other way around. And I think that in Atomic Habits that was really drilled home to me.
One of the reasons why I think it might be my book recommendation of the year is not only is it the content, but I’ve read a ton of self-help and writing books and craft books over the years, and Atomic Habits is one of the most well-written nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It’s succinct and clear and logical. It’s an easy read. You can sit down and read it and in one sitting. It’s fantastic.
Crys: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of that as well. And you’re right. That was a mind shift for me.
I had a rule for myself—because my depression, when it flares up, it keeps me from moving forward a lot of times because of all those negative voices in my head—and so I had a rule, that’s “just one thing.” Just do one thing. Chances are you’ll probably do more, but if you do just one thing, then you’ve succeeded today.
He puts it in much clearer words and better science about why that works. It was a mindset shift for me to hear it in his words and be like, oh, that’s why just one thing works. Like, I don’t have to fuss at myself that I’m not motivated… and then force myself to do one thing.
Everybody does that, no matter how difficult or minor it is, everyone does that. So you have to do just one thing and then you do another thing and then you start being excited to do more things.
J: Part of Atomic Habits that I think is really powerful is it kind of goes against the grain, although less so now, but it’s really prioritizing systems and habits over goals. He goes into great detail as to why goal setting alone is detrimental to your goals. You need to have some direction as to where you’re going, but you don’t accomplish the goals by setting the marker. The way you accomplish the goals is you create the systems and the habits that will by default get you there.
He goes into great detail on how to do that. That’s been another profound shift for me. I mean, even up until 15 years ago in the classroom, I would have students setting goals, but I didn’t ever sort of create the systems for them, that they could reach them.
And I see that now. I see it so clearly. I wonder why I didn’t see it so many years earlier. But it’s a revelation and I think once you realize that, you also take some of the pressure off. You know, the example that Zach and I always use on The Career Author podcast is we say, yif you set a goal to write 2000 words a day and you write 1,974, you’ve technically failed. But have you? And is that the mindset you want to have?
Do you want to have come that close to 2000 words and think of yourself as a failure? I don’t think so. It’s a very siloed example, but I think it’s one worth considering and you’d be better off instead of saying, “I want to get 2000 words a day,” you say, “Okay, every day at 7:00 AM till 7:20 AM I’m going to sit in this chair and I’m going to do nothing but type.”
And if I type 5 words or 50 words or 500 words, that’s all I’m going to do. And I’m going to do that every single day. There’s where I think you then start to turn those habits into something real and build that life of freedom that you want.
Crys: Well, thank you so much for sharing with me today, and I will have links to everything we’ve mentioned in this conversation in the show notes.
Notes
- Atomic Habits by James Clear https://amzn.to/3eVanRo
- Three Story Method by J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon https://amzn.to/3cWgYt8
- The Career Author https://thecareerauthor.com/
- The Writers Well https://thewriterswell.org/
- The Author Life https://theauthorlife.com/
- Writers, Ink https://writersinkpodcast.com/
This post contains affiliate links.
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