Write Away Podcast

Crys: Hello friends. It is November the 24th, 2020 as we are recording this morning. I’m your host, Crys Cain with my cohost…

JP: JP Rindfleisch. I’m still here.

Crys: I should just get you to say your name. I should have figured out this pro move earlier.

JP: Wonderful.

Crys: How was your writing week?

JP: It was significantly better than last week, but we had some Essential Gathering stuff this weekend, so that kinda took, a little bit of the time. But it was totally worth it and it snowed today. And, I’m very excited about that. So that’s a distraction to writing.

Crys: That’s snuggle in weather. I don’t really miss the snow. .

JP: It is a little too late in the season for snow, but I’m fine with it.  How about writing for you?

Crys: So I messaged you last night. A friend, Sasha was like, “Oh, it sounds you’re reacting to having a really busy week,” when I was like, “Yeah, I haven’t been able to listen to podcasts or whatever. I don’t even know what I did last week. I don’t think I did anything.”

But I’ve started tracking like my to-do list online in Notion.so. And I was like, “Oh, like I only have a week’s worth. I can absolutely see what I got done last week.” So I went in, I was like, “Oh, I had a book released last week.”

That’s what I did. Completely wiped from my brain. I don’t know how I managed to have a successful business at all, but I apparently do. There is that.

JP: But hey, congratulations on the book release, right?

Crys: Yeah! It’s going well, I’m pleased. And then we had the Essential Gathering for The Author Success Mastermind this weekend, which was good. I actually got a lot out of creating— what we did was, day one was a bit of craft, day two was business.

Day two, we basically created a Pixar Pitch of our business plan. I have been trying to do business plans this year. There’s a group of friends that I have, we have been having some really good conversations around that. I just hadn’t found a way that worked for my brain until, until J Thorn brought this Business Model Canvas to us, and he’s using it in his RevolutionFI framework. but he brought us the original Creative Commons version and I’ll probably share what mine is in the links.

JP: I think in contrast to how well you took onto the business model, I struggled with that thing—and I really liked it. I really liked the kind of approach of looking at what your business can provide and making that one page. But that was difficult for me. So I, I’m actually excited to see what, cause I’m not going to steal it, but adhere it to what my model might be.

I wasn’t, I wasn’t mentally prepared for that, but it was a good not mentally prepared day.

Crys: I think for a lot of people, it’s really hard to put any kind of business plan together when they haven’t already been in business for themselves. Which is why banks make people do business plans before giving them money. They want you To you to  prove that you know  what you’re doing, or at least can pretend enough that you know what you’re doing.

JP: Yeah, that was a fun experience that I will definitely have to keep working on.

Crys: Okay. So you had this idea for talking about how role-playing games can help you to become a better author.

JP: Yeah.

Crys: And I have only just started within the past three or four months participating in role-playing games. We’re not going to count the one time eleven years ago when my neighbor tried to get us into one and she was a terrible DM—dungeon master or game master—and created a six-armed, hairy alien that just wanted to have sex with everybody.

And that was not a good situation.  But it did scare me off from trying to find a group for a while because your DM matters. So I have been trying and I’ve been, I’ve just been having difficulty with it. Which, I thought as a writer I would take to role-playing very easily and it’s not been easy for me.

Creating character was easy, but then doing the consistent character playing parts has not. So I told you this and you said you’ve had some ideas.

JP: Yeah. So I am a bit of a role-playing nerd or collector. I don’t really know what you want to call it, but basically if I see a pretty decent role-playing game on Kickstarter, I will kickstart it because I cannot stop.

And I’m pretty sure I have twenty-plus different types of RPGs. I think the reason why I like RPG so much is the ability to create such a vast world in which your DMs are capable of then creating the stories within them. so not only from someone who likes creating those expansive worlds, seeing what someone else has developed, but then seeing how you could almost create these stories.

Because, if you take a look at Dungeons and Dragons—how many stories have actually been created off of that platform of that world? It’s innumerous. You cannot put a number to it, because there’s just more every day. So that’s why I think RPGs are this well that writers should really leap into. For characters when you play and you have a DM who, is hopefully at least not creating one like what your DM created.

You basically have to deal with the choices in your character within a split second roll. Most games you roll dice. Some games you flip tarot cards. Other games, you do a bunch of different other things and it depends on how mechanics heavy versus story heavy the RPG is, and where it fits on that scale.

But ultimately, when you want to do something as a character, you need to roll dice, or you need to negotiate how you’re going to do that. And then you need to decide what your choices after that.

I feel like that is extremely important for writers, because when it comes down to it, you have to make these character choices while you’re writing it.

And when you’re playing role-playing games, those are split second decisions. And they’re not always the ones that you’re like, “Oh, this is a wise decision. “Because if you fail on trying to jump across a bridge, you didn’t make it, so you have to figure out how to fix that problem. I think it’s a pretty important piece for role-playing games for writers.

You said you didn’t have good experience or we didn’t want to count that one, but how about this other one that I’ve heard that you’re a part of? How’s that one going?

Crys: It’s going okay. The problem that I find is—talking about Clifton Strengths here—is that I’m high Intellection. So I tend to take time to think things over.

I don’t think that most people realize that because I think about so many things all the time in my head. So by the time somebody asks me a question on most things, I’ve already thought about this for three months. And so I’m able to give you an answer that sounds like, “Oh, this off the cuff, here’s my answer.”

I don’t have three months to think about this character that I just created, and what they would do and how they would interact with other people who are gonna do completely different things. And I’m not in control of them, which is good, fine. But in that split moment, I’m just like, I’m gonna… I’m gonna observe. I’m gonna observe. Like, I should have created that character who’s an observer, apparently. But that’s not the character I created. And so I’m having trouble getting into the character and in those split moment kinds of thing.

JP: To me, that sounds like you need to work on character backstory, because you’re not relating to your character. Did you say you were playing Pathfinder when we’ve talked about it? The one thing I noticed with Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder is that while there is some character backstory, it’s okay. It’s not bad. It’s just… okay.

One of the games that I’m a huge proponent for is a game system called Invisible Sun. This comes from Monte Cook Games, and I don’t know how available it is now, but you can always get his different types because they all follow a simple flow.

Just throwing them out there, the Cipher system and Numinera, but ultimately he focuses on character creation and character development and these backstories. In the Invisible Sun games, I’ve played, I’ve DMed them. So I have to then create how these characters intertwined and intermix and how we can work on character arcs together.

Conveniently enough, in Invisible Sun, there are also character arcs. So it really focuses on storytelling as it’s forefront. Now in Dungeons and Dragons there are other supplemental things you can use to figure out how you could create a character backstory.

I follow this podcast called the One Shot Podcast. I highly recommend this even if you don’t personally want to get into role-playing games for any of the listeners out there, but you just want to get a feel for what it’s like to hear what these role-playing games are like. Or maybe to get a taste of what Invisible Sun is like or what some other game systems are like.

One Shot Podcast is a group of comedians from Chicago that come together and they play these role-playing games. They are fantastic. They’re amazing. Their leader. or the one who basically created the podcast from the start was James D’Amato, and he has… I conveniently have it right here, An Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide.

I enjoy this book. It is very dense. There are pieces you can skip over, but he really focuses on how you can make your character really strong and how you can create those backstories that really resonate. And aren’t just pick from the back of the Pathfinder book. So I would recommend this if you’re a player just because it will help you create someone that you can resonate with.

And then I feel like once you have that, you would be able to make those sorts of choices a little bit more.

Crys: I love that recommendation. Y you said that you also had some ideas for people who can’t find a group to play?

JP: So the big one was the One Shot Podcast. For years I couldn’t find a group and I still wanted to get that feel as to what RPGs could do for my writing. And listening to other people, how they respond, how they react— there are hours, I would say, days worth of content from that one website where you can listen to how choices have to be made in a split second decision decisions based off of roles.

The reason I would recommend this over any sort of radio play or any other sort of media, is those characters are going off of a script. There is already a defined choice. Whereas when you talk about role-playing games, the players themselves have to make these choices within split seconds. So you can see why they’re making those choices a little bit clearer.

There are also a single player RPG games. I know that tabletop RPGs get a lot of flack. I’m sure you’re rolling your eyes or at least some of you might be, but, hey, people play video games by themselves. Why can’t you play single player tabletop?

I would say try those out. One that I’ve heard a lot about, but I don’t have experience in is called Gloomhaven.  I think it’s involved with cards and you have to make decisions based off of that, but it’s just experiencing someone else’s very in-depth world and seeing how you can fit a story into it.

Crys: I love that. I don’t really have anything to add to this because this is something that I desperately want to be able to do well, to play RPG games. And it’s been frustrating me. So I’m definitely gonna get dig into that Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide—a long name.

JP: He’s got a very specific SEO.

Crys: For people who are writers and are getting into RPGs or have already gotten into RPGs, can you talk a little bit different about the difference between playing as a player versus as a DM.

JP: Yeah. So I feel like there are going to be a lot of people that are afraid to DM, but they should DM. And the reason behind that is you can create these stories for these characters and then you basically have no control over those characters. They will do what they want. And so it helps you create this world in which you’re able to focus on what happens if this, what happens if that, and create these little side quests.  The Monte Cook, games, I’m explicitly talking about Invisible Sun, but it also includes the other two that I’ve mentioned, are focused on this kind of character and arc building.

For writers, I would highly recommend his collection, just because it is very focused on that kind of writing and narrative story-building. So I feel like those would tie closer to writers. As a player, you have no control over the story and you just have to figure out well, if I’m, a non-binary assassin, why am I here? Why do I care about this rude cleric who doesn’t let me steal anything, even though I’m a rogue? You have to find a way to create those friendships. And yes, you can play a game and you can focus on just your character. But the important part, especially for storytellers is you have to figure out how you fit in how your character fits in. Why they’re there.

And we do this when we write, so why wouldn’t we do this when we play games? And it’s just, there’s that aspect of having other people playing with you where you don’t have control over those other pieces, that you can then figure out how you can build up these things that you have control over, and figure out how they fit into the narrative.

Crys: As a player you’re working on your character creation hardcore and as a DM, maybe plot and world building and all that fun stuff.

Have you ever thought about writing an RPG yourself?

JP: It is a big task, because I’m one of those people that it has to be perfect. And I know it won’t be, but I’ve definitely considered it.

I think that’s part of why I collect so much of it is just because I’m trying to find the pieces that are missing that maybe I could bring to the table. But yeah, maybe one day.

Crys: What is our question for the listeners?

JP: Have you played, RPG? What experiences have you had playing them?

Crys: And if so, how have you applied that to your writing and if you haven’t, are you going to in the future? That’s like… five.

JP: I know, but we want to know them all. I think it’s just, I think RPGs are pretty cool. So I want people to try them. Another one, if you’re scared to jump into it, or if you have, others around you that are iffy, is a system called Dread. You use the Jenga tower, and if the Jenga tower falls when you pull it, your character’s dead.

I think that one’s really fun. I haven’t played that one with people that didn’t like it. Everyone I played with loved the game, so I highly recommend that one.

Crys: Come join us in the conversation at www.writeawaypodcast.com.

Crys: Hello friends. This is Episode 16 of the Write Away Podcast. And we’re recording this—I actually do not know what the date is—the 16th of November, 2020, for historical prosperity. I have some exciting news. I have asked a friend to co-host the podcast with me. You all have met him already, JP Rindfleisch. I’m going to say your name different every time, I swear. Probably everyone does.

JP: Perfect. We’ll just hear all the variations.

Crys: And I’ve said several times that I’ve just had a hard time figuring out how to be consistent with this podcast. I have a lot easier time talking with someone than just speaking into the void. I have a really easy time talking to JP. He was really excited at the possibility of joining me. And so here we are. Hooray! Excited.

Okay. So first we’re going to talk about how our writing week slash business week has gone. So how have the writing things been for you, JP?

JP: So I think I am on the sixth week that my day job has taken me to a hotel. But finally I started to get back into the routine and I’m working on revisions with my collaborator. So… making up a process, and I think in two weeks we’ll be ready to send it off to the editor.

Crys: Ooh. Do you have that scheduled or will it just be ready then?

JP: It will be ready then we’re still working on finding one, but we’ll find one by then. I’m sure. Yeah.

Crys: Cool. For me, I—gosh. I’m trying to remember if I—so the week before on Friday I finished or Saturday I finished the novel, and then this last week was very much a catching up on life week. There was a lot of driving involved, but I managed to get some paperwork I desperately needed.

I’ve started getting organized, which is probably my biggest like business win. I am coming out of a low energy state into a high energy state with a lot of eagerness to do things. Oh! Biggest win of this last week, completely slipping my mind, is I’m joining J Thorn and working with him on The Author Success Mastermind website.

If you go to www.theauthorsuccessmastermind.com—big ol’ mouthful there, we’ll link below in the show notes— you’ll just see a login screen, but what it is it is a community of writers. It is a learning resource. One of the things that I will be working on over the next few months is getting more information on the front end. I haven’t quite decided how to do that, but that’s, uh, where a lot of my planning energy has been going. So I’m super excited about that.

JP: Yeah. I’m really excited to see where you’re going to take it. I’ve kind heard a little bit about it here and there. And um, I’m a member too. So I’m excited to see where you’re going to take it.

Crys: I’m going to nerd out a little more about the strengths, the Becca Syme’s strengths  or CliftonStrengths, because I thought I was good at ideas. And when I told JP a couple days ago, I was like, “Hey, why don’t you go ahead and come up with some ideas to talk about on the podcast?”

He was like, okay, cool. And then yesterday he’s, “Hey, I’ve got 43 ideas.” And it’s… you are a god among men. That is excellent.

JP: I had to stop myself.

Crys: No, don’t stop yourself! Write all the ideas. That’s amazing. He has high Ideation and that is the difference between someone who is good at ideas and someone who has high Ideation, and I discovered that this week.

Okay. So one, so he started entering a few of them on, this note tracking software I’m using called Notion, and one popped out at me and just kind of hit me in the guts. I was like, why don’t we talk about that one tonight? And that was: Is there a plan B?

I am full-time author, a business author, authorpreneur whatever you wish to call it. And I got into it both out of desire, but desire didn’t get me anywhere in the years of working a “safe” job that summarily booted me when it was no longer convenient for them, as they will tend to do. I got into writing and it worked for me and I’ve stuck with it.

So what would happen if writing didn’t work for me again? I’ve thought about that here and there. Not fully, because there’s a stubborn part of me—it’s just, there is no plan B. I’m going to, I’m just moving. I’m always moving forward. There is no fallback plan, per se. Occasionally, I think about selling feet pics on Instagram. And I just, that seems like too much work.

JP: Hey, there’s a market for it.

Crys: Apparently.  Apparently… but that’s all this human interaction…

I would probably, I’d probably have to go back to programming for other people, software programming. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world. But like, just all of me wants to die at the thought of sitting at a desk in business casual, which—most programming places don’t require you to dress up, but the one I was at previously did, and so that’s my hellscape, is having to wear business casual—sitting at an open office or what do they call them? Open? And working for someone else all day long, from eight to five. So that would probably be the plan B, but I honestly don’t think that will happen, because I am too forward motion oriented.

But if it did, that’s probably what I do. The other plan B is just to move in with my parents and be a mooch, which I have done. 

Yeah,

JP: that’s always an option I might take.

Crys: Hey, we just need to rebuild, recover.

So when you were thinking of plan B, do you think of it as in “if my current career isn’t working out” or do you think about it as “if my push for a writing career doesn’t work out…?”

JP: I originally put this as if my writing career didn’t work out, and that—it’s because I had this ideation or this belief that everything was black and white and that while I was still in the nine to five, and this was years ago when I started listening to podcasts and now I’m starting to shift a little closer and closer to the whole writer’s dream.

But I always had this mindset that, I am a writer trapped in a nine to five job. But that’s just not true. I am a writer, but I think that’s a limitation that I’ve put on myself. Because not only am I a writer, but I’m also a scientist. I have a degree in biochemistry. I’ve spent years in quality departments and I do arts and just so many more things.

So when I thought of this question, I always thought about how everyone puts everything in one bucket. And how, you and I have talked about this and also J Thorn with his RevolutionFI podcast. He started to talk a little bit more about this, but we are so focused on putting everything in one bucket that we don’t really view what we are capable of bringing to the table.

And sometimes those are multifaceted. I don’t want a plan B, I want a plan with so many different facets that if one string doesn’t work, I have so many other strings that can keep me up. So that’s, I think that’s where this question came from.

Crys: Yeah. I think we’re both on the same, like push there.

And one of the things I like about what we’ve been talking about, of you being interested in pursuing more of the science aspect of your knowledge is looking at the writing to possibly support, to provide the financial cushion so that you can take maybe a sucky paying job that really ignites your brain.

JP: Exactly. Because I personally like, the more and more I think about it, I would love to be back in a research lab or to be looking at research data, because I’ve veered off of that on my career path to just financially support this idea that I want to be a writer one day when, realistically, like, why am I so focused on this one end goal that I’m hindering myself now?

So I’m right there with you, where you want to take those different paths and take the sucky job just so that you can have the experience.

Crys: Do you think that this last year with all of its craziness of being stuck at home because of COVID, well, you’ve been still shuffled around everywhere, but, still, being in really weird situations has emphasize that, or was all of that like pretty set before this year happened?

JP: It emphasized it for sure. I think this whole strange experience that we’re all going through has really, for me, led to an introspection. What do I actually want? What can I get rid of? Because we’re stuck in this weird state where everything has changed. Everything’s so different. And now you just have to question what is actually important to me, because there are so many pieces that aren’t, that we just went through the motions on before.

I guess I want to throw the question back on you, how do you think COVID has made you take this viewpoint? Why did you have such a strong reaction to plan B? And was it anything correlated to COVID?

Crys: I don’t know that it was COVID, actually. I don’t think has changed my life as much as it’s changed a lot of people’s. One, it hasn’t hit Costa Rica as hard as it’s hit a lot of places. And we definitely have had a hard core lockdown, but I have my kid, I have a roommate, so I had, I don’t know, 95% of my social necessities fulfilled between those two in real life interactions. And then all of my digital friends.

I am very, very secure in my extreme introvert status. And yet anytime I look at WhatsApp and count up the number of conversations I’ve had in the last 24 hours, it is at least 20 different conversations.

I think that what COVID helped me was that everybody got on my level. As far as plan B, I think less influence on that, but it did give me some very necessary downtime. There weren’t a lot of social things I had to say no to, because I didn’t have the energy. No one could go to social things, so it was very helpful for me.

The thing I’ve been wrestling with is—ever since last year, about this time, I hit some really high financial goals. And until then I was like, I’m going to be a writer and a writer only, and that is the only thing I’m going to do. that’s how I make all my money. And then I hit some pretty good financial goals and I was like, okay, ding, ding, done. I’ve just been wandering in the wilderness since then. Okay, well. What now? Like what now?

I don’t know.

I’m finally starting to get an idea and I actually think COVID interrupted that thought process, maybe, because I couldn’t see what the world was going to look like in six months. I couldn’t see what the world was going to look like in a year. I still can’t, but maybe a little better now.

But it did take the pressure off to wonder what everything was going to look like, because I knew that it was too crazy. And so that might’ve actually given my brain space to pick up different threads that I’m putting into motion now.

I know that J. and a lot of other people who’ve been in this writing and publishing game far longer than us are huge proponents of having multiple income streams. Joanna Penn is one. But then there’s other authors like Lindsay Buroker, and like, a hundred, romance authors who, all they do is make their money off of books.

There’s nothing wrong with that at all ,but having had all my eggs in one basket once and had that taken away from me, especially with Amazon being the largest player in the game, so much of our income being, dependent on them—I’m very hesitant to put all of my eggs in the book world, the entertainment world, as much as I love being a writer, talking with writers, helping writers, all, every aspect of that business is just absolutely joyful for me. I do have other plans of owning real estate, investments, just trying to build up a bunch of little things so that I never need a plan B.

JP: And I think that’s a good path to take, because I think we often sell ourselves short by just having that one thing we want.

That’s just definitely a kind of a realization that I’ve had recently is, you don’t need one thing. You can have whatever you want.

Crys: You could have a million things.

 That actually was a limiting mindset I had. I realized this summer, like two, three months ago, I realized that somewhere in my brain, I was like, “You can’t make a ton of money from writing and have three other successful businesses because you’ve never seen anyone do that particular collection of things.”

And I realized, okay, no, I’ve never seen anyone be a writer and do all these other things. That doesn’t mean, one, that there’s nobody out there and I just don’t know them. But also, I can look at a lot of other examples of people who are, not only fabulously wealthy, but fabulously happy, and energized and jumping from one business to another and doing really well.

There’s some skills, particularly people skills that I need to work on, or at least find like my key people who are good at those things to take with me or put in place for projects. but if I feel like I need examples, they’re out there. I just need to go looking for them.

JP: Yeah.  Totally. All right.

Crys: We will convene again next week. JP will be with me just about every week now. Bye, JP.

JP: Bye, have a good one.