What if the source of your best writing isn't something you control — but something you learn to collaborate with? How can ancient ideas about the muse, the daimon, and creative genius transform the way you approach your work? And what might happen if you stopped fighting the silence and let it become your greatest creative ally? With Matt Cardin, author of Writing at the Wellspring.

In the intro, thoughts on bookstores and Toppings; 20 ways authors can signal humanity and build reader trust [Wish I'd Known Then]; Learning from Silence – Pico Iyer; ProWritingAid spring sale; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic. I actually blurbed it as follows:

“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.”

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How Matt balances a full-time academic career with his creative writing life
• The ancient concept of the genius, the muse, and the daimon, and why creativity is about collaboration with something beyond yourself
• Why the silences that come into our creative lives, including writer's block and inertia, might actually be gifts rather than obstacles
• The stages of the creative process
• Living into the dark, and embracing uncertainty
• How Substack and blogging can organically grow into books

You can find Matt at MattCardin.com or www.livingdark.net.

Transcript of the interview with Matt Cardin

Joanna: Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic.

I actually blurbed it as follows: “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” It is a great book. So welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt: Well, thank you, Jo. It's really a pleasure to be here, especially since, as you and I were briefly acknowledging before we started recording, we have overlapping interests to a great degree. So it's really great to make official contact with you.

Joanna: Indeed. So, first up, before we get into the book itself—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.

Matt: Well, I'm one of those people whose story is probably typical in some ways, in that I really wanted to do it from the time I was a child. My father was a great writer, although he was an attorney. He wasn't a professional writer.

Something about books and reading when I was a child really seriously enchanted me. I was very frustrated when I was so young—and I vividly remember this—that I couldn't read, because I loved the books that were read to me.

I craved being able to read them for myself. So as soon as I gained that ability in school, it was off to the races, so to speak, and for some reason, a desire to tell stories myself came along with that.

Being a “writer” was one of the earliest life desires, job or career desires, that I expressed. I was one of those young people really into fantasy, horror, and science fiction. So I was reading a lot of it and trying to emulate it and write a lot of it. There was a cinematic component—I was a movie fanatic as well.

I won a local Authors' Guild short story writing contest when I was a senior in high school and began trying to write stories seriously in college. Then my interest in horror and religion became dominant over time, and that's what I ended up writing about.

Joanna: Has your interest turned into paid work?

That's the other thing, because there's an interest and then there's making writing more of your income and your business.

Matt: Right. Well, actually, although I have made and do make money from my writing, it has always, always, always remained on the side. My main career, as far as my moneymaking life, first started off in video and media production, which is formally what I got my undergraduate college degree in.

Then I switched into education. I taught high school for some years, and then now for the past, good Lord, 18 years, I have been in higher education. First as English faculty who also taught some religion courses, and then now for the past several years in the administration. I'm Vice President of Academic Affairs at a college.

My writing has been something that I pursued as an avocation. As far as earning money from it, that didn't happen even with my first publication, which happened on the internet in 1998, I believe, with a horror story titled “Teeth.” It was just free—I didn't get paid.

That led to paid publication of that story three or four years later, when it appeared as my very first print publication in a Lovecraftian horror anthology from Del Rey titled The Children of Cthulhu. It appeared as the final story, and that was the first time I had received a paycheck. It was a professional per-word rate.

Since then I've had several books published and more stories and essays and that kind of thing. I've had income sometimes from writing and sometimes I haven't.

My first book came out of that story. I attended the World Horror Convention in 2001, actually before that Lovecraftian anthology was published, but it had been placed.

At the World Horror Convention, which was in Seattle that year, I met one of the two editors of that book, and that led to me having my first short story collection, Divinations of the Deep, which was not for much money, but it attracted a lot of good attention and some good reviews.

So it's been like that all along. I mean, I've made a couple of runs at saying I would love to just be an author, as it were, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. And honestly, I'm glad it's not.

I have made the most money from some academic editing projects that I've done. I created and edited a two-volume encyclopedia of the history of horror literature, for instance, for a big academic publisher. Those are work-for-hire projects that I get paid for.

Making money on my own creative vision and my own creative work has been intermittent. It really has proven over time that not having my primary creative, spiritual, and philosophical drive hooked to what I earn my bread by has been a blessing.

I don't want to take this thing I love and make it be how I have to grind to earn my money. I want to keep it in a protected space. That has been spontaneously what's happened with my writing career.

Joanna: Yes. I think as you say, there are a lot of benefits of that, especially where you are writing at this convergence of horror, religion, and creativity.

Your writing is very deep. I would say it's on the edge of academic. I don't want to say it's completely academic, because a lot of people will find that difficult. But I think Writing at the Wellspring goes very deep while still being open to non-academic readers.

As you say, I think if you had wanted to make a living with your books, you would've had to have gone in at a lighter level, perhaps. Do you think that makes sense?

Matt: Yes, I know what you mean. I want to specify, I know that neither you nor I are saying anything about this as any kind of criticism or condescension to anyone who does make their living as a writer. I mean, I believe you do.

Joanna: Yes, exactly.

Matt: And that's fine. There really are people who have had significant commercial success from books or other things they've written that don't appear to be making huge concessions to being commercial.

You can make a living as a writer, I think, and really follow your muse and not feel like you have to pander or cater or cheapen it.

Then there are people who have perfectly happily decided to commercialise their work and tune it in whatever way is currently popular. That's fine. Every writer, every creative person should do what is right for him or her, in my opinion.

In my particular case, I think what you said is right. I do think that I might have needed to change some things, to back off, to word them differently.

Whenever I've tried to exert deliberate control like that, it just turns out that it's not something that my creative spirit wants to do. I don't really feel like I'm in contact with the work anymore. I'm fine with that. I don't think I'm doing a sweet lemons type thing. It really is the way it just needs to be.

If it ever proves that me doing it strictly the way I want to do it, going however deep I want regardless of trying to appeal to a paying readership—if it turns out that at some point aligns with boatloads of money coming in, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. I'd be open to that.

Joanna: Yes.

Matt: I would be open to that.

Joanna: You mentioned muse there, and with Writing at the Wellspring, the subtitle is “Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius.” So I think this is a good place to talk about it. As you mentioned, you are leaning into your muse and your inner genius, and you use other terms—daemon or daimon.

I think sometimes people find the word “genius” particularly very difficult because it has the connotation of brilliance in some form. So how can people think about this?

How can we lean into this [genius] side of ourselves?

Matt: Honestly, one thing that I would suggest people do is I would refer them to the TED Talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave some years ago—was it 2009, 2010, 2011? It's one of the more popular TED Talks. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about. I think it's sometimes given the title “Your Elusive Creative Genius” or something like that.

Her whole talk is about the way in her own creative life, and as she recommends to others, it has been very important for her to seize on the older model that we're talking about.

The most clear articulation of it is that it used to be the case—and we're talking about in ancient Western history, back to the Romans and even earlier to the Greeks—that genius was not something that you identified a person as being. It was something that a person had. And I would also say importantly, maybe had them too.

In ancient Roman culture surrounding art and poetry and that kind of thing, the genius was the spirit that might, say, live in an artist's studio and would provide the same service to that artist as the Greek muses provided to someone who was writing epic poetry or history or something like that.

That understanding of it has continued in various ways down through history. But there was a fateful transition as Western culture went through what we commonly call the Enlightenment and the Renaissance as well.

This was where the term “genius,” while it didn't lose all those connotations of being an inspiring spirit—something that a person both has and maybe has hold of them—did become internalised to the point where we speak of people as being geniuses., which is exactly what you're talking about.

I agree, some people listening to this probably have some reservations about this. They don't want to call themselves a genius because we tend to mean that's a super brilliant person, some kind of prodigy who is possessed of amazing artistic, creative, or intellectual skills.

Again, that is the result of a cultural, philosophical, psychological, historical transition that occurred several centuries ago. And you still see the older meaning of it being attached sometimes. You think of people who we call geniuses being touched by something.

Well, the older version—where you think of the genius, which in the way I use it in this book and also in my first book on creativity, A Course in Demonic Creativity—the genius is equivalent to the muse, which is equivalent to that other figure that you mentioned, the daemon or the daimon.

It refers to a separate—what seems for all the world to be a separate—centre of intelligence or entity or influence. The thing that gives you both your creative drive and also your ideas, and serves as the source of what comes to you naturally to write. It's more than just ideas.

When you talk about the ancient Greek daimon, there was a whole well-developed tradition of that in ancient Greek philosophy and religion. A daimon was, in one famous sense, a spirit that you were born with, that the gods had given you. It was like your double, your higher self.

It was the thing that represented your character, your interests, the blueprint and the outline that your life was supposed to follow.

There are great books written about that. There's a book by the psychologist James Hillman titled The Soul's Code. A lot of people have read it. It lays out the daimon theory and gives it application to modern instances. The idea is that everybody has a genius or has a muse or has a daimon.

For writers, my recommendation is to say, whether you believe it or not, whether you take it as a metaphor—which is fine—or whether you want to get somewhat mystical and delve into the idea that maybe there's really a spirit or something, it doesn't matter.

Productively, with practical, measurable results, you can learn to relate to your creative impulse as if you are collaborating internally with someone else.

It's the centre of why you're interested in writing what you want to write, why you want to write the way you want to write, and even the types of things that unfold in the course of your career—both your creative career and the rest of your life, in the mould of the ancient daimon.

I have found that to be a vein of great power and meaning in my own life. I do it exactly the way I'm describing. I don't actually believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. I find that in experience, it really doesn't matter. It works and it may as well be true.

Joanna: I mean, obviously the book has a whole load of ways we can tap into that, but I did like that you talk about stillness and silence, because I feel like that is actually increasingly difficult as authors.

Obviously it's noisy online and we're meant to be doing things like social media or interacting with people online. And then the world is just noisy. The news is noisy. There's lots of things.

How can we use this idea of stillness and silence? Also, any other ways we can practically tap into this side?

Matt: Sure. One thing that wanted to say itself in this book was some things I had been thinking and feeling about silence for a long time. As you say, it can be difficult these days to find what feels like the silence that we need to even get our work done.

We're talking about the muse or the genius. How can we even hear it when it seems like the clamour of all the pulls that we have on our outward attention has become truly a cacophony?

We have opted for this in many ways through our engagement with social media or other things, but in other ways seems like it's been thrust upon us. What I want to point out, that has been of extreme importance to me, is that many silences come into our lives as creatives that we resist.

It's not just that we can't find the silence and the space that we feel like we need so as not to drown out our creativity. It's that we have unwanted silences come in, like writer's block. Or even if it doesn't feel like a block, just inertia. Just stasis.

I don't know about you, but I have many, many times found myself grappling with what, for all the world, feels like a totally natural, organic sense of wanting to slip into complete inertia, just total stillness. And that feels like it has been in conflict with my creative drive.

It's like I have this residual desire and also a sense of duty that I really should be writing. Maybe I have an idea in mind and I'm just not working on it. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a project and I feel like I'm abandoning it. Or maybe nothing's coming up, but I feel like it should be.

I'm pushing myself, but there's a division in me where I also just want to leave it alone. Whether that means actually just sitting there silently at my writing table or in meditation, or maybe just going about regular daily life and forgetting about trying to fulfil this creative calling.

I really think there's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us. Because as I said, that can be in the middle of daily activity. We have this kind of franticness, some of us, about our creativity. We get wrapped up in it. We feel bound to it.

The thing that so much of the time we want to think is a gift—we're proud of it, we cherish it, we like our writing—also becomes a burden.

This fantasy of just chucking it all, of just saying, “I would love to be free of it. It's like something that's weighing me down. I'm sorry that I roped myself into it. I would love to just sink into complete silence.” This sort of meditative thing, or just muteness—hey, that is valid to hear. That's valid to heed when it comes up.

I mean, sometimes we have gotten ourselves into situations where we have external responsibilities and deadlines, and it's important to try and honour those and not be a bad person on the level of just fulfilling practical obligations.

It's also important to recognise you've got silence offering itself to you in all kinds of ways. The more important silence is paradoxically the one that we so often resist if we're creative people and feel like we have to be making.

The more important silence is not whether or not your outward conditions seem like they're a clamour and they're chaotic and they're distracting and they're full of pressure. It's that inner silence.

So I recommend paying attention to when it comes up. And for practical ways—they are endless. Take advantage of early mornings. A lot of people have found great value in getting up earlier than they are used to and making a practice of that, and either just meditating or free writing.

Maybe using, for example, Julia Cameron's famous practice of morning pages, which has been valuable to me sometimes.

Or doing things like—as I've said about the muse and the genius and the daimon—personify your unconscious mind and maybe write down a dialogue between yourself and your creative spirit, whether about your current project or just about your life and your creativity as a whole.

There are various tricks to get in touch with this unconscious part of you, and I really am convinced out of practical personal experience that it's not necessary to have outer silence and outer spaciousness when you can find it within yourself. You can find it through some of these exercises for getting in alignment with what your creativity wants to do.

You can get in touch with it if you're paying attention to what you might not recognise as a gift—offering it to yourself. If things go quiet and you think, “Oh no, I should be doing something”—why not let that be a place where things can germinate? Why not let that be the silence that you might not be able to find on the outside?

Joanna: Yes, and I'm feeling guilty here because of course we are producing a podcast episode for people to listen to. I find personally that one of the places I can find silence is when I walk. It's not obviously silent outside, but I am definitely guilty of always listening to podcasts, often at very fast speed as well.

Sometimes when I go for a walk, I just deliberately do not listen to anything—don't listen to an audiobook, don't listen to a podcast—and a lot comes up there.

I have my phone with me, and when I get back from those walks and jot down things that come up in my mind, I will have so many notes of things that have come up in my brain during the walk.

It's really difficult, isn't it? Because I know you also love input. You do a lot of research. As I said, your books have a lot of research in them, and so we both like doing the research. But also I definitely find that has to be balanced with the time for letting it come out again in some form, with that mental silence.

You also talk about being uncomfortable, and I feel like sometimes that silence can be uncomfortable as well.

Matt: Yes, it can be. There's no telling what might come up when you are faced with silence. Again, it's one of those things—even the outer kind that we think we crave. Sometimes it's a bit frightening when it comes up, which is why we try to fill it with things, like this podcast episode for example.

There's a threshold that you can notice you cross sometimes, where what was a natural desire to connect with something that you heard about and found interesting becomes a bit frantic.

Where now, really, what might be good is if you shut off—didn't go for the next podcast episode or didn't go for the next click to the website—if you just shut the browser and just sat there and did something else.

You're kind of, with a little desperateness, trying to fill the void. What you described about needing to get quiet and let things happen—yes.

I love reading and research, but the classic stages of the creative process—first codified, I think, by Graham Wallas, if I remember correctly—they still work. It's really good sometimes to have a model and understand how it works.

You have what's sometimes called the preparation stage. All the input, all the research, all the brainstorming, all that kind of thing.

Then the incubation stage can be vastly important. That can get frightening, both because the silence seems somehow threatening, like something about you is going to be exposed. Or maybe that you're going to lose the thread of whatever it was and it's never going to come out.

But really, if you just stop and let your muse, let your genius do its thing, let your unconscious do its thing, it will suggest itself again. It will come up on its own. Ideas will come back.

You'll realise, “Oh, I didn't know what I was going to do with that character. I didn't know how these ideas were going to come together. I didn't even know what this idea for a story, a book, or an essay was going to be.” It comes back up, and with you working with it, it shows what it wanted to be all along.

This whole thing about doing the preparation and then allowing it to incubate and germinate and then sprout when it wants to, that still works.

Part of the reason that we're scared of the silence, I'm convinced, is because each of us operates in our psychological selves as a closed system. It's like we each comprise our own cosmos, so to speak.

I know you know that I have worked in horror literature, the literature of cosmic fear. In cosmic horror, as laid out by the likes of Lovecraft and others, the basic effect has been analysed as constituting a disturbance of the universe.

That's the horror of cosmic horror—the world is transformed into this nightmarish thing in a cosmic horror story, where there's a haunting, threatening presence that's out of the ordinary and it's somehow bound up with the narrator's interior world.

Life reveals itself as supernaturally or ontologically something nightmarish—there are awful forces that are about to erupt all the time. And whether anybody's into cosmic horror or not, I think it's pretty accurate to say that we each constitute our own world, our own cosmos.

A lot of the noise that we make—the mental noise and the complications we introduce into our own lives—is, usually unconsciously, trying to stave off confrontation with the otherness that is outside the barrier of our personal sense of self.

The weird thing is that that otherness is actually in us, and in fact, we can approach it in the figure of the daemon or the daimon or the muse. So creativity is fraught.

You're dealing with something that you might want to think, “Oh, this is great, it's going to be the source of my ideas, it's going to fulfil my creativity.” Well, yes, but it is frightening to think about the fact of something about yourself being beyond yourself and perhaps being out of your conscious control and somehow guiding your destiny.

A lot of people have trouble getting along with their own unconscious, which is another way to put it. There's a horror, a fear, a dread effect that comes when we feel like we are out of control.

We all face that ultimately—when it comes to our death, for example. There are some spiritual traditions that talk about dying before you die, that being basically the way to enlightenment in those traditions.

Recognising and coming to terms with the fact that this thing that is you, that you call yourself, is transitory. It is only there by being enclosed within and swamped from without by this thing that is not you, which is a sort of void to which you'll return.

In the book, I deal with some of that, and I talk about it from a non-dual spiritual viewpoint, because ultimately for me, these creative questions have become inseparable from spiritual questions.

Joanna: Yes. And obviously people know about my book Writing the Shadow, which is how we really connected around this Jungian idea of the shadow and the darkness. I agree with you—there's some really interesting things at the juxtaposition of all of these topics, which we could talk about for a long time.

I do want to ask you around your idea of “living into the dark.”

Because I feel like you do take things beyond just the writing into this idea of living into it. So maybe talk a bit about that. And obviously synchronicity, which is a Jungian psychology concept.

Matt: Living into the dark is the thing that forms the overarching ethos or perspective for me of all this. I got the term from “writing into the dark,” which actually comes from the American science fiction and fantasy author Dean Wesley Smith. He wrote a book titled Writing Into the Dark, subtitled “Writing Without an Outline.”

It's a great book. I recommend it to anyone. It is about forsaking and foregoing the felt need to outline writing in advance and trusting your creative mind to be able to make up a story in real time. That draws on the deep nature of storytelling to come out right.

Therefore you write into the dark, as if you're walking down a road where you have a lantern and you can only see one step ahead. You haven't mapped out the territory.

It was a great metaphor. I had already been thinking in that direction about life and about creativity for some time when I first came across that book. I devoured it and recognised it described how I had already been writing anyway, which is one reason it was so powerful for me.

Then it edged out into a broader understanding for me that I had also been coming up with, that I just ended up calling “living into the dark.” None of us knows where anything is going, that much is obvious. But living into the dark goes farther than that, to embrace this understanding.

I think of this in connection with what so many people, either personally or because of jobs they have where they're required to think like this. I think of this in terms of the famous five-year plan that so many of us want to draw up.

There's nothing wrong with a five-year plan or a ten-year plan or a one-year plan. You can come up with that for practical purposes and try and chart where you're going, but we too often forget that that's just a fantasy exercise.

We are not actually thinking into the future, nor are we ever actually thinking into the past. Remembering the past, predicting or projecting the future—both are events that are happening right now, in this moment, which is always now. It's no less now than it was when you and I first started this conversation.

Past and future are projections—mental projections right now. And everything is unfolding in the present in real time, which effectively means what's going to come next is coming out of—well, we don't know where it's coming out of. Darkness.

Living into the dark is living with full-on contact with, and awareness of, and embrace of this fact that we don't know what's coming up. That encompasses all of life and all of creativity.

That same darkness, if it's helpful for you to take on this emotional tenor—which it is for me—can relate to the darkness in cosmic horror fiction, or to some of the rich traditions of darkness, like in Daoism with the yin contrasted with yang. Yin is the dark, moon, feminine aspect of things—the receptive source of the universe.

This idea of living into the dark, of just accepting that we're all on this journey on a path where we can only see one step ahead, even if that far, has been meaningful to me. It's been meaningful to my creativity, and I recommend it to anybody to whom it appeals.

It takes a lot of pressure off. I think that's a guiding meta-theme for me—trying to take the pressure off us from trying to control things that can't be controlled, and more stepping into that flow of understanding: what's going to come to me is going to come to me, and my posture toward it, whether I align with it or not, is what's going to determine my experience of it.

You mentioned synchronicity. It's interesting. It's verifiable.

I know a lot of people have verified it for themselves. Maybe some people listening to this have too.

It's verifiable that when you really get in tune with this present-moment thing and get in tune with your creativity—and you can tell when you're aligned and not, when you feel blocked or when you feel resistance or not—when these things align on their own sometimes, strange coincidences do happen.

Jung talked about synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle. That was probably due to the fact that the psyche is not separate from the fabric of the world that gives rise to it, so that we might have subjective things—impressions, fantasies, dreams—that we rather uncannily see mirrored in objective events.

Like the famous thing that clarified and coalesced that for him: a psychotherapy session with a patient who was describing a dream she'd been having about a scarab beetle.

Then he heard a tapping at the window of his office and he went there and opened it, and there was a European beetle—a kind of scarab beetle, much like the Egyptian scarab—that was there.

He held it up and said to the woman, “Is this your beetle? Here is your beetle.” It just blew her mind. It opened new levels of the therapy that she was receiving. Those kinds of things happen. I've had them happen.

Joanna: Me too.

Matt: If you're a long-time writer or reader, you're familiar with the library genie—the library daemon, we sometimes refer to it as—the book that, just at the moment you think of it and realise, “Oh yes…”

You're doing your study, and it doesn't have to be a library, it could be on the web or whatever. You finally realise what it is that you need, what you've been looking for, and in some cases it literally falls off the shelf onto someone's head.

What do you make of those when they happen? At the very least, it rattles your cage. You might enter a state of suspended judgement about whether we really are living in a kind of magical cosmos full of real correspondences.

It's a bit like the daimon or the muse: is it a metaphor? Is it just an interpretation, or is it something real? Probably the best place is one of profoundly, actively embraced agnosticism, and just take it for what it is.

Joanna: Yes, and leaning more into your intuition. I think you definitely demonstrate that in the book as well, really exploring a lot of very interesting topics.

Now, we are almost out of time, but you do have a Substack, The Living Dark, where you publish essays, and you've also got all kinds of really interesting books. I want people to go have a look at some of the other stuff you've written, especially if you enjoy horror and religion and all of that kind of thing.

So just to ask, how do you decide when something is an essay on The Living Dark, and how do you decide when you are going to put it in a book or in some other way?

I feel like a lot of authors are thinking about Substack but don't necessarily know what to put on it. I think I first connected with you on your Substack, where I was like, “Oh, this guy's writing interesting, weird stuff.”

How do you use Substack as opposed to writing for your books?

Matt: Sure. Let me answer by first talking about what happened previously with that first book on creativity that I mentioned, A Course in Demonic Creativity. I had all kinds of thoughts and ideas coming up, seeded over many years of practice and reading about the daimon and the daemon and the genius and the muse.

In 2009 I founded a blog—it was just a WordPress blog—and I titled it Daemon Muse. I attended to it for two to three years. A lot of people ended up reading it. I really did not have any plans, not even any back-burner plans, of taking the material that I published in posts there about this way of creativity and making it a book.

I did realise about a year and a half in that essentially I had a book I had already written in those posts. So it took some work, and I spent six months making it all into a coherent book.

By the way, that book was only ever published as a PDF, which is still free on my website, MattCardin.com—although plans for the first-ever print edition of it are in motion right now. That was published in 2011.

When I went to Substack and started my newsletter there in 2022—and by the way, it wasn't originally called The Living Dark; my first title was “Living Into the Dark,” and then I changed it about a year, year and a half in—I kind of am doing the same thing.

It's been a while since I took anything and thought, “I'm writing a book with it.” I write what comes to me to write. You know how Substack Notes is Substack's own version of social media, kind of like Twitter used to be or like X kind of is now.

It happens all the time that I write things that just stay in contact with people as a Substack Note—some short thing. And then I realise I wanted to say more about that.

Or you have what happened just this morning. Three or four hours before you and I were talking, I started writing a Substack Note and it got so long I realised I had something that could be a post to The Living Dark. So I switched over and finished it that way.

The book Writing at the Wellspring came together after I had written things for a couple of years at The Living Dark and realised that I could trace a path through about a third of the posts that I had ever published there, and had the makings of a book.

So that, plus other material from earlier in my life—there are things from my private journals from years ago in Writing at the Wellspring—plus some new material, ended up turning into that book.

So I'm not thinking about the difference, is what I'm saying. I find writing at my Living Dark newsletter to be a needful and enjoyable creative outlet, partly because I have some 3,800 readers now and it feels good to be in contact with them and to have that audience and to know that there's that eye on what I'm writing.

That's partly because I just have the freedom to work it out to my satisfaction and publish it there. I'm already halfway forming another book that will be of a different focus, to come from things that I have published there.

So for me, there's an organic relationship between Substack writing, or any kind of blogging, and the writing of books.

If people haven't thought about that, they might want to consider it. If you have one already or if you're thinking of starting a blog on Substack or anywhere else, maybe you have things that can guide you to a book that already exists and you just haven't realised it.

Joanna: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

Matt: Well, The Living Dark that we're talking about is at www.livingdark.net—and it does require the three Ws at the beginning to get there. Then my author website is MattCardin.com, and you can go to the books page there to get a link to all the books I've published and read about them.

Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was fantastic.

Matt: Thank you, Jo. I really appreciate the invitation.

The post Writing At The Wellspring: Tapping The Source Of Your Inner Genius With Matt Cardin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What does it take to write strong sentences? How do you keep writing when the world feels dark? How do you push past self-doubt, build a sustainable writing practice, and trust that your voice is enough? Anne Lamott and Neal Allen share decades of hard-won wisdom from their new book, Good Writing.

In the intro, Hachette cancels allegedly AI-written book [The New Publishing Standard]; How Pangram works; Publishing industry insights from Macmillan's CEO [David Perell Podcast]; Photos from Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle; The Black Church; Bones of the Deep coming in April.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction. Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there. Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why strong verbs are rule number one
• How Anne and Neal's contrasting styles created a unique call-and-response writing guide
• Practical advice on finding and trusting your authentic voice across genres
• Why award-winning novelists typically write for only 90 minutes a day — and what that means for your writing practice
• How to keep writing during dark and discouraging times without giving up
• The uncomfortable truth about publication, longevity, and why nobody cares if you write

You can find Neal at ShapesOfTruth.com and Anne on Substack.

Transcript of the interview with Neal Allen and Anne Lamott

Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction.

Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there.

Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences

Jo: Welcome to the show, Neal and Anne.

Anne: Thank you so much, Jo. We're happy to be here.

Neal: Hi, Jo.

Jo: Let us get straight into the book with rule one, which is use strong verbs.

How can we implement that practically in our manuscripts when most of us don't start with the verb?

We're thinking of story or we're thinking of message?

Neal: Throughout the book, it's pointed out that these are rules for second drafts, right? So you've put it down. You've already got your story down, you've already got your piece down—your email, your text, it doesn't matter what.

Then you stop, you pause, you go back to the beginning and you go sentence by sentence and look at them.

Anne: I'd like to add that there's a lot in the book, usually on my end of the conversation, that has to do with really using these rules anywhere and everywhere.

Whether you're writing a memoir or a grant proposal, I believe these rules apply to getting everything written at any time, in any phase of the work because, from Bird by Bird, I'm all about taking short assignments and writing really godawful first drafts.

What is fun about writing is to have spewed out something on the page and then to get to go back right then and just start cleaning it up a bit, straightening it out, probably inevitably shortening it. One place to start is to notice how weak our verbs are.

If I say “Jo walked towards us across the lawn,” it doesn't give the reader very much information. But if I say “Jo lurched towards us across the lawn,” or “Jo raced towards us across the lawn,” then right away you've improved the sentence with really two or three quick thoughts about what you actually meant with that verb and a better one.

So it really applies to every level and stage of writing, but Neal's right—this is really about going back over your work sentence by sentence and seeing if you can make it stronger and cleaner and clearer. The reason it's rule one is to write strong verbs.

Neal: A nice thing about strong verbs is that they often preclude the need for an adjective or an adverb, right? If I say “I trudged,” it's shorter than saying “I walked slowly and depressed.”

Jo: Absolutely, and how you answered that question is kind of how the book works, right? Because Neal does an outline of the rule, and then Anne comes in and comments.

Maybe you could talk a bit about that process. You are both strong characters, obviously you've been writing a long time.

Talk a bit about how you made the book and how that worked as a couple as well.

Neal: I'd had these rules collected for a number of years and I had them on my website. When I met Anne, she liked them and would hand them out when she was doing writing sessions.

I was intrigued at some point a few years ago and looked around to see whether there was a list like mine out there. I noticed that all the other lists I saw were much shorter.

Hemingway had his four rules for rewriting. Elmore Leonard, his eight, which are wonderful. Margaret Atwood has 10. The longest I saw was Martin Amis had, depending on what year it was, 14, 15 or 16—he'd go back and forth with a couple of them.

I had 30-some and I wondered, well, 30-some might be enough for a book. I didn't want to write a scolding book like on grammar. I didn't want it to be academic or written like “I'm the expert, I know.”

I'll just let my mind range. I'll explain the rule and then let my mind go where it went. Which, by the way, is one of the rules—show then tell. Not “show, don't tell.” It's show, then tell. Let your mind riff after you've explained something to the reader or shown something to the reader.

So I wrote the book. It was too short to be published, and I showed it to Anne and I asked her, “What do I do with this?”

Anne: I said, “Hey, I know something about writing, Bub,” and I asked if I could contribute my thoughts and retorts and examples and prompts to each of his rules. We were just off and running because his stuff was so solid.

Mine is more maybe welcoming and giving encouragement and hope to writers because writing's hard. It's still hard for me. This is my 21st book and I'm only a third of it.

Writing's hard, and what we hope is that our conversation can help people understand: a) it's hard for everybody, and b) it'll work if you just keep your butt in the chair and do the best you can, and then go back one day at a time and try to make it a little bit better.

Neal: It turned out to be pretty serendipitous because just naturally I'm more of an explainer and Annie is more driving toward catharsis. So the call and response is always: I set out the rule, I explain the rule, and Annie drives it toward catharsis and usefulness.

Jo: In some chapters you do disagree in some form. How did that work in the process of writing?

Anne: Usually I disagree because Neal might be using words that are too big, or it might be a little bit elitist, I would think. Or of course I would point out that he's completely overeducated, whereas I'm a dropout and so I have a much plainer, more welcoming version of the rules.

All of the rules are so strong, but I would feel that the way he explained it was beyond me. So I would come in and try to explain what Neal had been explaining. It was actually really funny and fun.

We do come from really different directions. Neal is an explainer. He's like an ATM of information, and I am the class den mother who brings in treats and party favours on everybody's birthday.

My message is always: you can really, really do this, I promise, trust me. But you start where you are, you get your butt in the chair, and then Neal comes along and says what has worked for him.

He was a journalist forever, so he writes in a very different way than I write. It just turned out that the two of us together kind of make a whole. People have asked us if there were a lot of conflicts or if we really objected to the other person's take.

I can tell you, Jo, there wasn't a day when we had only conflict. We were just laughing and we were excited because one of us would remember a great example from literature. We came to believe that these two very distinct voices would form one voice of encouragement for any writer.

Jo: That brings us to rule number eight, which is trust your voice. I feel like this is easier when you've been writing a while.

We're told to find our voice, but I remember as an early writer when I read Bird by Bird and other books and I was like, “How on earth do I find my voice?” Maybe you could talk about this more for early stage writer.

How do you find and trust that voice?

Neal: Boy, that is a halt for almost all of us. This follows from any intellectual pursuit that requires lots of practice and repetitions.

Malcolm Gladwell's great statement, or discovery, or restatement from somebody else who discovered it, that the human brain requires 10,000 hours of repetitions before something can be allowed to just flow without thought. Flow as if intuitive rather than thinking.

I don't think that's any different in writing than it is in basketball or football or anything else—sports, creative pursuits, everyday pursuits. There's just a lot of repetitions required.

Some people have the experience that I did, where you're just going along getting better and better, doing it over and over again, learning this, learning that, adding in this, adding in that, moving toward a goal of virtuosity or whatever. And all of a sudden, bang, one day, it all works and your voice emerges.

Other people don't have that experience, don't have that one day that it happened or that feeling that it suddenly happened. For some people it takes less than 10,000 hours, but for most people it is a hell of a lot of repetitions.

Anne: I think for me, the most important aspect to finding your own voice is noticing how desperately you don't think your voice is good enough and that you want to write like somebody else.

I always mention that when I was coming up, at about 20, I wanted to sound like Isabel Allende because I loved her work so much. Or Ann Beattie, who was writing those wonderful short stories in the New Yorker. Or Salinger, who I'd started reading probably at 10 years old.

I had to come to the understanding that I can't tell my stories and my truth and my version of life—which is really what writing is—in somebody else's voice. Unless it's a kind of advanced writing exercise to write in the voice of an alcoholic billionaire in Spain.

For most of us, it's about finding out that our voice is what people want to hear. It's hard to believe, but it is absolutely true. If you have a story to tell me, Jo, I just want you to tell me your story. I don't want you to try to sound like Virginia Woolf or Margaret Drabble. I want you to be Jo.

If it's the written version you're sending me, I can probably go through and help you maintain your voice while making the writing stronger by following certain really basic rules. But spiritually and psychologically, this is just about the most important rule of all because that's why we're here.

That's why we are on this side of eternity—to discover who we are and why we're here. Part of that is discovering who, deep down, when all the layers are peeled away, we are, and then how to communicate that to a reader.

Without trying to sound more impressive or more brilliant or more ironic than we actually are, our voice is good enough. It's hard to believe. Our voice is what we want you to tell us your stories in.

Neal: I distinctly remember the day I found my voice, for odd reasons. I just can remember it, and the first thing I did when this story felt like it had written itself to me was look at it and go, “Crap. That doesn't sound like Faulkner.”

Jo: It sounded like you.

Anne: Or bad Faulkner.

Jo: Do you think we have to find our voice maybe multiple times, depending on genre? For example, I recognised that feeling with one of my novels. It was novel number five. I was like, “Oh, that's my voice.” But then it took me a lot longer to find that in memoir because, well, I think memoir is super hard.

Do you think we have to go through these 10,000 hours in different genres?

Neal: Not for me. I don't think any differently about how I'm entering into a business letter, a text, a novel, a self-help book, or any of the things that I do. I feel like I just have to turn this switch and let it go, and I can trust myself.

So that's interesting. I can imagine you could develop a second voice. I haven't ever needed to.

Anne: I would agree that I write my novels and my nonfiction really from a kind of central bus station deep inside of me.

One of our rules is write the hard things—write about life and death and loss and grief and relationships and getting old and being here during these incredibly cold, dark times. Because the reader, i.e. me, is just desperate for truth and for real.

I started out wanting to sound like John Updike or sound like a New York glitterati male writer, and I can't tell you what is really real in somebody else's voice. I disagree with Malcolm Gladwell. I think it's 10 hours—a little bit different there.

But when I'm writing autobiographical spiritual pieces or my novels, I have to kind of settle myself down, like gentling a horse, and find that bus station inside of myself where I'm observing and I'm tugging on the sleeve of the person sitting next to me and saying, “I just saw something really interesting. Do you have a minute?”

That's really what writing is. I just saw something or thought of something or imagined something or remembered something really interesting. Do you have a minute? If I'm talking to the person next to me, I'm not going to try to sound like Laurence Olivier or anybody else. I'm just going to tell them my story.

The best four or five word great quote is from our screenwriter friend, Randy Mayem Singer, and she said: “Tell me a story. Make me care.” Those six words really transcend all genres. It's just: I can tell you a story my way if you're interested. Got a minute?

Jo: You mentioned that, really interesting, you said, “I need to settle myself down,” particularly in these dark times. This is not a political show, and obviously we're all from different countries here and we all have different views of what difficult times are, but we all go through them.

When big things in the world make us feel like perhaps what we are doing is not so important, how do we get through that?

That “shouldn't I go do something more important than writing a story” feeling?

Neal: Everybody is encouraged to be a political scientist nowadays, or to be an ethicist or to be a moralist as their job, and that's kind of ridiculous, right?

We've been handed our role. By the time you're 30, you've been handed your role in the world, and that's your productive role.

You have certain citizenship requirements, which might include voting or marching or watching the news every day. That's not the rest of your day unless you actually work in parliament as an aide or doing some kind of social policy work.

I am not going to let the external world ruin my day. I'm going to keep that to a certain number of minutes of my day that is appropriate to my role in the world. I am perfectly productive in the world. I have lots of things that I do. I work hard. Everybody works hard.

There are no lazy people in this world any more—civilisation's too difficult. You want lazy? Go back to 300,000 years of tribal life, where as soon as you had fulfilled your last need for calories for the day, you made it back to camp slowly so you didn't burn calories, and lulled from about 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

The rest of the day you reclined so you weren't burning calories and gossiped with your fellow tribespeople. None of us is like that now.

I'm perfectly productive without having to say I should be more productive and more concerned about the foibles of the species.

Anne: Neal does something with his clients, with whom he does this work on taming the inner critic. It's about having them make a list of what they do every day.

Rain or shine or catastrophe or peace or war or whatever, you just do it. I wake up, I pray, I put my glasses on. I get a little bit of work done every day. I meditate for 15 minutes every day. I get outside every day because that is the most nourishing, spiritual reset button I can get to. I catch up with my friends.

We have a grandson here. We hang out with him. I do certain things every day, and one of them is I get a little bit of work done.

Of course what I'd rather do is just stay glued to CNN and have my tiny opinions on every single thing that is happening and how things would be better if they followed my always excellent advice.

Instead, what I do is I will meditate for 50 minutes a day and it won't be really beautiful and inspiring—it'll be like a monkey at the mall who's over-caffeinated.

I will also get outside. I don't know if I'll get a really good long walk with 10,000 steps in, but I will get outside and I will pay attention. I will breathe in fresh air. I will have moments of wonder.

I will also sit down, and I will be doing it after we talk. I'm going to get my own writing done for the day.

I really recommend that to writing students: write down what you do every day. And in it, figure out at least one pod—a 45-minute pod—where you can get a little bit of writing done.

Something that may serve the writers in your audience is that I make long lists and I encourage all beginning writers to make long lists of every memory and thought and idea that they've had. But mostly memories, often starting very young.

Thinking about early holidays and school are great prompts. Make a list of 25 memories you have that you've told people over the years that are meaningful to you. If you remember them, they're meaningful.

You may think that they're meaningful because of this or that, but you sit down and you write about them for 45 minutes and you're going to discover that there was a kernel of insight, or even healing, in them that you hadn't known when you set out to write them.

I taught writing forever at this bookstore called Book Passage in Marin. We would spend a part of every hour having the writers, the students, explain to me why they weren't getting any writing done, and they were excellent ideas.

Any excuse your listeners have about why they're not getting any writing done—believe me, it's a good excuse and I've heard it 10 times.

If you are committed to writing, you have to meet us halfway, and that means that you set aside 45 minutes or an hour and a half or whatever you can give me to get a little bit of writing done. Get one passage written—the first or eighth thing on the list of really important memories that you've carried in your pocket all these years.

Neal: The typical amount of time that a Booker Prize winner, or a National Book Award winner here in America, spends writing—a novelist—is one to two hours in the morning, getting 45 minutes to an hour and a half of work done, a thousand to 1,500 words. And then they stop.

The reason they stop is it's really brain-consuming. To do this is hard work, and it's intellectually vigorous. High-end programmers can work two and a half hours on average before they have to stop because they've used up their brain energy—the blood going to the brain and expending calories and whatever is going on in there.

It's not a long time. It's just repetitive time. The Booker Prize winners, they typically work six days a week, not five days a week. An hour and a half a day is about the mean. About 1,200 words is about the mean.

Jo: It's interesting because you mentioned what's stopping people from writing, and you also mentioned it's hard work.

One of the things I've heard a lot recently is: “This is really hard. I thought writing was meant to be this romantic myth where I would sit down and things would stream into my brain and it would be easy. And if it's not easy and fun, then maybe it's wrong for me.”

So maybe you could explain more about the hardness and why hard is still good. Hard doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Neal: The interesting thing about writers is that they are really interested in very complex thinking about sentences.

A few things distinguish a writer from a subject matter expert or a plotter—who either writes plots and is interested in the movement of plots, or who is a subject matter expert in something and either novelises it or writes nonfiction.

It's that a writer is first concerned about the puzzle of a sentence, second concerned about the flow of a paragraph really, and only thirdly concerned about the subject matter.

I don't care what the subject matter is. What I want to concentrate on ultimately is the sentence. And getting a sentence to look right in context requires building sentences upon sentences upon sentences. It's more like painting than it is like writing in that sense.

If you look at a painter, once they've put one brushstroke down—and usually it takes them a while to figure out what that brushstroke is, how big it is, how wide it is, how thick it is, how grainy it is—then the second brushstroke becomes a puzzle based on what they just did with the first brushstroke and the remaining canvas.

A writer thinks that way about each sentence and realises that each sentence has layers of information in it—diction, colour, rhythm, harmony, melody, plot, all sorts of things are happening. How many of those are taken care of in that sentence? Well, that becomes the interest.

It's hard in the sense that to be virtuosic at it, to be really good at it, requires a lot of study and a lot of mistakes. Most of the mistakes are getting rid of clichés and finding your way past them, and that's a long, long process.

This isn't something that can be just picked up because you have a talent. You were told at a certain time you were a talented writer, so you can just pick it up. As soon as you get into it, you see that the sentences are demanding a heck of a lot of work.

Anne: I would add that I don't find it all that fun and easy—I never find it fun and easy. I've been doing this professionally for 52 years now, since I was 20, when I worked at a magazine.

I think that's an illusion. So much of becoming a writer is unlearning what you thought it meant and how it would go. That you would sit alone like Bartleby the Scrivener, hunched over working on your ledger.

That was not true at all, because a lot of our book, Good Writing, has to do with the collaboration between you and a writing partner, a writing group or a writing collective, and eventually an editor.

It's not about that lonely, hunched-over romantic, Wuthering Heights sense of seriousness. And it's also not giddy. It's not Walt Disney. It's just very real.

It's one human sitting down at the desk with paper or at the keyboard, and it is just trying, one day at a time, to write what's on your heart, what's on your mind, what's on your scribbled notes, what you're trying to transcribe from this little bit of a flicker of an idea about something that you've always meant to tell on paper. And then writing it.

Some parts of the day's work will be pulling teeth. The secret of writing—and I write about this a lot in Bird by Bird, I write a lot about it in Good Writing—is you just don't give up. Because you wanted to be a writer when you grew up.

What that means is that you write a little bit every day and you read about writing. You read good books on writing. You read Stephen King. You read William Zinsser. You read all the Paris Review interviews of writers at work.

You enter into the writing life because it's a calling, like a monk to a monastery. You've gotten into the water, it's a little cold at first, and you stay in it. And it starts to be something that is so fulfilling, if maybe not fun. It's fulfilling.

You will feel this rare excitement that you're doing what you have put off for so long, or that you're re-entering it in a new way with a different sense of commitment and maybe a little bit more wisdom and probably a lot more stories to tell.

Jo: I did want to ask Anne, because coming back to Bird by Bird, many writers listening will have read it. I've also read over the years about your son and your faith. These are really personal things that you have shared.

It feels like we live in this age of judgement and cancellation, and writing what you call our truths can be very difficult. People are afraid. What would you say to them?

And obviously also rule 33 is “write hard stuff”, so I guess that gets into it too. How do we do this?

Anne: A lot of people don't have the calling to write personal stuff or autobiographical stuff or stuff about spiritual or emotional or psychological healing. They want to write about England in the 1300s.

I've always told my writing students to write what they would love to come upon, because then they're creating it.

If they love to read historical romances, or they love to read journals—I have to say, I read every single journal of Virginia Woolf's in my early twenties, and I read every single volume of her letters in my early twenties.

It was thrilling to be in that intimate, umbilical connection to a writer that I loved so much, and into the world of Bloomsbury, and into the world of England between the wars. People may not want to write like I write, and I would assume they don't.

My calling is that I love to write about real life and I use my immediate experiences of daily living and my family and my husband and our animals and my nation and my recovery and my church. All of that is the stuff that I love to come upon in other people's work, and so I write it.

Neal writes differently. He is a journalist and a novelist, and he is writing a lot in a much more sociological way than I am. He is writing with this font of knowledge about socioeconomic and historical understanding of the world.

Yet he's just raggedy old Neal Allen, but he loves to come upon different stuff than I love to come upon. Does that answer your question?

Neal: I think one thing to notice is that the whole bully-victim cycle that we are promoting and living in now—and it's a cycle because if somebody claims that they have been bullied, then their only defence is to become a bully themselves. The victims become the bullies. It just gets worse and worse. It's the old revenge story.

What I've noticed when I think about it is the authors who I respect the most tend to be humanists. Humanists tend not to be cancelled, and I've never felt a great danger. Of course, I watch my words in certain ways that are fashionable—you can't use this word any more, and all of that.

But in terms of ideas, humanists embrace the world in a funny, different kind of way than people who chase after conflict, chase after separation of people from each other, tribalism, all of that.

When I look back, my heroes were always humanists. Some of them might be cancelled now, but just for the weirdest reasons—like Henry Miller or Mark Twain might be cancelled for very strange reasons. These are absolute humanists who love everybody in the world in a certain kind of odd way.

Virginia Woolf is the most incredible humanist in the world. She's not going to be cancelled.

Jo: She cancelled herself.

Neal: There we go.

Jo: As we come towards the end, I do want to return to something—you've both talked about calling and you've been handed your role, and this sort of “we are writers now.”

Both of you have had great longevity in the career, and I've been doing this now 20 years. I've noticed so many people who leave the writing life, so I wondered what tips you had on making it long term.

How do we do this long term, assuming we are feeling a calling? People have to balance the money side, they're balancing book marketing, which is always a nightmare for all of us, and the writing.

Any tips for longevity?

Neal: I have no idea. I have lived outside of the writing life, just kind of using it as a secondary skill, for half of my life.

I left journalism because it didn't pay well enough to support a family of six. I moved into the corporate world. I loved the corporate world. I didn't have any problem with it, but it wasn't the writing world.

When I came out of the corporate world, I first went into “tame your inner critic” sessions with people—executive coaching, other kinds of coaching. Only lately, only in the last 10 years, have I really resumed my writing career.

I think maintaining a writing career, like anything in the arts, is incredibly difficult financially. It just will be. Annie will tell you—you were, what, 15 years into your career before you had your first home office?

Anne: Yes.

Neal: Right.

Anne: More than that. I was 20 years in before I had a door I could close to keep the Huns out—i.e. my child.

Here's the thing: nobody cares if you write, if you hate it, or if you've given up.

It might be that you would find your creative soul, your imaginative, creative life force at ecstatic dancing on Saturdays in the town park, which we offer here in our tiny town. It might be that you're a painter. My best friend started painting several years ago and she's incredible.

If you want to write, the horrible thing is that you just have to keep setting aside a pod. I keep using the word pod because that's how I get any work done at all—an hour.

Now, Neal and I can both tell you, and Neal alluded to this: you set aside an hour and that will give you maybe 40 minutes of actual writing. And we'll give the Booker Prize winners 40 minutes of actual writing. You have two hours and that gives you an hour and 15 minutes. That's how it works.

If you care and if you long to be a writer, to immerse yourself in the writing life—I hate to sound like a Nike ad, and I don't know if you have this in England—but you just do it.

One thing that gets in everybody's way is this fantasy of getting published and how if they get published, it will be like the world has stamped “validated” on their parking ticket and their self-esteem will now be much, much better and more consistently excellent than it ever was before.

We can tell you: we've got this book that's out, brand new, and it makes you much more insecure and much more anxious than you were before it got published. Because how's it going to do? Is it going to get reviewed? There are very, very few places reviewing books any more.

Carol Shields, who wrote an incredible book 30 years ago called The Stone Diaries. She was teaching large, large writing retreats, a thousand people at a time, and she would tell them that five to 10 of them will be published.

Getting published means that you get your book out and you have one week to make it. You have one week in the bookstores for it to get noticed. And there are 180,000 hardback books published in America every year in general interest.

So you write a novel that's about a small town. You have great dreams that it's going to be an Oprah book and that this is going to happen and it will lead to a second contract, and then you can start investing in diamonds or buy a set of fish forks.

It doesn't happen. My first book that made any money at all for me was my fifth book. It was a journal of my son's first year called Operating Instructions, and it was the first time that I didn't have to have a second job. I was 38, and I had been writing—and writing full time—since I was 20 and publishing since I was 26.

If the carrot that is enticing you to get any new work done is publication and finding an agent and getting published, it's not going to happen for you. I can just promise you that.

If your dream is to become a writer and to become a member of the writing community and to write—and it will be discouraging—but if you want to write, you just keep pushing back your sleeves. You don't get up. You sit down and you keep your butt in the chair.

If your work is really good, it may get published. If your work is excellent, it may not. But that can't be what gets you to commit to being a writer when you grow up.

Jo: Fantastic.

So where can people find Good Writing and all your books and everything you both do online?

Neal: On March 17th the book comes out. You can get it online, anywhere online. It's published by Penguin Avery. March 17th, it gets released.

Anne: As we said, it'll be in the bookstores for a while.

Neal: It'll be in the bookstores in America. You might have to go online in Great Britain at first.

Jo: Oh yes, it's definitely there. And what about your websites as well?

Anne: I don't have a website.

Neal: I have a modest website at ShapesOfTruth.com. That tells you about my other books also.

Anne: I'm at Substack, Anne Lamott. I'm on Facebook, Anne Lamott. I'm kind of all over the place. But this is kind of terrifying: 80% of books bought in America are bought at Amazon on cell phones.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. Actually, I was going to ask—have you recorded the audiobook as a pair?

Anne: Yes, we have. It's available if you go—I hate to always be plugging Amazon, but it's so easy. If you go to Amazon, it'll give you a choice of hardback or audio or Kindle.

Neal: And if you don't want to go to Amazon and want to find another place to buy it that you feel more comfortable with, go to Penguin Random House and just put in “Good Writing, Anne Lamott.” I think it'll take you to a splash page that gives you a choice of a half dozen online places to order it.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much, both of you, for your time. This has been brilliant.

Anne: Oh, Jo, thank you. Pleasure and an honour. Thank you for having us.

Neal: Thank you, Jo. As you can see, we really get turned on talking about this!

Anne: Yes, we do.

The post Strong Verbs And Hard Truths. Good Writing With Anne Lamott and Neal Allen first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What makes a character so compelling that readers will forgive almost anything about the plot? How do you move beyond vague flaws and generic descriptions to create people who feel pulled from real life? In this solo episode, I share 15 actionable tips for writing deep characters, curated from past interviews on the podcast.

In the intro, thoughts from London Book Fair [Instagram reel @jfpennauthor; Publishing Perspectives; Audible; Spotify]; Insights from a 7-figure author business [BookBub].

This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

This episode has been created from previous episodes of The Creative Penn Podcast, curated by Joanna Penn, as well as chapters from How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book. Links to the individual episodes are included in the transcript below.

In this episode:

• Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' trifecta, how to hook readers on the very first page
• Define the Dramatic Question: Who is your character when the chips are down?
• Absolute specificity. Why “she's controlling” isn't good enough
• Understand the Heroine's Journey, strength through connection, not solo action
• Use ‘Metaphor Families' to anchor dialogue and give every character a distinctive voice
• Find the Diagnostic Detail, the moments that prove a character is real
• Writing pain onto the page without writing memoir
• Write diverse characters as real people, not stereotypes or plot devices
• Give your protagonist a morally neutral ‘hero' status. Compelling beats likeable.
• Build vibrant side characters for series longevity and spin-off potential
• Use voice as a rhythmic tool
• Link character and plot until they're inseparable
• Why discovery writers can write out of order and still build deep character
• Find the sensory details that make characters live and breathe

More help with how to write fiction here, or in my book, How to Write a Novel.

Writing Characters: 15 Tips for Writing Deep Character in Your Fiction

In today’s episode, I’m sharing fifteen tips for writing deep characters, synthesised from some of the most insightful interviews on The Creative Penn Podcast over the past few years, combined with what I’ve learned across more than forty books of my own. I’ll be referencing episodes with Matt Bird, Will Storr, Gail Carriger, Barbara Nickless, and Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer. I’ll also draw on my own book, How to Write a Novel, which covers these fundamentals in detail.

Whether you’re writing your first novel or your fiftieth, whether you’re a plotter or a discovery writer like me, these tips will help you create characters that readers believe in, care about, and invest in—and keep coming back for more. Let’s get into it.

1. Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest’ Trifecta

When I spoke with Matt Bird on episode 624, he laid out the three things you need to achieve on the very first page of your book or in the first ten minutes of a film. He calls it “Believe, Care, and Invest.”

First, the reader must believe the character is a real person, somehow proving they are not a cardboard imitation of a human being, not just a generic type walking through a generic plot. Second, the reader must care about the character’s circumstances. And third, the reader must invest in the character’s ability to solve the story’s central problem.

Matt used The Hunger Games as his primary example, and it’s brilliant. On the very first page, we believe Katniss’s voice. Suzanne Collins writes in first person with a staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short declarative sentences—that immediately grounds us in a survivalist mentality. We care because Katniss is starving. She’s protecting her little sister. And we invest because she is out there bow hunting, which Matt pointed out is one of the most badass things a character can do. She even kills a lynx two pages in and sells the pelt. We invest in her resourcefulness and grit before the plot has even begun.

Matt was very clear that this has nothing to do with the character being “likable.” He said his subtitle, Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love, doesn’t mean the character has to be a good person. He described “hero” as both gender-neutral and morally neutral. A hero can be totally evil or totally good. What matters is that we believe, care, and invest.

He demonstrated this beautifully by breaking down the first ten minutes of WeCrashed, where the characters of Adam and Rebekah Neumann are absolutely not likable, but we are completely hooked. Adam steals his neighbour’s Chinese food through a carefully orchestrated con involving an imaginary beer. It’s not admirable behaviour, but the tradecraft involved, as Matt put it—using a term from spy movies—makes us invest in him. We see a character trying to solve the big problem of his life, which is that he’s poor and wants to be rich, and we want to see if he can pull it off.

Actionable step: Go to the first page of your current work in progress. Does it achieve all three? Does the reader believe this is a real person with a distinctive voice? Do they care about the character’s circumstances? And do they invest in the character’s ability to handle what’s coming? If even one of those three is missing, that’s your revision priority.

2. Define the Dramatic Question: Who Are They Really?

Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling, came on episode 490 and gave one of the most powerful frameworks I’ve ever heard for character-driven fiction. He explained that the human brain evolved language primarily to swap social information—in other words, to gossip. We are wired to monitor other people, to ask the question: who is this person when the chips are down?

That’s what Will calls the Dramatic Question, and it’s what he believes lies at the heart of all compelling storytelling. It’s not a question about plot. It’s a question about the character’s soul. And every scene in your novel should force the character to answer it.

His example of Lawrence of Arabia is unforgettable. The Dramatic Question for the entire film is: who are you, Lawrence? Are you ordinary or are you extraordinary?

At the beginning, Lawrence is a cocky, rebellious young soldier who believes his rebelliousness makes him superior. Every iconic scene in that three-hour film tests that belief. Sometimes Lawrence acts as though he truly is extraordinary—leading the Arabs into battle, being hailed as a god—and sometimes the world strips him bare and he sees himself as ordinary. Because it’s a tragedy, he never overcomes his flaw. He doubles down on his belief that he’s extraordinary until he becomes monstrous, culminating in that iconic scene where he lifts a bloody dagger and sees his own reflection with horror.

Will also used Jaws to demonstrate how this works in a pure action thriller. Brody’s dramatic question is simple: are you going to be old Brody who is terrified of the water, or new Brody who can overcome that fear? Every scene where the shark appears is really asking that question. And the last moment of the film isn’t the shark blowing up. It’s Brody swimming back through the water, saying he used to be scared of the water and he can’t imagine why.

Actionable step: Write down the Dramatic Question for your protagonist in a single sentence. Is it “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you brave enough to love again?” or “Will you sacrifice your principles for survival?” If you can’t answer this with specificity, your character might still be a sketch rather than a person.

3. Get rid of Vague Flaws, and use Absolute Specificity

This was one of Will Storr’s most important points. He said that vague thinking about characters is really the enemy. When he teaches workshops and asks writers to describe their character’s flaw, most of them say something like “they’re very controlling.” And Will’s response is: that’s not good enough. Everyone is controlling. How are they controlling? What’s the specific mechanism?

He gave the example of a profile he read of Theresa May during the UK’s Brexit chaos. Someone who knew her said that Theresa May’s problem was that she always thinks she’s the only adult in every room she goes into. Will said that stopped him in his tracks because it’s so precise. If you define a character with that level of specificity, you can take them and put them in any genre, any situation—a spaceship, a Victorian drawing room, a school playground—and you will know exactly how they’re going to behave.

The same applies to Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as Will described it: a man who believes absolutely in capitalistic success and the idea that when you die, you’re going to be weighed on a scale, just as God weighs you for sin, but now you’re weighed for success. That’s not a vague flaw. That’s a worldview you can drop into any story and watch it combust.

Will made another counterintuitive point that I found really valuable: writers often think that piling on multiple traits will create a complex character, but the opposite is true. Starting with one highly specific flaw and running it through the demands of a relentless plot is what generates complexity. You end up with a far more nuanced, original character than if you’d started with a laundry list of vague attributes.

Actionable step: Take your protagonist’s flaw and pressure-test it. Is it specific enough that you could place this character in any situation and predict their behaviour? If you’re stuck at “she’s stubborn” or “he’s insecure,” keep pushing. What kind of stubborn? What kind of insecure? Find the diagnostic sentence—the Theresa May level of precision.

4. Understand the Heroine’s Journey: Strength Through Connection

Gail Carriger came on episode 550 to discuss her nonfiction book, The Heroine’s Journey, and it completely reframed how I think about some of my own fiction.

Gail explained that the core difference between the Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s Journey comes down to how strength and victory are defined. The Hero’s Journey is about strength through solo action. The hero must be continually isolated to get stronger. He goes out of civilisation, faces strife alone, and achieves victory through physical prowess and self-actualisation.

The Heroine’s Journey is the opposite. The heroine achieves her goals by activating a network. She’s a delegator, a general. She identifies where she can’t do something alone, finds the people who can help, and portions out the work for mutual gain. Gail put it simply: the heroine is very good at asking for help, which our culture tends to devalue but which is actually a powerful form of strength.

Crucially, Gail stressed that gender is irrelevant to which journey you’re writing. Her go-to examples are striking: the recent Wonder Woman film is practically a beat-for-beat hero’s journey—Gilgamesh on screen, as Gail described it. Meanwhile, Harry Potter, both the first book and the series as a whole, is a classic heroine’s journey. Harry’s power comes from his network—Dumbledore’s Army, the Order of the Phoenix, his friendships with Ron and Hermione. He doesn’t defeat Voldemort alone. He defeats Voldemort because of love and connection.

This distinction has real practical consequences for writers. If you’re writing a hero’s journey and you hit writer’s block, Gail said, the solution is usually to isolate your hero further and pile on more strife. But if you’re writing a heroine’s journey, the solution is probably to throw a new character into the scene—someone who has advice to offer or a skill the heroine lacks. The actual solutions to writer’s block are different depending on which narrative you’re writing.

As I reflected on my own work, I realised that my ARKANE thriller protagonist, Morgan Sierra, follows a hero’s journey—she’s a solo operative, a lone wolf like Jack Reacher or James Bond. But my Mapwalker fantasy series follows a heroine’s journey, with Sienna and her group of friends working together. I hadn’t consciously chosen those paths; the stories led me there. But understanding the framework helps me write more intentionally now.

Actionable step: Identify which journey your protagonist is on. Does your character gain strength by being alone (hero) or by building connections (heroine)? This will inform every plot decision you make, from how they face obstacles to how your story ends.

5. Use ‘Metaphor Families’ to Anchor Dialogue and Voice

One of the most practical techniques Matt Bird shared on episode 624 is the idea of assigning each character a “metaphor family”—a specific well of language that they draw from. This gives each character a distinctive voice that goes beyond accent or dialect.

Matt explained how in The Wire, one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, every character has a different metaphor family. What struck him was that Omar, this iconic character, never utters a single curse word in the entire series. His metaphor family is pirate. He talks about parlays, uses language that feels like it belongs in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it creates this incredible ironic counterpoint against his urban setting. It tells us immediately that this is a character who sees himself in a tradition of people that doesn’t match his immediate surroundings.

Matt also referenced the UK version of The Office, where Gareth works at a paper company but aspires to the military. So all of his language is drawn from a military metaphor family. He doesn’t talk about filing and photocopying; he talks about tactics and discipline and being on the front line. This tells us that the character has a life and dreams beyond the immediate scene—and it’s the gap between aspiration and reality that makes him both funny and believable.

He pointed out that a metaphor family sometimes comes from a character’s background, but it’s often more interesting when it comes from their aspirations. What does your character want to be? What world do they fantasise about inhabiting? That’s where their language should come from. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a spiritual hermit, but his metaphor family is military. He uses the language of generals and commanders, and that ironic counterpoint is part of what makes him feel so rich.

Actionable step: Assign each of your main characters a metaphor family. It could be based on their job, their background, or—more interestingly—their secret aspirations. Then go through your dialogue and make sure each character is consistently drawing from that well of language. If two characters sound the same when you strip away the dialogue tags, this is the fix.

6. Find the Diagnostic Detail: The Diagonal Toast

Avoid clichéd character tags—the random scar, the eye patch, the mysterious limp—unless they serve a deep narrative purpose. Matt Bird on episode 624 was very funny about this: he pointed out that Nick Fury, Odin, and eventually Thor all have eye patches in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eye patches are done, he said. You cannot do eye patches anymore.

Instead, look for what I’m calling the “diagonal toast” detail, after a scene Matt described from Captain Marvel. In the film, Captain Marvel is trying to determine whether Nick Fury is who he says he is. She asks him to prove he isn’t a shapeshifting alien. Fury shares biographical details—his history, his mother—but then she pushes further and says, name one more thing you couldn’t possibly have made up about yourself. And Fury says: if toast is cut diagonally, I can’t eat it.

Matt said that detail is gold for a writer because it feels pulled from a real life. You can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and the reader can tell it’s not manufactured. He gave another example from The Sopranos: Tony Soprano’s mother won’t answer the phone after dark. The show’s creator, David Chase, confirmed on the DVD commentary that this came from his own mother, who genuinely would not answer the phone after dark and couldn’t explain why.

Matt’s practical advice was to keep a journal. Write down the strange, specific things that people do or say. Mine your own life for those hyper-specific details. You just need one per book. In my own writing, I’ve used this approach.

In my ARKANE thrillers, my character Morgan Sierra has always been Angelina Jolie in my mind—specifically Jolie in Lara Croft or Mr and Mrs Smith. And Blake Daniel in my crime thriller series was based on Jesse Williams from Grey’s Anatomy. I paste pictures of actors into my Scrivener projects. It helps with visuals, but also with the sense of the character, their energy and physicality.

But visual details only take you so far. It’s the behavioural quirks—the diagonal toast moments—that make a character feel genuinely alive.

That said, physical character tags can work brilliantly when they serve the story. As I discuss in How to Write a Novel, Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike is an amputee, and his pain and the physical challenges of his prosthesis are a key part of every story—it’s not a cosmetic detail, it’s woven into the action and the character’s psychology.

My character Blake Daniel always wears gloves to cover the scars on his hands, which provides an angle into his wounded past as well as a visual cue for the reader. And of course, Harry Potter’s lightning-shaped scar isn’t just a mark—it’s a direct connection to his nemesis and the mythology of the entire series.

The rule of thumb is: if the tag tells us something about the character’s interior life or connects to the plot, it’s earning its place. If it’s just there to make the character visually distinctive, it’s probably a crutch. Game of Thrones takes character tags further with the family houses, each with their own mottos and sigils. The Starks say “Winter is coming” and their sigil is a dire wolf. Those aren’t just labels—they’re worldview made visible.

Actionable step: Start a “diagonal toast” notebook. Every time you notice something strange and specific about someone’s behaviour—something that feels too real to be made up—write it down. Then gift it to a character who needs more texture.

7. Displace Your Own Trauma into the Work

Barbara Nickless shared something deeply personal on episode 732 that fundamentally changed how I think about putting pain onto the page. While starting At First Light, the first book in her Dr. Evan Wilding series, she lost her son to epilepsy—something called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. One day he was there, and the next day he was gone.

Barbara said that writing helped her cope with the trauma, that doing a deep dive into Old English literature and the Viking Age for the book’s research became a lifeline. But here’s what’s important: she didn’t give Dr. Evan Wilding her exact trauma. Evan Wilding is four feet five inches, and Barbara described how he has to walk through a world that won’t adjust to him. That’s its own form of learning to cope when circumstances are beyond your control. She displaced her genuine grief into the character’s different but parallel struggle.

When I asked her about the difference between writing for therapy and writing for an audience, she drew on her experience teaching creative writing to veterans through a collaboration between the US Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts. She said she’s found that she can pour her heartache into her characters and process it through them, even when writing professionally, and that the genuine emotion is what touches readers. We’ve all been through our own losses and griefs, so seeing how a character copes can be deeply meaningful.

I’ve always found that putting my own pain onto the page is the most direct way to connect with a reader’s soul. My character Morgan Sierra’s musings on religion and the supernatural are often my own. Her restlessness, her fascination with the darker edges of faith—those come from me. But her Krav Maga fighting skills and her ability to kill the bad guys are definitely her own. That gap between what’s mine and what’s hers is where the fiction lives.

Barbara also said something on that episode that I wrote down and stuck on my wall. She said the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. On my own wall, I have “Measure your life by what you create.” Different words, same truth.

Actionable step: If you’re carrying something heavy—grief, anger, fear, regret—consider how you might displace it into a character’s different but emotionally parallel struggle. Don’t copy your exact situation; transform it. The emotion will be genuine, and the reader will feel it.

8. Write Diverse Characters as Real People

When I spoke with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673—Sarah is Choctaw and a historical fiction author honoured by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian—she offered a perspective that every fiction writer needs to hear.

The key message was to move away from stereotypes. Don’t write your American Indian character as the “Wise Guide” who exists solely to dispense mystic wisdom to the white protagonist. Don’t limit diverse characters to historical settings, as though they only exist in the past. Place them in normal, contemporary roles. Your spaceship captain, your forensic scientist, your small-town baker—any of them can be American Indian, or Nigerian, or Japanese, and their heritage should be a lived-in part of their identity, not the sole reason they exist in the story.

I write international thrillers and dark fantasy, and my fiction is populated with characters from all over the world. I have a multi-cultural family and I’ve lived in many places and travelled widely, so I’ve met, worked with, and had relationships with people from different cultures. I find story ideas through travel, and if I set my books in a certain place, then the story is naturally populated with the people who live there.

As I discuss in my book, How to Write a Novel, the world is a diverse place, so your fiction needs to be populated with all kinds of people. If I only populated my fiction with characters like me, they would be boring novels. There are many dimensions of difference—race, nationality, sex, age, body type, ability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, class, culture, education level—and even then, don’t assume that similar types of people think the same way.

Some authors worry they will make mistakes. We live in a time of outrage, and some authors have been criticised for writing outside their own experience. So is it too dangerous to try? Of course not. The media amplifies outliers, and most authors include diverse characters in every book without causing offence because they work hard to get it right. It’s about awareness, research, and intent.

Actionable step: Audit the cast of your current work in progress. Have you written a mono-cultural perspective for all of them? If so, consider who could bring a different background, perspective, or set of cultural specifics to the story. Not as a token addition, but as a real person with a real life.

9. Respect Tribal and Cultural Specificity

Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673 was emphatic about one thing: never treat diverse groups as monolithic. If you’re writing a Native American character, you must research the specific nation. Choctaw is not Navajo, just as British is not French.

Sarah described the distinct cultural markers of the Choctaw people—the diamond pattern you’ll see on traditional shirts and dresses, which represents the diamondback rattlesnake. They have distinct dances and songs. She said that if she saw someone in traditional dress at a distance, she would know whether they were Choctaw based on what they were wearing.

She encouraged writers who want to write specifically about a nation to get to know those people. Go to events, go to a powwow, learn about the individual culture. She noted that a big misconception is that American Indians exist only in the past—she stressed that they are still here, still living their cultures, and fiction should reflect that present reality.

I took a similar approach when writing Destroyer of Worlds, which is set mostly in India. I read books about Hindu myth, watched documentaries about the sadhus, and had one of my Indian readers from Mumbai check my cultural references. For Risen Gods, set in New Zealand with a young Maori protagonist, I studied books about Maori mythology and fiction by Maori authors, and had a male Maori reader check for cultural issues. Research is simply an act of empathy.

The practical takeaway is this: if you’re going to include a character from a specific cultural background, do the work. Use specific cultural details rather than generic signifiers. Sarah talked about how even she fell into stereotypes when she was first writing, until her mother pointed them out. If someone from within a culture can fall into those traps, the rest of us certainly can. Do the research, try your best, ask for help, and apologise if you need to.

Actionable step: If you’re writing a character from a specific culture, identify three to five sensory or behavioural details that are particular to that culture—not the generic version, but the real, researched, lived-in version. Consider hiring a sensitivity reader from that community to check your work.

10. Give Your Protagonist a Morally Neutral ‘Hero’ Status

Matt Bird was clear about this on episode 624: the word “hero” simply means the protagonist, the person we follow through the story. It’s a functional role, not a moral label. We don’t have to like them. We don’t even have to root for their goals in a moral sense. We just have to find them compelling enough to invest our attention in their problem-solving.

Think of Succession, where every member of the Roy family is varying degrees of awful, and yet the show was utterly compelling. Or WeCrashed, where Adam Neumann is a narcissistic con artist, but we can’t look away because he’s trying to solve the enormous problem of building an empire from nothing, and the tradecraft he employs is fascinating.

As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, readers must want to spend time with your characters. They don’t have to be lovable or even likable—that will depend on your genre and story choices—but they have to be captivating enough that we want to spend time with them. A character who is trying to solve a massive problem will naturally draw investment from the audience, even if we wouldn’t want to have tea with them.

Will Storr extended this idea by pointing out that the audience will actually root for a character to solve their problem even if the audience doesn’t actually want the character’s goal to be achieved in the real world. We don’t really want more billionaires, but we invested in Adam Neumann’s rise because that was the problem the story posed, and our brains are wired to invest in problem-solving.

This connects to something deeper: what does your character want, and why? As I explore in How to Write a Novel, desire operates on multiple levels.

Take a character like Phil, who joins the military during wartime. On the surface, she wants to serve her country. But she also wants to escape her dead-end town and learn new skills. Deeper still, her father and grandfather served, and by joining up, she hopes to finally earn their respect. And perhaps deepest of all, her father died on a mission under mysterious circumstances, and she wants to find out what happened from the inside.

That layering of motivation is what turns a flat character into a three-dimensional one. The audience doesn’t need to be told all of this explicitly. It can emerge through action, dialogue, and the choices the character makes under pressure. But you, the writer, need to know it. You need to know what your character really wants deep down, because that desire—more than any external plot device—is what drives the story forward.

And your antagonist needs the same depth. They also want something, often diametrically opposed to your protagonist, and they need a reason that makes sense to them. In my ARKANE thriller Tree of Life, my antagonist is the heiress of a Brazilian mining empire who wants to restore the Earth to its original state to atone for the destruction caused by her father’s company. She’s part of a radical ecological group who believe the only way to restore Nature is to end all human life. It’s extreme, but in an era of climate change, it’s a motivation readers can understand—even if they disagree with the solution.

Actionable step: If you’re struggling to make a morally grey character work, make sure their problem is big enough and their methods are specific and interesting enough that we invest in the how, even if we’re ambivalent about the what.

11. Build Vibrant Side Characters

Gail Carriger made a point on episode 550 that was equal parts craft advice and business strategy. In a Heroine’s Journey model, side characters aren’t just fodder to be killed off to motivate the hero. They form a network. And because you don’t have to kill them—unlike in a hero’s journey, where allies are often betrayed or removed so the hero can be further isolated—you can pick up those side characters and give them their own books.

Gail said this creates a really voracious reader base. You write one series with vivid side characters, and then readers fall in love with those side characters and want their stories. So you write spin-offs. The romance genre does this brilliantly—think of the Bridgerton books, where each sibling gets their own novel. The side character in one book becomes the protagonist in the next.

Barbara Nickless experienced this firsthand with her Dr. Evan Wilding series. She has River Wilding, Evan’s adventurous brother, and Diana, the axe-throwing research assistant, and her editor has already expressed interest in a spin-off series with those characters. Barbara described creating characters she wants to spend time with, or characters who give her nightmares but also intrigue her. That’s the dual test: are they interesting enough for you to write, and interesting enough for readers to demand more?

As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, characters that span series can deepen the reader’s relationship with them as you expand their backstory into new plots. Readers will remember the character more than the plot or the book title, and look forward to the next instalment because they want more time with those people.

British crime author Angela Marsons described it as readers feeling like returning to her characters is like putting on a pair of old slippers.

Actionable step: Look at your supporting cast. Is there a side character who is vivid enough to carry their own story? If not, what could you add—a specific hobby, a distinct voice, a compelling backstory—that would make readers want more of them?

12. Use Voice as a Rhythmic Tool

Voice is one of the most important elements of novel writing, and Matt Bird helped me think about it in a technical, mechanical way that I found really useful. He pointed out that the ratio of periods to commas defines a character’s internal reality.

A staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short sentences—suggests a character who is certain, grounded, or perhaps survivalist and traumatised. Katniss in The Hunger Games has a period-heavy voice. She’s in survival mode. She doesn’t have time for complexity or qualification.

A flowing, comma-heavy style suggests someone more academic, more nuanced, or possibly more scattered and manipulative. The character who qualifies everything, who adds sub-clauses and digressions, is a different kind of person from the character who speaks in declarations.

This is something you can actually measure. Pull up a passage of your character’s dialogue or internal monologue and count the periods versus the commas. If the rhythm doesn’t match who the character is supposed to be, you’ve found a mismatch you can fix. Sentence length is the heartbeat of your character’s persona.

And voice extends beyond rhythm to the words themselves. As I discussed in the metaphor families tip, each character should draw from a distinctive well of language. But voice also encompasses their relationship to silence. Some characters talk around the thing they mean; others say it straight. Some are self-deprecating; others are blunt to the point of rudeness. All of these choices are character choices, not just style choices.

I find it useful to read my dialogue aloud—and not just to check for naturalness, but to hear whether each character sounds distinct. If you could swap dialogue lines between two characters and nobody would notice, you have a voice problem. One practical test: cover the dialogue tags and see if you can tell who’s speaking from the words alone.

Actionable step: Choose a key passage from your protagonist’s point of view and read it aloud. Does the rhythm match the character? A soldier under fire should not sound like a philosophy professor at a wine tasting. Adjust the ratio of periods to commas until the voice feels right.

13. Link Character and Plot Until They’re Inseparable

Will Storr made the case on episode 490 that the number one problem he sees in the writing he encounters—in workshops, in submissions, even in published books—is that the characters and the plots are unconnected. There’s a story happening, and there are people in it, but the story isn’t a product of who those people are.

He said a story should be like life. In our lives, the plots are intimately connected to who we are as characters. The goals we pursue, the obstacles we face, the same problems that keep recurring—these are products of our personalities, our flaws, our specific ways of being in the world.

His framework is that your plot should be designed specifically to plot against your character. You’ve got a character with a particular flaw; the plot exists to test that flaw over and over until the character either transforms or doubles down and explodes. Jaws is the perfect example. Brody is afraid of water. A shark shows up in the coastal town he’s responsible for protecting. The entire plot is engineered to force him to confront the one thing he cannot face.

Will pointed out that the whole plot of Jaws is structured around Brody’s flaw. It begins with the shark arriving, the midpoint is when Brody finally gets the courage to go into the water, and the very final scene isn’t the shark blowing up—it’s Brody swimming back through the water. Even a film that’s ninety-eight percent action is, at its core, structured around a character with a character flaw.

This is the standard I aspire to in my own work, even in my action-heavy thrillers. The external plot should be a mirror of the internal struggle. When those two are aligned, the story becomes irresistible.

Will also made an important point about series fiction, which is where most commercial authors live. I asked him how this works when your character can’t be transformed at the end of every book because there has to be a next book. His answer was elegant: you don’t cure them. Episodic TV characters like Fleabag or David Brent or Basil Fawlty never truly change—and the fact that they don’t change is actually the source of the comedy. But every episode throws a new story event at them that tests and exposes their flaw. You just keep throwing story events at them again and again. That’s a soap opera, a sitcom, and a book series.

As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, character flaws are aspects of personality that affect the person so much that facing and overcoming them becomes central to the plot.

In Jaws, the protagonist Brody is afraid of the water, but he has to overcome that flaw to destroy the killer shark and save the town. But remember, your characters should feel like real people, so never define them purely by their flaws. The character addicted to painkillers might also be a brilliant and successful female lawyer who gets up at four in the morning to work out at the gym, likes eighties music, and volunteers at the local dog shelter at weekends.

Character wounds are different from flaws. They’re formed from life experience and are part of your character’s backstory—traumatic events that happened before the events of your novel but shape the character’s reactions in the present. In my ARKANE thrillers, Morgan Sierra’s husband Elian died in her arms during a military operation. This happened before the series begins, but her memories of it recur when she faces a firefight, and she struggles to find happiness again for fear of losing someone she loves once more.

And then there’s the perennial advice: show, don’t tell. Most writers have heard this so many times that it’s easy to nod and then promptly write scenes that tell rather than show. Basically, you need to reveal your character through action and dialogue, rather than explanation.

In my thriller Day of the Vikings, Morgan Sierra fights a Neo-Viking in the halls of the British Museum and brings him down with Krav Maga. That fight scene isn’t just about showing action. It opens up questions about her backstory, demonstrates character, and moves the plot forward. Telling would be something like: “Morgan was an expert in Krav Maga.” Showing is the reader discovering it through the scene itself.

Actionable step: Look at the main plot events of your novel. For each major turning point, ask: does this scene specifically test my protagonist’s flaw? If not, can you redesign the scene so that it does? The tighter the connection between character and plot, the more powerful the story.

14. The ‘Maestra’ Approach: Write Out of Order

If you’re a discovery writer like me, you may feel like the deep character work I’ve been describing sounds more suited to plotters. But Barbara Nickless gave me a beautiful metaphor on episode 732 that reframes it entirely.

Barbara described her evolving writing process as being like a maestra standing in front of an orchestra. Sometimes you bring in the horns—a certain theme—and sometimes you bring in the strings—a certain character—and sometimes you turn to the soloist. It’s a more organic and jumping-around process than linear writing, and Barbara said she’s only recently given herself permission to work this way.

When I told her that I use Scrivener to write in scenes out of order and then drag and drop them into a structure later, she was genuinely intrigued. And this is how I’ve always worked. I’ll see the story in my mind like a movie trailer—flashes of the big emotional scenes, the pivotal confrontations, the moments of revelation—and I write those first. I don’t know how they hang together until quite late in the process. Then I’ll move scenes around, print the whole thing out, and figure out the connective tissue.

The point is that discovery writers can absolutely build deep characters. Sometimes writing the big emotional scenes first is how you discover who the character is before you fill in the rest. You don’t need a twenty-page character worksheet or a 200-page outline like Jeffery Deaver. You need to be willing to follow the character into the unknown and trust that the structure will emerge.

As Barbara said, she writes to know what she’s thinking. That’s the discovery writer’s credo. And I would add: I write to know who my characters are.

Actionable step: If you’re stuck on your current chapter, skip it. Write the scene that’s burning in your imagination, even if it’s from the middle or the end. That scene might be the key to unlocking who your character really is.

15. Use Research to Help with Empathy

Research shouldn’t just be about factual accuracy—it’s a tool for finding the sensory details that create empathy. Barbara Nickless described research as almost an excuse to explore things that fascinate her, and I feel exactly the same way. I would go so far as to say that writing is an excuse for me to explore the things that interest me.

Barbara and I both travel for our stories. For her Dr. Evan Wilding books, she did deep research into Old English literature and the Viking Age. For my thriller End of Days, I transcribed hours of video from Appalachian snake-handling churches on YouTube to understand the worldview of the worshippers, because my antagonist was brought up in that tradition. I couldn’t just make that up. I had to hear their language, feel their conviction, understand why they would hold venomous serpents as an act of faith.

Barbara also mentioned getting to Israel and the West Bank for research, and I’ve been to both places too. Finding that one specific sensory detail—the smell of a particular location, the specific way an expert handles a tool, the sound of a particular kind of music—makes the character’s life feel lived-in. It’s the difference between a character who is described as living in a place and a character who inhabits it.

As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, don’t write what you know. Write what you want to learn about. I love research. It’s part of why I’m an author in the first place. I take any excuse to dive into a world different from my own. Research using books, films, podcasts, and travel, and focus particularly on sources produced by people from the worldview you want to understand.

Actionable step: For your next piece of character research, go beyond reading. Watch a documentary, visit a location, talk to someone who lives the experience. Find one sensory detail—a smell, a sound, a texture—that you couldn’t have invented. That detail will make your character feel real.

Bonus: Measure Your Life by What You Create

In an age of AI and a tsunami of content, your ultimate brand protection is the quality of your human creation. Barbara Nickless said that the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul, and I believe that with every fibre of my being.

Don’t be afraid to take that step back, like I did with my deadlifting. Take the time to master these deeper craft skills. It might feel like you’re slowing down or going backwards by not chasing the latest marketing trend, but it’s the only way to step forward into a sustainable, high-quality career.

Your characters are your signature. No AI can replicate the specificity of your lived experience, the emotional truth of your displaced trauma, or the sensory details you’ve gathered from a life of curiosity and travel. Those are yours. Pour them into your characters, and they will resonate for years to come.

Actionable Takeaway:

Identify the Dramatic Question for your current protagonist. Can you state it in a single sentence with the kind of specificity Will Storr described? Is it as clear as “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you the only adult in the room?”

If you can’t answer it with that kind of precision, your character might still be a sketch. Give them a diagonal toast moment today. Find the one hyper-specific detail that proves they are not an imitation of life.

And then ask yourself: does your plot test your character’s flaw in every major scene? If you can align those two things—a precisely defined character and a plot that exists to test them—you will have a story that readers cannot put down.

References and Deep Dives

The episodes I’ve referenced today are all available with full transcripts at TheCreativePenn.com:

Episode 732 — Facing Fears, and Writing Unique Characters with Barbara Nickless

Episode 673 — Writing Choctaw Characters and Diversity in Fiction with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

Episode 624 — Writing Characters with Matt Bird

Episode 550 — The Heroine’s Journey with Gail Carriger

Episode 490 — How Character Flaws Shape Story with Will Storr

Books mentioned:

The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love by Matt Bird

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger

How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn

You can find all my books for authors at CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at JFPennBooks.com

Happy writing!

How was this episode created?

This episode was initiated created by NotebookLM based on YouTube videos of the episodes linked above from YouTube/TheCreativePenn, plus my text chapters on character from How to Write a Novel. NotebookLM created a blog post from the material and then I expanded it and fact checked it with Claude.ai 4.6 Opus, and then I used my voice clone at ElevenLabs to narrate it.

The post Writing Characters: 15 Actionable Tips For Writing Deep Character first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you capture something as enormous and personal as the feeling of “home” in a book? How can you navigate the chaotic discovery period in writing something new? With Roz Morris.

In the intro, KU vs Wide [Written Word Media]; Podcasts Overtake Radio, book marketing implications [The New Publishing Standard]; Tips for podcast guests;
The Vatican embraces AI for translation, but not for sermons [National Catholic Reporter]; NotebookLM; Self-Publishing in German; Bones of the Deep.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Roz Morris is an award-nominated literary fiction author, memoirist, and previously a bestselling ghostwriter. She writes writing craft books for authors under the Nail Your Novel brand, and is also an editor, speaker, and writing coach. Her latest travel memoir is Turn Right at the Rainbow: A Diary of House-Hunting, Happenstance & Home.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How being an indie author has evolved over 15 years, from ebooks-only to special editions, multi-voice audiobooks and tools to help with everything
• Why “home” is such a powerful emotional theme and how to turn personal experiences into universal memoir
• Practical craft tips on show-don't-tell, writing about real people, and finding the right book title
• The chaotic discovery writing phase — why some books take seven years and why that's okay
• Building a newsletter sustainably by finding your authentic voice (and the power of a good pet story)
• Low-key book marketing strategies for memoir, including Roz's community-driven “home” collage campaign

You can find Roz at RozMorris.org.

Transcript of the interview with Roz Morris

JOANNA: Roz Morris is an award-nominated literary fiction author, memoirist, and previously a bestselling ghostwriter. She writes writing craft books for authors under the Nail Your Novel brand, and is also an editor, speaker, and writing coach.

Her latest travel memoir is Turn Right at the Rainbow: A Diary of House-Hunting, Happenstance & Home.

Welcome back to the show, Roz.

ROZ: Hi, Jo. It's so lovely to be back. I love that we managed to catch up every now and again on what we're doing. We've been doing this for so long.

JOANNA: In fact, if people don't know, the first time you came on this show was 2011, which is 15 years.

ROZ: I know!

JOANNA: It is so crazy. I guess we should say, we do know each other in person, in real life, but realistically we mainly catch up when you come on the podcast.

ROZ: Yes, we do, and by following what we're doing around the web. So I read your newsletters, you read mine.

JOANNA: Exactly. So good to return. You write all kinds of different things, but let's first take a look back. The first time you were on was 2011, 15 years ago. You've spanned traditional and indie, you've seen a lot. You know a lot of people in publishing as well.

What are the key things you think have shifted over the years, and why do you still choose indie for your work?

ROZ: Well, lots of things have shifted. Some things are more difficult now, some things are a lot easier.

We were lucky to be in right at the start and we learned the ropes and managed to make a lot of contacts with people. Now it's much more difficult to get your work out there and noticed by readers. You have to be more knowledgeable about things like marketing and promotions.

But that said, there are now much better tools for doing all this. Some really smart people have put their brains to work about how authors can get their work to the right readers, and there's also a lot more understanding of how that can be done in the modern world.

Everything is now much more niche-driven, isn't it? People know exactly what kind of thriller they like or what kind of memoir they like. In the old days it was probably just, “Well, you like thrillers,” and that could be absolutely loads of things.

Now we can find far better who might like our work. The tools we have are astonishing. To start with, in about 2011, we could only really produce ebooks and paperbacks. That was it. Anything else, you'd have to get a print run that would be quite expensive.

Now we can get amazing, beautiful special editions made. We can do audiobooks, multi-voice audiobooks. We can do ebooks with all sorts of enhancements. We can even make apps if we want to. There's absolutely loads that creators can do now that they couldn't before, so it's still a very exciting world.

JOANNA: When we first met, there was still a lot of negativity here in the UK around indie authors or self-publishing. That does feel like it's shifted.

Do you think that stigma around self-publishing has changed?

ROZ: I think it has really changed, yes. To start with, we were regarded as a bit of the Wild West. We were just tramping in and making our mark in places that we hadn't been invited into.

Now it's changed entirely. I think we've managed to convince people that we have the same quality standards.

Readers don't mind—I don't think the readers ever minded, actually, so long as the book looked right, felt right, read right. It's much easier now. It's much more of a level playing field. We can prove ourselves. In fact, we don't necessarily have to prove ourselves anymore. We just go and find readers.

JOANNA: Yes, I feel like that. I have nothing to prove. I just get on with my work and writing our books and putting them out there. We've got our own audiences now. I guess I always think of it as perhaps not a shadow industry, but almost a parallel industry.

You have spanned a lot of traditional publishing and you still do editing work. You know a lot of trad pub authors too.

Do you still actively choose indie for a particular reason?

ROZ: I do. I really like building my own body of work, and I'm now experienced enough to know what I do well, what I need advice with, and help with. I mean, we don't do all this completely by ourselves, do we? We bring in experts who will give us the right feedback if we're doing a new genre or a genre that's new to us.

I choose indie because I like the control. Because I began in traditional publishing—I was making books for other people—I just learned all the trades and how to do everything to a professional standard. I love being able to apply that to my own work.

I also love the way I can decide what I'm going to write next. If I was traditionally published, I would have to do something that fitted with whatever the publisher would want of me, and that isn't necessarily where my muse is taking me or what I've become interested in.

I think creative humans evolve throughout their lives. They become interested in different things, different themes, different ways of expressing themselves. I began by thinking I would just write novels, and now I've found myself writing memoirs as well.

That shift would have been difficult if someone else was having to make me fit into their marketing plans or what their imprint was known for. But because I've built my own audience, I can just bring them with me and say, “You might like this. It's still me. I'm just doing something different.”

JOANNA: I like that phrase: “creative humans.” That's what we are. As you say, I never thought I would write a memoir, and then I wrote Pilgrimage, and I think there's probably another one on its way. We do these different things over time.

Let's get into this new book, Turn Right at the Rainbow. It's about the idea of home. I've talked a lot about home on my Books And Travel Podcast, but not so much here.

Why is home such an emotional topic, for both positive and negative reasons? Why did you want to explore it?

ROZ: I think home is so emotional because it grows around you and it grows on you very slowly without you really realising it. As you are not looking, you suddenly realise, “Oh, it means such a lot.”

I love to play this mind game with myself—if you compare what your street looks like to you now and how it looked the first time you set eyes on it, it's a world of difference.

There are so many emotional layers that build up just because of the amount of time we spend in a place. It's like a relationship, a very slow-growing friendship. And as you say, sometimes it can be negative as well.

I became really fascinated with this because we decided to move house and we'd lived in the same house for about 30 years, which is a lot of time. It had seen a lot of us—a lot of our lives, a lot of big decisions, a lot of good times, a lot of difficult times. I felt that was all somehow encapsulated in the place.

I know that readers of certain horror or even spiritual fiction will have this feeling that a place contains emotions and pasts and all sorts of vibes that just stay in there. When we were going around looking at a house to buy, I was thinking, “How do we even know how we will feel about it?”

We're moving out of somewhere that has immense amounts of feelings and associations, and we're trying to judge whether somewhere else will feel right. It just seemed like we were making a decision of cosmic proportions.

It comes down so much to chance as well. You're not only just deciding, “Okay, I'd like to buy that one,” and pressing a button like on eBay and you've won it. It doesn't happen like that. There are lots of middle steps.

The other person's got to agree to sell to you, not do the dirty on you and sell to someone else. You've got all sorts of machinations going on that you have no idea about. And you only have what's on offer—you only get an opportunity to buy a place because someone else has decided to let it go.

All this seemed like immense amounts of chance, of dice rolling. I thought, yet we end up in these places and they mean so much to us. It just blew my mind. I thought, “I've got to write about this.”

JOANNA: It's really interesting, isn't it? I really only started using the word “home” after the pandemic and living here in Bath. We had luckily just bought a house before then, and I'd never really considered anywhere to be a home.

I've talked about this idea of third culture kids—people who grow up between cultures and don't feel like there's a home anywhere.

I was really interested in your book because there's so much about the functional things that have to happen when you move house or look for a house, and often people aren't thinking about it as deeply as you are.

So did you start working on the memoir as you went to see places, or was it something you thought about when you were leaving?

Was it a “moving towards” kind of memoir or a “sad nostalgia” memoir?

ROZ: Well, it could have been very sad and nostalgic because I do like to write really emotional things, and they're not necessarily for sharing with everybody, but I was very interested in the emotions of it.

I started keeping diaries. Some of them were just diaries I'd write down, some of them were emails I'd send to friends who were saying, “How's it going?” And then I'd find I was just writing pieces rather than emails, and it built up really.

JOANNA: It's interesting, you said you write emotional things. We mentioned nostalgia, and obviously there are memories in the home, but it's very easy to say a word like “nostalgia” and everyone thinks that means different things. One of the important things about writing is to be very specific rather than general.

Can you give us some tips about how we can turn big emotions into specific written things that bring it alive for our readers?

ROZ: It's really interesting that you mention nostalgia, because what we have to be careful of is not writing just for ourselves. It starts with us—our feelings about something, our responses, our curiosities—but we then have to let other people in.

There's nothing more boring than reading something that's just a memoir manuscript that doesn't reach out to anyone in any way. It's like looking through their holiday snaps.

What you have to do is somehow find something bigger in there that will allow everyone to connect and think, “Oh, this is about me too,” or “I've thought this too.”

As I said, we start with things that feel powerful and important for us, and I think we don't necessarily need to go looking for them. They emerge the more deeply we think about what we're writing. We find they're building.

Certainly for me, it's what pulls me back to an idea, thinking, “There's something in this idea that's really talking to me now. What is it?”

Often I'll need to go for walks and things to let the logical mind turn off and ideas start coming in. But I'll find that something is building and it seems to become more and more something that will speak to others rather than just to me.

That's one way of doing it—by listening to your intuition and delving more and more until you find something that seems worth saying to other people.

But you could do it another way. If you decided you wanted to write a book about home, and you'd already got your big theme, you could then think, “Well, how will I make this into something manageable?” So you start with something big and build it into smaller-scale things that can be related to.

You might look at ideas of homes—situations of people who have lost their home, like the kind of displacement we see at the moment. Or we might look at another aspect, such as people who sell homes and what they must feel like being these go-betweens between worlds, between people who are doing these immense changes in their lives.

Or we might think of an ecological angle—the planet Earth and what we're doing to it, or our place in the cosmos.

We might start with a thing we want to write about and then find, “How are we going to treat it?” That usually comes down to what appeals to us. It might be the ecological side. It might be the story of a few estate agents who are trying to sell homes for people. Or it might be like mine—just a personal story of trying to move house.

From that, we can create something that will have a wider resonance as well as starting with something that's personally interesting to you. The big emotions will come out of that wider resonance.

JOANNA: Trying to go deeper on that—

It's the “show, don't tell” idea, isn't it?

If you'd said, “I felt very sad about leaving my house” or “I felt very sad about the prospect of leaving my house,” that is not a whole book.

ROZ: Yes. It's why you felt sad, how you felt sad, what it made you think of. That's a very good point about “show, don't tell,” which is a fundamental writing technique.

It basically tells people exactly how you feel about a particular thing, which is not the same as the way anyone else would feel about it—but still, curiously, it can be universal and something that we can all tap into.

Funnily enough, by being very specific, by saying, “I realised when we'd signed the contract to sell the house that it wasn't ours anymore, and it had been, and I felt like I was betraying it,” that starts to get really personal.

People might think, “Yes, I felt like that too,” or “I hadn't thought you'd feel like that, but I can understand it.” Those specifics are what really let people into the journey that you're taking them on.

JOANNA: And isn't this one of the challenges, that we're not even going to use a word like “sad,” basically.

ROZ: Yes. It's like, who was it who said, “Don't tell me if they got wet—tell me how it felt to get wet in that particular situation.” Then the reader will think, “Oh yes, they got wet,” but they'll also have had an experience that took them somewhere interesting.

JOANNA: Yes. Show me the raindrops on the umbrella and the splashing through the puddles. I think this is so important with big emotions.

Also, when we say nostalgia—we've talked before about Stranger Things and Kate Bush and the way Stranger Things used songs and nostalgia. Oh, I was watching Derry Girls—have you seen Derry Girls?

ROZ: No, I haven't yet.

JOANNA: Oh, it's brilliant. It's so good. It's pretty old now, but it's a nineties soundtrack and I'm watching going, “Oh, they got this so right.” They just got it right with the songs. You feel nostalgic because you feel an emotion that is linked to that music.

It makes you feel a certain way, but everyone feels these things in different ways. I think that is a challenge of fiction, and also memoir. Certainly with memoir and fiction, this is so important.

ROZ: Yes, and I was just thinking with self-help books, it's even important there because self-help books have to show they understand how the reader is feeling.

JOANNA: Yes, and sometimes you use anecdotes to do that.

Another challenge with memoir—in this book, you're going round having a look at places, and they're real places and there are real people. This can be difficult.

What are things that people need to be wary of if using real people in real places? Do you need permissions for things?

ROZ: That book was particularly tricky because, as you said, I was going around real places and talking about real people. With most of them, they're not identifiable. Even though I was specific about particular aspects of particular houses, it would be very hard for anyone to know where those houses were.

I think possibly the only way you would recognise it is if that happened to be your own house. The people, similarly—there's a lot about estate agents and other professionals. They were all real incidents and real things that happened, but no one is identifiable.

A very important thing about writing a book like this is you're always going to have antagonists, because you have to have people who you're finding difficult, people who are making life a bit difficult for you. You have to present them in a way that understands what it's like to be them as well.

If you're writing a book where your purpose is to expose wrongdoing or injustices, then you might be more forthright about just saying, “This is wrong, the way this person behaved was wrong.” You might identify villains if that's appropriate, although you'd have to be very careful legally.

This kind of book is more nuanced. The antagonists were simply people who were trying to do the right thing for them. You have to understand what it's like to be them.

Quite a lot of the time, I found that the real story was how ill-equipped I sometimes felt to deal with people who were maybe covering something up, or maybe not, but just not expressing themselves very clearly.

Estate agents who had an agenda, and I was thinking, “Who are they acting for? Are they acting for me, or are they acting for someone else that we don't even know about?” There's a fair bit of conflict in the book, but it comes from people being people and doing what they have to do.

I just wanted to find a good house in an area that was nice, a house I could trust and rely on, for a price that was right. The people who were selling to me just wanted to sell the house no matter what because that was what they needed to do.

You always have to understand what the other person's point of view is. Often in this kind of memoir, even though you might be getting very frustrated, it's best to also see a bit of a ridiculous side to yourself—when you're getting grumpy, for instance.

It's all just humans being humans in a situation where ultimately you're going to end up doing a life-changing and important thing. I found there's quite a lot of humour in that.

We were shuffling things around and, as I said, we were eventually going to be making a cosmic change that would affect the place we called home. I found that quite amusing in a lot of ways. I think you've got to be very levelheaded about this, particularly about writing about other people.

Sometimes you do have to ask for permission. I didn't have to do that very much in this book. There were people I wrote about who are actually friends, who would recognise themselves and their stories. I checked that they didn't mind me quoting particular things, and they were all fine with that.

In my previous memoir, Not Quite Lost, I actually wrote about a group of people who were completely identifiable. They would definitely have known who they were, and other people would have known who they were. There was no hiding them.

They were the people near Brighton who were cryonicists—preserving dead bodies, freezing them, in the hope that they could be revived at a much later date when science had solved the problem that killed them.

I went to visit this group of cryonicists, and I'd written a diary about it at the time. Then I followed up when I was writing the book to find out what happened to them. I thought, I've simply got to contact them and tell them I'm going to write this. “I'll send it to you, you give me your comments,” and I did.

They gave me some good comments and said, “Oh, please don't put that,” or “Let me clarify this.” Everything was fine. So there I did actually seek them out and check that what I was going to write was okay.

JOANNA: Yes, in that situation, there can't be many cryonicists in that area.

ROZ: They really were identifiable.

JOANNA: There's probably only one group! But this is really interesting, because obviously memoir is a personal thing. You're curating who you are as well in the book, and your husband. I think it's interesting, because I had the problem of “Am I giving away too much about myself?”

Do you feel like with everything you've written, you've already given away everything about yourself by now?

Are you just completely relaxed about being personal, for yourself and for your husband?

ROZ: I think I have become more relaxed about it. My first memoir wasn't nearly as personal as yours was. You were going to some quite difficult places.

With Turn Right at the Rainbow, I was approaching some darker places, actually, and I had to consider how much to reveal and how much not to. But I found once I started writing, the honesty just took over.

I thought, “This is fine. I have read plenty of books that have done this, and I've loved them. I've loved getting to know someone on that deeper level.” It was just something I took my example from—other writers I'd enjoyed.

JOANNA: Yes. I think that's definitely the way memoir has to happen, because it can be very hard to know how to structure it.

Let's come to the title. Turn Right at the Rainbow. Really great title, and obviously a subtitle which is important as well for theme.

Talk about where the title came from and also the challenges of titling books of any genre.

You've had some other great titles for your novels—at least titles I've thought, “Oh yes, that's perfect.” Titling can be really hard.

ROZ: Oh, thank you for that. Yes, it is hard. Ever Rest, which was the title of my last novel, just came to me early on. I was very lucky with that. It fitted the themes and it fitted what was going on, but it was just a bolt from the blue.

I found that also with Turn Right at the Rainbow, it was an accident. It slipped out. I was going to call it something else, and then this incident happened. “Turn Right at the Rainbow” is actually one of the stories in the book. I call it the title track, as if it's an album.

We were going somewhere in the car and the sat nav said, “Turn right at the rainbow.” And Dave and I just fell about, “What did it just say?!” It also seemed to really sum up the journey we were on. We were looking for rainbows and pots of gold and completely at the mercy of chance.

It just stayed with me. It seemed the right thing. I wrote the piece first and then I kept thinking, “Well, this sounds like a good title.” Dave said it sounded like a good title. And then a friend of mine who does a lot of beta reading for me said, “Oh, that is the title, isn't it?” When several people tell you that's the title, you've got to take notice.

But how we find these things is more difficult, as you said. You just work and work at it, beating your head against the wall. I find they always come to me when I'm not looking. It really helps to do something like exercise, which will put you in a bit of a different mind state. Do you find this as well?

JOANNA: Yes, I often like a title earlier on that then changes as the book goes. I mean, we're both discovery writers really, although you do reverse outlines and other things. You have a chaotic discovery phase.

I feel like when I'm in that phase, it might be called something, and then I often find that's not what it ends up being, because the book has actually changed in the process.

ROZ: Yes, very much. That's part of how we realise what we should be writing. I do have working titles and then something might come along and say, “This seems actually like what you should call it and what you've been working towards, what you've been discovering about it.”

I think a good title has a real sense of emotional frisson as well. With memoir, it's easier because we can add a subtitle to explain what we mean. With fiction, it's more difficult. We've got to really hope that it all comes through those few words, and that's a bit harder.

JOANNA: Let's talk about your next book. On your website it says it might be a novel, it might be narrative nonfiction, and you have a working title of Four.

I wondered if you'd talk a bit more about this chaotic discovery writing phase when we just don't know what's coming.

I feel like you and I have been doing this long enough—you longer than me—so maybe we're okay with it. But newer writers might find this stage really difficult. Where's the fun in it? Why is it so difficult? And how can people deal with it?

ROZ: You've summed that up really well. It's fun and it's difficult, and I still find it difficult even after all these years. I have to remind myself, looking back at where Ever Rest started, because that was a particularly difficult one. It took me seven years to work out what to do with it, and I wrote three other books in the meantime.

It just comes together in the end. What I find is that something takes root in my mind and it collects things. The title you just picked out there—the book with working title of Four—it's now two books. One possibly another memoir and one possibly fiction.

It's evolving all the time. I'm just collecting what seems to go with it for now and thinking, “That belongs with it somehow. I don't yet know how, but my intuition is that the two work well together.” There's a harmony there that I see.

In the very early stages, that's what I find something is. Then I might get a more concrete idea, say a piece of story or a character, and I'll have the feeling that they really fit together.

Once I've got something concrete like that, I can start doing more active research to pursue the idea. But in the beginning, they're all just little twinkles in the eye and you just have to let them develop.

If you want to get started on something because you feel you want to get started and you don't feel happy if you're not working on something, you could do a far more active kind of discovery. Writing lists. Lists are great for this.

I find lists of what you don't want it to be are just as helpful as what you do want it to be because that certainly narrows down a lot and helps you make good choices.

You've got a lot of choices to make at the beginning of a book. You've got to decide: What's it going to be about? What isn't it going to be about? What kind of characters am I interested in? What kind of situations am I interested in?

What doesn't interest me about this situation? Very important—saves you a lot of time. What does interest me?

If you can start by doing that kind of thing, you will find that you start gathering stuff that gets attracted to it. It's almost like the world starts giving it to you. This is discovery writing, but it's also chivvying it along a bit and getting going. It does work.

Joanna: I like the idea of listing what you don't want it to be.

I think that's very useful because often writers, especially in the early stages—or even not, I still struggle with this—it's knowing what genre it might actually be.

With Bones of the Deep, which is my next thriller, it was originally going to be horror and I was writing it, and then I realised one of the big differences between horror and thriller is the ending and how character arcs are resolved and the way things are written.

I was just like, “Do you know what? I actually feel like this is more thriller than horror,” and that really shaped the direction. Even though so much of it was the same, it shaped a lot about the book.

It's always hard talking about this stuff without giving spoilers, but I think deciding, “Okay, this is not a horror,” actually helped me find my way back to thriller.

ROZ: Yes, I do know what you mean. That makes perfect sense to me, with no spoilers either. It's so interesting how a very broad-strokes picture like that can still be very helpful. Just trying to make something a bit different from the way you've been envisaging it can lead to massive breakthroughs.

“Oh no, it's not a thriller—I don't have to be aiming for that kind of effect.” Or try changing the tone a little bit and see if that just makes you happier with what you're making, more comfortable with it.

JOANNA: You mentioned the seven years that Ever Rest took. We should say the title is in two words—”Ever” and “Rest”—but it is also about Everest the mountain in many ways. That's why it's such a perfect title.

If that took seven years and you were doing all this other stuff and writing other books along the way, how do you keep your research under control? How do you do that? I still use Scrivener projects as my main research place.

How do you do your research and organisation?

ROZ: A lot of scraps of paper. My desk is massive. It used to be a dining table with leaves in it. It's spread out to its fullest length, and it's got heaps of little pieces of paper. I know what's on them all, and there are different areas, different zones.

I'm very much a paper writer because I like the tangibility of it. I also like the creativity of taking a piece of paper and tearing it into an odd shape and writing a note on that. It seems as sort of profound and lucky as the idea. I really like that.

I do make text files and keep notes that way. Once something is starting to get to a phase where it's becoming serious, it will then be a folder with various files that discuss different aspects of it.

I do a lot of discussing with myself while writing, and I don't necessarily look at it all again. The writing of it clarifies something or allows me to put something aside and say, “No, that doesn't quite belong.”

Gradually I start to look at things, look at what I've gathered, and think, “How does this fit with this?” And it helps to look away as well. As I said with finding titles, sometimes the right thing is in your subconscious and it's waiting to just sail in if you look at it in a different way.

There's a lot to be said for working on several ideas, not looking at some of them for a while, then going back and thinking, “Oh, I know what to do with this now.”

JOANNA: Yes. My Writing the Shadow, I was talking about that when we met, and that definitely took about a decade.

ROZ: Yes.

JOANNA: I kept having to come back to that, and sometimes we're just not ready.

Even as experienced writers, we're not ready for a particular book.

With Bones of the Deep, I did the trip that it's based on in 1999. Since I became a writer, I've thought I have to use that trip in some way, and I never found the right way to use it. I came at it a couple of times and it just never sat right with me.

Then something on this master's course I'm doing around human remains and indigenous cultures just suddenly all clicked. You can't really rush that, can you?

ROZ: You absolutely can't. It's something you develop a sense for, the more you do—whether something's ready or whether you should just let it think about itself for a while whilst you work on something else.

It really helps to have something else to work on because I panic a bit if I don't have something creative to do. I just have to create, I have to make things, particularly in writing. But I also like doing various little arty things as well. I need to always have something to be writing about or exploring in words.

Sometimes a book isn't ready for that intense pressure of being properly written. So it helps to have several things that I can play with and then pick one and go, “Okay, now I'm going to really perform this on the page.”

JOANNA: Do you find that nonfiction—because you have some craft books as well—do you find the nonfiction side is quite different? Can you almost just go and write a nonfiction book or work on someone else's project?

Does that use a different kind of creativity?

ROZ: Yes, it does. Creativity where you're trying to explain something to creative people is totally different from creativity where you're trying to involve them in emotions and a journey and nuances of meaning. They're very different, but they're still fun.

So, yes, I am an editor as well, and that feeds my creativity in various unexpected ways. I'll see what someone has done and think, “Oh, that's very interesting that they did that.”

It can make me think in different ways—different shapes for stories, different kinds of characters to have. It really opens your eyes, working with other creative people.

JOANNA: I wanted to return to what you said at the beginning, that it is more difficult these days to get our work noticed. There's certainly a challenge in writing a travel memoir about home. What are you doing to market this book?

What have you learned about book marketing for memoir in particular that might help other people?

ROZ: Partly I realised it was quite a natural progression for me because in my newsletter I always write a couple of little pieces. I think they're called “life writing.” Just little things that have happened to me. That's sort of like memoir, creative nonfiction, personal essays.

I was quite naturally writing that sort of thing to my newsletter readers, and I realised that was already good preparation for the kind of way that I would write in a memoir.

As for the actual campaign, I actually came up with an idea which quite surprised me because I didn't think I was good at that. I'm making a collage of the word “home” written in lots of different handwriting, on lots of different things, in lots of different languages.

I'm getting people to contribute these and send them to me, and I'm building them into a series of collages that's just got the word “home” everywhere. People have been contributing them by sending them by email or on Facebook Messenger, and I've been putting them up on my social platforms.

They look stunning. It's amazing. People are writing the word “home” on a post-it or sticking it to a picture of their radiator. Someone wrote it in snow on her car when we had snow.

Someone wrote it on a pottery shard she found in her drive when she bought the house. She thought it was mysterious. There are all these lovely stories that people are telling me as well.

I'm making them into little artworks and putting them up every day as the book comes to launch. It's so much fun, and it also has a deeper purpose because it shows how home is different for all of us and how it builds as uniquely as our handwriting. Our handwriting has a story. I should do a book about that!

JOANNA: That's a weird one. Handwriting always gets me, although it'd be interesting these days because so many people don't handwrite things anymore. You can probably tell the age of someone by how well-developed their handwriting is.

ROZ: Except mine has just withered. I can barely write for more than a few minutes.

JOANNA: Oh, I know what you mean. Your hand gets really tired.

ROZ: We used to write three-hour exams. How did we do that?

JOANNA: I really don't know.

JOANNA: Just coming back on that. You mentioned mainly you're doing your newsletter and connecting with your own community. You've done podcasts with me and with other people. But I feel like in the indie community, the whole “you must build your newsletter” thing is described as something quite frantic.

How have you built a newsletter in a sustainable manner?

ROZ: I've built it by finding what suited me. To start with I thought, “What will I put in it? News, obviously.” But I wasn't doing that much that was newsworthy. Then I began to examine what news could actually be.

The turning point really happened when I wrote the first memoir, Not Quite Lost: Travels Without a Sense of Direction. I thought, “I have to explain to people why I'm writing a memoir,” because it seemed like a very audacious thing to do—”Read about me!” I thought I had to explain myself.

So I told the story of how I came to think about writing such an audacious book. I just found a natural way to tell stories about what I was doing creatively.

I thought, “I like this. I like writing a newsletter like this.” And it's not all me, me, me. It's “I'm discovering this and it makes me think this,” and it just seems to be generally about life, about little questions that we might all face.

From then, I found I really enjoyed writing a newsletter because I felt I had something to say. I couldn't put lists of where I was speaking, what I was teaching, what special offers I had, because that wasn't really how my creative life worked.

Once I found something I could sustainably write about every month, it really helped. Oh, it also helps to have a pet, by the way.

JOANNA: Yes, you have a horse!

ROZ: I've got a horse. People absolutely love hearing the stories about my ongoing relationship with this horse. Even if they're not horsey, they write to me and say, “We just love your horse.” It helps to have a human interest thing going on like that.

So that works for me. Everyone's got different things that will work for them. But for me, it builds just a sense of connection, human connection. I'm human, making things.

JOANNA: In terms of actually getting people signed up—has it literally just been over time? People have read your book, signed up from the link at the back?

Have you ever done any specific growth marketing around your newsletter?

ROZ: I tried a little bit of growth marketing. I have a freebie version of one of my Nail Your Novel books and I put that on a promotion site. I got lots of newsletter signups, but they sort of dwindled away.

When I get unsubscribes, it's usually from that list, because it wasn't really what they came for. They just came for a free book of writing tips. While I do writing tips on my blog—I'm still doing those—it wasn't really what my newsletter was about.

What I found was that that wasn't going to get people who were going to be interested long-term in what I was writing about in my newsletter. Whatever you do, I found, has got to be true to what you are actually giving them.

JOANNA: Yes, I think that's really key. I make sure I email once every couple of weeks. And you welcome the unsubscribes. You have to welcome them because those people are not right for you and they're not interested in what you're doing.

At the end of the day, we're still trying to sell books. As much as you're enjoying the connection with your audience, you are still trying to sell Turn Right at the Rainbow and your other books, right?

ROZ: Absolutely, yes. And as you say, someone who decides, “No, not for me anymore,” and that's good. There are still people who you are right for.

JOANNA: Mm-hmm.

ROZ: I do market my newsletter in a very low-key way. I make a graphic every month for the newsletter, it's like a magazine cover. “What's in it?” And I put that around all my social media. I change my Facebook page header so it's got that on it, my Bluesky header.

People can see what it's like, what the vibe is, and they know where to find it if they're interested. I find that kind of low-key approach works quite well for what I'm offering. It's got to be true to what you offer.

JOANNA: Yes, and true for a long-term career, I think. When I first met you and your husband Dave, it was like, “Oh, here are some people who are in this writing business, have already been in it for a while.” And both of you are still here. I just feel like—

You have to do it in a sustainable way, whether it's writing or marketing or any of this.

The only way to do it is to, as you said, live as a creative human and not make it all frantic and “must be now.”

ROZ: Yes. I mean, I do have to-do lists that are quite long for every week, but I've learned to pace myself. I've learned how often I can write a good blog post. I could churn out blog posts that were far more frequent, but they wouldn't be as good. They wouldn't be as properly thought through.

In the old days with blogs, you had an advantage if you were blogging very frequently, I think you got more noticed by Google because you were constantly putting up fresh content. But if that's not sustainable for you, it's not going to do you any good.

Now there's so much content around that it's probably fine to post once a month if that is what you're going to do and how you're going to present the best of yourself.

I see a lot on Substack—I've recently started Substack as well—I see people writing every other day. I think they're good, that's interesting, but I don't have time to read it. I would love to have the time, but I don't.

So there's actually no sin in only posting once a month—one newsletter a month, one blog post a month, one Substack a month. That's plenty. People will still find that enough if they get you.

JOANNA: Fantastic.

So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

ROZ: My website is probably the easiest place, RozMorris.org.

JOANNA: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time, Roz. As ever, that was great.

ROZ: Thank you, Jo.

The post Writing Emotion, Discovery Writing, And Slow Sustainable Book Marketing With Roz Morris first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you build a creative life that spans music, writing, film, and spiritual practice? Alicia Jo Rabins talks about weaving multiple creative strands into a sustainable career and why the best advice for any creator might simply be: just make the thing.

In the intro, backlist promotion strategy [Written Word Media]; Successful author business [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Bookstore; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Alicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning writer, musician, performer, as well as a Torah teacher and ritualist. She's the creator of Girls In Trouble, a feminist indie-folk song cycle about biblical women, and the award-winning film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. Her latest book is a memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Building a sustainable multi-disciplinary creative career through teaching, performance, grants, and donations
• Trusting instinct in the early generative stages of creativity and separating generation from editing
• Adapting and reimagining religious and cultural source material through music, writing, and performance
• The challenges of transitioning from poetry to long-form prose memoir, including choosing a lens for your story
• Making an independent film on a shoestring budget without waiting for Hollywood's permission
• Finding your creative voice and building confidence by leaning into vulnerability and returning to the practice of making

You can find Alicia at AliciaJo.com.

Transcript of the interview with Alicia Jo Rabins

Joanna: Alicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning writer, musician, performer, as well as a Torah teacher and ritualist. She's the creator of Girls In Trouble, a feminist indie-folk song cycle about biblical women, and the award-winning film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. Her latest book is a memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything.

So welcome to the show, Alicia.

Alicia: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

Joanna: There is so much we could talk about. But first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you've woven so many strands of creativity into your life and career.

Alicia: Yes, well, I am a maximalist. What happened in terms of my early life is that I started writing on my own, just extremely young.

I'm one of those people who always loved writing, always processed the world and managed my emotions and came to understand myself through writing. So from a very young age, I felt really committed to writing.

Then I had the good fortune that my mother saw a talk show about the Suzuki method of learning violin—when you start really young and learn by ear, which is modelled after language learning. It's so much less intellectual and much more instinctual, learning by copying.

She was like, that looks like a cool thing. I was three years old at the time and she found out that there was a little local branch of our music conservatory that had a Suzuki violin programme. So when I was three and a half, getting close to four, she took me down and I started playing an extremely tiny violin.

Joanna: Oh, cute!

Alicia: Yes, and because it was part of this conservatory that was downtown, and we were just starting at the suburban branch where we lived, there was this path that I was able to follow. As I got more and more interested in violin, I could continue basically up through the conservatory level during high school.

So I had a really fantastic music education without any pressure, without any expectations or professional goals. I just kept taking these classes and one thing led to another.

I grew up being very immersed in both creative writing and music, and I think just having the gift of those two parts of my brain trained and stimulated and delighted so young really changed my brain in some ways. I'll always see the world through this creative lens, which I think I'm also just set up to do personally.

Then the last step of my multi-practice career is that in college I got very interested in Jewish spirituality. I'm Jewish, but I didn't grow up very religious. I didn't grow up in a Jewish community really. So I knew some basics, but not a ton.

In college I started to study it and also informally learned from other people I met. I ended up going on a pretty intense spiritual quest, going to Jerusalem and immersing myself after college for two years in traditional Jewish study and practice.

So that became the third strand of the braid that had already been started with music and writing. Torah study, spiritual study, and teaching became the third, and they all interweave.

The last thing I'll say is that because I work in both words and music, and naturally performance because of music, it began to branch a little bit into plays, theatre, and film, just because that's where the intersection of words, performance, and music is.

So that's really what brought me into that, as opposed to any specific desire to work in film. It all happened very organically.

Joanna: I love this. This is so cool. We are going to circle back to a lot of this, but I have to ask you—

What about work for money at any point? How did this turn into more than just hobbies and lifestyle?

Alicia: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm very fortunate that I did not graduate college with loans because my parents were able to pay for college. That was a big privilege that I just want to name, because in the States that's often not the case. So that allowed me to need to support myself, but not also pay loans, which was a real gift.

What happened was I went straight from college to that school in Jerusalem, and there I was on loans and scholarship, so I didn't have to worry yet about supporting myself.

Then when I came back to the States, I actually found on Craigslist a job teaching remedial Hebrew. It was essentially teaching kids at a Jewish elementary school who either had learning differences or had just entered the school late and needed to be in a different Hebrew class than the other kids in their grade.

That was my first experience of really teaching, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. Although in the end, my passion is much more for teaching the text and rituals and the wrestling with the concepts, as opposed to teaching language.

So all these years, while doing performance and writing and all these things, I have been teaching Jewish studies. That has essentially supported me, I would say, between 50 and 70 per cent.

Then the rest has been paid gigs as a musician, whether as a front person leading a project or as what we call a sideman, playing in someone else's band. Sometimes doing theatre performances, sometimes teaching workshops.

That's how I've cobbled it together. I have not had a full-time job all these years and I have supported myself through both earned income and also grants and donations.

I've really tried to cultivate a little bit of a donor base, and I took some workshops early on about how to welcome donations. So I definitely try to always welcome that as well.

Joanna: That is so interesting that you took a workshop on how to welcome donations. Way back in, I think 2013, I said on this show, I just don't know if I can accept people giving to support the show. Then someone on the podcast challenged me and said, but people want to support creatives.

That's when I started Patreon in 2014. It was when The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer came out and—

It was this realisation that people do want to support people.

So I love that you said that.

Alicia: It's not easy. It's still not easy for me, and I have to grit my teeth every time I even put in my end-of-year newsletter. I just say, just a reminder that part of what makes this possible is your generous donations, and I'm so grateful to you. It's not easy.

I think some people enjoy fundraising. I certainly don't instinctively enjoy it, but I have learned to think of it exactly the way that you're saying. I mean, I love donating to support other people's projects. Sometimes it's the highlight of my day.

If I'm having a bad day and someone asks for help, either to feed a family or to complete a creative project, I just feel like, okay, at least I can give $36 or $25 and feel like I did something positive in the last hour, even if my project is going terribly and I'm in a fight with my kid or something.

So I have to keep in mind that it is actually a privilege to give as well as a privilege to receive.

Joanna: Absolutely. So let's get back into your various creative projects. The first thing I wanted to ask you, because you do have so many different formats and forms of your creativity—how do you know when an idea that comes to you should be a song, or something you want to do as a performance, or written, or a film?

Tell us a bit about your creative process.

Because a lot of your projects are also longer-term.

Alicia: Yes. It's funny, I love planning and in some ways I'm an extreme planner. I really drive people in my family bonkers with planning, like family vacations a year in advance.

In terms of my creativity, I'm very planful towards goals, but in that early generative state, I am actually pure instinct.

I don't think I ever sit down and say, “I have this idea, which genre would it match with?” It's more like I sit on my bed and pick up my guitar, which is where I love to do songwriting, just sitting on my bed cross-legged, and I pick up my guitar and something starts coming out. Then I just work with that kernel.

So it's very nebulous at first, very innate, and I just follow that creative spirit. Often I don't even know what a project is, sometimes if it's a larger project, until a year or two in.

Once things emerge and take shape, then my planning brain and my strategy brain can jump on it and say, “Okay, we need three more songs to fill out the album, and we need to plan the fundraising and the scheduling.” Then I might take more of an outside-in approach. At the beginning it's just all instinct.

Joanna: So if you pick up your guitar, does that mean it always starts in music and then goes into writing?

Or is that you only pick up a guitar if it's going to be musical?

Alicia: I think I'm responding to what's inside me. It's almost like a need, as opposed to, “I'm going to sit down and work.”

I mean, obviously I sit down and work a lot, but I think in that early stage of anything, it's more like my fingers are itching to play something, and so I sit down and pick up my guitar. Sometimes nothing comes out and sometimes the kernel of a song comes out.

Or I'm at a café, and I often like to write when I'm feeling a little bit discombobulated, just to go into the complexity of things or use challenging emotions as fuel. I really do use it as a—I don't know if therapeutic is the word, but I think it maybe is.

I write often, as I always have, as I said before, to understand what I'm thinking. Like Joan Didion said—to process difficult emotions, to let go of stuck places.

So I think I create almost more out of a sense of just what I need in the moment. Sometimes it's just for fun. Sometimes picking up a guitar, I just have a moment so I sit down and mess around. Sometimes it's to help me struggle with something.

It doesn't always start in music. That was a random example. I might sit down to write because I have an hour and I think, I haven't written in a while. Or I do have an informal daily writing thing where I'll try to generate one loose draft of something a day, even if it's only ten pages.

I mean, sorry, ten words.

Joanna: I was going to say!

Alicia: No, no. Ten words. I'm sorry. It's often poetry, so it feels like a lot when it's ten words.

I'll just sit down with no pressure, no goal, no intention to make anything specific. Just open the floodgates and see what comes out. That's where every single project of mine has started.

Joanna: Yes, I do love that. Obviously, I'm a discovery writer and intuitive, same as you. I think very much this idea of, especially when you said you feel discombobulated, that's when you write. I almost feel like I need that.

I'm not someone who writes every day. I don't do ten lines or whatever. It's that I'll feel that sense of pressure building up into “this is going to be something.” I will really only write or journal when that spills over into—

“I now need to write and figure out what this is.”

Alicia: Yes. It's almost a form of hunger. It feels to me similar to when you eat a great meal and then you're good for a while. You're not really thinking of it, and then it builds up, like you said, and then there's a need—at least the first half of creativity. I really separate my generation and my editing.

So my generative practice is all openness, no critique, just this maybe therapeutic, maybe curious, wandering and seeing what happens. Then once I have a draft, my incisive editing mind is welcome back in, which has been shut out from that early process. So that's a really different experience.

Those early stages of creativity are almost out of need more than obligation.

Joanna: Well, just staying with that generative practice. Obviously you've mentioned your study of and practice of Jewish tradition and Jewish spirituality.

Steven Pressfield in his books has talked about his prayer to the muse, and I've got on my wall here—I don't talk about this very often, actually — I have a muse picture, a painting of what I think of as a muse spirit in some form.

So do you have any spiritual practices around your generative practice and that phase of coming up with ideas?

Alicia: I love that question, and I wish I had a beautiful, intentional answer. My answer is no.

I think I experience creativity as its own spiritual practice itself. I do love individual prayer and meditation and things like that, but for me those are more to address my specifically spiritual health and happiness and connectedness.

I'm just a dive-in kind of person. As a musician, I have friends who have elaborate backstage rituals. I have to do certain things to take care of my voice, but even that, it's mostly vocal rest as opposed to actively doing things. There's a bit of an on/off switch for me.

Joanna: That's interesting. Well, I do want to ask you about one of your projects, this collaboration with a high school on a musical performance, I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs, and also your Girls in Trouble songs about women in the Torah.

On your website, I had a look at the school, the high school, and the musical performance. It was extraordinary. I was watching you in the school there and it's just such extraordinary work. It very much inspired me—not to do it myself, but it was just so wonderful.

I do urge people to go to your website and just watch a few minutes of it.

I'm inspired by elements of religion, Christian and Jewish, but I wondered if you've come up against any issues with adaptation—respecting your heritage but also reinventing it. How has this gone for you.

Any advice for people who want to incorporate aspects of religion they love but are worried about responses?

Alicia: Well, I have to say, coming from the Jewish tradition, that is a core practice of Judaism—reinterpreting our texts and traditions, wrestling with them, arguing with them, reimagining them.

I don't know if you're familiar with Midrash, but just in case some of your listeners aren't sure I'll explain it.

There's essentially an ancient form of fanfic called Midrash, which was the ancient rabbis, and we still do it today, taking a biblical story that seems to have some kind of gap or inconsistency or question in it and writing a story to fill that gap or recast the story in an interestingly different light.

So we have this whole body of literature over thousands of years that are these alternate or added-on adventures, side quests of the biblical characters. What I'm doing from a Jewish perspective is very much in line with a traditional way of interacting with text.

I've certainly never gotten any pushback, especially as I work in progressive Jewish communities. I think if I were in an extremely fundamentalist community, there would be a lot of different issues around gender and things like that. The interpretive process, even in those communities, is part of how we show respect for the text.

When I was working with the high school—and I just want to call out the choir director, Ethan Chen, who has an incredible project where he brings in a different artist every two years to work with the choir, and they tend to have a different cultural focus each time.

He invited me specifically to integrate my songwriting about biblical women with his amazing high school choir. I was really worried at first because most of them are not Jewish—very few of them, if any. I wanted to respect their spiritual paths and their religious heritages and not impose mine on them.

So I spent a lot of time at the beginning saying, this project has religious source material, but essentially it is a creative reinterpretive project. I am not coming to you to bring the religious material to you.

I'm coming to take the shared Hebrew Bible myths and then reinterpret those myths through a lens of how they might reflect our own personal struggles, because that's always my approach to these ancient stories. I wanted to really make that clear to the students. It was such a joy to work with them.

Joanna: It's such an interesting project. Also, I find with musicians in general this idea of performance. You've written this thing—or this thing specifically with the school—and it doesn't exist again, right? You're not selling CDs of that, I presume. Whereas compared to a book, when we write a book, we can sell it forever.

It doesn't exist as a performance generally for an author of a memoir or a novel. It carries on existing.

So how does that feel, the performance idea versus the longer-lasting thing?

I mean, I guess the video's there, but the performance itself happened.

Alicia: I do know what you mean. Absolutely. We did, for that reason, record it professionally. We had the sound person record it and mix it, so it is available to stream. I'm not selling CDs, but it's out there on all the streaming services, if people want to listen. I do also have the scores, so if a choir wanted to sing it.

The main point that you're making is so true. I think there's actually something very sacred about live performance—that we're all in the moment together and then the moment is over.

I love the artefacts of the writing life. I love writing books. I love buying and reading books and having them around, and there's piles of them everywhere in this room I'm standing in.

I feel like being on stage, or even teaching, is a very spiritual practice for me, because it's in some ways the most in-the-moment I ever am. The only thing that matters is what's happening right then in that room.

It's fleeting as it goes. I'm working with the energy in the room while we're there. It's different every time because I'm different, the atmosphere is different, the people are different. There's no way to plan it. The kind of micro precision that we all try to bring to our editing—you can't do that.

You can practice all you want and you should, but in the moment, who knows? A string breaks or there's loud sound coming from the other room. It is just one of those things.

I love being reminded over and over again of the truth that we really don't control what happens. The best that we can do is ride it, surf it, be in it, appreciate it, and then let it go.

Joanna: I think maybe I get a glimpse of that when I speak professionally, but I'm far more in control in that situation than I guess you were with—I don't know how many—was it a hundred kids in that choir? It looked pretty big.

Alicia: It was amazing. It was 130 kids. Yes.

Joanna: 130 kids! I mean, it was magic listening to it. And yes, of course, showing my age there with buying a CD, aren't I?

Alicia: Well, I do still sell some CDs of Girls in Trouble on tour, because I have a bunch of them and people still buy them. I'm always so grateful because it was an easier life for touring musicians when we could just bring CDs. Now we have to be very creative about our merch.

Joanna: Yes, that's a good point because people are like, “Oh yes, I'll scan your QR code and stream it,” but you might not get the money for that for ages, and it might just be five cents or whatever.

Alicia: Streaming is terrible for live musicians. I mean, I don't know if you know the site Bandcamp, but it's essentially self-publishing for musicians.

Bandcamp is a great way around that, and a lot of independent musicians use it because that's a place you can upload your music and people can pay $8 for an album. They can stream it on there if they want, or they can download it and have it. But, yes, it's hard out there for touring musicians.

Joanna: Yes, for sure. Well, let's come to the book then. Your memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything.

Tell us about some of the challenges of a book as opposed to these other types of performances.

Alicia: Well, I come out of poetry, so that was my first love. That's what I majored in in college. That's what my MFA is in.

Poetry is famously short, and I'm not one of those long-form poets. I have been trained for many years to think in terms of a one-page arc, if at all. Arc isn't even really a word that we use in poetry.

So to write a full-length prose book was really an incredible education. Writing it basically took ten years from writing to publication, so probably seven years of writing and editing. I felt like there was an MFA-equivalent process in the number of classes I took, books I read, and work that went into it.

So that was one of my main joys and challenges, really learning on the job to write long-form prose coming out of poetry.

How to keep the engine going, how to think about ending one chapter in a way that leaves you with some torque or momentum so that you want to go into the next chapter. How many characters is too many? Who gets names and who doesn't?

Some of these things that are probably pretty basic for fiction writers were all very new to me. That was a big part of my process.

Then, of course, poets don't usually have agents. So once it was done, I began to query agents. It was the normal sort of 39 rejections and then one agent who really understood what I was trying to do. She's incredible, and she was able to sell the book.

The longevity of just working on something for that long—I have a lot of joy in that longevity—but it does sometimes feel like, is this ever going to happen, or am I on a fool's errand?

Joanna: I guess, again, the difference with performance is you have a date for the performance and it's done then. I suppose once you get a contract, then for sure it has to be done. But memoir in particular, you do have to set boundaries, because of course your life continues, doesn't it?

So what were the challenges in curating what went into the book?

Because many people listening know memoir is very challenging in terms of how personal it can be.

Alicia: Yes, and one thing I think is so fascinating about memoir is choosing which lens to put on your story, on your own story.

I heard early on that the difference between autobiography and memoir is that autobiography tries to give a really comprehensive view of a life, and memoir is choosing one lens and telling the story of a life through that lens, which is such a beautiful creative concept.

I knew early on that I wanted this to be primarily a spiritual memoir, and also somewhat of an artistic memoir, because my creativity and my spirituality are so intertwined.

It started off being spiritual, and also about my musical life, and also about my writing life. In the end, I edited out the part about my writing life, because writing about writing was just too navel-gazing.

So there's nothing in there about me coming of age as a writer, which used to be in there, but that whole thing got taken out. Now it's spiritual and musical.

For me, it really helped to start with those focuses, because I knew there may be things that were hugely important in my life, absolutely foundational, that were not really going to be either mentioned or gone deeply into in the book.

For example, my husband teases me a lot about how few pages and words he gets. He's very important in my life, but I actually met him when I was 29, and this book really mainly takes place in the years leading up to that.

There's a little bit of winding down in the first few years of my thirties, but this is not a book about my life with him. He is mentioned in it. That story is in there.

Having those kinds of limitations around the canvas—there's a quote, I forget if it was Miranda July, but somebody said something like, basically when you put a limitation on your project, that's when it starts to be a work of art.

Whatever it is, if you say, “I'm taking this canvas and I'm using these colours,” that's when it really begins, that initial limitation. That was very helpful.

Joanna: It's also the beauty of memoir, because of course you can write different memoirs at different times. You can write something about your writing life. You can write something else about your marriage and your family later on. That doesn't all have to be in one book.

I think that's actually something I found interesting. And I would also say in my memoir, Pilgrimage, my husband is barely mentioned either.

Alicia: Does he tease you too?

Joanna: No, I think he's grateful. He is grateful for the privacy.

Alicia: That's why I keep saying, you should be grateful!

Joanna: Yes. You really should. Like, maybe stop talking now.

Alicia: Yes, exactly. I know. Marriage, memoir—those words should strike fear into his heart.

Joanna: They definitely should. But let's just come back. When I look at your career—

You just seem such an independent creative, and so I wondered why you decided to work with a traditional publisher instead of being an independent.

How are you finding it as someone who's not in charge of everything?

Alicia: It's a great question. The origin story for this memoir is that I was actually reading poetry at a writing conference called Bread Loaf in the States. This was 16 years ago or something.

I was giving a poetry reading and afterwards an agent, not my agent, came up to me and said, you know, you have a voice. You should try writing nonfiction because you could probably sell it.

Back to your question about how I support myself, I am always really hustling to make a living. It's not like I have some separate well-paying job and the writing has no pressure on it. So my ears kind of perked up.

I thought, wait, getting paid for writing? Because poetry is literally not in the world. It's just not a concept for poets. That's not why we write and it's not a possibility.

So a little light turned on in my brain. I thought, wow, that could be a really interesting element to add to my income stream, and it would be flexible and it would be meaningful.

For a few years I thought, what nonfiction could I write? And I came up with the idea of writing a book about biblical women from a more scholarly perspective, because I teach that material and I've studied it.

I went to speak to another agent and she said, well, you could do that, but if you actually want to sell a book, it's going to have to be more of a trade book. So if you don't want an academic press, which wouldn't pay very much, you would have to have some kind of memoir-like stories in there to just sweeten it so it doesn't feel academic.

So then I began writing a little bit of spiritual memoir. I thought, okay, well, I'll write about a few moments. Then once I started writing, I couldn't stop. The floodgates really opened. That's how it ended up being a spiritual memoir with interwoven stories of biblical women. It became a hybrid in that sense.

I knew from the beginning that this project—for all my saying earlier that I never plan anything and only work on instinct, I was thinking as I said that, that cannot be true.

This time, I actually thought, what if, instead of coming from this pure, heart-focused place of poetry, I began writing with the intention of potentially selling a book? The way my fiction writer friends talked about selling their books.

So that was always in my mind. I knew I would continue writing poetry, continue publishing with small presses, continue putting my own music out there independently, but this was a bit of an experiment. What if I try to interface with the publishing world, in part for financial sustainability?

And because I had a full draft before I queried, I never felt like anyone was telling me what to write. I can't imagine personally selling a book on proposal, because I do need that full capacity to just swerve, change directions, be responsive to what the project is teaching me.

I can't imagine promising that I'll write something, because I never know what I'll write. But writing at least a very solid draft first, I'm always delighted to get notes and make polish and rewrite and make things better. I took care of that freedom in the first seven years of writing and then I interfaced with the agent and publisher.

Joanna: I was going to say, given that it's taken you seven to ten years to do this and I can't imagine that you're suddenly a multimillionaire from this book. It probably hasn't fulfilled the hourly rate that perhaps you were thinking of in terms of being paid for your work.

I think some people think that everyone's going to end up with the massive book deal that pays for the rest of their life.

I guess this book does just fit into the rest of your portfolio career.

Alicia: Yes. One of the benefits of these long arcs that I like to work on is, one of them—and probably the primary one—is that the project gets to unfold on its own time. I don't think I could have rushed it if I wanted. The other is that it never really stopped me from doing any of my other work.

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Alicia: So it's not like, oh, I gave up months of my life and all I got was this advance or something. It's like, I was living my life and then when I had a little bit of writing time—and I will say, it impacted my poetry. I haven't written as much poetry because I was working on this.

So it wasn't like I just added it on top of everything I was already doing, but it was a pleasure to just switch to prose for a while. It was just woven into my life.

I appreciated having this side project where no one was waiting for it. There were no deadlines, there was no stress around it, because I always have performances to promote and due dates for all kinds of work. It was just this really lovely arena of slow growth and play.

When I wanted a reader, I could do a swap with a writer friend, but no one was ever waiting for it on deadline. So there's actually a lot of pleasure in that.

Then I will say, I think I've made more from selling this than my poetry. Probably close to ten times more than I've ever made from any of my poetry.

So on a poetry scale, it's certainly not going to pay for my life, but it actually does make a true financial difference in a way that much of my other work is a little more bit by bit by bit. It's actually a different scale.

Joanna: Well, that's really good. I'm glad to hear that. I also want to ask you, because you've done so many things, and—

I'm fascinated by your independent film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff.

I have only watched the trailer. You are in it, you wrote it, directed it, and it's also obviously got other people in, and it's fascinating. It's about this particular point in history.

I've written quite a lot of screenplay adaptations of my novels, and I've had some various amounts of interest, but the whole film industry to me is just a complete nightmare, far bigger nightmare than the book industry. So I wonder if you could maybe talk about this, because it just seems like you made a film, which is so cool.

Alicia: Oh yes, thank you.

Joanna: And it won awards, yes, we should say.

Alicia: Did we win awards? Yes. It really, for an extremely low-budget indie film, went far further than my team and I could ever have imagined.

I will say I never intended to make a film. Like most of the best things in my life, it really happened by accident.

When I was living in New York— I lived there for many years—the 2008 financial collapse happened and I happened to have an arts grant that gave a bunch of artists workspace, studio space, in essentially an abandoned building in the financial district.

It was an empty floor of a building. The floor had been left by the previous tenant, and there's a nonprofit that takes unused real estate in the financial district and lets artists work in it for a while.

So I was on Wall Street, which was very rare for me, but for this year I was working on Wall Street. Even though I was working on poems, the financial collapse happened around me, and I did get inspired by that to create a one-woman show, which was more of a theatre show.

That was already a huge leap for me because I had no real theatre experience, but it was experimental and growing out of my poetry practice and my music. It was a musical one-woman show about the financial collapse from a spiritual perspective, apparently.

So I performed that. I documented it, and then a friend who lives in Portland, Oregon, where I now live, said, “I'm a theatre producer, I'd like to produce it here.” So then I rewrote it and did a run here in Portland of that show.

Essentially, I started to tour it a little bit, but I got tired of it. It was too much work and it never really paid very much, and I thought, this is impacting my life negatively. I just want to do a really good documentation of the show.

So I wanted to hire a theatre documentarian to just document the show so that it didn't disappear, like you were saying before about live performance. But one of the people I talked to actually ended up being an artistic filmmaker, as opposed to a documentarian.

She watched the archival footage, just a single camera of the show, and said, “I don't think you should do this again and film it with three cameras. I think you should make it into a feature film. And in fact, I think maybe I should direct it, because there's all this music in it and I also direct music videos.” We had this kind of mind meld.

Joanna: Mm.

Alicia: I never intended to make a film, but she is a visionary director and I had this piece of IP essentially, and all the music and the writing.

We adapted it together. We did it here in Portland. We did all the fundraising ourselves. We did not interface with Hollywood really. I think that would be, I just can't imagine.

I love Hollywood, but I'm not really connected, and I can't imagine waiting for someone to give us permission or a green light to make this. It was experimental and indie, so we just really did it on the cheap.

We had an amazing producer who helped us figure out how to do it with the budget that we had. We worked really hard fundraising, crowdfunding, asking for donations, having parties to raise money, and then we just did it and put it out there.

I think my main advice—and I hear this a lot on screenwriting podcasts—is just make the thing.

Make something, as opposed to trying to get permission to make something.

Because unless you're already in that system, it's going to be really hard to get permission to make it.

Once you make something, that leads to something else, which leads to something else. So even if it's a very short thing, or even if it's filmed on your phone, just actually make the thing. That turned out to be the right thing for us.

Joanna: Yes, I mean, I feel like that is what underpins us as independent creatives in general. As an independent author, I feel the same way. I'm never asking permission to put a book in the world. No, thank you.

Alicia: Exactly. We have a vision and we do it. It's harder in some ways, but that liberation of being able to really fully create our vision without having to compromise it or wait for permission, I think it's such a beautiful thing.

Joanna: Well, we're almost out of time, but I do want to ask you about creative confidence.

Alicia: Hmm.

Joanna: I feel I'm getting a lot of sense about this at the moment, with all the AI stuff that's happening. When you've been creating a long time, like you and I have, we know our voice and we can lean into our voice. We are creatively confident. We'll fail a lot, but we'll just push on and try things and see what happens.

Newer creators are struggling with this kind of confidence. How do I know what is my voice? How do I know what I like? How do I lean into this?

So give us some thoughts about how to find your voice and how to find that creative confidence if you don't feel you have it.

Alicia: I love that. One thing I will say is that I always think whatever is arising is powerful material to create from. So if a lack of confidence is arising, that's a really powerful feeling to directly explore and not just try to ignore.

Although sometimes one has to just ignore those feelings. But to actually explore that feeling, because AI can't have that, right? AI can't really feel a crisis of confidence, and humans can.

So that's a gift that we have, those kinds of sensitivities. I think to go really deep into whatever is arising, including the sense that we don't have the right to be creating, or we're not good enough, or whatever it is.

Then I always do come back to a quote. I think it might have been John Berryman, but I'm forgetting which poet said it. A younger poet said, “How will I ever know if I'm any good?” And this famous poet said something like—I'm paraphrasing—”You'll never know if you're any good. If you have to know, don't write.”

That has been really liberating to me, actually. It sounds a little harsh, but it's been really liberating to just let go of a sense of “good enough.” There is no good enough. The great writers never know if they're good enough.

Coming back to this idea of just making without permission—the practice of doing the thing is being a writer. Caring and trying to improve our craft, that's the best that we can have.

There's never going to be a moment where we're like, yes, I've nailed this. I am truly a hundred per cent a writer and I have found my voice. Everything's always changing anyway.

I would say, either go into those feelings or let those feelings be there. Give them a little tea. Tell them, okay, you're welcome to be here, but you don't get to drive the boat. And then return to the practice of making.

Joanna: Absolutely. Great.

So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

Alicia: Everything is on my website, which is AliciaJo.com, and also on Instagram at @ohaliciajo. I'd love to say hello to anyone who's interested in similar topics.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alicia. That was great.

Alicia: Thank you. I love your podcast. I'm so grateful for all that you've given the writing world, Jo.

The post Creative Confidence, Portfolio Careers, And Making Without Permission with Alicia Jo Rabins first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can trauma become a catalyst for creative transformation? What lessons can indie authors learn from the music industry's turbulent journey through technological disruption? With Jack Williamson.

In the intro, Why recipes for publishing success don’t work and what to do instead [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; Why your book isn’t selling: metadata [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Creating a successful author business [Fantasy Writers Toolshed Podcast]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Finding post-traumatic growth and meaning after bereavement, and using tragedy as a catalyst for creative transformation
• Why your superpower can also be your Achilles heel, and how indie authors can overcome shiny object syndrome
• Three key lessons from the music industry: embracing change, thinking creatively about marketing, and managing pressure for better creativity
• The A, B, C technique for PR interviews and why marketing is storytelling through different mediums
• How to deal with judgment and shame around AI in the author community by understanding where people sit on the opinion-belief-conviction continuum
• Three AI developments coming from music to publishing: training clauses in contracts, one-click genre adaptation, and licensed AI-generated video adaptations

You can find Jack at JackWilliamson.co.uk and his fiction work at ABJackson.com.

Transcript of the interview with Jack Williamson

Jo: Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson. Welcome to the show.

Jack: Thank you so much for having me, Jo. It's a real honour to be on your podcast after listening all of these years.

Jo: I'm excited to talk to you. We have a lot to get into, but first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and why get into writing books after years of working in music.

Jack: I began my career at the turn of the millennium, basically, and I worked for George Michael and Mariah Carey's publicist, which I'm sure you can imagine was quite the introduction to the corporate world.

From there I went on to do domestic and international marketing for a load of massive artists at Universal, so the equivalent of the top five publishers in the publishing world that we all work in.

Then from there I had a bit of a challenge. In December 2015, I lost my brother, unfortunately to suicide. For any listener or any person that's gone through a traumatic event, it can really make you reassess everything, make you question life, make you question your purpose.

When I went through that, I was thinking, well, what do I want to do? What do I want out of life? So I went on this journey for practically the next ten years.

I retrained to be a psychotherapist. I created a bucket list—a list of all the things that I thought maybe my brother would've wanted to do but didn't do. One of the things was scatter his ashes at the Seven Wonders of the world.

Then one of the items on my bucket list was to write a book. The pandemic hit. It was a challenge for all of us, as you've spoken about so much on this wonderful podcast.

I thought, well, why not? Why not write this book that I've wanted to write? I didn't know when I was going to do it because I was always so busy, and then the pandemic happened and so I wrote a book.

From there, listening to your wonderful podcast, I've learned so much and been to so many conferences and learned along the way. So now I've written five books and released three.

Jo: That's fantastic. I mean, regular listeners to the show know that I talk about death and grief and all of this kind of thing, and it's interesting that you took your brother's ashes to the Seven Wonders of the world.

Death can obviously be a very bad, negative thing for those left behind, but it seems like you were able to reframe your brother's experience and turn that into something more positive for your life rather than spiralling into something bad.

So if people listening are feeling like something happens, whether it's that or other things—

How can we reframe these seemingly life-ending situations in a more positive way?

Jack: It is very hard and there's no one way to do it. I think as you always say, I never want to tell people what to do or what to think. I want to show them how to think and how they can approach things differently or from a different perspective.

I can only speak from my journey, but we call it in therapeutic language, post-traumatic growth. It is, how do you define it so it doesn't define you? Because often when you have a bereavement of a loved one, a family member, it can be very traumatic, but how can you take meaning and find meaning in it?

There's a beautiful book called Man's Search for Meaning, and the name of the author escapes me right now, but he says—

Jo: Viktor Frankl.

Jack: Yes. Everyone quotes it as one of their favourite books, and one of my favourite lines is, “Man can take everything away from you, apart from the ability to choose one thought over the other.”

I think it's so true because we can make that choice to choose what to think. So in those moments when we are feeling bad, when we're feeling down, we want to honour our feelings, but we don't necessarily want to become them.

We want to process that, work through, get the support system that we need. But again, try to find meaning, try to find purpose, try to understand what is going on, and then pay it forward.

Irrespective of your belief system, we all yearn for purpose. We all yearn for being connected to something bigger than ourselves. If we can find that through bereavement maybe, or through a traumatic incident, then hopefully we can come through the other side and have that post-traumatic growth.

Jo: I love that phrase, post-traumatic growth.

That's so good. Obviously people think about post-traumatic anything as like PTSD—people immediately think a sort of stress disorder, like it's something that makes things even worse. I like that you reframed it in that way.

Obviously I think the other thing is you took specific action. You didn't just think about it. You travelled, you retrained, you wrote books. So I think also it's not just thinking. In fact, thinking about things can sometimes make it worse if you think for too long, whereas taking an action I think can be very strong as well.

Jack: Ultimately we are human beings as opposed to human doings, but actually being a human doing from time to time can be really helpful. Actually taking steps forward, doing things differently, using it as a platform to move forward and to do things that maybe you didn't before.

When you are confronted with death, it can actually make you question your own mortality and actually question, am I just coasting along? Am I stuck in a rut? Could I be doing something differently?

One of the things that bereavement, does is it holds a mirror up to ourselves and it makes us question, well, what do we want from our life? Are we here to procreate? Are we here to make a difference?

Some of us can't procreate, or some of us choose not to procreate, but we can all make a difference. And it's, how do we do that? Where do we do that? When do we do that?

Jo: That's interesting. I was thinking today about service and gratitude. I'm doing this Master's and I was reading some theology stuff today, and service and gratitude, I think if you are within a religious tradition, are a normal part of that kind of religious life.

Whether it's service to God and gratitude to God, or service and gratitude to others. I was thinking that these two things, service and gratitude, can actually really help reframe things as well.

Who can we serve? As authors, we're serving our readers and our community.

What can we be grateful about? That's often our readers and our community as well.

So I don't know, that helped me today—thinking about how we can reframe things, especially in the world we're in now where there's a lot of anger and grief and all kinds of things.

Jack: That's what we've got to look at. We are here to serve. Again, that can take different shapes, different forms. Some of us work in the service industry.

I provide a service as a psychotherapist, you serve your listeners with knowledge and information that you gather and dispense through the research you do or the guests you have on. We serve readers of the different genres that we write in. It's what ways can we serve, how can we serve?

Again, I think we all, if we can and when we can, should pay it forward. Someone said this to me once in the music industry: be careful who you meet on the way up and how you treat them on the way up, because invariably you'll meet them on the way down.

So if you can pay forward that kindness, if you can be kind, considerate, and treat people how you want to be treated, that is going to pay dividends in the long run. It may not come off straight away, but invariably it will come back to you in some way, shape, or form in a different way.

Jo: I've often talked about social karma and karma in the Hindu sense—the things that you do come back to you in some other form. Possibly in another life, which I don't believe.

In terms of, I guess, you didn't know what was going to happen to your brother, and so you make the most of the life that we have at the moment because things change and you just don't know how things are going to change.

You talk about this in your book, Maybe You're The Problem, which is quite a confronting title.

So just talk about your book, Maybe You're The Problem, and why you wrote that.

Put it into context with the author community and why that might be useful.

Jack: Thank you for flagging my book. I intentionally crossed out “maybe” on the merchandise I did as well, because in essence, we are our own problem. We can get in the way, and it's what happened to us when we grew up wasn't our fault, but what we do with it is our responsibility.

We may have grown up in a certain period or a climate. We didn't necessarily choose to do that, but what we do with that as a result is up to us.

So we can stay in our victimhood and we can blame our parents, or we can blame the generation we are in, or we can blame the city, the location—however, that is relinquishing your power. That is staying in a victim mindset rather than a survivor or a thriver mindset.

So it's about how can we look at the different areas in our life. Whether that is conflict, whether that is imposter syndrome, whether that is the generation we're born into.

We try to understand how that has shaped us and how we may be getting in our own way to stop us from growing, to stop us from expanding, and to see where our blind spots are, our limitations are, and how that may impact us.

There's so much going on in the moment in the world, whether that is in the digital realm, whether that is in the geo-climate that we're in at the moment. Again, that's going to bring up a lot for us.

How can we find solutions to those problems for us so that we continue to move forward rather than be restricted and hindered by them?

Jo: Alright. Well let's get into some more specifics. You have been in the author community now for a while. You go to conferences and you are in the podcast community and all this kind of thing.

What specific issues have you seen in the author community?

Maybe around some of the things you've mentioned, or other things? How might we be able to deal with those?

Jack: With authors, I think it is such a wonderful and unique industry that I have an honour and privilege of being a part of now. One of the main things I've learned is just how creative people are.

Coming from a creative industry like the music industry, there is a lot of neurodivergence in the creative industries and in the author community. Whether that is autism, whether that is ADHD—that is a real asset to have as a superpower, but it can be an Achilles heel.

So it's understanding—and I know that there is an overexposure of people labelling themselves as ADHD—but on the flip side to that, it's how can we look at what's going on for us?

For ADHD, for example, there's a thing called shiny object syndrome. You've talked about this in the past, Joanna, where it's like a new thing comes along, be it TikTok, be it Substack, be it bespoke books, be it Shopify, et cetera.

We can rush and quickly be like, “oh, let me do this, let me do that,” before we actually take the time to realise, is this right for me? Does this fit my author business? Does this fit where I'm at in my author journey?

I think sometimes as authors, we need to not cave in to that shiny object syndrome and take a step back and think to ourselves, how does this serve me? How does this serve my career? How does this work for me if I'm looking at this as a career?

If you're looking at it as a hobby, obviously it's a different lens to look through, but that's something that I would often make sure that we look at.

One of the other things that really comes up is that in order for any of us to address our fears and anxieties, we need to make sure that we feel psychologically safe and to put ourselves in spaces and places where we feel seen, heard, and understood, which can help address some of the issues that I've just mentioned.

Being in that emotionally regulated state when we are with someone we know and trust—so taking someone to a conference, taking someone to a space or a place where you feel that you can be seen, heard, and understood—can help us and allow us to embrace things that we perceive to be scary.

That may be finding an author group, finding an online space where you can actually air and share your thoughts, your feelings, where you don't feel that you are being judged.

Often it can be quite a judgmental space and place in the online world. So it's just finding your tribe and finding places where you can actually lean into that. So there'd be two things.

Jo: I like the idea of the superpower and the Achilles heel because I also feel this when we are writing fiction. Our characters have strengths, but your fatal flaw is often related to your strength.

Jack: Yes.

Jo: For example, I know I am independent. One of the reasons I'm an independent author is because I'm super independent. But one of my greatest fears is being dependent.

So I do lots of things to avoid being dependent on other people, which can lead me to almost damage myself by not asking for help or by trying to make sure that I control everything so I never have to ask anyone else to do something.

I'm coming to terms with this as I get older. I feel like this is something we start to hit—I mean, as a woman after menopause—is this feeling of I might have to be dependent on people when I'm older.

It's so interesting thinking about this and thinking—

My independence is my strength. How can it also be my weakness? So what do you think about that?

You're going to psychotherapist me now.

Jack: I definitely won't, but it's interesting. Just talking about that, we all have wounds and we all have the shadow, as you've even written about in one of your books. And it's how that can come from a childhood wound where it's like we seek help and it's not given to us.

So we create a belief system where I have to do everything myself because no one will help me. Or we may have rejection sensitivity, so we reject ourselves before others can reject us.

So it's actually about trying, where we can, to honour our truths, honour that we may want to be independent, for example, but then realising that success leaves clues.

I always say that if you are independent—and I definitely align a hundred percent with you, Joanna—I've had to work really hard myself in personal therapy and in business and life to realise that no human is an island and we can't all do this on our own.

Yes, it's amazing with the AI agents now that can help us in a business capacity, but having those relationships that we can tap into—like you mentioned all of the people that you tap into—it's so important to have those.

I always say that it's important to have three mentors: one person that's ahead of you (for me, that would be Katie Cross because she's someone that I find is an amazing author and we speak at least once a month); people that are at the same level as you that you can go on the journey together with (and I have an author group for that); and then someone that is perceived to be behind you or in a younger generation than you, because you can learn as much from them as they can learn from you.

If you can actually tap into those people whilst honouring your independence, then it feels like you can still go on your own journey, but you can tap in and tap out as and when needed.

Sacha Black will give you amazing insights, other people like Honor will give you amazing insights, but you can also provide that for them.

So there's that safety of being able to do it on your own. But on the flip side, you still have those people that you can tap into as and when necessary as a sounding board, as information on how they were successful, and go from there.

Jo: No, I like that. If you're new to the show, Sacha Black and Honor Raconteur have been on the show and they are indeed some of my best friends. So I appreciate that.

I really like the idea of the three mentor idea. I just want to add to that because I do think people misunderstand the word mentor sometimes. You mentioned you speak to Katie Cross, but I've found that a lot of the mentors that I've had who are ahead of me have often been books.

We mentioned the Viktor Frankl book, and if people don't know, he was Jewish and in the concentration camps and survived that. So it's a real survivor story. But to me, books have been mostly my mentors in terms of people who are ahead of me.

We don't always need to speak to or be friends with our mentors.

I think that's important too, right? Because I just get emails a lot that say, “Will you be my mentor?” And I don't think that's the point.

Jack: Oh, I a hundred percent agree with you. If you don't have access to those mentors—like Oprah Winfrey is one of the people that I perceive as a mentor—I listen to podcasts, I read her books, I watch interviews.

There is a way to absorb and acquire that information, and it doesn't have to be a direct relationship with them. It is someone that you can gain the knowledge and wisdom that they've imparted in whatever form you may consume it.

Which is why I think it is important to have those three levels: that one that is above you that may be out of reach in terms of a human connection, but you can still access; then the people at the same level as you that you can have those relationships and grow with; and again, that one behind that you can help pave the way for them, but also learn from them as well.

So a hundred percent agree that that mentor that you are looking for that may be ahead of you doesn't necessarily need to be someone that is in a real-world relationship.

Jo: So let's just circle back to your music industry experience. You mentioned being on the sort of marketing team for some really big names in music, and I mean, it's kind of a sexy job really. It just sounds pretty cool, but of course the music industry has just as many challenges as publishing.

What did you learn from working in the music industry that you think might be particularly useful for authors?

Jack: The perception of reality was definitely a lot different. It does look sexy and glamorous, but the reality is similar to going to conferences. It's pretty much flight, hotel, and dark rooms with terrible air conditioning that you spend a lot of time in. So sorry to burst the illusion. But I mean, it does have its moments as well.

There is so much I've learned over the years and there's probably three things that stand out the most.

The first one was I entered the industry right at the height of the music industry. In 2000, 2001. That was when Napster really exploded and it decimated the music industry. It wiped half the value in the space of four years.

Then the music industry was trying to shut it down, throwing legal, throwing everything at it, but it was like whack-a-mole. As soon as one went down such as Napster, ten others popped up like Kazaa.

So you saw that the old guard wasn't willing to embrace change. They weren't willing to adapt. They assumed that people wanted the formats of CDs, vinyls, cassettes, and they were wrong.

Yes, people wanted music, but they actually wanted the music. They didn't care about the format, they just wanted the access.

So that was one of the really interesting things that I learned, because I was like, you have to embrace change. You can't ignore it. You can't push it away, push it aside, because it's coming whether you like it or not.

I think thankfully the music industry has learned as AI's coming, because now you have to embrace it. There's a lot of legal issues that have been going on at the moment with rights, which you've covered about the Anthropic case and so on. It's such a challenge, and I just think that's the first one.

The second one I learned was back in 2018. There was an artist I worked on called Freya Ridings. At that time I was working at an independent record label rather than one of the big three major record labels. She had great songs and we were up against one of the biggest periods of the year and trying to make noise.

At the time, Love Island was the biggest TV show on, and everyone wanted to be on it in terms of getting their music synced in the scenes. We were just like, we are never going to compete. So we thought, we need to be clever here. We need to think differently.

What we did is we found out what island the show was being recorded on, and we geo-targeted our ads just to that island because we knew the sync team were going to be on there. So we just went hard as nails, advertised relentlessly, and we knew that the sync people would then see the adverts.

As a result of that, Freya got the sync. It became the biggest song that season on Love Island, back when it was popular. As a result of that, we built from there. We were like, right, we can't compete with the majors. We have to think differently. We need to do things differently. We need to be creative.

It wasn't an easy pathway. That year there were only two other songs that were independent that reached the top 10. So we ended up becoming a third and the biggest song that year.

The reason I'm saying that is we can't compete with the major publishers. But the beauty of the independent author community is because we have smaller budgets—most of us, not all of us, but most of us—we have to think differently. We have to make our bang for our buck go a lot further. So it's actually—

How can we stay creative? How can we think differently? What can we do differently?

So that would be the second thing.

Then the third main lesson that I learned, and this is more on the creative side, is that pressure can often work against you, both in a business sense, but especially creativity.

I've seen so many artists over the years have imposed deadlines on them to hand in their albums, and it's impacted the quality of their output. Once it's handed in, the stress and the pressure is off, and then you realise that actually those artists end up creating the best material that they have, and then they rush to put it on.

Whether that's Mariah Carey's “We Belong Together,” Adele with her song “Hello,” Taylor Swift did the same with “Shake It Off”—they're just three examples.

The reason is that pressure keeps us in our beta brainwave state, which is our rational, logical mind. For those of us that are authors that are writing fiction, or even if we are creating stories in our nonfiction work to deliver a point, we need to be in that creative mindset.

So we need to be in the alpha and the gamma brain state. Because our body works on 90-minute cycles known as our ultradian rhythm, we need to make sure that we honour our cycle and work with that. If we go past that, our creativity and our productivity is going to go down between 60% and 40% respectively.

So as authors, it's important—one, to apply the right amount of pressure; two, to work in breaks; and three, to know what kind of perspective we're looking at. Do we need to be rational and logical, or do we need to be creative? And then adjust the sails accordingly.

Jo: That's all fantastic. I want to come back on the marketing thing first—around what you did with the strategic marketing there and the targeted ads to that island. That's just genius.

I feel like a lot of us, myself included, we struggle to think creatively about marketing because it's not our natural state. Of course, you've done a lot of marketing, so maybe it comes more naturally to you. I think half the time we don't even use the word creative around marketing, when you're not a marketeer.

What are some ways that we can break through our blocks around marketing and try to be more creative around that?

Jack: I would challenge a lot of authors on that presumption, because as authors we're in essence storytellers, and to tell a story is creative.

There's a great quote: “One death is a tragedy. A thousand deaths is a statistic.”

If you can create a story, a compelling narrative about a death in the news, it's going to pull at the heartstrings of people. It's going to really resonate and get with them. Whereas if you are just quoting statistics, most people switch off because they become desensitised to it.

So I think because we can tell stories, and that's the essence of what we do, it's how can we tell our story through the medium of social media? How can we tell a story through our creative ads that we then put out onto Facebook or TikTok or whatever platform that we're putting them out—BookBub, et cetera?

How can we create a narrative that garners the attention? If we are looking at local media or traditional media, how can we do that? How can we get people to buy in to what we're selling?

So it's about having different angles. For me with my new romance book, Stolen Moments, one of the stories I had that really has helped me get some coverage and PR is we recorded the songs next door to the Rolling Stones.

Now that was very fortunate timing, very fortunate. But everyone's like, “Oh my God, you recorded next door to the Rolling Stones?” So it's like, well, how can you bring in these creative nuggets that help you to find a story?

Again, marketing is in essence telling a story, albeit through different mediums and forms. So it's just how can you package that into a marketable product depending on the platform in which you're putting it out on.

Jo: I think that's actually hilarious, by the way, because what you hit on there, as someone with a background in marketing, your story about “we recorded an album for the book next door to the Rolling Stones”—it's got nothing to do with the romance.

Jack: Oh, the romance is that the pop star in the book writes and records songs.

Jo: Yes, I realised that. But the fact is—

For doing things like PR, it's the story behind the story.

They don't care that you've written a romance.

Jack: Yes.

Jo: They're far more interested in you, the author, and other things. So I think what you just described there was a kind of PR hook that most of us don't even think about.

Jack: I'm sure a lot of authors already know this, so it's a good reminder, and if you don't, it's great. It's called the A, B, C technique.

When you get asked a question, you Answer the question. So that's A. You Build a bridge, and then you go to C, which is Covering one of your points.

So whenever you get asked a question, have a list of things you want to get across in an interview. Then just make sure that you find that bridge between whatever the question is to cover off one of your points, and that's how you can do it.

Because yes, you may be selling a story, like I said, about writing the songs, but then you can bridge it into actually covering and promoting whatever it is you're promoting. So I think that's always quite helpful to remember.

Jo: Well, that's a good tip for things like coming on podcasts as well.

I've had people on who don't do what you just mentioned and will just try and shoehorn things in in a more deliberate fashion, whereas other people, as you have just done with your romance there, bring it in while answering a question that actually helps other people.

So I think that's the kind of thing we need to think about in marketing.

Okay, so then let's come back to the embracing change, and as you mentioned, the AI stuff that's going on. I feel like there's so many “stories” around AI right now. There's a lot of stories being told on both sides—on the positive side, on the negative side—that people believe and buy into and may or may not be true.

There's obviously a lot of anger. There's, I think, grief—a big thing that people might not even realise that they have.

Can you talk about how authors might deal with what's coming up around the technological change around AI, and any of your personal thoughts as well?

Jack: I was thinking about this a lot recently. I mean, I guess everyone is in their own ways and forms. One of the things that came up for me is we have genre expectations and we have generation expectations.

When we look at genres, you will have different expectations from different genres. For romance, they want a happily ever after or a happy for now. For cosy mysteries, they expect the crime to be solved. So we as authors make sure we endeavour to meet those expectations.

The challenge is that if we are looking at AI, we are all in our own generations. We might be in slightly different generations, but there are going to be different generation expectations from the Alpha generation that's coming up and the Beta generation that's just about to start this year or next year because they're going to come into the world where they don't know any different to AI.

So they will have a different expectation than us. It will just be normal that there will be AI agents. It will just be normal that there are AI narrators. It will be normalised that AI will assist authors or assist everyone in doing their jobs.

So again, it is a grieving period because we can long for what was, we can yearn for things that worked for us that no longer work for us—whether it's Facebook groups, whether it's the Kindle Rush.

We can mourn the loss of that, but that's not coming back. I mean, sometimes there may be a resurgence, but essentially, we've got to embrace the change.

We've got to understand that it's coming and it's going to bring up a lot of different emotions because you may have been beholden to one thing and you may be like, yes, I've now got my TikTok lives, and then all of a sudden TikTok goes away.

I know Adam, when he was talking about it, he'll just find another platform. But there'll be a lot of people that are beholden to it and then they're like, what do I do now?

So again, it's never survival of the fittest—it's survival of the most adaptable.

I always use this metaphor where there are three people on three different boats. A storm comes. And the first, the optimist, is like, “Oh, it'll pass,” and does nothing. The pessimist complains about the storm and does nothing. But the realist will adjust the sails and use the storm to find its way to the other side, to get through.

It's not going to be easy, but they're actually taking change and making change to get to where they need to go, rather than just expecting or complaining.

I get it. We are not, and I hate the expression, “we're all in the same boat.” I call bleep on that. I'm not going to swear. We're not all in the same boat. We're all in the same storm, but different people are going through different things.

For some, they can adjust and adapt really quickly like a speedboat. For others, they may be like Jack and Rose in the Titanic on that terrible prop where they're clinging to dear life and trying to get through the storm.

So it's about how do I navigate this upcoming storm? What can I do within my control to get through the storm? For some it may be easier because they have the resources, or for some of us that love learning, it's easy to embrace change.

For others that have a fear mindset and it's like, “Oh, something new, it's scary, I don't want to embrace it”—you are going to take longer. So you may not be the speedboat, but at some point we are going to have to embrace that change. Otherwise we're going to get left behind. So you need to look at that.

Jo: The storm metaphor is interesting, and being in different boats. I feel I do struggle. I struggle with people who suddenly seem to be discovering the storm. I've been talking about AI now since 2016. That's a decade.

Jack: Yes.

Jo: Even ChatGPT has been around more than three years, and people come to me now and they're talking about stories that they've seen in the media that are just old now. Things have moved on so much.

I feel like maybe I was on my boat and I looked through my telescope and I saw the storm. I've been talking about the storm and I've had my own moments of being in the middle of the storm. Now I definitely do struggle with people who just seem to have arrived without any knowledge of it before.

I oscillate between being an optimist and a realist. I think I'm somewhere between the two, probably. But I think what is driving me a little crazy in the author community right now is judgment and shame. There are people who are judging other people, and there's shame felt by AI-curious or AI-positive people.

So I want to help the people who feel shame in some way for trying new technology, but they still feel attacked. Then those people judge other authors for their choices to use technology.

So how do you think we can deal with judgment and shame in the community?

Which is a form of conflict, I guess.

Jack: Of course. I think with that, there's another great PR quote: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Especially in this digital age, there's a lot of clickbait. So the more polarising, the more emotion-evoking the headline, the more likely you are to engage with that content—whether that is reading it or whether that's posting or retweeting, or whatever format you are consuming it on.

So unfortunately, media has now become so much more polarising. It's dividing us rather than uniting us. So people are going to have stronger positions.

There's so much even within this to look at. One is, you have to work out where people are on the continuum. Do they have an opinion on AI? Do they have a belief? Or do they have a conviction?

Now you're not going to move someone that has a conviction about something, so it's not worth even engaging with them because they're immovable.

Like they say, you shouldn't talk about sports, politics, and religion. There are certain subjects that may not be worth talking about, especially if they have a conviction. Because they may not even be able to agree to disagree. They may not be willing or able to hear you.

So first and foremost, it's about understanding, well, where are those people sitting on the continuum of AI? Are they curious? Do they have an opinion, but they're open to hearing other opinions? Do they have a belief that could be changed or evolved if they find more information?

That's where I think it is. It's not necessarily our jobs—even though you do an amazing job of it, Joanna—but a lot of people are undereducated on these issues or these new technologies.

So in some cases it's just a case of a lack of education or them being undereducated. Hopefully in time they will become more and more educated. But again, it's how long is a piece of string? Will people catch up? Will they stay behind? Are they fearful?

I guess because of social media, because of the media, as they say, if you can evoke fear in people, you can control them. You can control their perspectives. You can control their minds. So that's where we see it—a lot of people are operating from a fear mindset. So then that's when they project their vitriol in certain cases.

If people want to believe a certain thing, that's their choice. I'm not here to tell people what to think. Like I said earlier, it's more about how to think. But I would just encourage people to find people that align with you.

Do a sense test, like a litmus test, to find where they sit on the continuum and engage with those people that are open and have opinions or beliefs. But shy away or just avoid people that have convictions that maybe are the polar opposite of yours.

Jo: It's funny, isn't it? We seem to be in a phase of history when I feel like you should be able to disagree with people and still be friends.

Although, as you mentioned, there's certain members of my family where we just stay on topics of TV shows and movies or music, or what books are you reading? Like, we don't go anywhere near politics.

So I do think that might be a rule also with the AI stuff. As you said, find a community, and there are plenty of AI-positive spaces now for people who do want to talk about this kind of stuff.

I also think that, I don't know whether this is a tipping point this year, but certainly—

I know people who are in bigger corporates where the message is now, “You need to embrace this stuff. It is now part of your job to learn how to use these AI tools.”

So if that starts coming into people's day jobs, and also people who have, I don't know, kids at school or people at university who are embracing this more—I mean, maybe it is a generational thing.

Jack: Yes. Look, there were so many people that were resistant to working from home, or corporations that were, and then the pandemic forced it. Now everyone's embraced it in some way, shape, or form. I mean, there are people that don't, but the majority of people—when something's forced on you, you have to adapt.

So again, if those things are implemented in corporations, then you're going to see it. I'm seeing so many amazing new things in AI that have been implemented in the music industry that we'll see in the publishing industry coming down the road.

That will scare a lot of people, but again, we have to embrace those things because they're coming and there's going to be an expectation—especially from the younger generations—that these things are available.

So again, it's not first past the post, but if you can be ahead of the wave or at least on the wave, then you are going to reap the rewards. If you are behind the wave, you're going to get left behind.

So that's my opinion. I'm not trying to encourage anyone to see from my lens, but at the same time, I do think that we need to be thinking differently. We need to always embrace change where we can, as we can, at the pace that we can.

Jo: You mentioned there AI things coming down the road in the music industry. And now everyone's going, wait, what is coming? So tell us—

What do you see ahead that you think might also shift into the author world?

Jack: There are three things that I've seen. Two that have been implemented and one that's been talked about and worked on at the moment.

The first, and this will be quite scary for people, is that major record labels—so think the major publishers on our side—they're all now putting clauses in their contracts that require the artists that sign with them to allow their works to be trained by their own AI models.

So that is something that is now actually happening in record labels. I wouldn't be surprised, although I don't have insight into it, if Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, et cetera, are potentially doing the same with authors that sign to them. So that's going to become more standardised. So that is on the major side.

But then on the creative side, there are two things that really excite me. The music AI platforms that we're hearing about, the stories that we've seen in the press, and it's the fact that with a click of a button, you can recreate a song into a different genre.

I find it so fascinating because if you think about that—turning a pop song into a country song or a rap song into a dance song—the possibilities that we have as authors with our books, if we wish to do so, are amazing.

I just think, for example, with your ARKANE series, Joanna, imagine clicking a button and just with one click you can take Morgan Sierra and turn her into a romantic lead in a romance book.

Jo: See, it's so funny because I personally just can't imagine that because it's not something I would write. But I guess one example in the romance genre itself is I know plenty of romance authors who write a clean and a spicy version of the same story, right? It is already happening in that way. It's just not a one-click.

Jack: Well, I think you can also look at it another way. I think one of the most famous examples is Twilight. With Twilight and Stephenie Meyer, if she had the foresight—and I'm not saying she didn't, just to clarify—but fan fiction is such a massive sub-genre of works. And obviously from Twilight came 50 Shades of Gray.

Imagine if she had the licensing rights like the NFTs, where she could have made money off of every sale. So that you could then, through works that you create and give licence, earn a percentage of every release, every sale, every consumption unit of your works.

There are just so many possibilities where you can create, adapt, have spinoffs that can then build out your world. Obviously, there may need to be an approval process in there for continuity and quality control because you want to make sure you're doing that, but I think that has such massive potential in publishing if we wish to do so.

Or like I said, change characters. Like Robert Langdon's character in Dan Brown's books—no longer being the kind of thriller, but maybe being a killer instead. There's so many possibilities. It's just, again, how to think, not what to think—how to think differently and how we can use that. So that's the second of three.

Jo: Oh, before you move on, you did mention NFTs and I've actually been reading about this again. So I'm usually five years early. That's the general rule. I started talking about NFTs in mid-2021, and obviously there was a crypto crash, it goes up and down, blah, blah, blah.

But forget the crypto side—on the blockchain side, digital originality, and exactly what you said about saying like, where did this originate? This is now coming back in the AI world. It could be that I really was five years early.

So amusingly—and I'm going to link to it in the notes because I did a “Why NFTs Are Exciting for Authors” solo episode, I think in 2022—it may be that the resurgence will happen in the next year, and all those people who said I was completely wrong, that this may be coming back.

Digital originality I think is what we're talking about there.

But so, okay, so what was the other thing?

Jack: So the third one is the one that I'm most excited about, but I think will be the most scary for people.

Obviously consumption changes and formats change. Like I said, in music I've seen it all the time—whether it's vinyl to cassettes, to CDs, to downloads, to streaming.

Again, there's different consumption of the same format, and we see that with books as well, obviously—hardbacks, paperbacks, eBooks, audiobooks.

Now with the rise of AI, AI narration has made audiobooks so much more accessible for people. I know that there are issues with certain people not wanting to do it, or certain platforms not allowing AI narration to be uploaded unless it's their own.

The next step is what I'm most excited about. What I'm seeing now in the music industry is people licensing their image to then recreate that as music videos because music videos are so expensive.

One of my friends just shot a music video for two million pounds. I don't think many authors would ever wish to spend that.

If you can license your image and use AI to create a three-minute music video that looks epic and just as real as humanly possible, imagine if those artists—or if we go a step further, those actors—license their image to then be used to adapt our books into a TV series or a film.

So that then we are in a position where that is another format of consumption alongside an audiobook, a paperback, an eBook, hardcover, special edition, and so on and so forth. It potentially has the opportunity to open us up to a whole new world.

Because yes, there are adaptations of books that we're seeing at the moment, but for those of us that are trying to get our content into different formats, this can be a new pathway.

I'm going to make a prediction here myself, Joanna.

Jo: Mm-hmm.

Jack: I would say in the next five to ten years, there will be a platform akin to a Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Apple Plus, where you can license the rights to an image of an actor or an actress.

Then with the technology—and you may need people to help you adapt your book into a TV series or a film—that can then be consumed. I just think the possibilities are endless.

I mean, again, I think of your character and I'm like, oh, what would it be if Angelina Jolie licensed her image and you could have her play the lead character in your ARKANE series? I mean, again, the possibilities potentially are endless here.

Jo: Well, and on that, if people think this won't happen—1776, I don't know if you've seen this, it's just being teased at the moment. Darren Aronofsky has made an American revolutionary story all with AI. So this is being talked about at the moment. It's on YouTube at the moment.

The AI video is just extraordinary already, so I totally agree with you. I think things are going to be quite weird for a while, and it will take a while to get used to.

You mentioned coming into the music industry in 2000, 2001—I started my work before the internet, and then the internet came along and lots of things changed. I mean, anyone who's older than 40, 45-ish can remember what work was like without the internet.

Now we are moving into a time where it'll be like, what was it like before AI? And I think we'll look back and go like, why the hell did we do that kind of thing? So it is a changing world, but yes, exciting times, right?

I think the other thing that's happening right now, even to me, is that things are moving so fast. You can almost feel like a kind of whiplash with how much is changing.

How do we deal with the fast pace of change while still trying to anchor ourselves in our writing practice and not going crazy?

Jack: Again, it's that everything everywhere all at once—you can get lost and discombobulated.

I always say be the tortoise, not the hare—because you don't want to fly and die. You want pace and grace. Everyone will have a different pace. For some marathon runners, they can run a five-minute mile, some can run an eight-minute mile, some can run a twelve-minute mile. It's about finding the pace that works for you.

Every one of us have different commitments. Every one of us have different ways we view the industry—some as a hobby, some as a business. So it's about honouring your needs, your commitment.

Some of us, as you've had people on the podcast, some people are carers. They have to care. Some people are parents. Some people don't have those commitments and so can devote more time and then actually learn more, change more as a result.

So again, it's about finding your groove, finding your rhythm, honouring that, and again, showing up consistently. Because motivation may get you started, but it's habit and discipline that sees you through.

Keep that discipline, keep that pace and grace. Be consistent in what you can do. And know where you're at. Don't compare and despair, because again, if you look at someone else, they may be ahead of you, but the race is only with yourself in the end.

So you've got to just focus on where you are at and am I in a better place than I was yesterday? Am I working on my business as well as in my business? How am I doing that? When am I doing that? And what am I doing that for?

If you can be asking yourself those questions and making sure you're staying true to yourself and not burning out, making sure that you are honouring your other commitments, then I think you are going at the pace that feels right for you.

Jo: Brilliant.

Jo: Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

Jack: Thank you so much for having me on, Joanna, today. You can find me on JackWilliamson.co.uk for all my nonfiction books and therapy work. Then for my fiction work, it is ABJackson.com, or ABJacksonAuthor on Instagram and TikTok.

Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jack. That was great.

Jack: Thank you so much.

The post Post-Traumatic Growth, Creative Marketing, And Dealing With Change with Jack Williamson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you stay audacious in a world that's noisier and more saturated than ever? How might the idea of creative rhythm change the way you write? Lara Bianca Pilcher gives her tips from a multi-passionate creative career.

In the intro, becoming a better writer by being a better reader [The Indy Author];
How indie authors can market literary fiction [Self-Publishing with ALLi];
Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities; Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life; All Men are Mortal – Simone de Beauvoir; Surface Detail — Iain M. Banks; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Lara Bianca Pilcher is the author of Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World. She's also a performing artist and actor, life and creativity coach, and the host of the Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist podcast.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why self-doubt is a normal biological response — and how audacity means showing up anyway
• The difference between creative rhythm and rigid discipline, and why it matters for writers
• How to navigate a saturated world with intentional presence on social media
• Practical strategies for building a platform as a nonfiction author, including batch content creation
• The concept of a “parallel career” and why designing your life around your art beats waiting for a big break
• Getting your creative rhythm back after crisis or burnout through small, gentle steps

You can find Lara at LaraBiancaPilcher.com.

Transcript of the interview with Lara Bianca Pilcher

Lara Bianca Pilcher is the author of Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World. She's also a performing artist and actor, life and creativity coach, and the host of the Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist podcast. Welcome, Lara.

Lara: Thank you for having me, Jo.

Jo: It's exciting to talk to you today. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.

Lara: I'm going to call myself a greedy creative, because I started as a dancer, singer, and actress in musical theatre, which ultimately led me to London, the West End, and I was pursuing that in highly competitive performance circles. A lot of my future works come from that kind of place.

But when I moved to America—which I did after my season in London and a little stint back in Australia, then to Atlanta, Georgia—I had a visa problem where I couldn't work legally, and it went on for about six months.

Because I feel this urge to create, as so many of your listeners probably relate to, I was not okay with that. So that's actually where I started writing, in the quietness, with the limits and the restrictions. I've got two children and a husband, and they would go off to school and work and I'd be home thinking, ha.

In that quietness, I just began to write. I love thinking of creativity as a mansion with many rooms, and you get to pick your rooms. I decided, okay, well the dance, acting, singing door is shut right now—I'm going to go into the writing room. So I did.

Jo: I have had a few physical creatives on the show. Obviously one of your big rooms in your mansion is a physical room where you are actually performing and moving your body. I feel like this is something that those of us whose biggest area of creativity is writing really struggle with—the physical side.

How do you think that physical practice of creativity has helped you in writing, which can be quite constrictive in that way?

Lara: It's so good that you asked this because I feel what it trained me to do is ignore noise and show up. I don't like the word discipline—most of us get a bit uncomfortable with it, it's not a nice word.

What being a dancer did was teach me the practice of what I like to call a rhythm, a creative rhythm, rather than a discipline, because rhythm ebbs and flows and works more with who we are as creatives, with the way creativity works in our body.

That taught me: go to the barre over and over again—at the ballet barre, I'm talking about, not the pub. Go there over and over again. Warm up, do the work, show up when you don't feel like it. thaT naturally pivoted over to writing, so they're incredibly linked in the way that creativity works in our body.

Jo: Do you find that you need to do physical practice still in order to get your creativity moving? I'm not a dancer. I do like to shake it around a bit, I guess. But I mainly walk. If I need to get my creativity going, I will walk.

If people are stuck, do you think doing something physical is a good idea?

Lara: It is, because the way that our body and our nervous system works—without going into too much boring science, although some people probably find it fascinating—is that when we shake off that lethargic feeling and we get blood flowing in our body, we naturally feel more awake.

Often when you're walking or you're doing something like dance, your brain is not thinking about all of the big problems.

You might be listening to music, taking in inspiration, taking in sunshine, taking in nature, getting those endorphins going, and that naturally leads to the brain being able to psychologically show up more as a creative.

However, there are days, if I'm honest, where I wake up and the last thing I want to do is move. I want to be in a little blanket in the corner of the room with a hot cocoa or a coffee and just keep to myself. Those aren't always the most creative days, but sometimes I need that in my creative rhythm, and that's okay too.

Jo: I agree. I don't like the word discipline, but as a dancer you certainly would've had to do that. I can't imagine how competitive it must be. I guess this is another thing about a career in dance or the physical arts.

Does it age out? Is it really an ageist industry?

Whereas I feel like with writing, it isn't so much about what your body can do anymore.

Lara: That is true. There is a very real marketplace, a very real industry, and I'm careful because there's two sides to this coin. There is the fact that as we get older, our body has trouble keeping up at that level. There's more injuries, that sort of thing.

There are some fit women performing in their sixties and seventies on Broadway that have been doing it for years, and they are fine. They'll probably say it's harder for some of them.

Also, absolutely, I think there does feel in the professional sense like there can be a cap. A lot of casting in acting and in that world feels like there's fewer and fewer roles, particularly for women as we get older, but people are in that space all the time.

There's a Broadway dancer I know who is 57, who's still trying to make it on Broadway and really open about that, and I think that's beautiful. So I'm careful with putting limits, because I think there are always outliers that step outside and go, “Hey, I'm not listening to that.”

I think there's an audience for every age if you want there to be and you make the effort. But at the same time, yes, there is a reality in the industry. Totally.

Jo: Obviously this show is not for dancers. I think it was more framing it as we are lucky in the writing industry, especially in the independent author community, because you can be any age. You can be writing on your deathbed. Most people don't have a clue what authors look like.

Lara: I love that, actually. It's probably one of the reasons I maybe subconsciously went into writing, because I'm like, I want to still create and I'm getting older. It's fun.

Jo: That's freeing.

Lara: So freeing. It's a wonderful room in the mansion to stay in until the day I die, if I must put it that way.

Jo: I also loved you mentioning that Broadway dancer. A lot of listeners write fiction—I write fiction as well as nonfiction—and it immediately makes me want to write her story. The story of a 57-year-old still trying to make it on Broadway.

There's just so much in that story, and I feel like that's the other thing we can do: writing about the communities we come from, especially at different ages.

Let's get into your book, Audacious Artistry. I want to start on this word audacity. You say audacity is the courage to take bold, intentional risks, even in the face of uncertainty. I read it and I was like, I love the sentiment, but I also know most authors are just full of self-doubt.

Bold and audacious. These are difficult words. So what can you say to authors around those big words?

Lara: Well, first of all, that self-doubt—a lot of us don't even know what it is in our body. We just feel it and go, ugh, and we read it as a lack of confidence. It's not that. It's actually natural. We all get it. What it is, is our body's natural ability to perceive threat and keep us safe.

So we're like, oh, I don't know the outcome. Oh, I don't know if I'm going to get signed. Oh, I don't know if my work's going to matter. And we read that as self-doubt—”I don't have what it takes” and those sorts of things.

That's where I say no. The reframe, as a coach, I would say, is that it's normal. Self-doubt is normal. Everyone has it. But audacity is saying, I have it, but I'm going to show up in the world anyway. There is this thing of believing, even in the doubt, that I have something to say.

I like to think of it as a metaphor of a massive feasting table at Christmas, and there's heaps of different dishes. We get to bring a dish to the table rather than think we're going to bring the whole table. The audacity to say, “Hey, I have something to say and I'm going to put my dish on the table.”

Jo: I feel like the “I have something to say” can also be really difficult for people, because, for example, you mentioned you have kids. Many people are like, I want to share this thing that happened to me with my kids, or a secret I learned, or a tip I think will help people. But there's so many people who've already done that before.

When we feel like we have something to say but other people have said it before, how do you address that?

Lara: I think everything I say, someone has already said, and I'm okay with that. But they haven't said it like me. They haven't said it in my exact way. They haven't written the sentence exactly the way—that's probably too narrow a point of view in terms of the sentence—maybe the story or the chapter.

They haven't written it exactly like me, with my perspective, my point of view, my life experience, my lived experience. It matters.

People have very short memories. You think of the last thing you watched on Netflix and most of us can't remember what happened. We'll watch the season again.

So I think it's okay to be saying the same things as others, but recognise that the way you say it, your point of view, your stories, your metaphors, your incredible way of putting a sentence togethes, it still matters in that noise.

Jo: I think you also talk in the book about rediscovering the joy of creation, as in you are doing it for you. One of the themes that I emphasise is the transformation that happens within you when you write a book. Forget all the people who might read it or not read it.

Even just what transforms in you when you write is important enough to make it worthwhile.

Lara: It really, really is. For me, talking about rediscovering the joy of creation is important because I've lost it at times in my career, both as a performing artist and as an author, in a different kind of way.

When we get so caught up in the industry and the noise and the trends, it's easy to just feel overwhelmed. Overwhelm is made up of a lot of emotions like fear and sadness and grief and all sorts of things. A lot of us don't realise that that's what overwhelm is.

When we start to go, “Hey, I'm losing my voice in all this noise because comparison is taking over and I'm feeling all that self-doubt,” it can feel just crazy. So for me, rediscovering the joy of creation is vital to survival as an author, as an artist.

A classic example, if you don't mind me sharing my author story really quickly, is that when I first wrote the first version of my book, I was writing very much for me, not realising it. This is hindsight. My first version was a little more self-indulgent. I like to think of it like an arrowhead. I was trying to say too much.

The concept was good enough that I got picked up by a literary agent and worked with an editor through that for an entire year. At the end of that time, they dropped me. I felt like, through that time, I learned a lot. It was wonderful.

Their reason for dropping me was saying, “I don't think we have enough of a unique point of view to really sell this.” That was hard. I lay on my bed, stared at the ceiling, felt grief. The reality is it's so competitive. What happened for me in that year is that I was trying to please.

If you're a new author, this is really important. You are so desperately trying to please the editor, trying to do all the right things, that you can easily lose your joy and your unique point of view because you are trying to show up for what you think they all need and want.

What cut through the noise for me is I got off that bed after my three hours of grief—it was probably longer, to be fair—but I booked myself a writing coach. I went back to the drawing board.

I threw a lot of the book away. I took some good concepts out that I already knew were good from the editor, then I rewrote the entire thing. It's completely different to the first version.

That's the book that got a traditional publishing deal. That book was my unique point of view. That book was my belief, from that grief, that I still have something to say. Instead of trusting what the literary agent and the editor were giving me in those red marks all over that first version, I was like, this is what I want to say.

That became the arrowhead that's cut into the industry, rather than the semi-trailer truck that I was trying to bulldoze in with no clear point of view. So rediscovering the joy of creation is very much about coming back to you. Why do I write? What do I want to say?

That unique point of view will cut through the noise a lot of the time. I don't want to speak in absolutes, but a lot of the time it will cut through the noise better than you trying to please the industry.

Jo: I can't remember who said it, but somebody talked about how you've got your stone, and your stone is rough and it has random colours and all this. Then you start polishing the stone, which you have to do to a point. But if you keep polishing the stone, it looks like every other stone. What's the point?

That fits with what you were saying about trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. I also think the reality of what you just said about the book is a lot of people's experience with writing in general.

Certainly for me, I don't write in order. I chuck out a lot. I'm a discovery writer. People think you sit down and start A and finish Z, and that's it.

It's kind of messy, isn't it? Was that the same in your physical creative life?

Lara: Yes. Everything's a mess. In the book I actually talk about learning to embrace the cringe, because we all want to show up perfect. Just as you shared, we think, because we read perfect and look at perfect or near-perfect work—that's debatable all the time—we want to arrive there, and I guess that's natural.

But what we don't often see on social media or other places is the mess. I love the behind the scenes of films. I want to see the messy creative process.

The reality is we have to learn to embrace the messy cringe because that's completely normal. My first version was so messy, and it's about being able to refine it and recognise that that is normal. So yes, embrace it. That's my quote for the day. Embrace the cringe, show up messy. It's all right.

Jo: You mentioned the social media, and the subtitle of the book mentions a “saturated world.” The other problem is there are millions of books out there now. AI is generating more content than humans do, and it is extremely hard to break through.

How are we to deal with this saturated world? When do we join in and when do we step away?

Lara: I think it's really important not to have black and white thinking about it, because trust me, every day I meet an artist that will say, “I hate that I have to show up online.” To be honest with you, there's a big part of me that does also.

But the saturation of the world is something that I recognise, and for me, it's like I'm in the world but not of it. That saturation can cause so much overwhelm and nervous system threat and comparison.

What I've personally decided to do is have intentional showing up. That looks like checking in intentionally with a design, not a randomness, and then checking out.

When push comes to shove, at the end of the day, I really believe that what sells books is people's trust in us as a person.

They might go through an airport and not know us at all and pick up the book because it's a bestseller and they just trust the reputation, but so much of what I'm finding as an artist is that personal relationship, that personal trust.

Whether that's through people knowing you via your podcast or people meeting you in a room. Especially in nonfiction, I think that's really big.

Intentional presence from a place where we've regulated ourselves, being aware that it's saturated, but my job's not to be focused on the saturation. My job is to find my unique voice and say I have something to bring.

Be intentional with that. Shoot your arrow, and then step out of the noise, because it's just overwhelming if you choose to live there and scroll without any intentionality at all.

Jo: So how do people do that intentionality in a practical way around, first of all, choosing a platform, and then secondly, how they create content and share content and engage?

What are some actual practical tips for intentionality?

Lara: I can only speak from my experience, but I'm going to be honest, every single application I sent asked for my platform stats. Every single one.

Platform stats as in how many followers, how many people listening to your podcast, how many people are reading your blog. That came up in every single literary agent application.

So I would be a fool today to say you've got to ignore that, because that's just the brass tacks, unless you're already like a famous footballer or something. Raising and building a platform of my own audience has been a part of why I was able to get a publishing deal.

In doing that, I've learned a lot of hard lessons. Embrace the cringe with marketing and social media as well, because it's its own beast.

Algorithms are not what I worry about. They're not going to do the creativity for you. What social media's great at is saying, “Hey, I'm here”—it's awareness. It's not where I sell stuff. It's where I say, I'm here, this is what I'm doing, and people become aware of me and I can build that relationship.

People do sell through social media, but it's more about awareness statistically. I am on a lot of platforms, but not all of them work for every author or every style of book.

I've done a lot of training. I've really had to upskill in this space and get good at it. I've put myself through courses because I feel like, yes, we can ignore it if we want to, but for me it's an intentional opting in because the data shows that it's been a big part of being able to get published.

That's overwhelming to hear for some people. They don't want to hear that. But that's kind of the world that we are in, isn't it?

Jo: I think the main point is that you can't do everything and you shouldn't even try to do everything. The best thing to do is pick a couple of things, or pick one thing, and focus on that.

For example, I barely ever do video, so I definitely don't do TikTok. I don't do any kind of video stuff. But I have this podcast. Audio is my happy place, and as you said, long-form audio builds trust. That is one way you can sell, but it's also very slow—very, very slow to build an audio platform.

Then I guess my main social media would be Instagram, but I don't engage a lot there.

So do you have one or two main things that you do, and any thoughts on using those for book marketing?

Lara: I do a lot of cross-posting. I am on Instagram and I do a lot of creation there, and I'm super intentional about this. I actually do 30 days at a time, and then it's like my intentional opt-in.

I'll create over about two days, edit and plan. It's really, really planned—shoot everything, edit everything, put it all together, and then upload everything. That will be 30 days' worth.

Then I back myself right out of there, because I don't want to stay in that space. I want to be in the creative space, but I do put those two days a month aside to do that on Instagram.

Then I tweak things for YouTube and what works on LinkedIn, which is completely different to Instagram. As I'm designing my content, I have in mind that this one will go over here and this one can go on here, because different platforms push different things.

I am on Threads, but Threads is not statistically where you sell books, it's just awareness. Pinterest I don't think has been very good for my type of work, to be honest. For others it might. It's a search engine, it's where people go to get a recipe.

I don't necessarily feel like that's the best place, this is just my point of view. For someone else it might be brilliant if you're doing a cookbook or something like that.

I am on a lot of platforms. My podcast, however, I feel is where I'm having the most success, and also my blog. Those things as a writer are very fulfilling. I've pushed growing a platform really hard, and I am on probably almost every platform except for TikTok, but I'm very intentional with each one.

Jo: I guess the other thing is the business model. The fiction business model is very, very different to nonfiction. You've got a book, but your higher-cost and higher-value offerings are things that a certain number of people come through to you and pay you more money than the price of a book.

Could talk about how the book leads into different parts of your business?

Because some people are like, “Am I going to make a living wage from book sales of a nonfiction book?” And usually people have multiple streams of income.

Lara: I think it's smart to have multiple streams of income. A lot of people, as you would know, would say that a book is a funnel. For those who haven't heard of it, a way that people come into your bigger offerings. They don't have to be, but very much I do see it that way.

It's also credibility. When you have a published book, there's a sense of credibility.

I do have other things. I have courses, I have coaching, I have a lot of things that I call my parallel career that chug alongside my artist work and actually help stabilise that freelance income. Having a book is brilliant for that. I think it's a wonderful way to get out there in the world.

No matter what's happening in all the online stuff, when you're on an aeroplane, so often someone still wants to read a book. When you're on the beach, they don't want to be there with a laptop. If you're on the sand, you want to be reading a beautiful paper book. The smell of it, the visceral experience of it.

Books aren't going anywhere, to me. I still feel like there are always going to be people that want to pick it up and dig in and learn so much of your entire life experience quickly.

Jo: We all love books here.

I think it's important, as you do talk about career design and you mentioned there the parallel career—I get a lot of questions from people. They may just be writing their first book and they want to get to the point of making money so they could leave their day job or whatever. But it takes time, doesn't it?

So how can we be more strategic about this sort of career design?

Lara: For me, this has been a big one because lived experience here is that I know artists in many different areas, whether they're Broadway performers or music artists. Some of them are on almost everything I watch on TV. I'm like, oh, they're that guy again. I know that actor is on almost everything.

I'll apply this over to writers. The reality is that these high-end performers that I see all the time showing up, even on Broadway in lead roles, all have another thing that they do, because they can still have, even at the highest level, six months between a contract.

Applying that over to writing is the same thing, in that books and the money from them will ebb and flow. What so often artists are taught—and authors fit into this—is that we ultimately want art to make us money.

So often that becomes “may my art rescue me from this horrible life that I'm living,” and we don't design the life around the art. We hope, hope, hope that our art will provide.

I think it's a beautiful hope and a valid one. Some people do get that. I'm all for hoping our art will be our main source of income. But the reality is for the majority of people, they have something else.

What I see over and over again is these audacious dreams, which are wonderful, and everything pointing towards them in terms of work. But then I'll see the actor in Hollywood that has a café job and I'm like, how long are you going to just work at that café job?

They're like, “Well, I'm goint to get a big break and then everything's going to change.” I think we can think the same way. My big break will come, I'll get the publishing deal, and then everything will change.

The reframe in our thinking is: what if we looked at this differently? Instead of side hustle, fallback career, instead of “my day job,” we say parallel career. How do I design a life that supports my art? And if I get to live off my art, wonderful.

For me, that's looked like teaching and directing musical theatre. It's looked like being able to coach other artists. It's looked like writing and being able to pivot my creativity in the seasons where I've needed to.

All of that is still creativity and energising, and all of it feeds the great big passion I have to show up in the world as an artist. None of it is actually pulling me away or draining me. I mean, you have bad days, of course, but it's not draining my art.

When we are in this way of thinking—one day, one day, one day—we are not designing intentionally.

What does it look like to maybe upskill and train in something that would be more energising for my parallel career that will chug alongside us as an artist? We all hope our art can totally 100% provide for us, which is the dream and a wonderful dream, and one that I still have.

Jo: It's hard, isn't it? Because I also think that, personally, I need a lot of input in order to create. I call myself more of a binge writer. I just finished the edits on my next novel and I worked really hard on that.

Now I won't be writing fiction for, I don't know, maybe six months or something, because now I need to input for the next one.

I have friends who will write 10,000 words a day because they don't need that. They have something internal, or they're just writing a different kind of book that doesn't need that.

Your book is a result of years of experience, and you can't write another book like that every year. You just can't, because you don't have enough new stuff to put in a book like that every single year.

I feel like that's the other thing.

People don't anticipate the input time and the time it takes for the ideas to come together. It is not just the production of the book.

Lara: That's completely true. It goes back to this metaphor that creativity in the body is not a machine, it's a rhythm. I like to say rhythm over consistency, which allows us to say, “Hey, I'm going to be all in.”

I was all in on writing. I went into a vortex for days on end, weeks on end, months and probably years on end. But even within that, there were ebbs and flows of input versus “I can't go near it today.”

Recognising that that's actually normal is fine. There are those people that are outliers, and they will be out of that box. A lot of people will push that as the only way. “I am going to write every morning at 10am regardless.” That can work for some people, and that's wonderful.

For those of us who don't like that—and I'm one of those people, that's not me as an artist—I accept the rhythm of creativity and that sometimes I need to do something completely different to feed my soul.

I'm a big believer that a lot of creative block is because we need an adventure. We need to go out and see some art. To do good art, you've got to see good art, read good art, get outside, do something else for the input so that we have the inspiration to get out of the block.

I know a screenwriter who was writing a really hard scene of a daughter's death—her mum's death. It's not easy to just write that in your living room when you've never gone through it.

So she took herself out—I mean, it sounds morbid, but as a writer you'll understand the visceral nature of this—and sat at somebody's tombstone that day and just let that inform her mind and her heart.

She was able to write a really powerful scene because she got out of the house and allowed herself to do something different.

All that to say that creativity, the natural process, is an in-and-out thing. It ebbs and flows as a rhythm. People are different, and that's fine. But it is a rhythm in the way it works scientifically in the body.

Jo: On graveyards—we love graveyards around here.

Lara: I was like, sorry everyone, this isn't very nice.

Jo: Oh, no. People are well used to it on this show.

Let's come back to rhythm. When you are in a good rhythm, or when your body's warmed up and you are in the flow and everything's great, that feels good. But what if some people listening have found their rhythm is broken in some way, or it's come to a stop?

That can be a real problem, getting moving again if you stop for too long.

What are some ways we can get that rhythm back into something that feels right again?

Lara: First of all, for people going through that, it's because our body actually will prioritise survival when we're going through crisis or too much stress. Creativity in the brain will go, well, that's not in that survival nature.

When we are going through change—like me moving countries—it would disconnect us a lot from not only ourselves and our sense of identity, but creativity ultimately reconnects you back into life.

I feel like to be at our optimum creative self, once we get through the crisis and the stress, is to gently nudge ourselves back in by little micro things. Whether it's “I'm just going to have the rhythm of writing one sentence a day.” As we do that, those little baby steps build momentum and allow us to come back in.

Creativity is a life force. It's not about production, it's actually how we get to any unique contribution we're going to bring to the world. As we start to nudge ourselves back in, there's healing in that and there's joy in that.

Then momentum comes. I know momentum comes from those little steps, rather than the overwhelming “I've got to write a novel this week” mindset. It's not going to happen, most of the time, when we are nudging our way back in. Little baby steps, kindness with ourselves.

Staying connected to yourself through change or through crisis is one of the kindest things we can offer ourselves, and allowing ourselves to come into that rhythm—like that musical song of coming back in with maybe one line of the song instead of the entire masterpiece, which hopefully it will be one day.

Jo: I was also thinking of the dancing world again, and one thing that is very different with writers is that so much of what we do is alone. In a lot of the performance art space, there's a lot more collaboration and groups of people creating things together.

Is that something you've kept hold of, this kind of collaborative energy?

How do you think we can bring that collaborative energy more into writing?

Lara: Writing is very much alone. Obviously some people, depending on the project, will write in groups, but generally speaking, it's alone.

For me, what that looks like is going out. I do this, and I know for some writers this is like, I don't want to go and talk to people. There are a lot of introverts in writing, as you are aware.

I do go to creative mixers. I do get out there. I'm planning right now my book launch with a local bookstore, one in Australia and one here in America.

Those things are scary, but I know that it matters to say I'm not in this alone. I want to bring my friends in. I want to have others part of this journey. I want to say, hey, I did this. And of course, I want to sell books. That's important too.

It's so easy to hide, because it's scary to get out there and be with others. Yet I know that after a creative mixer or a meetup with all different artists, no matter their discipline, I feel very energised by that. Writers will come, dancers will come, filmmakers will come. It's that creative force that really energises my work.

Of course, you can always meet with other writers. There's one person I know that runs this thing where all they do is they all get on Zoom together and they all write. Their audio's off, but they're just writing. It's just the feeling of, we're all writing but we're doing it together.

It's a discipline for them, but because there's a room of creatives all on Zoom, they're like, I'm here, I've showed up, there's others. There's a sense of accountability. I think that's beautiful. I personally don't want to work that way, but some people do, and I think that's gorgeous too.

Jo: Whatever sustains you. I think one of the important things is to realise you are not alone. I get really confused when people say this now.

They're like, “Writing's such a lonely life, how do you manage?” I'm like, it is so not lonely.

Lara: Yes.

Jo: I'm sure you do too. Especially as a podcaster, a lot of people want to have conversations. We are having a conversation today, so that fulfils my conversation quota for the day.

Lara: Exactly. Real human connection. It matters.

Jo: Exactly. So maybe there's a tip for people. I'm an introvert, so this actually does fulfil it. It's still one-on-one, it's still you and me one-on-one, which is good for introverts. But it's going out to a lot more people at some point who will listen in to our conversation.

There are some ways to do this. It's really interesting hearing your thoughts.

Tell people where they can find you and your books and your podcast online.

Lara: The book is called Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World, and it's everywhere. The easiest thing to do would be to visit my website, LaraBiancaPilcher.com/book, and you'll find all the links there.

My podcast is called Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist, and it's on all the podcast platforms. I do short coaching for artists on a lot of the things we've been talking about today.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Lara. That was great.

Lara: Thank you.

The post Audacious Artistry: Reclaiming Your Creative Identity And Thriving In A Saturated World With Lara Bianca Pilcher first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you juggle multiple book projects, a university teaching role, Kickstarter campaigns, and rock albums—all without burning out? What does it take to build a writing career that spans decades, through industry upheavals and personal setbacks? Kevin J. Anderson shares hard-won lessons from his 40+ year career writing over 190 books.

In the intro, Draft2Digital partners with Bookshop.org for ebooks; Spotify announces PageMatch and print partnership with Bookshop.org; Eleven Audiobooks; Indie author non-fiction books Kickstarter; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor and rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Managing multiple projects at different stages to maximise productivity without burning out
• Building financial buffers and multiple income streams for a sustainable long-term career
• Adapting when life disrupts your creative process, from illness to injury
• Lessons learned from transitioning between traditional publishing, indie, and Kickstarter
• Why realistic expectations and continuously reinventing yourself are essential for longevity
• The hands-on publishing master's program at Western Colorado University

You can find Kevin at WordFire.com and buy his books direct at WordFireShop.com.

Transcript of Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

Jo: Kevin J. Anderson is the multi award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages.

He's also the Director of Publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor, a rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show.

Welcome back to the show, Kevin.

Kevin: Well, thanks, Joanna. I always love being on the show.

Jo: And we're probably on like 200 books and like 50 million copies in print. I mean, how hard is it to keep up with all that?

Kevin: Well, it was one of those where we actually did have to do a list because my wife was like, we really should know the exact number. And I said, well, who can keep track because that one went out of print and that's an omnibus. So does it count as something else?

Well, she counted them. But that was a while ago and I didn't keep track, so…

Jo: Right.

Kevin: I'm busy and I like to write. That's how I've had a long-term career. It's because I don't hate what I'm doing. I've got the best job in the world. I love it.

Jo: So that is where I wanted to start. You've been on the show multiple times. People can go back and have a listen to some of the other things we've talked about. I did want to talk to you today about managing multiple priorities.

You are a director of publishing at Western Colorado University. I am currently doing a full-time master's degree as well as writing a novel, doing this podcast, my Patreon, all the admin of running a business, and I feel like I'm busy.

Then I look at what you do and I'm like, this is crazy. People listening are also busy. We're all busy, right. But I feel like it can't just be writing and one job—you do so much.

So how do you manage your time, juggle priorities, your calendar, and all that?

Kevin: I do it brilliantly. Is that the answer you want? I do it brilliantly.

It is all different things. If I were just working on one project at a time, like, okay, I'm going to start a new novel today and I've got nothing else on my plate. Well, that would take me however long to do the research and the plot.

I'm a full-on plotter outliner, so it would take me all the while to do—say it's a medieval fantasy set during the Crusades. Well, then I'd have to spend months reading about the Crusades and researching them and maybe doing some travel.

Then get to the point where I know the characters enough that I can outline the book and then I start writing the book, and then I start editing the book, which is a part that I hate. I love doing the writing, I hate doing the editing. Then you edit a whole bunch.

To me, there are parts of that that are like going to the dentist—I don't like it—and other parts of it are fun.

So by having numerous different projects at different stages, all of which require different skill sets or different levels of intensity—

I can be constantly switching from one thing to another and basically be working at a hundred percent capacity on everything all the time.

And I love doing this. So I'll be maybe writing a presentation, which is what I was doing before we got on this call this morning, because I'm giving a new keynote presentation at Superstars, which is in a couple of weeks.

That's another thing that was on our list—I helped run Superstars. I founded that 15 years ago and it's been going on. So I'll be giving that talk.

Then we just started classes for my publishing grad students last week. So I'm running those classes, which meant I had to write all of the classes before they started, and I did that.

I've got a Kickstarter that will launch in about a month. I'm getting the cover art for that new book and I've got to write up the Kickstarter campaign. And I have to write the book. I like to have the book at least drafted before I run a Kickstarter for it. So I'm working on that.

A Kickstarter pre-launch page should be up a month before the Kickstarter launches, and the Kickstarter has to launch in early March, so that means early February I have to get the pre-launch page up. So there's all these dominoes. One thing has to go before the next thing can go.

During the semester break between fall semester—we had about a month off—I had a book for Blackstone Publishing and Weird Tales Presents that I had to write, and I had plotted it and I thought if I don't get this written during the break, I'm going to get distracted and I won't finish it.

So I just buckled down and I wrote the 80,000-word book during the month of break. This is like Little House on the Prairie with dinosaurs. It's an Amish community that wants to go to simpler times. So they go back to the Pleistocene era where they're setting up farms and the brontosaurus gets into the cornfield all the time.

Jo: That sounds like a lot of fun.

Kevin: That's fun. So with the grad students that I have every week, we do all kinds of lectures.

Just to reassure people, I am not at all an academic. I could not stand my English classes where you had to write papers analysing this and that. My grad program is all hands-on, pragmatic. You actually learn how to be a publisher when you go through it.

You learn how to design covers, you learn how to lay things out, you learn how to edit, you learn how to do fonts.

One of the things that I do among the lectures every week or every other week, I just give them something that I call the real world updates. Like, okay, this is the stuff that I, Kevin, am working on in my real world career because the academic career isn't like the real world.

So I just go listing about, oh, I designed these covers this week, and I wrote the draft of this dinosaur homestead book, and then I did two comic scripts, and then I had to edit two comic scripts.

We just released my third rock album that's based on my fantasy trilogy. And I have to write a keynote speech for Superstars. And I was on Joanna Penn's podcast. And here's what I'm doing.

Sometimes it's a little scary because I read it and I go, holy crap, I did a lot of stuff this week.

Jo: So I manage everything on Google Calendar. Do you have systems for managing all this? Because you also have external publishers, you have actual dates when things actually have to happen. Do you manage that yourself or does Rebecca, your wife and business partner, do that?

How do you manage your calendar?

Kevin: Well, Rebecca does most of the business stuff, like right now we have to do a bunch of taxes stuff because it's the new year and things. She does that and I do the social interaction and the creating and the writing and stuff.

My assistant Marie Whittaker, she's a big project management person and she's got all these apps on how to do project managing and all these sorts of things. She tried to teach me how to use these apps, but it takes so much time and organisation to fill the damn things out.

So it's all in my head. I just sort of know what I have to do. I just put it together and work on it and just sort of know this thing happens next and this thing happens next.

I guess one of the ways is when I was in college, I put myself through the university by being a waiter and a bartender.

As a waiter and a bartender, you have to juggle a million different things at once. This guy wants a beer and that lady wants a martini, and that person needs to pay, and this person's dinner is up on the hot shelf so you've got to deliver it before it gets cold.

It's like I learned how to do millions of things and keep them all organised, and that's the way it worked. And I've kept that as a skill all the way through and it has done me good, I think.

Jo: I think that there is a difference between people's brains, right? So I'm pretty chaotic in terms of my creative process. I'm not a plotter like you. I'm pretty chaotic, basically. But I come across—

Kevin: I've met you. Yes.

Jo: I know. But I'm also extremely organised and I plan everything. That's part of, I think, being an introvert and part of dealing with the anxiety of the world is having a plan or a schedule.

So I think the first thing to say to people listening is they don't have to be like you, and they don't have to be like me. It's kind of a personal thing. I guess one thing that goes beyond both of us is, earlier you said you basically work at a hundred percent capacity.

So let's say there's somebody listening and they're like, well, I'm at a hundred percent capacity too, and it might be kids, it might be a day job, as well as writing and all that. And then something happens, right? You mentioned the real world. I seem to remember that you broke your leg or something.

Kevin: Yes.

Jo: And the world comes crashing down through all your plans, whether they're written or in your head.

So how do you deal with a buffer of something happening, or you're sick, or Rebecca's sick, or the cat needs to go to the vet?

Real life—how do you deal with that?

Kevin: Well, that really does cause problems. We had, in fact, just recently—so I'm always working at, well, let's be realistic, like 95% of Kevin capacity.

Well, my wife, who does some of the stuff here around the house and she does the business things, she just went through 15 days of the worst crippling migraine string that she's had in 30 years.

So she was curled up in a foetal position on the bed for 15 days and she couldn't do any of her normal things. I mean, even unloading the dishwasher and stuff like that.

So if I'm at 95% capacity and suddenly I have to pick up an extra 50%, that causes real problems. So I drink lots of coffee, and I get less sleep, and you try to bring in some help.

I mean, we have Rebecca's assistant and the assistant has a 20-year-old daughter who came in to help us do some of the dishes and laundry and housework stuff.

You mentioned before, it was a year ago. I always go out hiking and mountain climbing and that's where I write. I dictate. I have a digital recorder that I go off of, and that's how I'm so productive.

I go out, I walk in the forest and I come home with 5,000 words done in a couple of hours, and I always do that. That's how I write.

Well, I was out on a mountain and I fell off the mountain and I broke my ankle and had to limp a mile back to my car. So that sort of put a damper on me hiking.

I had a book that I had to write and I couldn't go walking while I was dictating it. It has been a very long time since I had to sit at a keyboard and create chapters that way.

Jo: Mm-hmm.

Kevin: And my brain doesn't really work like that. It works in an audio—I speak this stuff instead.

So I ended up training myself because I had a big boot on my foot. I would sit on the back porch and I would look out at the mountains here in Colorado and I would put my foot up on another chair and I'd sit in the lawn chair and I'd kind of close my eyes and I would dictate my chapters that way.

It was not as effective, but it was plan B. So that's how I got it done.

I did want to mention something. When I'm telling the students this every week—this is what I did and here's the million different things—one of the students just yesterday made a comment that she summarised what I'm doing and it kind of crystallised things for me.

She said that to get so much done requires, and I'm quoting now, “a balance of planning, sprinting, and being flexible, while also making incremental forward progress to keep everything moving together.”

So there's short-term projects like fires and emergencies that have to be done. You've got to keep moving forward on the novel, which is a long-term project, but that short story is due in a week. So I've got to spend some time doing that one.

Like I said, this Kickstarter's coming up, so I have to put in the order for the cover art, because the cover art needs to be done so I can put it on the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter.

It is a balance of the long-term projects and the short-term projects. And I'm a workaholic, I guess, and you are too.

Jo: Yes.

Kevin: You totally are. Yes.

Jo: I get that you're a workaholic, but as you said before, you enjoy it too. So you enjoy doing all these things. It's just sometimes life just gets in the way, as you said.

One of the other things that I think is interesting—so sometimes physical stuff gets in the way, but in your many decades now of the successful author business, there's also the business side.

You've had massive success with some of your books, and I'm sure that some of them have just kind of shrivelled into nothing. There have been good years and bad years.

So how do we, as people who want a long-term career, think about making sure we have a buffer in the business for bad years and then making the most of good years?

Kevin: Well, that's one thing—to realise that if you're having a great year, you might not always have a great year. That's kind of like the rockstar mentality—I've got a big hit now, so I'm always going to have a big hit. So I buy mansions and jets, and then of course the next album flops.

So when you do have a good year, you plan for the long term. You set money aside. You build up plan B and you do other things.

I have long been a big advocate for making sure that you have multiple income streams. You don't just write romantic epic fantasies and that's all you do. That might be what makes your money now, but the reading taste could change next year. They might want something entirely different.

So while one thing is really riding high, make sure that you're planting a bunch of other stuff, because that might be the thing that goes really, really well the next year.

I made my big stuff back in the early nineties—that was when I started writing for Star Wars and X-Files, and that's when I had my New York Times bestselling run. I had 11 New York Times bestsellers in one year, and I was selling like millions of copies.

Now, to be honest, when you have a Star Wars bestseller, George Lucas keeps almost all of that. You don't keep that much of it. But little bits add up when you're selling millions of copies. So it opened a lot of doors for me.

So I kept writing my own books and I built up my own fans who liked the Star Wars books and they read some of my other things. If you were a bestselling trad author, you could keep writing the same kind of book and they would keep throwing big advances at you. It was great.

And then that whole world changed and they stopped paying those big advances, and paperback, mass market paperback books just kind of went away.

A lot of people probably remember that there was a time for almost every movie that came out, every big movie that came out, you could go into the store and buy a paperback book of it—whether it was an Avengers movie or a Star Trek movie or whatever, there was a paperback book.

I did a bunch of those and that was really good work. They would pay me like $15,000 to take the script and turn it into a book, and it was done in three weeks. They don't do that anymore.

I remember I was on a panel at some point, like, what would you tell your younger self? What advice would you give your younger self?

I remember when I was in the nineties, I was turning down all kinds of stuff because I had too many book projects and I was never going to quit writing. I was a bestselling author, so I had it made.

Well, never, ever assume you have it made because the world changes under you. They might not like what you're doing or publishing goes in a completely different direction.

So I always try to keep my radar up and look at new things coming up.

I still write some novels for trad publishers. This dinosaur homestead one is for Blackstone and Weird Tales. They're a trad publisher. I still publish all kinds of stuff as an indie for WordFire Press. I'm reissuing a bunch of my trad books that I got the rights back and now they're getting brand new life as I run Kickstarters.

One of my favourite series is “Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.” It's like the Addams Family meets The Naked Gun. It's very funny. It's a private detective who solves crimes with monsters and mummies and werewolves and things.

I sold the first one to a trad publisher, and actually, they bought three. I said, okay, these are fast, they're fun, they're like 65,000 words. You laugh all the way through it, and you want the next one right away. So let's get these out like every six months, which is like lightning speed for trad publishing.

They just didn't think that was a good idea. They brought them out a year and a half apart. It was impossible to build up momentum that way.

They wanted to drop the series after the third book, and I just begged them—please give it one more chance. So they bought one more book for half as much money and they brought it out again a year and a half later.

And also, it was a trad paperback at $15. And the ebook was—Joanna, can you guess what their ebook was priced at?

Jo: $15.

Kevin: $15. And they said, gee, your ebook sales are disappointing. I said, well, no, duh. I mean, I am jumping around—I'm going like, but you should have brought these out six months apart. You should have had the ebook, like the first one at $4.

Jo: But you're still working with traditional publishers, Kevin?

Kevin: I'm still working with them on some, and I'm a hybrid. There are some projects that I feel are better served as trad books, like the big Dune books and stuff. I want those all over the place and they can cash in on the movie momentum and stuff.

But I got the rights back to the Dan Shamble stuff. The fans kept wanting me to do more, and so I published a couple of story collections and they did fine. But I was making way more money writing Dune books and things.

Then they wanted a new novel. So I went, oh, okay. I did a new novel, which I just published at WordFire. But again, it did okay, but it wasn't great. I thought, well, I better just focus on writing these big ticket things. But I really liked writing Dan Shamble.

Somebody suggested, well, if the fans want it so much, why don't you run a Kickstarter?

I had never run a Kickstarter before, and I kind of had this wrong attitude. I thought Kickstarters were for, “I'm a starving author, please give me money.” And that's not it at all. It's like, hey, if you're a fan, why don't you join the VIP club and you get the books faster than anybody else?

So I ran a Kickstarter for my first Dan Shamble book, and it made three times what the trad publisher was paying me. And I went, oh, I kind of like this model. So I have since done like four other Dan Shamble novels through Kickstarters, made way more money that way.

And we just sold—we can't give any details yet—but we have just sold it. It will be a TV show. There's a European studio that is developing it as a TV show, and I'm writing the pilot and I will be the executive producer.

Jo: Fantastic.

Kevin: So I kept that zombie detective alive because I loved it so much.

Jo: And it's going to be all over the place years later, I guess.

Just in terms of—given I've been in this now, I guess 2008 really was when I got into indie—and over the time I've been doing this, I've seen people rise and then disappear. A lot of people have disappeared. There are reasons, burnout or maybe they were just done.

Kevin: Yes.

Jo: But in terms of the people that you've seen, the characteristics, I guess, of people who don't make it versus people who do make it for years. And we are not saying that everyone should be a writer for decades at all. Some people do just have maybe one or two books.

What do you think are the characteristics of those people who do make it long-term?

Kevin: Well, I think it's realistic expectations.

Like, again, this was trad, but my first book I sold for $4,000, and I thought, well, that's just $4,000, but we're going to sell book club rights, and we're goingn to sell foreign rights, and it's going to be optioned for movies. And the $4,000 will be like, that's just the start.

I was planning out all this extra money coming from it, and it didn't even earn its $4,000 advance back and nothing else happened with it.

Well, it has since, because I've since reissued it myself, pushed it and I made more money that way. But it's a slow burn.

You build your career. You start building your fan base and then your next one will sell maybe better than the first one did. Then you keep writing it, and then you make connections, and then you get more readers and you learn how to expand your stuff better. You've got to prepare for the long haul.

I would suggest that if you publish your very first book on KU, don't quit your day job the next day. Not everybody can or should be a full-time writer.

We here in America need to have something that pays our health insurance. That is one of the big reasons why I am running this graduate program at Western Colorado University—because as a university professor, I get wonderful healthcare.

I'm teaching something that I love, and I'm frankly doing a very good job at it because our graduates—something like 60% of them are now working as writers or publishers or working in the publishing world.

So that's another thing. I guess what I do when I'm working on it is I kind of always say yes to the stuff that's coming in. If an opportunity comes—hey, would you like a graphic novel on this?—and I go, yes, I'd love to do that. Could you write a short story for this anthology? Sure, I'd love to do that.

I always say yes, and I get overloaded sometimes. But I learned my lesson. It was quite a few years ago where I was really busy.

I had all kinds of book deadlines and I was turning down books that they were offering me. Again, this was trad—book contracts that had big advances on them. And anthology editors were asking me.

I was really busy and everybody was nagging me—Kevin, you work too hard. And my wife Rebecca was saying, Kevin, you work too hard.

So I thought, I had it made. I had all these bestsellers, everything was going on. So I thought, alright, I've got a lot of books under contract. I'll just take a sabbatical. I'll say no for a year. I'll just catch up. I'll finish all these things that I've got. I'll just take a breather and finish things.

So for that year, anybody who asked me—hey, do you want to do this book project?—well, I'd love to, but I'm just saying no. And would you do this short story for an anthology? Well, I'd love to, but not right now. Thanks. And I just kind of put them off.

So I had a year where I could catch up and catch my breath and finish the stuff.

And after that, I went, okay, I am back in the game again. Let's start taking these book offers. And nothing. Just crickets. And I went, well, okay. Well, you were always asking before—where are all these book deals that you kept offering me? Oh, we gave them to somebody else.

Jo: This is really difficult though, because on the one hand—well, first of all, it's difficult because I wanted to take a bit of a break. So I'm doing this full-time master's and you are also teaching people in a master's program, right.

So I have had to say no to a lot of things in order to do this course. And I imagine the people on your course would have to do the same thing. There's a lot of rewards, but they're different rewards and it kind of represents almost a midlife pivot for many of us.

So how do we balance that then—the stepping away with what might lead us into something new? I mean, obviously this is a big deal. I presume most of the people on your course, they're older like me. People have to give stuff up to do this kind of thing.

So how do we manage saying yes and saying no?

Kevin: Well, I hate to say this, but you just have to drink more coffee and work harder for that time. Yes, you can say no to some things. My thing was I kind of shut the door and I just said, I'm just going to take a break and I'm going to relax.

I could have pushed my capacity and taken some things so that I wasn't completely off the game board.

One of the things I talk about is to avoid burnout. If you want a long-term career, and if you're working at 120% of your capacity, then you're going to burn out.

I actually want to mention something. Johnny B. Truant just has a new book out called The Artisan Author. I think you've had him on the show, have you?

Jo: Yes, absolutely.

Kevin: He says a whole bunch of the stuff in there that I've been saying for a long time. He's analysing these rapid release authors that are a book every three weeks. And they're writing every three weeks, every four weeks, and that's their business model.

I'm just like, you can't do that for any length of time. I mean, I'm a prolific writer. I can't write that fast. That's a recipe for burnout, I think.

I love everything that I'm doing, and even with this graduate program that I'm teaching, I love teaching it. I mean, I'm talking about subjects that I love, because I love publishing. I love writing. I love cover design. I love marketing. I love setting up your newsletters.

I mean, this isn't like taking an engineering course for me. This is something that I really, really love doing. And quite honestly, it comes across with the students. They're all fired up too because they see how much I love doing it and they love doing it.

One of the projects that they do—we get a grant from Draft2Digital every year for $5,000 so that we do an anthology, an original anthology that we pay professional rates for. So they put out their call for submissions.

This year it was Into the Deep Dark Woods. And we commissioned a couple stories for it, but otherwise it was open to submissions. And because we're paying professional rates, they get a lot of submissions. I have 12 students in the program right now. They got 998 stories in that they had to read.

Jo: Wow.

Kevin: They were broken up into teams so they could go through it, but that's just overwhelming. They had to read, whatever that turns out to be, 50 stories a week that come in.

Then they write the rejections, and then they argue over which ones they're going to accept, and then they send the contracts, and then they edit them. And they really love it.

I guess that's the most important thing about a career—you've got to have an attitude that you love what you're doing.

If you don't love this, please find a more stable career, because this is not something you would recommend for the faint of heart.

Jo: Yes, indeed. I guess one of the other considerations, even if we love it, the industry can shift. Obviously you mentioned the nineties there—things were very different in the nineties in many, many ways. Especially, let's say, pre-internet times, and when trad pub was really the only way forward.

But you mentioned the rapid release, the sort of book every month. Let's say we are now entering a time where AI is bringing positives and negatives in the same way that the internet brought positives and negatives. We're not going to talk about using it, but what is definitely happening is a change.

Industry-wise—for example, people can do a book a day if they want to generate books. That is now possible. There are translations, you know. Our KDP dashboard in America, you have a button now to translate everything into Spanish if you want. You can do another button that makes it an audiobook.

So we are definitely entering a time of challenge, but if you look back over your career, there have been many times of challenge.

So is this time different? Or do you face the same challenges every time things shift?

Kevin: It's always different. I've always had to take a breath and step back and then reinvent myself and come back as something else.

One of the things with a long-term career is you can't have a long-term career being the hot new thing. You can start out that way—like, this is the brand new author and he gets a big boost as the best first novel or something like that—but that doesn't work for 20 years.

I mean, you've got to do something else. If you're the sexy young actress, well, you don't have a 50-year career as the sexy young actress.

One of the ones I'm loving right now is Linda Hamilton, who was the sexy young actress in Terminator, and then a little more mature in the TV show Beauty and the Beast, where she was this huge star.

Then she's just come back now. I think she's in her mid-fifties. She's in Stranger Things and she was in Resident Alien and she's now this tough military lady who's getting parts all over the place. She's reinvented herself.

So I like to say that for my career, I've crashed and burned and resurrected myself. You might as well call me the Doctor because I've just come back in so many different ways.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but—

If you want to stay around, no matter how old of a dog you are, you've got to learn new tricks.

And you've got to keep learning, and you've got to keep trying new things.

I started doing indie publishing probably around the time you did—2009, something like that. I was in one of these great positions where I was a trad author and I had a dozen books that I wrote that were all out of print.

I got the rights back to them because back then they let books go out of print and they gave the rights back without a fight. So I suddenly found myself with like 12 titles that I could just put up. I went, oh, okay, let's try this.

I was kind of blown away that that first novel that they paid me $4,000 for that never even earned it back—well, I just put it up on Kindle and within one year I made more than $4,000. I went, I like this, I've got to figure this out.

That's how I launched WordFire Press. Then I learned how to do everything. I mean, back in those days, you could do a pretty clunky job and people would still buy it. Then I learned how to do it better.

Jo: That time is gone.

Kevin: Yes. I learned how to do it better, and then I learned how to market it. Then I learned how to do print on demand books. Then I learned how to do box sets and different kinds of marketing.

I dove headfirst into my newsletter to build my fan base because I had all the Star Wars stuff and X-Files stuff and later it was the Dune stuff. I had this huge fan base, but I wanted that fan base to read the Kevin Anderson books, the Dan Shamble books and everything.

The only way to get that is if you give them a personal touch to say, hey buddy, if you liked that one, try this one. And the way to do that is you have to have access to them.

So I started doing social media stuff before most people were doing social media stuff. I killed it on MySpace. I can tell you that.

I had a newsletter that we literally printed on paper and we stuck mailing labels on. It went out to 1,200 people that we put in the mailbox.

Jo: Now you're doing that again with Kickstarter, I guess. But I guess for people listening, what are you learning now?

How are you reinventing yourself now in this new phase we are entering?

Kevin: Well, I guess the new thing that I'm doing now is expanding my Kickstarters into more.

So last year, the biggest Kickstarter that I've ever had, I ran last year. It was this epic fantasy trilogy that I had trad published and I got the rights back.

They had only published it in trade paperback. So, yes, I reissued the books in nice new hardcovers, but I also upped the game to do these fancy bespoke editions with leather embossed covers and end papers and tipped in ribbons and slip cases and all kinds of stuff and building that.

I did three rock albums as companions to it, and just building that kind of fan base that will support that.

Then I started a Patreon last year, which isn't as big as yours. I wish my Patreon would get bigger, but I'm pushing it and I'm still working on that.

So it's trying new things. Because if I had really devoted myself and continued to keep my MySpace page up to date, I would be wasting my time. You have to figure out new things.

Part of me is disappointed because I really liked in the nineties where they just kept throwing book contracts at me with big advances. And I wrote the book and sent it in and they did all the work. But that went away and I didn't want to go away. So I had to learn how to do it different.

After a good extended career, one of the things you do is you pay it forward. I mentor a lot of writers and that evolved into me creating this master's program in publishing.

I can gush about it because to my knowledge, it is the only master's degree that really focuses on indie publishing and new model publishing instead of just teaching you how to get a job as an assistant editor in Manhattan for one of the Big Five publishers.

Jo: It's certainly a lot more practical than my master's in death.

Kevin: Well, that's an acquired taste, I think.

When they hired me to do this—and as I said earlier, I'm not an academic—and I said if I'm going to teach this, it's a one year program. They get done with it in one year. It's all online except for one week in person in the summer.

They're going to learn how to do things. They're not going to get esoteric, analysing this poem for something. When they graduate from this program, they walk out with this anthology that they edited, that their name is on.

The other project that they do is they reissue a really fancy, fine edition of some classic work, whether it's H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or something. They choose a book that they want to bring back and they do it all from start to finish.

They come out of it—rather than just theoretical learning—they know how to do things.

Surprise, I've been around in the business a long time, so I know everybody who works in the business. So the heads of publishing houses and the head of Draft2Digital or Audible—and we've got Blackstone Audio coming on in a couple weeks. We've got the head of Kickstarter coming on as guest speakers.

I have all kinds of guest speakers. Joanna, I think you're coming on—

Jo: I'm coming on as well, I think.

Kevin: You're coming on as a guest speaker. It's just like they really get plugged in. I'm in my seventh cohort now and I just love doing it. The students love it and we've got a pretty high success rate.

So there's your plug. We are open for applications now.

It starts in July. And my own website is WordFire.com, and there's a section on there on the graduate program if anybody wants to take a look at it.

Again, not everybody needs to have a master's degree to be an indie publisher, but there is something to be said for having all of this stuff put into an organised fashion so that you learn how to do all the things.

It also gives you a resource and a support system so that they come out of it knowing a whole lot of people.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kevin. That was great.

Kevin: Thanks. It's a great show.

The post Managing Multiple Projects And The Art of the Long-Term Author Career with Kevin J. Anderson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can indie authors raise their game through academic-style rigour? How might AI tools fit into a thoughtful research process without replacing the joy of discovery? Melissa Addey explores the intersection of scholarly discipline, creative writing, and the practical realities of building an author career.

In the intro, mystery and thriller tropes [Wish I'd Known Then]; The differences between trad and indie in 2026 [Productive Indie Fiction Writer]; Five phases of an author business [Becca Syme]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn;

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Making the leap from a corporate career to full-time writing with a young family
• Why Melissa pursued a PhD in creative writing and how it fuelled her author business
• What indie authors can learn from academic rigour when researching historical fiction
• The problems with academic publishing—pricing, accessibility, and creative restrictions
• Organising research notes, avoiding accidental plagiarism, and knowing when to stop researching
• Using AI tools effectively as part of the research process without losing your unique voice

You can find Melissa at MelissaAddey.com.

Transcript of the interview with Melissa Addey

JOANNA: Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Welcome back to the show, Melissa.

MELISSA: Hello. Thank you for having me.

JOANNA: It's great to have you back. You were on almost a decade ago, in December 2016, talking about merchandising for authors. That is really a long time ago.

So tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.

MELISSA: I had a regular job in business and I was writing on the side. I did a couple of writing courses, and then I started trying to get published, and that took seven years of jumping through hoops. There didn't seem to be much progress.

At some point, I very nearly had a small publisher, but we clashed over the cover because there was a really quite hideous suggestion that was not going to work. I think by that point I was really tired of jumping through hoops, really trying to play the game traditional publishing-wise.

I just went, you know what? I've had enough now. I've done everything that was asked of me and it's still not working. I'll just go my own way.

I think at the time that would've been 2015-ish. Suddenly, self-publishing was around more. I could see people and hear people talking about it, and I thought, okay, let's read everything there is to know about this.

I had a little baby at the time and I would literally print off stuff during the day to read—probably loads of your stuff—and read it at two o'clock in the morning breastfeeding babies. Then I'd go, okay, I think I understand that bit now, I'll understand the next bit, and so on.

So I got into self-publishing and I really, really enjoyed it. I've been doing it ever since. I'm now up to 20 books in the last 10 or 11 years. As you say, I did the creative writing PhD along the way, working with ALLi and doing workshops for others—mixing and matching lots of different things. I really enjoy it.

JOANNA: You mentioned you had a job before in business.

Are you full-time in all these roles that you're doing now, or do you still have that job?

MELISSA: No, I'm full-time now. I only do writing-related things. I left that in 2015, so I took a jump. I was on maternity leave and I started applying for jobs to go back to, and I suddenly felt like, oh, I really don't want to. I want to do the writing.

I thought, I've got about one year's worth of savings. I could try and do the jump. I remember saying to my husband, “Do you think it would be possible if I tried to do the jump? Would that be okay?”

There was this very long pause while he thought about it. But the longer the pause went on, the more I was thinking, ooh, he didn't say no, that is out of the question, financially we can't do that. I thought, ooh, it's going to work. So I did the jump.

JOANNA: That's great. I did something similar and took a massive pay cut and downsized and everything back in the day. Having a supportive partner is so important.

The other thing I did—and I wonder if you did too—I said to Jonathan, my husband, if within a year this is not going in a positive direction, then I'll get another job.

How long did you think you would leave it before you just gave up? And how did that go?

Because that beginning is so difficult, especially with a new baby.

MELISSA: I thought, well, I'm at home anyway, so I do have more time than if I was in a full-time job. The baby sleeps sometimes—if you're lucky—so there are little gaps where you could really get into it.

I had a year of savings/maternity pay going on, so I thought I've got a year. And the funny thing that happened was within a few months, I went back to my husband and I was like, I don't understand.

I said, all these doors are opening—they weren't massive, but they were doors opening. I said, but I've wanted to be a writer for a long time and none of these doors have opened before.

He said, “Well, it's because you really committed. It's because you jumped. And when you jump, sometimes the universe is on board and goes, yes, all right then, and opens some doors for you.”

It really felt like that. Even little things—like Mslexia (a writing magazine) gave me a little slot to do an online writer-in-residence thing. Just little doors opened that felt like you were getting a nod, like, yes, come on then, try.

Then the PhD was part of that. I applied to do that and it came with a studentship, which meant I had three years of funding coming in. That was one of the biggest creative gifts that's ever been given to me—three years of knowing you've got enough money coming in that you can just try and make it work.

By the time that finished, the royalties had taken over from the studentship. That was such a gift.

JOANNA: A couple of things there. I've got to ask about that funding. You're saying it was a gift, but that money didn't just magically appear.

You worked really hard to get that funding, I presume.

MELISSA: I did, yes. You do have to do the work for it, just to be clear.

My sister had done a PhD in an entirely different subject. She said, “You should do a PhD in creative writing.” I said, “That'd be ridiculous. Nobody is going to fund that. Who's going to fund that?” She said, “Oh, they might. Try.”

So I tried, and the deadline was something stupid like two weeks away. I tried and I got shortlisted, but I didn't get it. I thought, ah, but I got shortlisted with only two weeks to try. I'll try again next year then.

So then I tried again the next year and that's when I got it. It does take work. You have to put in quite a lot of effort to make your case. But it's a very joyful thing if you get one.

JOANNA: So let's go to the bigger question: why do a PhD in creative writing?

Let's be clear to everyone—you don't need even a bachelor's degree to be a successful author. Stephen King is a great example of someone who isn't particularly educated in terms of degrees. He talks about writing his first book while working at a laundry. You can be very successful with no formal education.

So why did you want to do a PhD? What drew you to academic research?

MELISSA: Absolutely. I would briefly say, I often meet people who feel they must do a qualification before they're allowed to write. I say, do it if you'd like to, but you don't have to. You could just practise the writing. I fully agree with that.

It was a combination of things. I do actually like studying. I do actually enjoy the research—that's why I do historical research. I like that kind of work. So that's one element.

Another element was the funding. I thought, if I get that funding, I've got three years to build up a back catalogue of books, to build up the writing. It will give me more time. So that was a very practical financial issue.

Also, children. My children were very little. I had a three-year-old and a baby, and everybody went, “Are you insane? Doing a PhD with a three-year-old and a baby?” But the thing about three-year-olds and babies is they're quite intellectually boring.

Emotionally, very engaging—on a number of levels, good, bad, whatever—but they're not very intellectually stimulating. You're at home all day with two small children who think that hide and seek is the highlight of intellectual difficulty because they've hidden behind the curtains and they're shuffling and giggling.

I felt I needed something else. I needed something for me that would be interesting.

I've always enjoyed passing on knowledge. I've always enjoyed teaching people, workshops, in whatever field I was in. I thought, if I want to do that for writing at some point, it will sound more important if I've done a PhD.

Not that you need that to explain how to do writing to someone if you do a lot of writing. But there were all these different elements that came together.

JOANNA: So to summarise: you enjoy the research, it's an intellectual challenge, you've got the funding, and there is something around authority. In terms of a PhD—and just for listeners, I'm doing a master's at the moment in death, religion, and culture.

MELISSA: Your topic sounds fascinating.

JOANNA: It is interesting because, same as you, I enjoy research. Both of us love research as part of our fiction process and our nonfiction.

I'm also enjoying the intellectual challenge, and I've also considered this idea of authority in an age of AI when it is increasingly easy to generate books—let's just say it, it's easy to generate books.

So I was like, well, how do I look at this in a more authoritative way? I wanted to talk to you because even just a few months back into it—and I haven't done an academic qualification for like two decades—it struck me that the academic rigour is so different.

What lessons can indie authors learn from this kind of academic rigour?

What do you think of in terms of the rigour and what can we learn?

MELISSA: I think there are a number of things. First of all, really making sure that you are going to the quality sources for things—the original sources, the high-quality versions of things.

Not secondhand, but going back to those primary sources. Not “somebody said that somebody said something.” Well, let's go back to the original. Have a look at that, because you get a lot from that.

I think you immerse yourself more deeply. Someone can tell you, “This is how they spoke in the 1800s.” If you go and read something that was written in the 1800s, you get a better sense of that than just reading a dictionary of slang that's been collated for you by somebody else. So I think that immerses you more deeply.

Really sticking with that till you've found interesting things that spark creativity in you. I've seen people say, “I used to do all the historical research. Nowadays I just fact-check. I write what I want to write and I fact-check.”

I think, well, that's okay, but you won't find the weird little things. I tend to call it “the footnotes of history.” You won't find the weird little things that really make something come alive, that really make a time and a place come alive.

I've got a scene in one of my Regency romances—which actually I think are less full of historical emphasis than some of my other work—where a man gives a woman a gift. It's supposed to be a romantic gift and maybe slightly sensual.

He could have given her a fan and I could have fact-checked and gone, “Are there fans? Yes, there are fans. Do they have pretty romantic poems on them? Yes, they do. Okay, that'll do.”

Actually, if you go round and do more research than that, you discover they had things like ribbons that held up your stockings, on which they wrote quite smutty things in embroidery. That's a much more sexy and interesting gift to give in that scene. But you don't find that unless you go doing a bit of research.

If I just fact-check, I'm not going to find that because it would never have occurred to me to fact-check it in the first place.

JOANNA: I totally agree with you. One of the wonderful things about research—and I also like going to places—is you might be somewhere and see something that gives you an idea you never, ever would have found in a book or any other way.

I used to call it “the serendipity of the stacks” in the physical library.

You go looking for a particular book and then you're in that part of the shelf and you find several other books that you never would have looked for. I think it's encouraging people, as you're saying, but I also think you have to love it.

MELISSA: Yes. I think some people find it a bit of a grind, or they're frightened by it and they think, “Have I done enough?”

JOANNA: Mm-hmm.

MELISSA: I get asked that a lot when I talk about writing historical fiction. People go, “But when do I stop? How do I know it's enough? How do I know there wasn't another book that would have been the book? Everyone will go, ‘Oh, how did you not read such-and-such?'”

I always say there are two ways of finding out when you can stop. One is when you get to the bibliographies, you look through and you go, “Yep, read that, read that, read that. Nah, I know that one's not really what I wanted.” You're familiar with those bibliographies in a way that at the beginning you're not.

At the beginning, every single bibliography, you haven't read any of it. So that's quite a good way of knowing when to stop.

The other way is: can you write ordinary, everyday life? I don't start writing a book till I can write everyday life in that historical era without notes. I will obviously have notes if I'm doing a wedding or a funeral or a really specific battle or something.

Everyday life, I need to be able to just write that out of my own head. You need to be confident enough to do that.

JOANNA: One of the other problems I've heard from academics—people who've really come out of academia and want to write something more pop, even if it's pop nonfiction or fiction—they're also really struggling. It is a different game, isn't it?

For people who might be immersed in academia, how can they release themselves into doing something like self-publishing?

Because there's still a lot of stigma within academia.

MELISSA: You're going to get me on the academic publishing rant now. I think academic publishing is horrendous. Academics are very badly treated. I know quite a lot of academics and they have to do all the work. Nobody's helping them with indexing or anything like that.

The publisher will say things like, “Well, could you just cut 10,000 words out of that?” Just because of size. Out of somebody's argument that they're making over a whole work. No consideration for that.

The royalties are basically zilch. I've seen people's royalty statements come in, and the way they price the books is insane. They'll price a book at 70 pounds. I actually want that book for my research and I'm hesitating because I can't be buying all of them at that price. That's ridiculous.

I've got people who are friends or family who bring out a book, and I'm like, well, I would gladly buy your book and read it. It's priced crazy. It's priced only for institutions.

I think actually, if academia was written a little more clearly and open to the lay person—which if you are good at your work, you should be able to do—and priced a bit more in line with other books, that would maybe open up people to reading more academia.

You wouldn't have to make it “pop” as you say. I quite like pop nonfiction. But I don't think there would have to be such a gulf between those two. I think you could make academic work more readable generally.

I read someone's thesis recently and they'd made a point at the beginning of saying—I can't remember who it was—that so-and-so academic's point of view was that it should be readable and they should be writing accordingly.

I thought, wow, I really admired her for doing that. Next time I'm doing something like that, I should be putting that at the front as well. But the fact that she had to explain that at the beginning…

It wasn't like words of one syllable throughout the whole thing. I thought it was a very quality piece of writing, but it was perfectly readable to someone who didn't know about the topic.

JOANNA: I might have to get that name from you because I've got an essay on the Philosophy of Death. And as you can imagine, there's a heck of a lot of big words.

MELISSA: I know. I've done a PhD, but I still used to tense up a little bit thinking they're going to pounce on me. They're going to say that I didn't talk academic enough, I didn't sound fancy enough. That's not what it should be about, really.

In a way, you are locking people out of knowledge, and given that most academics are paid for by public funds, that knowledge really ought to be a little more publicly accessible.

JOANNA: I agree on the book price. I'm also buying books for my course that aren't in the library. Some of them might be 70 pounds for the ebook, let alone the print book. What that means is that I end up looking for secondhand books, when of course the money doesn't go to the author or the publisher.

The other thing that happens is it encourages piracy. There are people who openly talk about using pirate sites for academic works because it's just too expensive. If I'm buying 20 books for my home library, I can't be spending that kind of money. Why is it so bad?

Why is it not being reinvented, especially as we have done with indie authors for the wider genres? Has this at all moved into academia?

MELISSA: I think within academia there's a fear because there's the peer reviews and it must be proven to be absolutely correct and agreed upon by everybody. I get that. You don't want some complete rubbish in there.

I do think there's space to come up with a different system where you could say, “So-and-so is professor of whatever at such-and-such a university. I imagine what they have to say might be interesting and well-researched.” You could have some sort of kite mark. You could have something that then allows for self-publishing to take over a bit.

I do just think their system is really, really poor. They get really reined in on what they're allowed to write about.

Alison Baverstock, who is a professor now at Kingston University and does stuff about publishing and master's programmes, started writing about self-publishing because she thought it was really interesting. This was way back.

JOANNA: I remember. I did one of those surveys.

MELISSA: She got told in no uncertain terms, “Do not write about this. You will ruin your career.” She stuck with it. She was right to stick with it. But she was told by senior academics, “Do not write about self-publishing. You're just embarrassing yourself. It's just vanity press.”

They weren't even being allowed to write about really quite interesting phenomena that were happening. Just from a historical point of view, that was a really interesting rise of self-publishing, and she was being told not to write about it.

JOANNA: It's funny, that delay as well. I'm looking to maybe do my thesis on how AI is impacting death and the death industry. And yet it's such a fast-moving thing.

MELISSA: Yes.

JOANNA: Sometimes it can take a year, two years or more to get a paper through the process.

MELISSA: Oh, yes. It moves really, really fast. Like you say, by the time it comes out, people are going, “Huh? That's really old.” And you'll be going, “No, it's literally two years.” But yes, very, very slow.

JOANNA: Let's come back to how we can help other people who might not want to be doing academic-level stuff.

One of the things I've found is organising notes, sources, references. How do you manage that? Any tips for people?

They might not need to do footnotes for their historical novel, but they might want to organise their research. What are your thoughts?

MELISSA: I used to do great big enormous box files and print vast quantities of stuff. Each box file would be labelled according to servant life, or food, or seasons, or whatever.

I've tried various different things. I'm moving more and more now towards a combination of books on the shelf, which I do like, and papers and other materials that are stored on my computer.

They'll be classified according to different parts of daily life, essentially. Because when you write historical fiction, you have to basically build the whole world again for that era. You have to have everything that happens in daily life, everything that happens on special events, all of those things.

So I'll have it organised by those sorts of topics. I'll read it and go through it until I'm comfortable with daily life. Then special things—I'll have special notes on that that can talk me through how you run a funeral or a wedding or whatever, because that's quite complicated to just remember in your head.

MELISSA: I always do historical notes at the end. They really matter to me. When I read historical fiction, I really like to read that from the author.

I'll say, “Right, these things are true”—especially things that I think people will go, “She made that up. That is not true.” I'll go, “No, no, these are true.” These other things I've fudged a little, or I've moved the timeline a bit to make the story work better.

I try to be fairly clear about what I did to make it into a story, but also what is accurate, because I want people to get excited about that timeline.

Occasionally if there's been a book that was really important, I'll mention it in there because I don't want to have a proper bibliography, but I do want to highlight certain books. If you got excited by this novel, you could go off and read that book and it would take you into the nonfiction side of it.

JOANNA: I'm similar with my author's notes. I've just done the author's note for Bones of the Deep, which has some merfolk in it, and I've got a book on Merpeople. It's awesome. It's just a brilliant book. I'm like, this has to go in.

You could question whether that is really nonfiction or something else. But I think that's really important.

Just to be more practical: when you're actually writing, what tools do you use?

I use Scrivener and I keep all my research there. I'm using EndNote for academic stuff.

MELISSA: I've always just stuck to Word. I did get Scrivener and played with it for a while, but I felt like I've already got a way of doing it, so I'll just carry on with that. So I mostly just do Word.

I have a lot of notes, so I'll have notepads that have got my notes on specific things, and they'll have page numbers that go back to specific books in case I need to go and double-check that again.

You mentioned citations, and that's fascinating to me. Do you know the story about Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner? It won the Pulitzer. It's a novel, but he used 10% of that novel—and it's a fairly slim novel—10% of it is actually letters written by somebody else, written by a woman before his time.

He includes those and works with them in the story. He mentioned her very briefly, like, “Oh, and thanks to the relatives of so-and-so.” Very brief. He got accused of plagiarism for using that much of it by another part of her family who hadn't agreed to it.

I've always thought it's because he didn't give enough credence to her. He didn't give her enough importance. If he'd said, “This was the woman who wrote this stuff. It's fascinating. I loved it. I wanted to creatively respond and engage with it”—I think that wouldn't have happened at all.

That's why I think it's quite important when there are really big, important elements that you're using to acknowledge those.

JOANNA: That's part of the academic rigour too—

You can barely have a few of your own thoughts without referring to somebody else's work and crediting them.

What's so interesting to me in the research process is, okay, I think this, but in order to say it, I'm going to have to go find someone else who thought this first and wrote a paper on it.

MELISSA: I think you would love a PhD. When you've done a master's, go and do a PhD as well. Because it was the first time in academia that I genuinely felt I was allowed my own thoughts and to invent stuff of my own.

I could go, “Oh no, I've invented this theory and it's this.” I didn't have to constantly go, “As somebody else said, as somebody else said.” I was like, no, no. This is me. I said this thing.

I wasn't allowed to in my master's, and I found it annoying. I remember thinking, but I'm trying to have original thoughts here. I'm trying to bring something new to it.

In a PhD, you're allowed to do that because you're supposed to be contributing to knowledge. You're supposed to be bringing a new thing into the world. That was a glorious thing to finally be allowed to do.

JOANNA: I must say I couldn't help myself with that. I've definitely put my own opinion. But a part of why I mention it is the academic rigour—it's actually quite good practice to see who else has had these thoughts before.

Speed is one of the biggest issues in the indie author community. Some of the stuff you were talking about—finding original sources, going to primary sources, the top-quality stuff, finding the weird little things—all of that takes more time than, for example, just running a deep research report on Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT.

You can do both. You can use that as a starting point, which I definitely do. But then the point is to go back and read the original stuff. On this timeframe—

Why do you think research is worth doing? It's important for academic reasons, but personal growth as well.

MELISSA: Yes, I think there's a joy to be had in the research. When I go and stand in a location, by that point I'm not measuring things and taking photos—I've done all of that online. I'm literally standing there feeling what it is to be there.

What does it smell like? What does it feel like? Does it feel very enclosed or very open? Is it a peaceful place or a horrible place?

That sensory research becomes very important. All of the book research before that should lead you into the sensory research, which is then also a joy to do. There's great pleasure in it.

As you say, it slows things down. What I tend to say to people if they want to speed things up again is: write in a series. Because once you've done all of that research and you just write one book and then walk away, that's a lot. That really slows you down.

If you then go, “Okay, well now I'm going to write four books, five books, six books, still in that place and time”—obviously each book will need a little more research, but it won't need that level of starting-from-scratch research. That can help in terms of speeding it back up again.

Recently I wrote some Regency romances to see what that was like. I'd done all my basic research, and then I thought, right, now I want to write a historical novel which could have been Victorian or could have been Regency. It had an openness to it.

I thought, well, I've just done all the research for Regency, so I'll stick with that era. Why go and do a whole other piece of research when I've only written three books in it so far? I'll just take that era and work with that.

So there are places to make up the time again a bit. But I do think there's a joy in it as well.

JOANNA: I just want to come back to the plagiarism thing. I discovered that you can plagiarise yourself in academia, which is quite interesting.

For example, my books How to Write a Novel and How to Write Nonfiction—they're aimed at different audiences. They have lots of chapters that are different, but there's a chapter on dictation. I thought, why would I need to write the same chapter again? I'm just going to put the same chapter in. It's the same process.

Then I only recently learned that you can plagiarise yourself. I did not credit myself for that original chapter.

MELISSA: How dare you not credit yourself!

JOANNA: But can you talk a bit about that? Where are the lines here? I'm never going to credit myself. I think that's frankly ridiculous.

MELISSA: No, that's silly. I mean, it depends what you're doing. In your case, that completely makes sense. It would be really peculiar of you to sit down and write a whole new chapter desperately trying not to copy what you'd said in a chapter about exactly the same topic. That doesn't make any sense.

JOANNA: I guess more in the wider sense. Earlier you mentioned you keep notes and you put page numbers by them. I think the point is with research, a lot of people worry about accidental plagiarism. You write a load of notes on a book and then it just goes into your brain. Perhaps you didn't quote people properly.

It's definitely more of an issue in nonfiction. You have to keep really careful notes. Sometimes I'm copying out a quote and I'll just naturally maybe rewrite that quote because the way they've put it didn't make sense, or I use a contraction or something. It's just the care in note-taking and then citing people.

MELISSA: Yes. When I talk to people about nonfiction, I always say, you're basically joining a conversation. I mean, you are in fiction as well, but not as obviously.

I say, well, why don't you read the conversation first? Find out what the conversation is in your area at the moment, and then what is it that you're bringing that's different?

The most likely reason for you to end up writing something similar to someone else is that you haven't understood what the conversation was, and you need to be bringing your own thing to it.

Then even if you're talking about the same topic, you might talk about it in a different way, and that takes you away from plagiarism because you're bringing your own view to it and your own direction to it.

JOANNA: It's an interesting one. I think it's just the care. Taking more care is what I would like people to do.

So let's talk about AI because AI tools can be incredible. I do deep research reports with Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT as a sort of “give me an overview and tell me some good places to start.”

The university I'm with has a very hard line, which is: AI can be used as part of a research process, but not for writing.

What are your thoughts on AI usage and tools? How can people balance that?

MELISSA: Well, I'm very much a newbie compared to you. I follow you—the only person that describes how to use it with any sense at all, step by step.

I'm very new to it, but I'm going to go back to the olden days. Sometimes I say to people, when I'm talking about how I do historical research, I start with Wikipedia. They look horrified.

I'm like, no. That's where you have to get the overview from. I want an overview of how you dress in ancient Rome. I need a quick snapshot of that. Then I can go off and figure out the details of that more accurately and with more detail.

I think AI is probably extremely good for that—getting the big picture of something and going, okay, this is what the field's looking like at the moment. These are the areas I'm going to need to burrow down into.

It's doing that work for you quickly so that you're then in a position to pick up from that point. It gets you off to a quicker start and perhaps points you in the direction of the right people to start with.

I'm trying to write a PhD proposal at the moment because I'm an idiot and want to do a second one. With that, I really did think, actually, AI should write this. Because the original concept is mine. I know nothing about it—why would I know anything about it? I haven't started researching it.

This is where AI should go, “Well, in this field, there are these people. They've done these things.” Then you could quickly check that nobody's covered your thing. It would actually speed up all of that bit, which I think would be perfectly reasonable because you don't know anything about it yet. You're not an expert.

You have the original idea, and then after that, then you should go off and do your own research and the in-depth quality of it.

I think for a lot of things that waste authors' time—if you're applying for a grant or a writer-in-residence or things like that—it's a lot of time wasting filling in long, boring forms. “Could you make an artist statement and a something and a blah?”

You're like, yes, yes, I could spend all day at my desk doing that. There's a moment where you start thinking, could you not just allow the AI to do this or much of it?

JOANNA: Yes. Or at least, in that case, I'd say one of the very useful things is doing deep searches. As you were mentioning earlier about getting the funding—if I was to consider a PhD, which the thought has crossed my mind—I would use AI tools to do searches for potential sources of funding and that kind of research.

In fact, I found this course at Winchester because I asked ChatGPT. It knows a lot about me because I chat with it all the time. I was talking about hitting 50 and these are the things I'm really interested in and what courses might interest me. Then it found it for me. That was quite amazing in itself.

I'd encourage people to consider using it for part of the research process.

But then all the papers it cites or whatever—then you have to go download those, go read them, do that work yourself.

MELISSA: Yes, because that's when you bring your viewpoint to something. You and I could read the exact same paper and choose very different parts of it to write about and think about, because we're coming at it from different points of view and different journeys that we're trying to explore.

That's where you need the individual to come in. It wouldn't be good enough to just have a generic overview from AI that we both try and slot into our work, because we would want something different from it.

JOANNA: I kind of laugh when people say, “Oh, I can tell when it's AI.” I'm like, you might be able to tell when it's AI writing if nobody has taken that personal spin, but that's not the way we use it. If you're using it that way, that's not how those of us who are independent thinkers are using it.

We're strong enough in our thoughts that we're using it as a tool. You're a confident person—intellectually and creatively confident—but I feel like some people maybe don't have that.

Some people are not strong enough to resist what an AI might suggest. Any thoughts on that?

MELISSA: Yes. When I first tried using AI with very little guidance from anyone, it just felt easy but very wooden and not very related to me. Then I've done webinars with you, and that was really useful—to watch somebody actually live doing the batting back and forth.

That became a lot more interesting because I really like bouncing ideas and messing around with things and brainstorming, essentially, but with somebody else involved that's batting stuff back to you.

“What does that look like?” “No, I didn't mean that at all.” “How about what does this look like?” “Oh no, no, not like that.” “Oh yes, a bit like that, but a bit more like whatever.”

I remember doing that and talking to someone about it, going, “Oh, that's really quite an interesting use of it.” And they said, “Why don't you use a person?”

I said, “Well, because who am I going to call at 8:30 in the morning on a Thursday and go, ‘Look, I want to spend two hours batting back and forth ideas, but I don't want you to talk about your stuff at all. Just my stuff. And you have to only think about my stuff for two hours. And you have to be very well versed in my stuff as well. Could you just do that?'” Who's going to do that for you?

JOANNA: I totally agree with you. Before Christmas, I was doing a paper. It was an art history thing. We had to pick a piece of art or writing and talk about Christian ideas of hell and how it emerged. I was writing this essay and going back and forth with Claude at the time.

My husband came in and saw the fresco I was writing about. He said, “No one's going to talk to you about this. Nobody.”

MELISSA: Yes, exactly.

JOANNA: Nobody cares.

MELISSA: Exactly. Nobody cares as much as you. And they're not prepared to do that at 8:30 on a Thursday morning. They've got other stuff to do.

JOANNA: It's great to hear because I feel like we're now at the point where these tools are genuinely super useful for independent work. I hope that more people might try that.

JOANNA: Okay, we're almost out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online? Also, tell us a bit about the types of books you have.

MELISSA: I mostly write historical fiction. As I say, I've wandered my way through history—I'm a travelling minstrel. I've done ancient Rome, medieval Morocco, 18th century China, and I'm into Regency England now. So that's a bit closer to home for once.

I'm at MelissaAddey.com and you can go and have a bit of a browse and download a free novel if you want. Try me out.

JOANNA: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Melissa.

MELISSA: That was great. Thank you. It was fun.

The post Research Like An Academic, Write Like an Indie With Melissa Addey first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Could live selling be the next big opportunity for indie authors? Adam Beswick shares how organic marketing, live streaming, and direct sales are transforming his author career—and how other writers can do the same.

In the intro, book marketing principles [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Interview with
Tobi Lutke, the CEO and co-founder of Shopify [David Senra]; The Writer's Mind Survey; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn; Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Lab.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Adam Beswick is a bestselling fantasy author and an expert in TikTok marketing for authors, as well as a former NHS mental health nurse. Adam went full-time as an indie author in 2023 and now runs AP Beswick Publications.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How Adam scaled from garden office to warehouse, with his wife leaving her engineering career to join the business
• Why organic marketing (free video content) beats paid ads for testing what resonates with readers
• The power of live selling: earning £3,500 in one Christmas live stream through TikTok shop
• Mystery book bags: a gamified approach to selling that keeps customers coming back
• Building an email list of actual buyers through direct sales versus relying on platform algorithms
• Why human connection matters more than ever in the age of AI-generated content

You can find Adam at APBeswickPublications.com and on TikTok as @a.p_beswick_publications.

Transcript of interview with Adam Beswick

Jo: Adam Beswick is a bestselling fantasy author and an expert in TikTok marketing for authors, as well as a former NHS mental health nurse. Adam went full-time as an indie author in 2023 and now runs AP Beswick Publications. Welcome back to the show, Adam.

Adam: Hi there, and thank you for having me back.

Jo: Oh, I'm super excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on the show in May 2024, so just under two years, and you had gone full-time as an author the year before that. So just tell us—

What's changed for you in the last couple of years? What does your author business look like now?

Adam: That is terrifying to hear that it was that long ago, because it genuinely feels like it was a couple of months ago. Things have certainly been turbocharged since we last spoke.

Last time we spoke I had a big focus on going into direct sales, and I think if I recall correctly, we were just about to release a book by Alexis Brooke, which was the first book in a series that we had worked with another author on, which was the first time we were doing that.

Since then, we now have six authors on our books, with a range of full agreements or print-only deals. With that focus of direct selling, we have expanded our TikTok shop.

In 2024, I stepped back from TikTok shop just because of constraints around my own time. We took TikTok shop seriously again in 2025 and scaled up to a six-figure revenue stream throughout 2025, effectively starting from scratch.

That means we have had to go from having an office pod in the garden, to my wife now has left her career as a structural engineer to join the business because there was too much for me to manage.

We went from this small office space, to now we have the biggest office space in our office block because we organise our own print runs and do all our distribution worldwide from what we call “AP HQ.”

Jo: And you don't print books, but you have a warehouse.

Adam: Yes, we have a warehouse. We work with different printers to order books in. We print quite large scale—well, large scale to me—volumes of books. Then we have them ordered to here, and then we will sign them all and distribute everything from here.

Jo: Sarah, your wife, being a structural engineer—it seems like she would be a real help in organising a business of warehousing and all of that.

Has that been great [working with your wife]?

Because I worked with my husband for a while and we decided to stop doing that.

Adam: Well, we're still married, so I'm taking that as a win! And funnily enough, we don't actually fall out so much at work. When we do, it's more about me being quite chaotic with how I work, but also I can at times be quite inflexible about how I want things to be done.

But what Sarah's fantastic at is the organisation, the analytics. She runs all the logistical side of things. When we moved into the bigger office space, she insisted on us having different offices. She's literally shoved me on the other side of the building.

So I'm out the way—I can just come in and write, come and do my bit to sign the books, and then she can just get on with organising the orders and getting those packed and sent out to readers.

She manages all the tracking, the customs—all the stuff that would really bog me down. I wouldn't say she necessarily enjoys it when she's getting some cranky emails from people whose books might have gone missing or have been held up at customs, but she's really good at that side.

She's really helped bring systems in place to make sure the fulfilment side is as smooth as possible.

Jo: I think this is so important, and I want everyone to hear you on this. Because at heart, you are the creative, you are a writer, and sure you are building this business, but I feel like one of the biggest mistakes that creative-first authors make is not getting somebody else to help them.

It doesn't have to be a spouse, right? It can also be another professional person. Sacha Black's got various people working for her.

I think you just can't do it alone, right?

Adam: Absolutely not. I would have drowned long before now. When Sarah joined the team, I was at a position where I'd said to her, “Look, I need to look at bringing someone in because I'm drowning.”

It was only then she took a look at where her career was, and she'd done everything she wanted to do. She was a senior engineer. She'd completed all the big projects. I mean, this is a woman who's designed football stands across the UK and some of the biggest barn conversions and school conversions and things like that.

She'd done everything professionally that she'd wanted to and was perhaps losing that passion that she once had.

So she said she was interested, and we said, “Look, why don't you come and spend a bit of time working with me within the business, see whether it works for you, see if we can find an area that works for you—not you working for the business, the business working for you—that we maintain that work-life balance.”

And then if it didn't work, we were in a position where we could set her up to start working for herself as an engineer again, but under her own terms.

Then we just went from strength to strength. We made it through the first year. I think we made it through the first year without any arguments, and she's now been full-time in the business for two years.

Jo: I think that's great. Really good to hear that. Because when I met you, probably in Seville I think it was, I was like, “You are going to hit some difficulty,” because I could see that if you were going to scale as fast as you were aiming to—

There are problems of scale, right? There's a reason why lots of us don't want a bloomin' warehouse.

Adam: Yes, absolutely. I think it's twofold. I am an author at heart—that's my passion—but I'm also a businessman and a creative from a marketing point of view. I always see writing as the passion. The business side and the creating of content—that's the work. So I never see writing as work.

When I was a nurse, I was the nurse that was always put on the wards where no one else wanted to work because that's where I thrived. I thrive in the chaos.

Put me with people who had really challenging behaviour or were really unwell and needed that really intense support, displayed quite often problematic behaviours, and I would thrive in those environments because I'd always like to prove that you can get the best out of anyone.

I very much work in that manner now. The more chaotic, the more pressure-charged the situation is, the better I thrive in that. If I was just sat writing a book and that was it, I'd probably get less done because I'd get bored and I wouldn't feel like I was challenging myself.

As you said, the flip side of that is that risk of burnout is very, very real, and I have come very, very close. But as a former mental health nurse, I am very good at spotting my own signs of when I'm not taking good care of myself. And if I don't, Sarah sure as hell does.

Jo: I think that's great. Really good to hear. Okay, so you talked there about creating the content as work, and—

You have driven your success, I would say, almost entirely with TikTok. Would that be right?

Adam: Well, no, I'd come back and touch on that just to say it isn't just TikTok. I would say definitely organic marketing, but not just TikTok.

I'm always quick to pivot if something isn't working or if there's a dip in sales. I'm always looking at how we can—not necessarily keep growing—but it's about sustaining what you've built so that we can carry on doing this.

If the business stops earning money, I can't keep doing what I love doing, and me and my wife can't keep supporting our family with a stable income, which is what we have now.

I would say TikTok is what started it all, but I did the same as having all my books on Amazon, which is why I switched to doing wide and direct sales: I didn't want all my eggs in one basket.

I was always exploring what platforms I can use to best utilise organic marketing, to the point where my author TikTok channel is probably my third lowest avenue for directing traffic to my store at the moment.

I have a separate channel for my TikTok shop, which generates great traffic, but that's a separate thing because I treat my TikTok shop as a separate audience. That only goes out to a UK audience, whereas my main TikTok channel goes out to a worldwide audience.

Jo: Okay. So we are going to get into TikTok, and I do want to talk about that, but you said TikTok Shop UK and—

Then you mentioned organic marketing. What do you mean by that?

Adam: When I say organic marketing, I mean marketing your books in a way that is not a detriment to your bank balance.

To break that down further: you can be paying for, say for example, you set up a Facebook ad and you are paying five pounds a day just for a testing phase for an ad that potentially isn't going to work.

You potentially have to run 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ads at five pounds a day to find one ad that works, that will make your book profitable. There's a lot of testing, a lot of money that goes into that.

With organic marketing, it's using video marketing or slideshows or carousels on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook—wherever you want to put it—to find the content that does resonate with your readers, that generates sales, and it doesn't cost you anything.

I can create a video on TikTok, put it out there, and it reaches three, four hundred people. That hasn't cost me any money at all. Those three, four hundred people have seen my content. That's not TikTok's job for that to generate sales. That's my job to convert those views into sales.

If it doesn't, I just need to look at the content and say, “Well, that hasn't hit my audience, or if it has, it hasn't resonated. What do I need to do with my content to make it resonate and then transition into sales?”

Once you find something that works, it's just a case of rinse and repeat. Keep tweaking it, keep changing or using variants of that content that's working to generate sales.

If you manage to do that consistently, you've already got content that you know works. So when you've built up consistent sales and you are perhaps earning a few thousand pounds a month—it could be five figures a month—you've then got a pool of money that you've generated.

You can use that then to invest into paid ads, using the content you've already created organically and tested organically for what your audience is going to interact with.

Jo: Okay. I think because I'm old school from the old days, we would've called that content marketing. But I feel like the difference of what you are doing and what TikTok—I think the type of behaviour TikTok has driven is the actual sales, the conversion into sales.

So for example, this interview, right? My podcast is content marketing. It puts our words out in the world and some people find us, and some people buy stuff from us. So it's content marketing, but it's not the way you are analysing content that actually drives sales.

Based on that content, there's no way of tracking any sales that come from this interview. We are just never going to know.

I think that's the big difference between what you are doing with content versus what I and many other, I guess, older creators have done, which is—

We put stuff out there for free, hope that some people might find us, and some of those people might buy.

It's quite different.

Adam: I would still argue that it is organic marketing, because you've got a podcast that people don't have to pay to listen to, that they get enjoyment from, and the byproduct of that is you generate some income passively through that.

If you think of your podcast as one product and your video content is the same—these social media platforms—you don't just post your podcast on one platform.

You will utilise as many platforms as you can, unless you have a brand agreement where a platform is paying you to solely use their platform because you or yourself are the driver for the audience there.

I would say a podcast is a form of organic marketing. I could start a podcast about video marketing. I could start a podcast about reading. The idea being you build up an audience and then when you drop in those releases, that audience then goes and buys that product.

For example, if you've got a self-help book coming out, if you drop that into your podcast, chances are you're going to get a lot more sales from your audience that are here to listen to you as the inspirational storyteller that you are from a business point of view than what you would if you announced that you had a new crime novel coming out or a horror story you've written.

Your audience within here is generally an author audience who are looking to refine their craft—whether that be the writing or the selling of the books or living the dream of being a full-time author. I think it's more a terminology thing.

Jo: Well, let's talk about why I wanted to talk to you. A friend of ours told me that you are doing really well with live sales. This was just before Christmas, I think. And I was like, “Live sales? What does that even mean?”

Then I saw that Kim Kardashian was doing live sales on TikTok and did this “Kim's Must Have” thing, and Snoop Dogg was there, and it was this massive event where they were selling.

I was like, “Oh, it's like TV sales—the TV sales channel where you show things and then people buy immediately.”

And I was like, “Wait, is Adam like the Kim Kardashian of the indie author?”

So tell us about this live sale thing.

Adam: Well, I've not got that far to say that I have the Kim Kardashian status! What it is, is that I'm passionate about learning, but also sharing what's working for me so that other authors can succeed—without what I'm sharing being stuck behind a paywall.

It is a big gripe of mine that you get all these courses and all these things you can do and everything has to be behind a paywall. If I've got the time, I'll just share.

Hence why we were in Vegas doing the presentations for Indie Author Nation, which I think had you been in my talk, Jo, you would've heard me talking about the live selling.

Jo: Oh, I missed it. I'll have to get the replay.

Adam: I only covered a short section of it, but what I actually said within that talk is, for me, live selling is going to be the next big thing. If you are not live selling your books at the moment, and you are not paying attention to it, start paying attention to it.

I started paying attention about six months ago, and I have seen constant growth to a point where I've had to post less content because doing one live stream a week was making more money than me posting content and burning myself out every single day for the TikTok shop.

I did a live stream at the beginning of Christmas, for example. A bit of prep work went into it. We had a whole Christmas set, and within that one live stream we generated three and a half thousand pounds of organic book sales.

Jo: Wow.

Adam: Obviously that isn't something that happened overnight. That took me doing a regular Friday stream from September all the way through to December to build up to that moment.

In fact, I think that was Black Friday, sorry, where we did that. But what I looked at was, “Right, I haven't got the bandwidth because of all the plates I was spinning to go live five days a week. However, I can commit to a Friday morning.”

I can commit to a Friday morning because that is the day when Sarah isn't in the office, and it's my day to pack the orders. So I've already got the orders to pack, so I thought I'll go live whilst I'm packing the orders and just hang out and chat.

I slowly started to find that on average I was earning between three to four hundred pounds doing that, packing orders that I already had to pack. I've just found a way to monetise it and engage with a new audience whilst doing that.

The thing that's key is it is a new audience. You have people who like to consume their content through short-form content or long-form content. Then you have people who like to consume content with human interaction on a live, and it's a completely different ballgame.

What TikTok is enabling us to do—on other platforms I am looking at other platforms for live selling—you can engage with an audience, but because on TikTok you can upload your products, people can buy the products direct whilst you are live on that platform.

For that, you will pay a small fee to TikTok, which is absolutely worth it. That's part of the reason we've been able to scale to having a six-figure business within TikTok shop itself as one revenue stream.

Jo: Okay. So a few things. You mentioned there the integration with TikTok shop. As I've said many times, I'm not on TikTok—I am on Instagram—and on Instagram you can incorporate your Meta catalogue to Shopify.

Do you think the same principle applies to Instagram or YouTube as well?

I think YouTube has an integration with Shopify. Do you think the same thing would work that way?

Adam: I think it's possible. Yes, absolutely. As long as people can click and buy that product from whatever content they are watching—but usually what it will have to do is redirect them to your store, and you've still got all the conversion metrics that have to kick in.

They have to be happy with the shipping, they have to be happy with the product description and stuff like that. With TikTok shop, it's very much a one-stop shop. People click on the product, they can still be watching the video, click to buy something, and not leave the stream.

Jo: So the stream's on, and then let's say you are packing one of your books—

Does that product link just pop up and then people can buy that book as you are packing it?

Adam: So we've got lots and lots of products on our store now. I always have a product link that has all our products listed, and I always keep all of the bundles towards the top because they generate more income than a single book sale.

What will happen is I can showcase a book, I'll tap the screen to show what product it is that I'm packing, and then I'll just talk about it. If people want it, they just click that product link and they can buy it straight away.

What people get a lot of enjoyment from—which I never expected in a million years—is watching people pack their order there and then. As an author, we're not just selling a generic product. We're selling a book that we have written, that we have put our heart and soul into. People love that.

It's a way of letting them into a bit of you, giving them a bit of information, talking to them, showing them how human you are.

If you're on that live stream being an absolute arse and not very nice, people aren't going to buy your books. But if you're being welcoming, you're chatting, you're talking to everyone, you're interacting, you're showcasing books they probably will.

What we do is if someone orders on the live stream, we throw some extra stuff in, so they don't just get the books, they'll get some art prints included, they'll get some bookmarks thrown in, and we've got merch that we'll throw in as a little thank you.

Now it's all stuff that is low cost to us, because actually we're acquiring a customer in that moment. I've got people who come onto every single Friday live stream that I do now.

They have bought every single product in our catalogue and they are harassing me for when the next release is out because they want more, before they even know what that is. They want it because it's being produced by us—because of our brand.

With the lives, what I found is the branding has become really important. We're at a stage where we're being asked—because I'm quite well known for wearing beanie hats on live streams or video content—people are like, “When are you going to release some beanie hats?”

Now and again, Sarah will drop some AP branded merch. It'll be beer coasters with the AP logo on, or a tote bag with the AP logo on. It's not stuff that we sell at this stage—we give them away.

The more money people spend, the more stuff we put in. And people are like, “No, no, you need to add these to the store because we want to buy them.”

The brand itself is growing, not just the book sales. It's becoming better known. We've got Pacificon in April, and there's so many people on that live stream that have bought tickets to meet us in person at this conference in April, which is amazing. There's so much going on.

With TikTok shop, it only works in the country where you are based, so it only goes out to a UK audience, which is why I keep it separate from my main channel. That means we're tapping into a completely new audience, because up until last year, I'd always targeted America—that's where my biggest readership was.

Jo: Wow. There's so much to this. Okay. First of all, most people are not going to have their own warehouse. Most people are not going to be packing live.

So for authors who are selling on, let's just say Amazon, can live sales still work for them?

Could they still go live at a regular time every week and talk about a book and see if that drives sales, even if it's at Amazon?

Adam: Yes, absolutely. I would test that because ultimately you're creating a brand, you're putting yourself out there, and you're consistently showing up.

You can have people that have never heard of you just stumble across your live and think, “What are they doing there?” They're a bit curious, so they might ask some questions, they might not. They might see some other interactions. There's a million and one things you can do on that live to generate conversation.

I've done it where I've had 150 books to sign, so I've just lined up the books, stood in front of the camera, switched the camera on while I'm signing the books, and just chatted away to people without any product links.

People will come back and be like, “Oh, I've just been to your store and bought through your series,” and stuff like that. So absolutely that can work. The key is putting in the work and setting it up.

I started out by getting five copies of one book, signing them, and selling them on TikTok shop. I sold them in a day, and then that built up to effectively what we have now. That got my eyes open for direct selling.

When I was working with BookVault and they were integrated with my store, orders came to me, but then they went to BookVault—they printed and distributed.

Then we got to a point scaling-wise where we thought, “If we want to take this to the next level, we need to take on distribution ourselves,” because the profit lines are better, the margins are bigger.

That's why we started doing it ourselves, but only once we'd had a proven track record of sales spanning 18 months to two years and had the confidence.

It was actually with myself and Sacha that we set up at the same time and egged each other on. I think I was just a tiny bit ahead of her with setting up a warehouse. And then as you've seen, Sacha's gone from strength to strength.

It doesn't come without its trigger warnings in the sense of it isn't an easy thing to do. I think you have to have a certain skill set for live selling. You have to have a certain mindset for the physicality that comes with it.

When we've had a delivery of two and a half thousand books and we've got to bring them up to the first floor where the office is—I don't have a massive team of people. It's myself and Sarah, and every now and again we get my dad in to help us because he's retired now. We'll give him a bottle of wine as a thank you.

Jo: You need to give him some more wine, I think!

Adam: Yes! But you've gotta be able to roll your sleeves up and do the work.

I think if you've got the work ethic and that drive to succeed, then absolutely anyone can do it. There's nothing special about my books in that sense.

I've got a group called Novel Gains where I've actually started a monthly challenge yesterday, and we've got nearly two and a half thousand people in the group now.

The group has never been more active because it's really energised and charged. People have seen the success stories, and people are going on lives who never thought it would work for them.

Lee Mountford put a post up yesterday on the first day of this challenge just to say, “Look, a year ago I was where you were when Adam did the last challenge. I thought I can't do organic marketing, I can't get myself on camera.”

Organic marketing and live selling is now equating to 50% of his income.

Jo: And he doesn't have a warehouse.

Adam: Well, he scaled up to it now, so he's got two lockups because he scaled up.

He started off small, then he thought, “Right, I'm going to go for it.” He ordered a print run of a few of his books—I think 300 copies of three books. Bundled them up, sold them out within a few months.

Then he's just scaled from there because he's seen by creating the content, by doing the lives, that it's just creating a revenue stream that he wasn't tapping into.

Last January when we did the challenge, he was really engaged throughout the process. He was really analytical with the results he was getting. But he didn't stop after 30 days when that challenge finished. He went away behind the scenes for the next 11 months and has continued to grow. He is absolutely thriving now.

Him and his wife—a husband and wife team—his wife is also an author, and they've now added her spicy books to their TikTok shop. They're just selling straight away because he's built up the audience. He's built up that connection.

Jo: I think that's great. And I love hearing this because I built my business on what I've called content marketing—you're calling it organic marketing. So I think it's really good to know that it's still possible; it's just a different kind.

Now I just wanna get some specifics. One—

Where can people find your Novel Gains stuff?

Adam: So Novel Gains is an online community on Facebook. As I said, there's no website, there's no fancy website, there's no paid course or anything. It is just people holding themselves accountable and listening to my ramblings every now and again when I try and share pills of wisdom to try and motivate and inspire.

I also ask other successful authors to drop their story about organic marketing on there, to again get people fired up and show what can be achieved.

Jo: Okay. That's on Facebook.

So then let's talk about the setup. I think a lot of the time I get concerned about video because I think everything has to be on my phone.

How are you setting this up technically so you can get filmed and also see comments and all of this kind of stuff?

Adam: Just with my phone.

Jo: It is just on your phone?

Adam: Yes. I don't use any fancy camera tricks or anything. I literally just settle my phone and hit record when I'm doing it.

Jo: But you set it up on a tripod or something?

Adam: Yes. So I'll have a tripod. I don't do any fancy lighting or anything like that because I want the content to seem as real as possible.

I'll set up the camera at an angle that shows whatever task I'm doing. For example, if I'm packing orders, I can see the screen so I can see the comments as they're coming up. It's close enough to me to interact.

At Christmas, we did have a bit of a setup—it did look like a QVC channel, I'm not going to lie! I was at the back. There was a table in front of me with products on. We had mystery book bags. We had a Christmas tree. We had a big banner behind me.

The camera was on the other side of the room, but I just had my laptop next to me that was logged into TikTok, so I was watching the live stream so I could see any comments coming up.

Jo: Yes, that's the thing. So you can have a different screen with the comments. Because that's what I'm concerned about—it might just be the eyesight thing, but I'm like, I just can't literally do everything on the phone.

Adam: TikTok has a studio—TikTok Studio—that you can download, and you can get all your data and analytics in there for your live streams.

At the moment, I'll just tap the screen to add a new product or pin a new product. You can do all that from your computer on this studio where you can say, “Right, I'm showcasing this product now,” click on it and it'll come up onto the live stream. You just have to link the two together.

Jo: I'm really thinking about this. Partly this is great because my other concern with TikTok and all these video channels is how much can be done by AI now. TikTok has its own AI generation stuff.

A lot of it's amazing. I'm not saying it's bad quality, I'm saying it's amazing quality, but—

What AI can't do is the live stuff.

You just can't—I mean, I imagine you can fake it, but you can't fake it.

Adam: Well, you'd be surprised. I've seen live streams where it's like an avatar on the screen and there is someone talking and then the avatar moving in live as that person's talking.

Jo: Right?

Adam: I've seen that where it's animals, I've seen it where it's like a 3D person. There's a really popular stream at the minute that is just a cartoon cat on the stream. Whenever you send a gift, it starts singing whoever sent it—it gets a name—and that's a system that someone has somehow set up.

I have no idea how they've set it up, but they're literally not doing it. That can run 24 hours a day. There's always hundreds and hundreds of people on it sending gifts to hear this cat sing with an AI voice their name.

Yes, AI will work and it will work for different things. But I think with us and with our books, people want that human connection more than ever because of AI. Use that to your advantage.

Jo: Okay. So the other thing I like about this idea is you are doing these live sales and then you are looking at the amount you've sold. But are you making changes to it? Or are you only tweaking the content on your prerecorded stuff?

Your live is so natural. How are you going to change it up, I guess?

Adam: I am always testing what is working, what's not working. For example, I'm a big nerd at heart and I collect Pokémon cards. Now that I'm older, I can afford some of the more rare stuff, and me and my daughter have a lot of enjoyment collecting Pokémon cards together.

We follow channels, we watch stuff on YouTube, and I was looking at what streamers do with Pokémon cards and how they sell like mystery products on an app or whatnot.

I was like, “How can I apply this to books?” And I came up with the idea of doing mystery book bags. People pay 20 pounds, they get some goodies—some carefully curated goodies, as we say, that “Mrs. B” has put together.

On stream, I never give the audience Sarah's name. It's always “Mrs. B.” So Mrs. B has built up her own brand within the stream—they go feral when she comes on camera to say hi!

Then there's some goodies in there. That could be some tote socks, a tote bag, cup holders, page holders, metal pins, things like that. Then inside that, I'll pull out a thing that will say what book they're getting from our product catalogue.

What I make clear is that could be anything from our product catalogue. So that could be a single book, it could be six books, it could be a three-book bundle. There's all sorts that people can get. It could be a deluxe special edition.

People love that, and they tend to buy it because there's so much choice and they might be struggling with, “Right, I don't know what to get.” So they think, “You know what? I'll buy one of them mystery book bags.”

I only do them when I'm live. I've done streams where the camera's on me. I've done top-down streams where you can only see my hands and these mystery book bags. Every time someone orders one, I'm just opening it live and showcasing what product they get from the stream.

People love it to the point where every stream I do, they're like, “When are you doing the next mystery book bags? When are you doing the next ones?”

Jo: So if we were on live now and I click to buy, you see the order with my name and you just write “Jo” on it, and then you put it in a pile?

Adam: So you print labels there and then, which I'll do. Exactly. If I'm live packing them—I'm not going to lie—when I'm set up properly, I don't have time to pack them because the orders are coming in that thick and fast.

All I do is have a Post-it note next to me, and I'll write down their username, then I'll stick that onto their order. I'll collect everything, showcase what they're getting, the extra goodies that they're getting with their order, and then I'll stick the Post-it on and put that to one side.

To put that into context as something that works through testing different things: we started off doing 60 book bags—30 of them were spicy book bags, 30 were general fantasy which had my books and a couple of our authors that haven't got spice in their books—and the aim was to sell them within a month.

We sold them within one stream. 60 book bags at 20 pounds a pop. What that also generated is people then buying other products while we're doing it. It also meant that I'd do it all on a Friday, and we'd come in on a Monday and start the week with 40, 50, 60 orders to pack regardless of what's coming from the Shopify store.

The level of orders is honestly obscene, but we've continuously learned how best to manage this. We learned that actually, if you showcase the orders, stick a Post-it on, when we print the shipping labels, it takes us five minutes to just put all the shipping labels with everyone's orders.

Then we can just fire through packing everything up because everything's already bundled together. It literally just needs putting in a box.

Jo: Okay. So there's so much we could talk about, but hopefully people will look into this more. So I went to go watch a video—I thought, “Oh, well, I'll just go watch Adam do this. I'm sure there's a recording”—and then I couldn't find one. So tell me about that.

Does [the live recording] just disappear or what?

Adam: Yes, it does. It's live for a reason. You can download it afterwards if you want, and then you've got content to repurpose.

In fact, you're giving me an idea. I've done a live today—I could download that clip that's an hour and 20 minutes long. Some of it, I'm just rambling, but some of it's got some content that I could absolutely use because I'm engaging with people.

I've showcased books throughout it because I've been packing orders. I had an hour window before this podcast and I had a handful of orders to pack. So I just jumped on a live and I made like 250 pounds while doing a job that I would already be having to do.

I could download that video, put it in OpusClip, and that will then generate short-form content for me of the meaningful interaction through that, based on the parameters that I give it. So that's absolutely something you could do. In fact, I'm probably going to do it now that you've given me the idea.

Jo: Because even if it was on another channel, like you could put that one on YouTube.

Adam: Yes. Wherever you want. It doesn't have a watermark on it.

Jo: And what did you say? OpusClip?

Adam: OpusClip, yes. If you do long-form content of any kind, you can put that in and then it'll pull out meaningful content. Loads of like 20, 30 short-form content video clips that you can use. It's a brilliant piece of software if you use it the right way.

Jo: Okay. Well I want you to repurpose that because I want to watch you in action, but I'm not going to turn up for your live—although now I'm like, “Oh, I really must.”

So does that also mean—you said it's UK only because the TikTok shop is linked to the UK—

So people in America can't even see it?

Adam: So sometimes they do pop in, but again, that's why I have a separate channel for my main author account.

When I go live on that, anyone from around the world can come in. But if I've got shoppable links in, chances are the algorithm is just going to put that out to a UK audience because that's where TikTok will then make money.

If I want to hit my US audience, I'll jump on Instagram because that's where I've got my biggest following. So I'll jump on Instagram and go live over there at a time that I know will be appropriate for Americans.

Jo: Okay. We could talk forever, but I do have just a question about TikTok itself. All of these platforms seem to follow a way of things where at the beginning it's much easier to get reach. It is truly organic. It's really amazing.

Then they start putting on various brakes—like Facebook added groups, and then you couldn't reach people in your groups. And then you had to pay to play.

Then in the US of course, we've got a sale that has been signed. Who knows what will happen there.

What are your thoughts on how TikTok has changed? What might go on this year, and how are you preparing?

Adam: So, I think as a businessman and an author who wants to reach readers, I use the platforms for what I can get out of them without having to spend a stupid amount of money. If those platforms stop working for me, I'll stop using them and find one that does.

With organic reach on TikTok, I think you'll always have a level of that. Is it harder now? Yes. Does that mean it's not achievable? Absolutely not.

If your content isn't reaching people, or you're not getting the engagement that you want, or you find fulfilling, you need to look at yourself and the content you are putting out. You are in control of that.

There's elements of this takeover in America—again, I've got zero control over that, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I'll focus on areas that are making a difference.

As I said, TikTok isn't the biggest earner for my business. My author channel's been absolutely dead for a good six months or so. But that means I get stagnant with the content I'm creating. So the challenge I'm doing at the minute, I'm taking part to create fresh content every day to recharge myself.

I've got Instagram and Facebook that generate high volumes of traffic every single day. And usually if they stop, TikTok starts to work.

Any algorithm changes—things will change when it changes hands in America—but primarily it still wants to make money. It's a business.

If anything, it might make it harder for us to reach America because it will want to focus on reaching an American audience for the people that are buying TikTok shop. But they want it because they want the TikTok shop because of the amount of money that it is generating.

It's gone from a small amount of people making money to large volumes of businesses across the entire USA—like over here now—that are reaching an audience that previously you had to have deep pockets to reach, to get your business set up.

Now you've got all these businesses popping up that are starting from scratch because they're reaching people. They've got a product that's marketable, that people want to enjoy. They want to be part of that growth.

I think that will still happen. It might just be a few of the parameters change, like Facebook does all the time.

Jo: Things will always change. That is key.

We should also say by selling direct, you've built presumably a very big email list of buyers as well.

Adam: Yes. I've actually got a trophy that Shopify sent me because we hit 10,000 sales—10,000 customers. I think we're nearing 16,000 sales on there now.

We've got all that customer data. We don't get that on TikTok. We haven't got the customer data.

Jo: Ah, that's interesting. Okay.

How do you not though? Oh, because—did they ship it?

Adam: So if you link it with your Shopify and you do all your shipping direct, the customer data has to come to your Shopify, otherwise you can't ship.

When TikTok ship it for you—so I print the shipping labels, but they organise the couriers—all the customer data's blotted out. It's like redacted, so you don't see it.

Jo: Ah, see that is in itself a cheeky move.

Adam: Yes. But if it's linked to your Shopify, you get all that data and your Shopify is your store. So your Shopify will keep that data. They kept affecting how I extracted the shipping labels and stuff like that, and just kept making life really difficult. So I've just switched it back.

I think Sarah has found an app that works really well for correlating the two.

Jo: Yes, but this is a really big deal. We carp on about it all the time, but—

If you sell direct and you do get the customer data, you are building an email list of actual buyers as opposed to freebie seekers.

Which a lot of people have.

Adam: Absolutely, and that's the same for you. If you send poor products out or your customer has a poor experience, they're not going to come back and order from you again.

If your customer has a really good experience and opens the products and sees all this extra care that's gone in and all the books are signed, then they've not had to pay extra.

There was a Kickstarter—I'm not going to name which author it was—but it was an author whose book I was quite excited to back. They had these special editions they'd done, but you had to buy a special edition for an extra 30 quid if you wanted it signed.

I was like, “Absolutely not.” If these people are putting their hands in their pockets for these deluxe special editions, and if you're a big name author, it's certainly not them that have anything to do with it. They just have other companies do it all for them.

Whereas with us, you are creating everything. Our way of saying thank you to everyone is by signing the book.

Jo: I love that you're still so enthusiastic about it and that it seems to be going really well. So we're almost out of time, but just quickly—

Tell people a bit more about the books that they can find in your stores and where people can find them.

Adam: Yes. So we publish predominantly fantasy, and we have moved into the spicy fantasy world. We have a few series there.

You can check out APBeswickPublications.com where you will see our full product catalogue and all of my books.

On TikTok shop, we are under a.p_beswick_publications. That's the best place to see where I go live—short-form content. I'll post spicy books on there, but on lives, I showcase everything.

I also have fantasy.books.uk, where that's where you'll see the videos or product links for the non-spicy fantasy books.

Jo: And what time do you go live in the UK?

Adam: So I go live 8:00 AM every Friday morning.

Jo: Wow. Okay. I might even have to check that out. This has been so great, Adam. Thanks so much for your time.

Adam: Well, thank you for having me.

The post Selling Books Live On Social Media With Adam Beswick first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What if the most transformative thing you can do for your writing craft and author business is to face what you fear? How can you can find gold in your Shadow in the year ahead? In this episode, I share chapters from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words.

In the intro, curated book boxes from Bridgerton's Julia Quinn; Google's agentic shopping, and powering Apple's Siri; ChatGPT Ads; and Claude CoWork.

Balancing Certainty and Uncertainty [MoonShots with Tony Robbins]; and three trends for authors with me and Orna Ross [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; plus, Bones of the Deep, Business for Authors, and Indie Author Lab.

This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

• What is the Shadow?
• The ‘creative wound' and the Shadow in writing
• The Shadow in traditional publishing
• The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author
• The Shadow in work
• The Shadow in money

You can find Writing the Shadow in all formats on all stores, as well as special edition, workbook and bundles at www.TheCreativePenn.com/shadowbook

Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words

The following chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn.

Introduction. What is the Shadow?

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

We all have a Shadow side and it is the work of a lifetime to recognise what lies within and spin that base material into gold. 

Think of it as a seedling in a little pot that you’re given when you’re young. It’s a bit misshapen and weird, not something you would display in your living room, so you place it in a dark corner of the basement. 

You don’t look at it for years. You almost forget about it. 

Then one day you notice tendrils of something wild poking up through the floorboards. They’re ugly and don’t fit with your Scandi-minimalist interior design. You chop the tendrils away and pour weedkiller on what’s left, trying to hide the fact that they were ever there. 

But the creeping stems keep coming. 

At some point, you know you have to go down there and face the wild thing your seedling has become. 

When you eventually pluck up enough courage to go down into the basement, you discover that the plant has wound its roots deep into the foundations of your home. Its vines weave in and out of the cracks in the walls, and it has beautiful flowers and strange fruit. 

It holds your world together. 

Perhaps you don’t need to destroy the wild tendrils. Perhaps you can let them wind up into the light and allow their rich beauty to weave through your home. It will change the look you have so carefully cultivated, but maybe that’s just what the place needs.

The Shadow in psychology

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of analytical psychology. He described the Shadow as an unconscious aspect of the human personality, those parts of us that don’t match up to what is expected of us by family and society, or to our own ideals.

The Shadow is not necessarily evil or illegal or immoral, although of course it can be. It’s also not necessarily caused by trauma, abuse, or any other severely damaging event, although again, it can be.

It depends on the individual. 

What is in your Shadow is based on your life and your experiences, as well as your culture and society, so it will be different for everyone. 

Psychologist Connie Zweig, in The Inner Work of Age, explains,

“The Shadow is that part of us that lies beneath or behind the light of awareness. It contains our rejected, unacceptable traits and feelings. It contains our hidden gifts and talents that have remained unexpressed or unlived. As Jung put it, the essence of the Shadow is pure gold.”

To further illustrate the concept, Robert Bly, in A Little Book on the Human Shadow,uses the following metaphor:

“When we are young, we carry behind us an invisible bag, into which we stuff any feelings, thoughts, or behaviours that bring disapproval or loss of love—anger, tears, neediness, laziness. By the time we go to school, our bags are already a mile long. 

In high school, our peer groups pressure us to stuff the bags with even more—individuality, sexuality, spontaneity, different opinions. We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding which parts of ourselves to put into the bag and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.”

As authors, we can use what’s in the ‘bag’ to enrich our writing — but only if we can access it. My intention with this book is to help you venture into your Shadow and bring some of what’s hidden into the light and into your words.

I’ll reveal aspects of my Shadow in these pages but ultimately, this book is about you. Your Shadow is unique. There may be elements we share, but much will be different.

Each chapter has questions for you to consider that may help you explore at least the edges of your Shadow, but it’s not easy. As Jung said,

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

But take heart, Creative. You don’t need courage when things are easy. You need it when you know what you face will be difficult, but you do it anyway.

We are authors. We know how to do hard things.

We turn ideas into books. We manifest thoughts into ink on paper. 

We change lives with our writing. First, our own, then other people’s. It’s worth the effort to delve into Shadow, so I hope you will join me on the journey.

The creative wound and the Shadow in writing

“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.” —Susan Cain, Bittersweet 

The more we long for something, the more extreme our desire, the more likely it is to have a Shadow side. For those of us who love books, the author life may well be a long-held dream and thus, it is filled with Shadow. 

Books have long been objects of desire, power, and authority. They hold a mythic status in our lives. We escaped into stories as children; we studied books at school and college; we read them now for escape and entertainment, education and inspiration. We collect beautiful books to put on our shelves. We go to them for solace and answers to the deepest questions of life. 

Writers are similarly held in high esteem. They shape culture, win literary prizes, give important speeches, and are quoted in the mainstream media. Their books are on the shelves in libraries and bookstores. Writers are revered, held up as rare, talented creatures made separate from us by their brilliance and insight.

For bibliophile children, books were everything and to write one was a cherished dream. To become an author? Well, that would mean we might be someone special, someone worthy.

Perhaps when you were young, you thought the dream of being a writer was possible — then you told someone about it.

That’s probably when you heard the first criticism of such a ridiculous idea, the first laughter, the first dismissal. So you abandoned the dream, pushed the idea of being a writer into the Shadow, and got on with your life.

Or if it wasn’t then, it came later, when you actually put pen to paper and someone — a parent, teacher, partner, or friend, perhaps even a literary agent or publisher, someone whose opinion you valued — told you it was worthless.

Here are some things you might have heard:

• Writing is a hobby. Get a real job.
• You’re not good enough. You don’t have any writing talent.
• You don’t have enough education. You don’t know what you’re doing.
• Your writing is derivative / unoriginal / boring / useless / doesn’t make sense.
• The genre you write in is dead / worthless / unacceptable / morally wrong / frivolous / useless. 
• Who do you think you are? No one would want to read what you write.
• You can’t even use proper grammar, so how could you write a whole book?
• You’re wasting your time. You’ll never make it as a writer.
• You shouldn’t write those things (or even think about those things). Why don’t you write something nice?
• Insert other derogatory comment here!

Mark Pierce describes the effect of this experience in his book The Creative Wound, which “occurs when an event, or someone’s actions or words, pierce you, causing a kind of rift in your soul. A comment—even offhand and unintentional—is enough to cause one.”

He goes on to say that such words can inflict “damage to the core of who we are as creators. It is an attack on our artistic identity, resulting in us believing that whatever we make is somehow tainted or invalid, because shame has convinced us there is something intrinsically tainted or invalid about ourselves.”

As adults, we might brush off such wounds, belittling them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We might even find ourselves saying the same words to other people. After all, it’s easier to criticise than to create. 

But if you picture your younger self, bright eyed as you lose yourself in your favourite book, perhaps you might catch a glimpse of what you longed for before your dreams were dashed on the rocks of other people’s reality.

As Mark Pierce goes on to say,

“A Creative Wound has the power to delay our pursuits—sometimes for years—and it can even derail our lives completely… Anything that makes us feel ashamed of ourselves or our work can render us incapable of the self-expression we yearn for.”

This is certainly what happened to me, and it took decades to unwind. 

Your creative wounds will differ to mine but perhaps my experience will help you explore your own. To be clear, your Shadow may not reside in elements of horror as mine do, but hopefully you can use my example to consider where your creative wounds might lie. 

“You shouldn’t write things like that.”

It happened at secondary school around 1986 or 1987, so I would have been around eleven or twelve years old. English was one of my favourite subjects and the room we had our lessons in looked out onto a vibrant garden. I loved going to that class because it was all about books, and they were always my favourite things.

One day, we were asked to write a story. I can’t remember the specifics of what the teacher asked us to write, but I fictionalised a recurring nightmare.

I stood in a dark room. 

On one side, my mum and my brother, Rod, were tied up next to a cauldron of boiling oil, ready to be thrown in. On the other side, my dad and my little sister, Lucy, were threatened with decapitation by men with machetes.

I had to choose who would die.

I always woke up, my heart pounding, before I had to choose. 

Looking back now, it clearly represented an internal conflict about having to pick sides between the two halves of my family. Not an unexpected issue from a child of divorce. 

Perhaps these days, I might have been sent to the school counsellor, but it was the eighties and I don’t think we even had such a thing. Even so, the meaning of the story isn’t the point. It was the reaction to it that left scars.

“You shouldn’t write things like that,” my teacher said, and I still remember her look of disappointment, even disgust. 

Certainly judgment.

She said my writing was too dark. It wasn’t a proper story. It wasn’t appropriate for the class.

As if horrible things never happened in stories — or in life. 

As if literature could not include dark tales.

As if the only acceptable writing was the kind she approved of. We were taught The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that year, which says a lot about the type of writing considered appropriate. 

Or perhaps the issue stemmed from the school motto, “So hateth she derknesse,” from Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women: “For fear of night, so she hates the darkness.”

I had won a scholarship to a private girls’ school, and their mission was to turn us all into proper young ladies. Horror was never on the curriculum.

Perhaps if my teacher had encouraged me to write my darkness back then, my nightmares would have dissolved on the page. 

Perhaps if we had studied Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or H.P. Lovecraft stories, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I could have embraced the darker side of literature earlier in my life.

My need to push darker thoughts into my Shadow was compounded by my (wonderful) mum’s best intentions. We were brought up on the principles of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and she tried to shield me and my brother from anything harmful or horrible. We weren’t allowed to watch TV much, and even the British school drama Grange Hill was deemed inappropriate.

So much of what I’ve achieved is because my mum instilled in me a “can do” attitude that anything is possible. I’m so grateful to her for that. (I love you, Mum!)

But all that happy positivity, my desire to please her, to be a good girl, to make my teachers proud, and to be acceptable to society, meant that I pushed my darker thoughts into Shadow. 

They were inappropriate. They were taboo. They must be repressed, kept secret, and I must be outwardly happy and positive at all times.

You cannot hold back the darkness

“The night is dark and full of terrors.” —George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

It turned out that horror was on the curriculum, much of it in the form of educational films we watched during lessons.

In English Literature, we watched Romeo drink poison and Juliet stab herself in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. 

In Religious Studies, we watched Jesus beaten, tortured, and crucified in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and learned of the variety of gruesome ways that Christian saints were martyred.

In Classical Civilisation, we watched gladiators slaughter each other in Spartacus. 

In Sex Education at the peak of the AIDS crisis in the mid-’80s, we were told of the many ways we could get infected and die.

In History, we studied the Holocaust with images of skeletal bodies thrown into mass graves, medical experiments on humans, and grainy videos of marching soldiers giving the Nazi salute.

One of my first overseas school field trips was to the World War I battlegrounds of Flanders Fields in Belgium, where we studied the inhuman conditions of the trenches, walked through mass graves, and read war poetry by candlelight. As John McCrae wrote:

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie, 
In Flanders fields.

Did the teachers not realise how deeply a sensitive teenager might feel the darkness of that place? Or have I always been unusual in that places of blood echo deep inside me?

And the horrors kept coming. 

We lived in Bristol, England back then and I learned at school how the city had been part of the slave trade, its wealth built on the backs of people stolen from their homes, sold, and worked to death in the colonies. I had been at school for a year in Malawi, Africa and imagined the Black people I knew drowning, being beaten, and dying on those ships.

In my teenage years, the news was filled with ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and massacres during the Balkan wars, and images of bodies hacked apart during the Rwandan genocide. Evil committed by humans against other humans was not a historical aberration.

I’m lucky and I certainly acknowledge my privilege. Nothing terrible or horrifying has happened to me — but bad things certainly happen to others.

I wasn’t bullied or abused. I wasn’t raped or beaten or tortured.

But you don’t have to go through things to be afraid of them, and for your imagination to conjure the possibility of them. 

My mum doesn’t read my fiction now as it gives her nightmares (Sorry, Mum!). I know she worries that somehow she’s responsible for my darkness, but I’ve had a safe and (mostly) happy life, for which I’m truly grateful. 

But the world is not an entirely safe and happy place, and for a sensitive child with a vivid imagination, the world is dark and scary. 

It can be brutal and violent, and bad things happen, even to good people. 

No parent can shield their child from the reality of the world. They can only help them do their best to live in it, develop resilience, and find ways to deal with whatever comes.

Story has always been a way that humans have used to learn how to live and deal with difficult times. The best authors, the ones that readers adore and can’t get enough of, write their darkness into story to channel their experience, and help others who fear the same.

In an interview on writing the Shadow on The Creative Penn Podcast, Michaelbrent Collings shared how he incorporated a personally devastating experience into his writing: 

“My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, Apparition. It’s not terrifying because it’s the greatest book of all time, but just the concept that there’s this thing out there… like a demon, and it consumes the blood and fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of the parents… I wrote that in large measure as a way of working through what I was experiencing.”

I’ve learned much from Michaelbrent. I’ve read many of his (excellent) books and he’s been on my podcast multiple times talking about his depression and mental health issues, as well as difficulties in his author career. Writing darkness is not in Michaelbrent’s Shadow and only he can say what lies there for him. But from his example, and from that of other authors, I too learned how to write my Shadow into my books.

Twenty-three years after that English lesson, in November 2009, I did NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and wrote five thousand words of what eventually became Stone of Fire, my first novel.

In the initial chapter, I burned a nun alive on the ghats of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges River. I had watched the bodies burn by night on pyres from a boat bobbing in the current a few years before, and the image was still crystal clear in my mind. The only way to deal with how it made me feel about death was to write about it — and since then, I’ve never stopped writing.

Returning to the nightmare from my school days, I’ve never had to choose between the two halves of my family, but the threat of losing them remains a theme in my fiction. In my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra will do anything to save her sister and her niece. Their safety drives her to continue to fight against evil. 

Our deepest fears emerge in our writing, and that’s the safest place for them. I wish I’d been taught how to turn my nightmares into words back at school, but at least now I’ve learned to write my Shadow onto the page. I wish the same for you.

The Shadow in traditional publishing

If becoming an author is your dream, then publishing a book is deeply entwined with that. But as Mark Pierce says in The Creative Wound,

“We feel pain the most where it matters the most… Desire highlights whatever we consider to be truly significant.”

There is a lot of desire around publishing for those of us who love books!

It can give you:

• Validation that your writing is good enough
• Status and credibility
• Acceptance by an industry held in esteem 
• The potential of financial reward and critical acclaim
• Support from a team of professionals who know how to make fantastic books
• A sense of belonging to an elite community
• Pride in achieving a long-held goal, resulting in a confidence boost and self-esteem

Although not guaranteed, traditional publishing can give you all these things and more, but as with everything, there is a potential Shadow side. 

Denying it risks the potential of being disillusioned, disappointed, and even damaged. But remember, forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Preparation can help you avoid potential issues and help you feel less alone if you encounter them. 

The myth of success… and the reality of experience

There is a pervasive myth of success in the traditional publishing industry, perpetuated by media reporting on brand name and breakout authors, those few outliers whose experience is almost impossible to replicate. 

Because of such examples, many new traditionally published authors think that their first book will hit the top of the bestseller charts or win an award, as well as make them a million dollars — or at least a big chunk of cash. They will be able to leave their job, write in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean, and swan around the world attending conferences, while writing more bestselling books. It will be a charmed life. 

But that is not the reality. 

Perhaps it never was. 

Even so, the life of a traditionally published author represents a mythic career with the truth hidden behind a veil of obscurity.

In April 2023, The Bookseller in the UK reported that

“more than half of authors (54%) responding to a survey on their experiences of publishing their debut book have said the process negatively affected their mental health. Though views were mixed, just 22%… described a positive experience overall… Among the majority who said they had a negative experience of debut publication, anxiety, stress, depression and ‘lowered’ self-esteem were cited, with lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher among the factors that contributed.”

Many authors who have negative experiences around publishing will push them into the Shadow with denial or self-blame, preferring to keep the dream alive. They won’t talk about things in public as this may negatively affect their careers, but private discussions are often held in the corners of writing conferences or social media groups online. 

Some of the issues are as follows:

Repeated rejection by agents and publishers may lead to the author thinking they are not good enough as a writer, which can lead to feeling unworthy as a person. If an author gets a deal, the amount of advance and the name and status of the publisher compared to others create a hierarchy that impacts self-esteem.

A deal for a book may be much lower than an author might have been expecting, with low or no advance, and the resulting experience with the publisher beneath expectations.

The launch process may be disappointing, and the book may appear without fanfare, with few sales and no bestseller chart position. 

In The Bookseller report, one author described her launch day as 

“a total wasteland… You have expectations about what publication day will be like, but in reality, nothing really happens.”

The book may receive negative reviews by critics or readers or more publicly on social media, which can make an author feel attacked.

The book might not sell as well as expected, and the author may feel like it’s their fault. Commercial success can sometimes feel tied to self-worth and an author can’t help but compare their sales to others, with resulting embarrassment or shame.

The communication from the publisher may be less than expected. One author in The Bookseller report said, 

“I was shocked by the lack of clarity and shared information and the cynicism that underlies the superficial charm of this industry.”

There is often more of a focus on debut authors in publishing houses, so those who have been writing and publishing in the midlist for years can feel ignored and undervalued.

In The Bookseller report, 48 percent of authors reported “their publisher supported them for less than a year,” with one saying, 

“I got no support and felt like a commodity, like the team had moved on completely to the next book.”

If an author is not successful enough, the next deal may be lower than the last, less effort is made with marketing, and they may be let go. 

In The Bookseller report, “six authors—debut and otherwise—cited being dropped by their publisher, some with no explanation.”

Even if everything goes well and an author is considered successful by others, they may experience imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud when speaking at conferences or doing book signings.

And the list goes on … 

All these things can lead to feelings of shame, inadequacy, and embarrassment; loss of status in the eyes of peers; and a sense of failure if a publishing career is not successful enough. 

The author feels like it’s their fault, like they weren’t good enough — although, of course, the reality is that the conditions were not right at the time. A failure of a book is not a failure of the person, but it can certainly feel like it! 

When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power

Despite all the potential negatives of traditional publishing, if you know what could happen, you can mitigate them. You can prepare yourself for various scenarios and protect yourself from potential fall-out. 

It’s clear from The Bookseller report that too many authors have unrealistic expectations of the industry.

But publishers are businesses, not charities. 

It’s not their job to make you feel good as an author. It’s their job to sell books and pay you. The best thing they can do is to continue to be a viable business so they can keep putting books on the shelves and keep paying authors, staff, and company shareholders. 

When you license your creative work to a publisher, you’re giving up control of your intellectual property in exchange for money and status. 

Bring your fears and issues out of the Shadow, acknowledge them, and deal with them early, so they do not get pushed down and re-emerge later in blame and bitterness.

Educate yourself on the business of publishing. Be clear on what you want to achieve with any deal. Empower yourself as an author, take responsibility for your career, and you will have a much better experience.

The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author

Self-publishing, or being an independent (indie) author, can be a fantastic, pro-active choice for getting your book into the world. Holding your first book in your hand and saying “I made this” is pretty exciting, and even after more than forty books, I still get excited about seeing ideas in my head turn into a physical product in the world. 

Self-publishing can give an author: 

• Creative control over what to write, editorial and cover design choices, when and how often to publish, and how to market
• Empowerment over your author career and the ability to make choices that impact success without asking for permission
• Ownership and control of intellectual property assets, resulting in increased opportunity around licensing and new markets
• Independence and the potential for recurring income for the long term
• Autonomy and flexibility around timelines, publishing options, and the ability to easily pivot into new genres and business models
• Validation based on positive reader reviews and money earned
• Personal growth and learning through the acquisition of new skills, resulting in a boost in confidence and self-esteem
• A sense of belonging to an active and vibrant community of indie authors around the world

Being an indie author can give you all this and more, but once again, there is a Shadow side and preparation can help you navigate potential issues.  

The myth of success… and the reality of experience

As with traditional publishing, the indie author world has perpetuated a myth of success in the example of the breakout indie author like E.L. James with Fifty Shades of Grey, Hugh Howey with Wool, or Andy Weir with The Martian.

The emphasis on financial success is also fuelled online by authors who share screenshots showing six-figure months or seven-figure years, without sharing marketing costs and other outgoings, or the amount of time spent on the business. 

Yes, these can inspire some, but it can also make others feel inadequate and potentially lead to bad choices about how to publish and market based on comparison. 

The indie author world is full of just as much ego and a desire for status and money as traditional publishing. 

This is not a surprise! 

Most authors, regardless of publishing choices, are a mix of massive ego and chronic self-doubt. We are human, so the same issues will re-occur. A different publishing method doesn’t cure all ills.

Some of the issues are as follows:

You learn everything you need to know about writing and editing, only to find that you need to learn a whole new set of skills in order to self-publish and market your book. This can take a lot of time and effort you did not expect, and things change all the time so you have to keep learning.

Being in control of every aspect of the publishing process, from writing to cover design to marketing, can be overwhelming, leading to indecision, perfectionism, stress, and even burnout as you try to do all the things. 

You try to find people to help, but building your team is a challenge, and working with others has its own difficulties. 

People say negative things about self-publishing that may arouse feelings of embarrassment or shame. These might be little niggles, but they needle you, nonetheless. You wonder whether you made the right choice.

You struggle with self-doubt and if you go to an event with traditional published authors, you compare yourself to them and feel like an imposter. 

Are you good enough to be an author if a traditional publisher hasn’t chosen you? 

Is it just vanity to self-publish? 

Are your books unworthy? 

Even though you worked with a professional editor, you still get one-star reviews and you hate criticism from readers. You wonder whether you’re wasting your time.

You might be ripped off by an author services company who promise the world, only to leave you with a pile of printed books in your garage and no way to sell them. 

When you finally publish your book, it languishes at the bottom of the charts while other authors hit the top of the list over and over, raking in the cash while you are left out of pocket. 

You don’t admit to over-spending on marketing as it makes you ashamed. 

You resist book marketing and make critical comments about writers who embrace it. You believe that quality rises to the top and if a book is good enough, people will buy it anyway. This can lead to disappointment and disillusionment when you launch your book and it doesn’t sell many copies because nobody knows about it. 

You try to do what everyone advises, but you still can’t make decent money as an author. 

You’re jealous of other authors’ success and put it down to them ‘selling out’ or writing things you can’t or ‘using AI’ or ‘using a ghostwriter’ or having a specific business model you consider impossible to replicate.

And the list goes on… 

When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power

Being in control of your books and your author career is a double-edged sword. 

Traditionally published authors can criticise their publishers or agents or the marketing team or the bookstores or the media, but indie authors have to take responsibility for it all. 

Sure, we can blame ‘the algorithms’ or social media platforms, or criticise other authors for having more experience or more money to invest in marketing, or attribute their success to writing in a more popular genre — but we also know there are always people who do well regardless of the challenges.

Once more, we’re back to acknowledging and integrating the Shadow side of our choices. We are flawed humans. There will always be good times and bad, and difficulties to offset the high points. This too shall pass, as the old saying goes.

I know that being an indie author has plenty of Shadow. I’ve been doing this since 2008 and despite the hard times, I’m still here. 

I’m still writing. I’m still publishing. 

This life is not for everyone, but it’s my choice. You must make yours.

The Shadow in work

You work hard. You make a living.

Nothing wrong with that attitude, right?

It’s what we’re taught from an early age and, like so much of life, it’s not a problem until it goes to extremes.

Not achieving what you want to? Work harder. Can’t get ahead? Work harder. Not making a good enough living? Work harder.

People who don’t work hard are lazy. They don’t deserve handouts or benefits. People who don’t work hard aren’t useful, so they are not valued members of our culture and community.

But what about the old or the sick, the mentally ill, or those with disabilities? What about children?

What about the unemployed? The under-employed?

What about those who are — or will be — displaced by technology, those called “the useless class” by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus?

What if we become one of these in the future?

Who am I if I cannot work?

The Shadow side of my attitude to work became clear when I caught COVID in the summer of 2021. 

I was the sickest I’d ever been. I spent two weeks in bed unable to even think properly, and six weeks after that, I was barely able to work more than an hour a day before lying in the dark and waiting for my energy to return. I was limited in what I could do for another six months after that. At times, I wondered if I would ever get better.

Jonathan kept urging me to be patient and rest. 

But I don’t know how to rest. I know how to work and how to sleep.

I can do ‘active rest,’ which usually involves walking a long way or traveling somewhere interesting, but those require a stronger mind and body than I had during those months.

It struck me that even if I recovered from the virus, I had glimpsed my future self. 

One day, I will be weak in body and mind. 

If I’m lucky, that will be many years away and hopefully for a short time before I die — but it will happen. 

I am an animal. I will die. My body and mind will pass on and I will be no more.

Before then I will be weak. 

Before then, I will be useless. 

Before then, I will be a burden. 

I will not be able to work… But who am I if I cannot work? What is the point of me?

I can’t answer these questions right now, because although I recognise them as part of my Shadow, I’ve not progressed far enough to have dealt with them entirely.

My months of COVID gave me some much-needed empathy for those who cannot work, even if they want to. We need to reframe what work is as a society, and value humans for different things, especially as technology changes what work even means. That starts with each of us.

“Illness, affliction of body and soul, can be life-altering. It has the potential to reveal the most fundamental conflict of the human condition: the tension between our infinite, glorious dreams and desires and our limited, vulnerable, decaying physicality.” —Connie Zweig, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul

The Shadow in money

In the Greek myth, King Midas was a wealthy ruler who loved gold above all else. His palace was adorned with golden sculptures and furniture, and he took immense pleasure in his riches. Yet, despite his vast wealth, he yearned for more.

After doing a favour for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, Midas was granted a single wish. Intoxicated by greed, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold — and it was so.

At first, it was a lot of fun. 

Midas turned everything else in his palace to gold, even the trees and stones of his estate. After a morning of turning things to gold, he fancied a spot of lunch.

But when he tried to eat, the food and drink turned to gold in his mouth. He became thirsty and hungry — and increasingly desperate.

As he sat in despair on his golden throne, his beloved young daughter ran to comfort him. For a moment, he forgot his wish — and as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek, she turned into a golden statue, frozen in precious metal. 

King Midas cried out to the gods to forgive him, to reverse the wish. 

He renounced his greed and gave away all his wealth, and his daughter was returned to life.

The moral of the story: Wealth and greed are bad.

In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is described as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.” He’s wealthy but does not share, considering Christmas spending to be frivolous and giving to charity to be worthless. He’s saved by a confrontation with his lonely future and becomes a generous man and benefactor of the poor.

Wealth is good if you share it with others.

The gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: 14-30, tells the parable of the bags of gold, in which a rich man goes on a journey and entrusts his servants with varying amounts of gold. On his return, the servants who multiplied the gold through their efforts and investments are rewarded, while the one who merely returned the gold with no interest is punished: 

“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Making money is good, making more money is even better. If you can’t make any money, you don’t deserve to have any.

Within the same gospel, in Matthew 19:24, Jesus encounters a wealthy man and tells him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, which the man is unable to do. Jesus says, 

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Wealth is bad. Give it all away and you’ll go to heaven.

With all these contradictory messages, no wonder we’re so conflicted about money!

How do you think and feel about money?

While money is mostly tied to our work, it’s far more than just a transactional object for most people. It’s loaded with complex symbolism and judgment handed down by family, religion, and culture.

You are likely to find elements of Shadow by examining your attitudes around money. 

Consider which of the following statements resonate with you or write your own.

• Money stresses me out. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it.
• Some people hoard money, so there is inequality. Rich people are bad and we should take away their wealth and give it to the poor. 
• I can never make enough money to pay the bills, or to give my family what I want to provide.
• Money doesn’t grow on trees. 
• It’s wasteful to spend money as you might need it later, so I’m frugal and don’t spend money unless absolutely necessary.
• It is better and more ethical to be poor than to be rich.
• I want more money. I read books and watch TV shows about rich people because I want to live like that. Sometimes I spend too much on things for a glimpse of what that might be like. 
• I buy lottery tickets and dream of winning all that money. 
• I’m jealous of people who have money. I want more of it and I resent those who have it.
• I’m no good with money. I don’t like to look at my bank statement or credit card statement. I live off my overdraft and I’m in debt. I will never earn enough to get out of debt and start saving, so I don’t think too much about it.
• I don’t know enough about money. Talking about it makes me feel stupid, so I just ignore it. People like me aren’t educated about money. 
• I need to make more money. If I can make lots of money, then people will look up to me. If I make lots of money, I will be secure, nothing can touch me, I will be safe. 
• I never want to be poor. I would be ashamed to be poor. I will never go on benefits. My net worth is my self worth.
• Money is good. We have the best standard of living in history because of the increase in wealth over time. Even the richest kings of the past didn’t have what many middle-class people have today in terms of access to food, water, technology, healthcare, education, and more.
• The richest people give the most money to the poor through taxation and charity, as well as through building companies that employ people and invent new things. The very richest give away much of their fortunes. They provide far more benefit to the world than the poor. 
• I love money. Money loves me. Money comes easily and quickly to me. I attract money in multiple streams of income. It flows to me in so many ways. I spend money. I invest money. I give money. I’m happy and grateful for all that I receive.

The Shadow around money for authors in particular

Many writers and other creatives have issues around money and wealth. How often have you heard the following, and which do you agree with?

• You can’t make money with your writing. You’ll be a poor author in a garret, a starving artist. 
• You can’t write ‘good quality’ books and make money.
• If you make money writing, you’re a hack, you’re selling out. You are less worthy than someone who writes only for the Muse. Your books are commercial, not artistic.
• If you spend money on marketing, then your books are clearly not good enough to sell on their own.
• My agent / publisher / accountant / partner deals with the money side. I like to focus on the creative side of things.

My money story

Note: This is not financial or investment advice. Please talk to a professional about your situation.

I’ve had money issues over the years — haven’t we all! But I have been through a (long) process to bring money out of my Shadow and into the light. There will always be more to discover, but hopefully my money story will help you, or at least give you an opportunity to reflect.

Like most people, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My parents started out as teachers, but later my mum — who I lived with, along with my brother — became a change management consultant, moving to the USA and earning a lot more. I’m grateful that she moved into business because her example changed the way I saw money and provided some valuable lessons.

(1) You can change your circumstances by learning more and then applying that to leverage opportunity into a new job or career

Mum taught English at a school in Bristol when we moved back from Malawi, Africa, in the mid ’80s but I remember how stressful it was for her, and how little money she made. She wanted a better future for us all, so she took a year out to do a master’s degree in management.

In the same way, when I wanted to change careers and leave consulting to become an author, I spent time and money learning about the writing craft and the business of publishing. I still invest a considerable chunk on continuous learning, as this industry changes all the time.

(2) You might have to downsize in order to leap forward

The year my mum did her degree, we lived in the attic of another family’s house; we ate a lot of one-pot casserole and our treat was having a Yorkie bar on the walk back from the museum. 

We wore hand-me-down clothes, and I remember one day at school when another girl said I was wearing her dress. I denied it, of course, but there in back of the dress was her name tag. I still remember her name and I can still feel that flush of shame and embarrassment. I was determined to never feel like that again. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was also learning the power of downsizing.

Mum got her degree and then a new job in management in Bristol. She bought a house, and we settled for a few years. I had lots of different jobs as a teenager. My favourite was working in the delicatessen because we got a free lunch made from delicious produce. After I finished A-levels, I went to the University of Oxford, and my mum and brother moved to the USA for further opportunities.

I’ve downsized multiple times over the years, taking a step back in order to take a step forward. The biggest was in 2010 when I decided to leave consulting. Jonathan and I sold our three-bedroom house and investments in Brisbane, Australia, and rented a one-bedroom flat in London, so we could be debt-free and live on less while I built up a new career. It was a decade before we bought another house.

(3) Comparison can be deadly: there will always be people with more money than you

Oxford was an education in many ways and relevant to this chapter is how much I didn’t know about things people with money took for granted.

I learned about formal hall and wine pairings, and how to make a perfect gin and tonic. I ate smoked salmon for the first time. I learned how to fit in with people who had a lot more money than I did, and I definitely wanted to have money of my own to play with.

(4) Income is not wealth

You can earn lots but have nothing to show for it after years of working. I learned this in my first few years of IT consulting after university. I earned a great salary and then went contracting, earning even more money at a daily rate.

I had a wonderful time. I traveled, ate and drank and generally made merry, but I always had to go back to the day job when the money ran out. I couldn’t work out how I could ever stop this cycle.

Then I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a book I still recommend, especially if you’re from a family that values academic over financial education. I learned how to escape the rat race by building and/or accumulating assets that pay even when you’re not working. It was a revelation!

The ‘poor dad’ in the book is a university professor. He knows so much about so many things, but he ends up poor as he did not educate himself about money. The ‘rich dad’ has little formal education, but he knows about money and wealth because he learned about it, as we can do at any stage in our lives. 

(5) Not all investments suit every person, so find the right one for you

Once I discovered the world of investing, I read all the books and did courses and in-person events. I joined communities and I up-skilled big time.

Of course, I made mistakes and learned lots along the way. 

I tried property investing and renovated a couple of houses for rental (with more practical partners and skilled contractors). But while I could see that property investing might work for some people, I did not care enough about the details to make it work for me, and it was certainly not passive income.

I tried other things. 

My first husband was a boat skipper and scuba diving instructor, so we started a charter. With the variable costs of fuel, the vagaries of New Zealand weather — and our divorce — it didn’t last long!

From all these experiments, I learned I wanted to run a business, but it needed to be online and not based on a physical location, physical premises, or other people. 

That was 2006, around the time that blogging started taking off and it became possible to make a living online. I could see the potential and a year later, the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle launched, which became the basis of my business as an author. 

(6) Boring, automatic saving and investing works best

Between 2007 and 2011, I contracted in Australia, where they have compulsory superannuation contributions, meaning you have to save and invest a percentage of your salary or self-employed income. 

I’d never done that before, because I didn’t understand it. I’d ploughed all my excess income into property or the business instead. But in Australia I didn’t notice the money going out because it was automatic. I chose a particular fund and it auto-invested every month. The pot grew pretty fast since I didn’t touch it, and years later, it’s still growing. 

I discovered the power of compound interest and time in the market, both of which are super boring. This type of investing is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a slow process of automatically putting money into boring investments and doing that month in, month out, year in, year out, automatically for decades while you get on with your life. 

I still do this. I earn money as an author entrepreneur and I put a percentage of that into boring investments automatically every month. I also have a small amount which is for fun and higher risk investments, but mostly I’m a conservative, risk-averse investor planning ahead for the future.

This is not financial advice, so I’m not giving any specifics. I have a list of recommended money books at www.TheCreativePenn.com/moneybooks if you want to learn more.

Learning from the Shadow

When I look back, my Shadow side around money eventually drove me to learn more and resulted in a better outcome (so far!).

I was ashamed of being poor when I had to wear hand-me-down clothes at school. That drove a fear of not having any money, which partially explains my workaholism. I was embarrassed at Oxford because I didn’t know how to behave in certain settings, and I wanted to be like the rich people I saw there. 

I spent too much money in my early years as a consultant because I wanted to experience a “rich” life and didn’t understand saving and investing would lead to better things in the future. 

I invested too much in the wrong things because I didn’t know myself well enough and I was trying to get rich quick so I could leave my job and ‘be happy.’

But eventually, I discovered that I could grow my net worth with boring, long-term investments while doing a job I loved as an author entrepreneur. 

My only regret is that I didn’t discover this earlier and put a percentage of my income into investments as soon as I started work. It took several decades to get started, but at least I did (eventually) start. 

My money story isn’t over yet, and I keep learning new things, but hopefully my experience will help you reflect on your own and avoid the issue if it’s still in Shadow.

These chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn

 

The post Writing The Shadow: The Creative Wound, Publishing, And Money, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.