Episode 59: How do you manage different seasons of being an author?

In this week’s episode, JP and Crys talk about the different seasons that come with being an author and how they navigate through them or plan to navigate through them in the future. 

Show Notes

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

The Serial Fiction Show

Story or Die by Lisa Cron

Patreon

Transcript

JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 59 of the Write Away Podcast and it is the 4th of September 2021 as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…

Crys: Crys Cain.

JP: Hello, Crys, how has the summer of chaos been?

Crys: You have basically given me my subtitle for the summer of chaos, the movie, and that is My Disney Pixar Princess Summer Adventure.

JP: Yeah, you should just explain that because it’s just insane watching all of these crazy videos.

Crys: Part of it is we’re in national parks, so we’re just seeing a lot of critters, first off. But last week was insanity because we went to, first of all, a national park I didn’t even know existed until I saw a sign for it on the road. So we were like okay we’re going to go over there just because, and then it’s the most deserted national park I’ve been to. I think it’s the smallest one in existence and it’s called Pinnacles National Park in California. And the animals were so cheeky.

I have video and photos. I don’t think I showed you the video of the squirrel coming up to Smalls and like pawing at his shorts. Like it looks like he’s trying to pet Smalls. Clearly, he’s just going for food. These animals are clearly overfed by humans. And we did not give them anything. But the squirrels were super cheeky and then the birds were also super cheeky and beautiful. So I have all these super close-up pictures and videos of these animals being like, yo, we’re hungry, come on.

If they’d offered to clean my house or my van, whatever, I absolutely would have had an exchange, but there was no offer. So we’re only halfway to the Disney Pixar princess, we’re working up to it. And then we went to Sequoia National Park. And we recorded last Wednesday with book club. So promptly the next evening after that, my van broke down on the side of a mountain at 11:00 PM at night with no cell phone reception.

JP: Of course not because that’s where things break down.

Crys: That’s where things break down. What kind of story would it be if you didn’t break down without a reception?

Now, if it’d been a real story, it would have been a road in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully it was the road through the Sequoia National Park. And so within 30 minutes an off-duty park employee found us, saved us. And I spent the night in the van bingeing Schitt’s Creek while Priscilla and Smalls went to a hotel. The continuation of the Disney princess aspect is, first of all, I did my tree hugging. Then I stood inside a tree that was bigger than my tent. The inside of the tree, of course the tress are Sequoias, they are definitely bigger than my tent, but the inside space of the tree was bigger than my tent.

That was cool. Like I can absolutely imagine people sleeping in those on their way through the wilderness. And then we saw a bear, a real-life bear, a mama bear and a cub. And the Rangers were trying to rejoin them. They’d gotten separated and they were in the people area of the park that we were in and so they herded them back up into the mountains.

And then I swam in a river full of gold. It’s a super drought over here. So normally these rivers are super dangerous and they’re going over these giant boulders. So Smalls and I were clearly bouldering, but it’s five feet lower than normal. There were these beautiful, calm pools that we could sit and splash in. And Priscilla looked and she’s, Hey, that looks like gold. I was like, oh no, it’s like probably pyrite or something. And then this crystal shop owner from Tucson, Arizona comes in and he’s, oh yeah, there’s gold. Here’s a piece of granite with like gold chunks in it, like tiny gold chunks in it.

And so then we realized that the little gold flakes that were like swirling up every time that we walked through the water actually were gold. And my semi scientific theory is that because the water’s so low, all this gold is collected in this area for years and not been accessible at all. And so any of the submerged rocks are just dusted with gold. And so we swam in gold and it’s definitely going into a book because that was absolutely magical.

JP: That’s amazing and awesome. And it’s so cool that you got to experience that.

Crys: Yeah. And so I have not written a darn word since I wrapped up the romance book. And we talked about how I’m going to put everything in the notebook and I have not taken the time to sit down and put my existing work in the notebook and that’s holding me back because I can’t just pick it up and roll with it.

But at the same time, I’ve just really been enjoying taking a break which I’m not generally very good at doing and letting myself have two weeks, no guilt. And we have The Career Author Summit in about two weeks, a little less than two weeks. And while part of me is like, well, that’s the point at which I really need to get back to work. That’s still a whole fucking month off work, and I don’t know how I feel about that, but I’m also trying to retrain my brain about the value of my time and work and all that good stuff that I complain about. Capitalism and everything all the time.

I mentioned this on The Author Success Mastermind podcast as well, but I read a book this last week called Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. And the maddening part of this book is where they talk about, specifically for the US, how we have been indoctrinated to believe that working gives us our value. And it’s so subtle most of us don’t even examine it. It’s something that I’ve been examining really deeply a lot, because when you are 100% in charge of your time, you have to be conscious about that. It’s thrust in your face.

Whereas if you just go to a job you’re able to compartmentalize. I’d had been able to compartmentalize a lot for a lot of years. I don’t know if I recommend the book because she dances around a lot of topics. So if you’re looking for a very directed, focused book, it may not be for you.

If you like seeing how all these random things are connected than it is a really good book for you. She also has a TED talk. So if you look up that book and the author’s name, I think she has a TEDx talk that spawned this book that might give you like the gist of it. But definitely recommend if you are really frustrated with American work culture, which I think is 95% of America right now.

JP: What was the title and the author?

Crys: Do Nothing. I don’t know who the author is. We’ll put it in the show notes.

JP: Perfect. Yep. That’s what they’re for.

Crys: How about you, sir?

JP: Well, the Do Nothing concept, very topical, not topical, but it’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind. Timely, topical, especially since you tried to curse me into becoming a van lifer in our Tarot episode. Thank you. But no, I’ve definitely been contemplating that because everything surrounding the author business has just been like ramping up so much. Which has been great for me, but I have no idea how I have all this like crazy amounts of time to do all of this stuff. I feel like something is about to give, but I have no idea what it is. And I’m just going with it because right now everything’s working out great.

The Serial Fiction Show Podcast, scheduling for that, we’re scheduled officially all the way through December, which is fantastic. So we know everything that we need to do to get to that point. And we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from authors who have been listening to the show and either want on it or whatnot. So it’s really cool to be a part of something that was Christine Daigle’s idea, and really see that it’s been flourishing because it’s what authors want. And basically we’re just promoting other authors. So it’s like a fun thing. And then this podcast has been doing great. I’ve been loving this. And then I have a Vella, 11 episodes are being edited by an external source and then we’re pretty much ready to publish.

And yeah, I don’t know, everything’s been going good. I feel scared saying that, but at the same time, I don’t. I’ve been having fun. I’ve been enjoying this and I have so many pieces and so many things that I could ramp up when the time comes. And right now I really like having that variety of options to choose from and when the time is right being able to be a little bit more in control of my time and being able to ramp up the piece that I want.

That’s basically what I’ve been doing since 2019 when I really was like, yeah, I want to be an author. I want to do this full time. And so now, starting to actually see all of these opportunities just sitting there and just like waiting, I’m like, oh, I can’t wait.

Crys: We have a topic that is supposed to be craft-based, but I feel like we’ve stumbled onto a topic that we’re both just really excited about right now that I want to switch to. We’ll figure out the question for the title later, but more about capturing the flows and seasons of life in our business.

JP: Yeah, sure.

Crys: Excellent. So one of the things that I see in you right now is when our business first really takes off and we start to go full time, and this is probably the same outside of the author community. But I see this three-year pattern that I have seen so far with all of my close writer friends who have gone full time in working for themselves. They may not be writing full-time, but they may be also teaching or consulting or whatever, but they don’t have a boss other than themselves. And you’re on this edge because you do have a day job, but you’re also doing so much for yourself stuff. And that is, that the first year we have so much energy because everything is new and exciting and we can see where it’s going and that energy fuels us for a good minute. It may not be the full year, but like year one categorized by catastrophic amounts of energy that allow us to do insane amounts of writing, publishing, teaching, projects, all that.

Year two, oh no. What have I done? And getting disillusioned, getting really tired of all of the work that you’ve created for yourself. You’re over committed because you no longer have year one energy and it’s not that you are doing too much, objectively. It’s that you’re doing too much for the energy phase you’re in.

And then year three is when I see a lot of people have readjusted. They realigned priorities, realigned their schedule. Often year three is when folks start to hire a virtual assistant because they know what their business is and they know what they need but don’t need to do themselves. And then year three is a lot more faith in yourself because you got through year two.

JP: It’s funny because I think about this from my own experience with working in different companies. Because I’ve jumped to different jobs because I will start off and I will be like, oh my gosh, I have a thousand ideas on how I can improve the systems here. And I will do them. It will be like crazy amounts of work and then I may not see the benefit of it. And then you have to come to terms with where you fit in the role.

And also, the one thing, especially with working for someone else, is the expectation. Because if you come in with, this is the thousand things I can do when I’m really excited to join, and then a year later you’re like, okay, I’m not that excited anymore. I just want to deal with what I’ve got right here. And I don’t want a thousand more projects tacked onto it.

I think it’s going to be interesting the point at which the stuff that I control becomes hopefully more beneficial. And then I can see what that looks like, because I think without the person dictating the projects that I work on and I being able to control that, I think there’s going to be a difference there that I can’t wait to experience.

Crys: For those of our friends who are still working day jobs and listening to this, I don’t know what it is that separates out these three categories of workers, these are not official, they’re just the ones that popped into my head. I think it tends to those who are entrepreneurial minded. We do jump in and do way too much. We do more than our job. We want to do good. We want to get a lot done. We want to improve things. We want to prove ourselves. And so like we give 110%, 120%. Again, not sustainable. And the reason I think that applies to entrepreneurial people is because we do that in our own business, but then it actually directly benefits us. So I’m okay with that.

There are then the other people who are absolute shit at their jobs and they don’t try and show up whatsoever. They do the bare minimum and whatever their mindset is about that, there are people who do that. And then there’s a third level of mythical person who actually has a balanced idea of how much energy they should give to a job. And I don’t know if I’ve actually met any of them. I hear they exist in theory.

But that I think is what most of our writer friends who have day jobs should be aiming towards. And that’s honestly, one, giving only 80% of yourself to your job, or less, if you can give 50 or 60% of yourself to your job, rocking. I don’t know how to do that.

If you give a hundred percent, there’s nothing left for your projects back home without digging into your reserves. And this is where that Do Nothing but comes in and how America, specifically through propaganda, convinced its citizens that your goodness, your value, your morality as a human being equated to how much you gave to your job and not like how much you gave to your family and your community.

It’s wild. Even if you just pick it up to just read the history part of it. It’s wild. And because it’s so deeply ingrained over about a century worth of this, we don’t even realize it’s there and that it could be different. Until we look at Europe and we’re like, oh my goodness, they get so much vacation time.

Yeah. Because they have different, crazy things, but they don’t have the specific crazy thing about work that we have. And then, so back to having the work, like you said, you can’t sustain that initial energy of all the things you want to do, but your employer is like, well, you were able to do it once, you should be able to do it forever. You should be a machine. Because again, they’re also caught in this trap. My recommendation that is completely like snooty and probably not realistic for a lot of people, though right now with the job market maybe realistic, start a new job and only give 50%.

The advice I’ve seen is let your job tell you how much they expect from you. Don’t set that bar for yourself. Cause you’re always gonna set it higher than they are going to set for you.

JP: Yeah. I’m actually really happy with the current job that I have now. And I went into this job and I let them know I write as a side thing, I want to ramp that up. I will give everything I can during the eight hours of work. And then if you need more, we can discuss that.

The goal before that job was always moving up the ladder. Cause I work in quality and in science, so it was always like a lab technician or something like that. And then moving to a lead role, supervisor role, manager role. And that was the “dream” to follow. And I would see that one opportunity that six people are fighting for and I had to take a step back and realize this is the choice. This was my choice that I had to make like we have in our stories.

I can go in this one direction and I can become a manager. I could get six figures plus really easily in less than a year. Or I can go this other route, I can take a job that is about lateral from where I was at. I would have no one under me. I can do the job that I need to do. I can offer what expertise I have. But it won’t be 80 hours a week, it won’t be 60 hours a week, and I can focus on writing. And that’s the direction I took because this is what I want to do, ultimately. I don’t want to be the manager.

 I don’t want my income being dictated by a corporate company. I want to be able to produce something that people want to. That’s what writers want. They want to be able to offer something to the table that is valued. And in return, the community gives back too.

Crys: 100%.

 And I think even with you having a good balance between your job and your time that isn’t working, the stress has sometimes reached into your free time. How have you handled that? Because that affected my energy insanely when I had a day job, to the point where I never would have been able to publish. I probably would’ve come to a point similar to you where I’m like, I can take this low stress job or I continue on with whatever I’m doing, but it probably would have taken me a lot longer.

JP: So I had to have a learning sit down with JP moment in a job a while back because the problem that I had with my drive to move up the ladder to prove myself to some imaginary person, was that my mindset was everyone needs to do that. Like why isn’t everyone also striving to be in this sort of like competitiveness. And not realizing that some people are in the same position as me to do the job and leave. Their interest is not to rise up to the top. They just want to get the job done and go. And so I would get really frustrated and I would get really angry. And then I would take that with me outside of work and I would complain. And it wasn’t until my partner was like, why do you complain so much about work? It sounds terrible. And the truth of the matter was it didn’t matter. It does not matter. No one’s going to die at the job. And as long as the work is getting done, who cares.

And that was like how I’ve removed that sort of stress when it comes to work. As long as it’s getting done, it doesn’t matter how it’s getting done. Having that mindset and just understanding that people are different and that they don’t have the same drive as you and that’s okay. That was a really big moment to remove so much stress, insane amount of stress.

Crys: Yeah. And I’m actually gonna side step this too, when you are in charge of your own business, a lot of authors and publishers compare themselves to other publishers. Who’s doing what promotions and who’s doing this in their social media groups and who is publishing this many books or writing this many words.

And especially early on, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not a sustainable thing, you want to try to do everything because you don’t know what’s working. And a lot of us are just desperate to get that income flowing early on. And so there’s that same kind of sit down talk you have to have with yourself about what is actually necessary.

And this is going to be different for every author. My main co-writer and I have very different ideas of necessary. And she is more financially successful than I am because she has different levels of necessary because so much of her goal/what she needs to survive in life is financially focused.

We have completely different living situations these days. She needs more income. I do not. So for me, it’s far more necessary to not have stress in my life. And so I make different choices that give me less money but make me really happy. So those things that you struggle with in your day job, they’re going to follow you to your self-employed status, but you don’t have somebody else to put the blame on.

JP: Yeah, exactly.

Crys: It’s just you.

JP: And the whole concept of being a six-figure author, you don’t have to be. If that’s not what you want, you don’t have to be that.

Crys: If you live in California, you might have to be that.

JP: Right, depending on where you live and your living situation, you may have to.

But I think that being financially driven is an echo of the current set in America and other places where the idea is just chasing the money. But, like you’ve spent a month on the road. You are experiencing what you want to experience. And you’ve been enjoying that. And as someone who may be like fighting to chase the dollar, chase the money, they may want to do those sorts of things and feel like they’re compelled to have to write every day. They’re compelled to have to focus on money as opposed to just like living in life.

And that’s one of the main things that I want to do becoming full-time is being able to control my time so that I can do things like what you are doing, because that is the ideal lifestyle that I want to have. And I don’t think that six figure income or more is necessary in order to do that.

I think it’s all just about being able to find that balance with everything instead of being forced into these kinds of have to get money all the time mindsets.

Crys: Yeah. And rolling back to our thread of the energy flows and having high energy when you start a big project. I think a lot of writers feel this when they’re writing a book as they will blitz through the first 10 or 20,000, and then peter out after that, that’s normal.

I think a lot of the way that I manage the slump after the big energy, one, evaluation. I look and see what am I doing simply because I had excess energy before that I simply just don’t have the energy for now. It doesn’t mean that they’re not good things to do. They might even be necessary things to do, but they just may not fit into the absolute necessities. And so a lot of those will go by the wayside or they’ll get delegated out when that’s possible.

And then routines, which I don’t have right now. But that’s another part of the energy flow, is taking actual time off. And even when I say, oh, I’m not working at all, I’m still doing these podcasts. I’m still constantly talking to my friends about writing because it’s the thing I am most excited about in the world is stories and writing. And so not talking about them would be so miserable for me. And as I get back into doing work again, I’m jumping back into the middle of a bunch of projects that got put on hold while I was finishing up the romance.

And so that’s even harder when you take a break and then you jump back in the middle where there’s no high energy, you’re at the lowest of your low. Because one, you’re on vacation, though you’re charged up from your vacation, you’re not in your pattern. So you’re not like wanting to sit down and work. You want to stay in vacation until you’re jumping in the middle of a project. So it’s not the ooh shinies. And the most important thing I do is, one, start really slow and pick a small task to systematize every day, whether it’s like, Hey, write a hundred words, write 500 words, write thousand words, whatever is small to you. Maybe pick a specific time of day, make it as consistent as possible so that you can build off that.

JP: Yeah. I think I have a lot of that starting energy, that I basically can’t wait to take more control of and to have the reins on that. But that whole starting energy or where things kind of peter out, and when those moments come where I have a lot of hesitation to start something. Because since I have a billion projects that I decided to do, sometimes I’ll have first drafting that I haven’t done in months and now I need to get into it and my head space isn’t right for that. And so I found for me, if I haven’t been on a project in such a long time, Pomodoros work the best for me because it’s almost like I’m negotiating that time and saying I will sit down for this amount of time, but I have an end point.

When I do my morning writing, which I have as that daily routine, I don’t really put those time barriers on it. It’s just roughly like an hour and a half of writing. Even then I get held up, which is odd. But when I put that Pomodoro on there and I have, for me, it’s 30 minutes because that works best for me. I know that there’s this end point to this little session, and then I can do like 10 of them and do five hours of writing for no reason except that I wanted to. And that’s how I get back into those routines.

I can’t say that’s how I would be year two when I’m working for myself. But I know that I’m figuring out what those routines look like, because I think even though I’m excited to go here and I know that I have that first-year brain, I know that I need to set myself up for the future and for more success. So I need to find out what to do when things aren’t going the way mentally that they should.

Crys: I will say, and I would love if any listeners who’ve been working for themselves longer than this would jump in to comment, but I have not been able to grasp that same first year energy, first few months energy in any way, shape or form. Like even as I’ve started new projects like the podcast, super exciting, stepping into The Author Success Mastermind, super exciting. All these new things definitely gave me energy boosts, but there is nothing that I have discovered that is the same as the desperation/excitement of, oh no, now I have to make money all by myself. Someone’s not going to just give it to me for showing up. I think that’s a unique moment in an entrepreneur’s life, if that’s something you choose, that is just something that happens. And I don’t know if that is recapturable or if that is extremely unique to that point in time.

JP: I think too, that, because of our interview, you started off with nothing. And so you’ve had this survival mode.

Crys: Yeah. Let’s hope I’m never in that position again. I’m like I’m living in a van by choice. Like we’re all very aware of that. That is a different circumstance than having to live in a van or at your parents’ house.

JP: And not to diminish, but to just wonder if some of that starting energy for you was that need for survival?

Crys: I definitely think it was probably a bit more intense in a lot of ways, but I do find that it’s super common even from folks who have spouses with really good jobs who are covering benefits or whatever so you’re not going from absolute zero. They still feel the same fear or desperation of, if this doesn’t work I have to go back to a miserable day job, or admit failure, or bad things are gonna happen cause our family won’t have the amount of money we need kind of thing.

Is it the same for people who have big savings accounts? Do they have that same desperation? Probably not. But I think anybody who does the leap without a giant nest egg, that feeling is still going to be similar, even if there might be varying degrees of intensity.

JP: So I definitely still have that crazy starting energy, but the one thing because I haven’t made the leap yet is I think I’m trying to set a really big foundation so that ideally there is a little room to fail because there’s always something to pull on. So like the editing services, the things we’re going to get certified for, all the other little plans that I have, hopefully something I can always pull on to help rebalance it. And then also like when we were talking about what our plan B is if things go bad, I don’t want one because I always want to have those things balanced for me.

But I think too, it’s accepting the fact that like you could take on a part time before things get too bad. You could do this, but you are still like controlling what you are bringing into your life so that you don’t have to just give up everything and go back into a 40-hour work week or more. But more or less like figuring it out before things go bad. So on that statement, watch your finances people.

Crys: Yeah. And this is one of those personality trait elements of, when you’re in this similar position, like how much risk are you comfortable with? Because there are some people for whom making the leap without a financial net, very energizing. We’re getting into that desperation energy, we’re going to get stuff done. It’s a deadline of sorts. And there are other people who when faced with that, will shut down and it will not be conducive. And it is far smarter to have the network and the threads and everything set up, far smarter. Not all of us are able to follow the smarts and that’s okay. Throw those wings out. You’ll find them.

JP: I think for me, and this is why I’m excited for the starting energy, but I’m the slow person. I’m the person that still lives in the same house for 10 years, even though we’ve been talking about moving for 10 years. I need to prove that I am capable of sustaining our lifestyle with the income that I may get for the writing and all of the other pieces before I can leave the day job. And I know that is going to take a ton of time.

Crys: That’s very much knowing what your goals are.

JP: I know that for some people, they either have the financial support or they’re able to do that type one jump right into it. That’s not me. And I’m okay with that. And I’m okay that this starting energy that I have may have to last, or I may have to extend it out for a couple more years before I can really take that jump. It’s not ideal. It’s not like I want to do that, but at the same time I have to have that proof of concept before I can just jump.

Crys: It will be interesting to see if your starting energy does start to fade within a yearish of things really ramping up. Because while you haven’t left the day job, in the last year you have started two podcasts, you’ve written how many books with Abe, and started a couple serial projects.

And what else? I know you’ve done other things, but you definitely have the same kind of energy with having the net, and I’m really curious to see in a year, in a few months, because you’ve hit a couple of ramp up phases in the last couple of months, if that fades and what kind of evaluations you’ll have to go through. Or if you’re just a weirdo who just holds an unimaginable sustainable energy over years at a time. Who knows? It’s all those chemicals you work with.

JP: It is. I love all those chemicals.

Yeah. So we’ll see. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s gonna look like. I can only hope.

Crys: My question for our listeners is when do they see their greatest increases in energy? And how do they utilize it? And that’s going to vary person to person. I think there’ll probably be some commonalities cause humans, but also personalities.

So thank you so much for joining us again this week. By the time this podcast airs, we’ll have just recorded our monthly book club, which we’ll release next week. And we were reading Story or Die by Lisa Cron. We have not yet decided on the book for next month, but we will announce it in our Patreon if you want to get a headstart on it and join us for the live recording next month. All right. We’ll see you next week.

JP: See you later.

 I went on such a

Crys: ramble. I know. I was like, there’s no good point to interrupt, but we will make this work. Like I might

JP: cut half a bite because I just couldn’t stop. It was like word vomit.

Crys: I’m sorry. There’s definitely times where I’ve gone on a ramble and I’ve cut it all the way the fuck down.

JP: Yeah. As I ramble about my day job and there’s no need to.