The Creative Penn

How can you embrace the process of change in life and author business, especially in an era of AI? How can you take control of what's possible and be more comfortable with uncertainty? How can you develop a career portfolio that future proofs you in changing times? April Rinne shares her insights into how we can flux.

In the intro, KDP royalty changes and printing costs; The Pre-Launch Checklist [Draft2Digital]; Audible opens AI narration to some traditional publishers [Publishing Perspectives]; US Copyright Office Fair Use;

Plus, join me for a live webinar on The AI-Assisted Artisan Author; Signing Death Valley at BookVault; Successful Self-Publishing 4th Edition; Egypt with Luke Richardson on Books and Travel.

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 

April Rinne is a futurist, professional speaker, lawyer, and the international bestselling author of Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.

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

You can find April at AprilRinne.com or FluxMindset.com.

Joanna: April Rinne is a futurist, professional speaker, lawyer, and the international bestselling author of Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. So welcome to the show, April.

April: Thank you so much, Jo. I'm delighted to be here.

Joanna: I'm so excited to talk about this, but first up, just—

April: It's quite interesting because I think a lot of people today do know me as a futurist, trained as a lawyer, business strategy, all of that. We can have that conversation around the need I was seeing in the business world around, frankly, just how bad humans are at change and uncertainty and the unknown.

Just to be clear, this predates the pandemic by a long shot. So I actually started germinating the book, I would say, in about 2014. It was like a long time in coming, and the thesis continued to grow and deepen. Obviously, when the pandemic hit, people are like, “Oh, flux. Yes, world is in flux. I don't know what to do.”

So since 2020, there's been a real zeitgeist around it, but for me, it goes much, much, much deeper and much further back in history. So one piece is, just in the business world, in the work I was doing, how fraught people's relationship with change is.

Also, my entire career has been global. So I would work in different cultures, with different kinds of organizations, in different settings. I noticed this is a very universal issue as well. It's not as though one place or one people is better at change or worse at change.

So there was a cultural component. I really love getting into the cultures of change and what we can learn from one another, and the fact that everyone has something to contribute to this conversation, and everyone has something to learn. So there was that piece as well.

Then really, the real genesis—and I realize I'm getting pretty personal pretty fast, and we've just started this conversation, but I do want to kind of put it all out there. For many years, I didn't share much of my personal story, not that I didn't want to talk about it.

I was always an open book about it personally, but you have those filters between who am I professionally and who am I personally, and what parts of me do I show to what people, and all of that.

The fact is that my real interest in what do you do when you don't know what to do, and what do you do when your entire world is thrown in flux, is deeply, deeply personal.

So if I think, like, how did I get into writing a book? This goes back more than 25 years.

My first really big experience with change and uncertainty happened when I was 20, and I was at university, and I got the phone call that no one ever wants to get or expects to get, which was that both of my parents had died in a car crash.

Imagine? Like, there's my world totally flipped upside down. I was actually overseas. I was in the UK, and I got this phone call.

20 is a very interesting age. I was old enough to know how to care for myself, day to day at university and whatnot, but really had no clue what my greater connection was to the world, if you will.

So I put all of that out there because had you asked me when I was 20, would I write a book about change and uncertainty? I would have said, of course not. I just need to survive.

It wasn't something that I was conscious of at the time, but it was absolutely where this journey began and where the process to ultimately write this book, and the research I did, and the perspective I have started.

Not just what I can contribute to the book, but the kinds of people and situations and changes that I can really relate to and hold space for and guide conversations around, that part.

Yes, the business part is important, the leadership, all of that. This personal piece is really deeply important to me as well. I love the ways in which Flux can reach a range of people and a range of different situations.

Joanna: I love that, and I think this is so important. As writers, there'll be people listening who write nonfiction, and bringing this personal aspect into nonfiction is so important.

Then your personal experience, I mean, obviously terrible and awful situation, but you have grown from that and help people every day. I did want to ask specifically here, because the word “flux”, and you talk about, we need to learn how to flux in a world in flux, and you use it kind of as a verb as well.

Your parents, that situation that happened, that was like an immediate, you have to change, you have to adapt right now. Whereas I feel like what a lot of people feel at the moment in the world is almost like a slow train crash. These changes that we see coming and that are happening, but they're not that immediate phone call.

April: Yes, I love this, Jo. This is wonderful.

Also, just as a big picture—not caveat, but framing—I realize that my story, I mean, it's tragic, it's a bit extreme, it's mine. I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't really welcome having conversations about it.

What I have found, and just as a little context going back to what we're talking about earlier, is that while I had that trepidation about, like, “What will people think of me if I share this? I'm supposed to be the business person,” whatever.

Guess what? So I say this for fiction and nonfiction writers, the moment I shared that story, it was like the doors blew off. People were like, that's what we want to talk about. Because, guess what? That's what affects our ability to show up at work and in business.

Not the change management process or framework or checklist, but like, how are we showing up for this?

So that's a really good segue to this question as well. I mean, I have to say, honestly, there are more filters on change and ways that we can parse through the different kinds of change and so forth, than even this conversation will allow for.

It gets broad and deep really fast, but let me share a couple different ways we might see change, a couple things I found extremely helpful for most people. So you are absolutely right that I hear from people pretty much every day, “I love change. It's amazing.” “I hate change. It's horrible.” You know, all of this.

I have heard from a lot of people in recent years around—you know, look at the pandemic. Look at how much we changed, look at how much we adapted and grew and what we knew.

I always have to give the caveat of, yes, because our backs were against the wall and we were forced to change. It was a global health crisis. We had no choice. Of course, we changed.

Guess what? After the immediate emergency and aftermath, did we regress in some of those habits? Did we kind of forget what we learned? You bet.

We're not that good at opting into changes, even ones we know would be good for us, because we have this preference for stasis. We have this preference for like, well, if I'm still alive, things should be okay. I don't want to create difficulty for myself. I don't want to do the work. I don't want to make myself uncomfortable.

Yet, guess what? In times of—and I'm not going to call it peace, I'm not going to call it stasis—but as you described — 

That is the best time of all to do the work that my research and Flux focuses on. The pain comes when we don't do it, and we wait for that train crash to happen, and then we're like, oh no. It's not just more painful and more fraught, but we actually have fewer choices.

So very big picture, I just kind of want to put this framing out there because it relates not just to day-to-day change. I know we'll talk a little bit about AI. It's all kinds of changes, right?

This idea that—and I realize I'm speaking in generalizations, and so I apologize for that, I'll give kind of a caveat—but just observations and patterns I see around the world, across demographics, it's not unique to one person or one place, but there is this sense that for a lot of people, if we followed the rules and did x, y and z, that the world would look in a certain way.

Whether that's with your career, whether that's technology, whether that's relationships, happiness, satisfaction, whatever.

I'm angry about that. That's not fair.

You kind of have to have this conversation and say none of this was ever promised to us. Yes, there are all kinds of things that we were led to believe we control, that we actually don't. No single human controls, no single event controls.

A lot of this gets into personal agency. It gets into what are those practices and skills, and I call them superpowers, that you do have control over that can help make you better adept, more aware and more ready for the changes that come our way.

I think that's what we really need to focus on because social media has done a wonderful job of kind of outsourcing our beliefs around our responsibility for how we cope with change. It's more like, “just go install this app and it'll take care of change for you.” What? It doesn't, right?

Or, “Just go buy this thing. Watch this, and your problems will be solved.” We're really talking about doing the work and getting into it. I realize I'm going on a little bit here, but I do want to kind of drill down on one of the big ones, and maybe this is where we can pull the thread a little bit more.

Back to the whole like, what changes do we love and what changes do we hate, and how do we look at this better? One of the biggest, easiest filters you can think about is on the whole, though —

That can be a new relationship, a new role, a new book to write, a new restaurant, to try, you name it.

Here's where it gets interesting. It doesn't mean that the changes we choose work out. I always use the example of like that haircut you got a few years ago, right? You picked it, right?

Yet we see those changes differently, and we appreciate them because we had a say in creating them. So I think that's one place we could just start. You start pulling on that.

I think we see that again with career choices. We see that with new technologies. We see that with all kinds of disruption. For people to just pay attention to like, is there a pattern in how they feel around the changes that they do and don't control?

Joanna: Yes, that's great. It's interesting, so you really mentioned there, choice and control. You also mentioned AI, so we're going to have to talk about that.

This is one of the biggest things in the author community, and I'm sure you're seeing this in the work community, the business community, is —

This is difficult, right?

One of the things that I loved in the book is you say, “We can radically reshape our relationship to uncertainty,” and that you have this chapter on getting lost rather than knowing exactly what's going to happen. So maybe you could speak to that because—

We cannot necessarily choose, and we cannot control, so how do we reshape this?

April: So I love this. I'm already coming up on at least three of the eight we could talk about here. Some of it around humanity, some around technology. This question, how you framed it, is just really rich and robust. So thank you for that.

So the book, and in particular the introduction, this concept of a flux mindset that I really am trying to open a new series of conversations around how we show up for change, how we relate to change, how we obviously manage change, and what we do about it.

As I mentioned and alluded to earlier, it's less about traditional change management and like, “give me my checklist.” The implication of change management is that if something changes, I will put it into my framework, these six steps or checklists, whatever.

At the end, the implication is that the change will be quote, unquote, “managed, done, finished, we can move on.” You look around and you go, is that really how change works? Pretty much everyone today is like, no, of course not.

So we're looking at, what's the missing piece? The missing piece is this human dimension. It is this relationship to change. So acknowledging that how you show up for change, how you feel about it, how you see it, how you see what you are and aren't in control of, really matters, and we can all get better at it.

So again, back to some of the changes. There will be all kinds of changes, actually more and more and more changes. I know this will make some people listening in not so happy, but there are more changes that we don't control ahead, not fewer.

That's not something that anyone controls. We don't know if there's more change today than in the past. There's always been change. There's always been a lot of it. You can as far back in human history, there's always been change, but the awareness of how much is changing is off the charts.

That's not really how human brains are designed to digest all of that. So the fact is, there's going to be more and more and more things in the outside world that we can't control, we can't predict, we don't get to decide whether or not they come to pass.

The more that happens, the more we have to be aware and harness and leverage all of the ways that we do control how we respond, and what we do, and how we feel, and how we think, and who we reach out to, and all of that. All of those things are 100% in our control.

We've never needed to harness those skills more than today, and it helps kind of reshape the relative balance between those things that we do and don't control.

So AI, just as one example, what I think is really rattling people about AI—yes, obviously, in a community of authors, just the AI itself is very daunting and very threatening—but —

There are aspects of it that could be amazing for authors.

There are aspects that could be extremely dangerous and foreboding for authors. It's all of these things at once.

So having the conversation around, what is it about AI that feels so threatening? For a lot of people, it's just the uncertainty.

So, there you have to say —

Those are all choices we make. So there's nothing that's a foregone conclusion here, unless we decide to do nothing.

I think that too, it's kind of this risk of complacency. It's not that that AI is going to take someone's job. It's that someone who understands how AI works and can work effectively with it might take some of what you do, kind of thing.

I do think, and the other piece to this, there's this sense of getting lost, and just really what that superpower is about is getting comfortable in that space of not knowing. The goal of getting lost isn't to stay lost forever. It's to be comfortable in that in between, in that messy middle that's neither here nor there.

We know things are changing, but we don't yet know what comes next. That the people who do that well are the ones that understand that that messy middle in that space of not knowing is actually the point of transformation.

That's where the new insights happen. That's where the new models come about. That's the place we need to be good at being, because if we just try to race through it, we never get to the new that's truly better.

So there's that piece, and then there's also—I just want to make a quick shout out to another superpower, which is “be all the more human.”

I do think, you mentioned it already, in the world of AI, where AI can write books just like that, the irony, the maybe counterintuitive, but the beauty also is that the more bombarded our lives are by technology of all kinds, the more valuable humanity, the human touch, the human script, the human authorship, the more valuable that becomes.

So I just want to put that out there as well.

Joanna: Yes, and I talk about double down on being human.

At the end of the day, it's not our ability to produce thousands of words, like producing words is not the point, it's the connection with another person that is the important thing. I think that's what I try to talk about.

I want to come back to something, you were talking there about the sort of the fact that it exists, you know, that AI exists, or whatever change is going on.

I wondered, you see so many organizations and so many people who are dealing with different kinds of change, and one of the aspects I struggle with in the community are the people who just say, “Look, this will go away. We will go back to how things were. The OpenAI court case with the New York Times will be resolved, and they'll just cancel all this stuff. It will all go.”

I almost feel like this is the most concerning attitude, that we can go back. So I guess my bigger question is, can things ever go back?

April: Well, I'm afraid that my answer here is probably going to be on the one hand, unsurprising, and on the other hand, maybe a little dissatisfying. That is simply, you're right. Unsurprising in that things aren't going back. There's never been a point at which we just go back to some sort of stasis that was before.

The pendulum swings, for sure. So you can go from one extreme to another. We've had lots of swinging back and forth, even in recent years, on many metrics. So it's not like it goes back, but it's not like the course of change is inevitable in one direction. I think that's the way to put it.

It will zig and zag and go upwards and downwards and sideways and all of that, but it doesn't really go back.

What I do think we find are sometimes when we go in one direction to an extreme, we're like, oops, let's not forget that some of this other stuff that we used to remember is also helpful.

Silly case in point, but the more addicted, I could say, we are to apps and technology and GPS, right? Running joke of like, just because we have GPS doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to get from point A to point B, just of your own reconnaissance.

So there's this sense of, it's a wonderful tool to have, let's not forget the human element of knowing how to orient yourself. So is that going back, going forward? It's combining both. So there's a lot of the combining of both, which is you can have a change, but not forget what came before it.

The piece about what do we do when we just feel like we're hitting a brick wall, I will say—and I'm sorry to not give a better answer—there are so many people, so many organizations, struggling with flux, struggling with change. Exactly what you're describing.

I am at a point in my career, in the development of Flux, where if that is a situation that I'm dealt with, there are so many people who recognize that the world is changing, that flux is a thing, and they want to lean into it and get help, that for me, what you've just described isn't a place where I invest too much of my energy these days.

It's a brick wall, and I know that ultimately they're going to have to change. Those will be the people who are more like that train wreck, that at some point down the road, are in a much greater point of pain.

What I'm looking at are so many people, so many organizations, who do understand that things are changing.

So, for me, that that lower hanging fruit of where there's heat and energy, and we might not have figured it all out, and we might have some rough edges that we need to work on, but we're here and we're willing to try. That's a far better place to start a conversation around flux.

I know it sounds a bit harsh, but for me, if people aren't ready to do the work, I'm not someone who can necessarily make them ready. What I do know is that everyone, in some capacity, whether it's personal, professional, organizational, societal, is going to run into that kind of change.

I don't know exactly what it is, but it's going to happen, that is that wake up call where they say I can't just keep pretending that this isn't changing, or that this isn't an issue, or that if I just do nothing, it will go away.

At some point that will come back to kind of, not haunt you, but—well, haunt you sometimes—that will come back to bite you even worse than you thought. So it pains my heart a little bit to say that, but I do have to put it out there because I've seen that pattern play out too many times.

I know where the benefit and the value of flux work can happen. I also know that if people aren't ready or open to even the idea of improving their relationship to change or that there's anything wrong with what they're currently doing, that that's the work they need to do before my work can be really that impactful.

Joanna: That's actually very helpful. More than you know!

I do want to come to another thing that you talk about, which is the idea of the portfolio career. Again, as old business models are changing, and even old ways of marketing—for example, book marketing has changed.

April: So this one, and I love that it's authors. In my experience, there's already a more natural congruence to someone who's been just like going for climbing the career ladder. There's a different conversation.

Obviously, there are some authors that that's all they've ever done, but for most authors, in my experience, they have a broader palette that they're drawing from. They have a deep, rich, diverse, professional and personal history.

So very briefly, let me just describe the superpower itself. It's unique amongst the eight because it's the only one that focuses exclusively on kind of professional change, career change, that sort of thing. The others expand, I think, a bit further beyond.

This is really about, how do you design and own a career that is fit for a future of work in flux.

I've been working on the scene for more than 20 years, I have a portfolio career, career portfolio. We can use those terms interchangeably. Just for the record, some people like portfolio career as a tagline. Other people like this idea of a career portfolio.

We're getting at the same general gist of the shape of the career of the future. It no longer looks like a ladder you're going to climb or a path you're going to pursue in one direction, which is up.

So it's interesting because I've been working on this for a while. It's not a brand new concept. It predates AI by decades, and yet what's fascinating is as AI becomes more and more present in the workplace, it's actually giving more and more fodder to this idea of the portfolio.

So what we're really getting at is, when you think about the shape of our career, historically, the metaphor of a ladder is something linear, something in one direction. Do A, then B, then C, and then somehow success is at the top or at the end. That's been really lodged in our heads.

That comes from the first industrial revolution, by the way. So it's only 250 years old. You might think that after 250 years we could use an update. Much of the workplace has moved on, but somehow we still have this metaphor of a ladder in our heads.

Yet, you look around and you go, is this ladder working? I want to be really careful to say, like the ladder metaphor, the ladder shape, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's not bad. It works, but it works for fewer and fewer people. It's becoming a smaller and smaller piece of a much bigger pie.

The fact is, today, there has never been more ways to work, to earn income, to contribute to society, than there are now. So the ladder is just one, but like there are a jillion other ways that you can have and create a successful, rewarding career.

So the portfolio is really this new shape to accommodate these other ways of working.

So the point here is that it's way more than your resume, way more than your CV.

When you start looking at your career capabilities in this more holistic way—and I'll come back to that in a minute—you start to be able to connect a lot more dots, you start to be able to pursue a lot more opportunities, and you start to see your career development in a much more kind of multi-dimensional way.

Let me just share a couple examples, because when you think about what's on your resume or your CV, it's a very select, identifiable set of skills. There's a form for it, right?

What's fascinating to me is that when you think about it, and when I think about the people that I admire and who are really successful at what they do—and again, success however you want to define it—many of their most valuable skills aren't the skills I even find on their resume.

They're human capabilities. They're the things that AI can't eliminate. The fact is that your resume, your CV, only contains a fraction of who you are and what you can do. So sometimes, not even the most interesting parts.

Probably my favorite example is—and I'm guessing there will be at least a few parents that are tuning in—parenting skills. Okay, parenting skills are super skills for time management, conflict negotiation, empathy. Parenting skills help us do so much in the world, and yet we're not supposed to put them on our CV.

Like, not only that, we might get dinged for it. Why? I cannot figure that out, because the kinds of skills you learn when parenting are the kinds of skills that are invaluable in the workplace that employers miss out on completely if they don't know this about you.

So that's a really good example. It's not on a resume, but that would be at the core of your portfolio. In my case, I lost my parents young. I'm really good at holding space for grief and loss. Again, you're not going to find that on my resume, a traditional resume, but it's at the heart of my portfolio, and it fuels what I do. \

So I think authors are drawing constantly from a well of different experiences, perspectives, research, you name it.

We haven't called it that. We haven't seen our career in that way.

When we do, it's kind of like a trap door opens up, and all of a sudden you just see this new universe of how you could pursue your career, and how you could combine those skills, and the kinds of roles you might be interested in pursuing, the kinds of things you might be interested in creating, and so on from there.

Just the final point is that, again, I've been working on career portfolios for more than 20 years, but we do find that for all of this, it's about what are the skills we need to thrive in a world in flux, and that portfolios are just naturally more inclined to be helpful and help you thrive in times of uncertainty.

If you've been on a ladder your whole life, and for whatever reason, change comes and that next rung on the ladder isn't there, it's really hard not to fall. It's really hard not to have a kind of career crisis or identity crisis.

Versus — 

So even if career change happens, you have much more agency and control over those next steps.

Joanna: That's so interesting. We're almost out of time, but just quickly on that, I have a clarifying question. So most people, when they think about portfolio careers, it's like, well, “April is an author, speaker, consultant.” You know, the words that mean other jobs. If you say something like “time management because of parenting” or “holding room for grief”—

April: So there are lots of ways, and each person is unique. What I want to do right now is tell people like, “I want you to read these two articles and listen to this interview,” because this could be an entire hour-long conversation.

Joanna: We can do that in the show notes.

[Here's April's Portfolio Career articles and other podcast episodes.]

April: Perfect, because I do want to keep this relatively brief. So there are different ways you can think about it. So if you have these skills, some people who are, I would say the more entrepreneurial end of things, where they're like, “I want to go build a business, this is what I do.”

So you think about that, whether it's time management, whether it's grief and loss, there are all kinds of needs in society where this could fit an actual service-based offering venture.

It also can affect the things you write about, and the features that you write, and the things that you want to get placed, and the things you want to get paid for, and all of the rest.

It also, though, expands if you're looking at roles within an organization for many people. Again, if you look at their resume, maybe they're qualified in marketing, or maybe they're qualified in finance and strategy.

Those things are super important, but what you will find sometimes is that when you have these skills, all of a sudden you start realizing, I would be really good at a job that probably lands more—and I'm just going to say one example—in HR. It's the human dimension. It's hiring and retaining people.

I mean, organizations across the board, I will say right now, not just with portfolios, but with flux more broadly, are realizing that many of their hiring processes are not fit for a world in flux because they're not capturing the people who are actually good at change.

So there are opportunities within organizations where you're like, I would have only thought of myself for a marketing job, but in fact, I might be really good over in this other department, this other function, because you've looked at yourself from that portfolio lens and realized you're a lot more qualified to do jobs that go beyond just your resume.

Now one important piece, and again, we'll put this in the show notes, I hear from people often that are like, “Well, great. I know I'm capable of more, but my resume still says I can only do X, Y and Z. How do I change that?”

There's an important connecting piece here, and it's what I call your portfolio narrative. So the fact is, you might know that you have all these skills. You might be able to draw your portfolio, cast it all out, all of that.

How did you come to those skills, etc.? I say this because you can't expect other people to know that about you unless you share it.

When you share it, though, you have the opportunity, the agency, to put that narrative in the light that makes sense to you. Where this comes up the most is people who have had many different jobs.

One narrative could say, “Oh, that person looks really distracted, scattered. They're not sure what they want to do. They've done these 10 different things. We're not going to hire them because they look disconnected.”

Another—same exact person—another scenario, though, is someone who looks at that person and is like, “Oh, my gosh. This is 10 people in one. This is amazing. No person typically has this much exposure or experience. We've got to hire them straight away.”

The difference between those two scenarios is that person's ability to tell their narrative, and that idea of, like, “I did this job because I thought I was going to really enjoy it. Turned out I didn't enjoy it, but it led me over here, where I learned this other skill. Then that opened this door that I didn't expect.”

So you see how that story kind of cascades and flows. I just want to put that out there because it's an important piece of the puzzle. When you tell people that they actually get to tell their own story, that usually makes people feel pretty encouraged as well.

Joanna: Brilliant.

April: So I have two websites. One is for all things me, like what do I do, and what's my story, and where do I come from, and that sort of thing. That's AprilRinne.com, so April, like the month, R-I-N-N-E.com.

Then for all things Flux, you can go to FluxMindset.com. There's all kinds of things there on the flux mindset, the superpowers.

I also do have a page there with lots and lots of other—not just podcast interviews, but I've done podcasts just on career portfolios, for example—but a lot of things that I've written. Articles, shorter reads, things like that that are also easy to share with others. So those are the two places to go.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, April. That was great.

April: Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you all for being here.

The post Embracing Change: How To Flux with April Rinne first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What can prose writers learn from poets about language, line breaks, and punctuation? How can we help people engage with our work in different ways? Abi Pollokoff talks about her advice from poetry.

In the intro, how to reframe success as a writer [Ink in Your Veins]; How I Write Podcast with Dean Koontz; Direct selling [SelfPublishing Advice]; Successful Self-Publishing 4th Edition; ElevenReader publishing.

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 

Abi Pollokoff is an award-winning poet, editor, and book artist. Her debut poetry collection is night myths • • before the body.

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

Find out more about Abi at AbiPollokoff.com or on Instagram @AbiPollokoff.

Joanna: Abi Pollokoff is an award-winning poet, editor, and book artist. Her debut poetry collection is night myths • • before the body. So welcome to the show, Abi.

Abi: Thank you so much, Jo. I'm so excited to be here.

Joanna: Yes. So lots to talk about today, but first up—

Abi: In terms of how I got started, really, I started with books. I always loved reading, and reading is such a big part of living a literary life for me. I read poetry when I was young, you know, Dr Seuss, Shel Silverstein. So I found myself reading language and story that just had fun in it.

I had always loved creative writing assignments in school, and I connected with poems. I think when I really first found my way into my current understanding and relationship to poetry was in my last year of university.

I studied at Tulane University in New Orleans, and in my last year, I took a series of classes that coalesced all around the same time period of study. So I was taking a class on the French avant-garde movements of the first half of the 1900s. We were reading a lot of Dada and Surrealism.

At the same time, I was taking a poetry workshop from the poet Andy Stallings, and we used a primary course text that covered around the same time period. So I was immersed in this area of literature that was concerned with the possibilities of language, of language without self-censorship, of linguistic freedom.

It was a time when I really needed that permission to play and to explore and to trust myself. So I gave myself that permission, and it's transformed where I am today.

In terms of my job, I think I really believe deeply in the value of reciprocity. So I knew that if I wanted to have a book in the world one day to take up space on a shelf or in a mind, I wanted to be able to make space for other books to exist and for other writers to see their names in print.

I just wanted to give back into the community, as well as being a part of it.

Joanna: Oh, so much there. I'm really interested in this juxtaposition there of this academic side of poetry, and you studying it and studying literature. Then you also mentioned the word “fun,” which I thought was interesting, and also permission, and trying to get rid of that self-censorship.

I feel like poetry, in particular, has a real difficulty with academic snobbery around what is an acceptable poem. So I wondered, I mean, I know it's a matter of opinion, but—

Abi: I'm so grateful for this question because I think you're right. I feel like for such a long time, Poetry with a capital P had very specific expectations and a very specific origin story. I don't think that an academic poem is the only kind of a good poem.

Of course, everyone's allowed to have taste and preference. One person might like chocolate ice cream and one person might like vanilla, and each flavor is equally valid.

For me, I believe —

In your body, a good poem is one that comes alive off the page. So that can be a sonnet with the perfect volta, that turns, that twists just the perfect amount and it gives your knees a little quiver.

It can also be a five line meditation on Instagram that makes your heart stop just for a moment. Or a slam poem that just touches your pulse and makes it beat a little bit faster.

So I think, for me, that breaking out of an academic understanding of poetry is so important to acknowledge the diversity, the cultural diversity, and all of the different possibilities that make poetry beautiful and accessible and exciting for readers who themselves have varying tastes and preferences.

Joanna: How do you manage that as an editor, and kind of, like you said, making space for other writers?

It's very hard to be an editor, in general, but I would think with poetry, it would be even harder. Of course, like you said about taste, you're going to be reading a lot in your work that is not to your taste. I guess this is the thing—

Abi: That's a great question. I think if I were thinking of this from an editor's perspective, when I'm approaching a poem as an editor, for me, the goal is to see if the poem is accomplishing its goals, rather than my goals.

So I try to actually take my taste out of it and think, well, what is the poem trying to do? Is it trying to deliver an image? Is it trying to create a metaphor or play with a specific form? If it's part of a formal lineage, how is it accomplishing that?

Think about it from the goal of the poem and the reader's experience of the poem, rather than whether I like it or not, because like can be so subjective from person to person.

So if I'm looking at it as an editor, I'm thinking about, what is the poem itself trying to do? What is the poem trying to tell me, and is it successful? If we're playing with an image, does the image land in the ways that it needs to?

If you're playing with form, and you're breaking a form, what is the impact of that formal break? How does that change the meaning of the overall message of the poem? So if you're a reader out there who is trying to experience poetry, but maybe not sure of what to make of it, I would say almost take yourself out of the equation.

Certainly consider whether you like the language, whether you like how it feels, the rhythm, but also think about, well — 

Joanna: I just want to mention that we can hear your lovely cat in the background with the little bell. So I just thought I'd point that out to the listeners. I'm a cat person, so totally understanding. I just wanted to point that out.

Abi: That little bell is a brand new cat to my home, and he is exploring today.

Joanna: I love it. It's a nice little backdrop. Well, let's talk about this because a lot of people—I mean, I wrote some poetry. I even had a poem published back in the day, but mainly in my younger years of angst.

Like you say, about university and those teenage years, lots of very bad poetry, but it did what it needed to do at the time. Now, I and most of the listeners, we write prose.

Abi: I love this question because I feel like prose and poetry are both playing with language. Whether you're writing fiction, or whether you're writing nonfiction, or whether you're writing poems, you're using language to communicate something.

Whether it's a story, or a feeling, or a moment, or a scene, those tools appear in all genres. So I would really think about, for prose readers and prose listeners who are out there but interested in what poetry can do, I think a really interesting tool that you might want to pay attention to or focus on is the line break.

It gives the opportunity for a change in a poem. So even if you're writing in a prose sentence, you too have moments where you can think about, what is this pause or this break doing?

So in prose, you can do that with commas, you can do that with em dashes. You can think about how one sentence pivots from one to the next, or how a paragraph evolves from one to the next.

In a poem, you have that too, it's just in a micro level.

So thinking about, how does the line break activate thought? How does punctuation activate thought and change what the reader is experiencing? You might be able to expand that onto the macro level in a prose piece and see if those tools can kind of go back and forth across the genres.

Joanna: Yes, line breaks are really interesting. Again, coming back to literature, I think older literature has a lot to answer for with huge, dense paragraphs with no line breaks, because I presume the cost of printing or whatever.

I feel like modern—I'm thinking particularly of James Patterson, who certainly won't be to everyone's taste—but it's the master of the line break.

Pretty much every sentence in his faster paced sections, every sentence is a new line break. It's a new paragraph, basically, for every line, and it moves you much faster through the text.

As a thriller writer, I pay more attention to that, but I certainly didn't know about that as a newer writer.

Abi: Yes, I think James Patterson is a great example of speed and digging into the line a little bit more. In poetry, you have long lines and short lines. So you might think, oh, a long line will give you an extended thought, it'll keep momentum.

I would actually say, from a poet perspective, that a short line will actually force the breath to break and give you a lot of speed. So I think there are some great parallels there between James Patterson moving from one sentence paragraph to the next, similar to a very short line moving to the next in a poem.

In terms of other tools, I would also say—to kind of drill into this even more and get even more micro with the line, and as an editor, this is also one of my favorite things to play with—but it's punctuation.

It gives you the tools as a conductor to make your lines a symphony, to build that metaphor. You can use punctuation to your advantage to build speed, to build rhythm, to build drama.

In a poem or in a piece of prose, the intentionality with which you're using specific punctuation is going to give the reader a different experience. Think about how an em dash will cut off a thought. At its core, an interruption. Or how a semicolon will kind of give you this lulling legato way of connecting one line to the next in a description.

So maybe not in the first draft, but as you're revising a piece of prose, don't just think about the nuance of the words you're using, but think about how the punctuation is connecting your ideas and how changing it will develop a different texture to the piece that you're working on.

Abi: Oh my gosh, the best!

Joanna: Which I think is hilarious, and it possibly shows you as an editor, more than anything else. I mean, there are some poets who have zero punctuation. They don't even use capital letters.

Abi: Oh, for sure.

Joanna: So there is freedom in that. The other thing I was going to mention is—and I find this very annoying because I use a lot of em dashes, always have—

I don't know if you've seen this?

Abi: I haven't, but I also have big feelings about it.

Joanna: Yes, I have big feelings because I use them. I do work with some AI tools, but I'm like, no, that doesn't mean it's AI. I mean that is just something that we use.

I feel like the people who are maybe spreading that kind of thing—apparently, there's this whole thing on TikTok about dashes, if anyone's using a dash of any kind. I'm like, no, no, no. I think you just don't know enough about this.

Abi: Oh my gosh. Oh, so many feelings. I'm so glad you mentioned this. I find this so interesting that the internet is claiming em dashes as an AI signature.

I would also maybe push on that and say, while I don't know, of course, everything that has gone into training the language learning models that AI uses, but I know that there have been big conversations about how certain AI tools have mined literature for their uses of language.

Joanna: Exactly.

Abi: So I think I disagree about this conversation on TikTok, but I'm not on TikTok, so I don't know what everyone is saying.

Joanna: I only reacted to it, a bit like you, because it's one of my favorite forms of punctuation, which, in itself, is kind of funny. I do want to ask you, so coming back to things like punctuation, line breaks, these things, to me, are part of the way words are laid out on a page.

So I do buy poetry books. Laying things out and using words in different ways, sometimes they're made into kind of sculptures on a page, right, in a poetry book. There's that. So maybe talk about that.

Abi: This is something that I think every poet will do differently, and so I don't think there's a right or a wrong answer here. I will say that I am definitely a poet who plays with the page and plays with space on the page.

If any readers out there are interested, you'll see this a lot in my book, where I'm using the page to capture different elements of the story. I think that space on the page is so important because it gives the reader breath, and it also gives the reader pause and silence.

In my thoughts, I'm a bit of a maximalist, but on the page, you have the opportunity to give the reader a moment of what's not there. To have a poem expanded in a way that makes the poem ask, and hopefully inspires the reader to ask, “Well, this is what's being said, but what is not being said?”

What is the expanse of the page, and the page's landscape, and the magnitude and difference between the quantity of words and the quantity of space, what is that doing for the overall argument of the poem?

For me, I like to use the page in different ways to indicate different speakers. So for me, placing a poem in one section of a page might help develop polyvocality, where I have multiple threads of conversations happening over the course of a project.

On the line, again, it's about breath. It's about space. It's about giving the poem room to breathe and to find its way into the thought as the reader is also reading their way into the thought as well.

Joanna: Yes, it is interesting. I will open poetry books, and I have quite a lot of poetry books, and I will open them, and sometimes I will be drawn to something shorter or something laid out in a way that attracts me even before I read the words. So I find that important as somebody who primarily reads poetry.

The other side of this is the power of spoken word. You mentioned slam poems earlier. I have been to a couple of slam nights, and that is completely different. Sometimes it's kind of more almost like rap kind of poetry.

It's certainly a lot of performance. It's just a completely different form of using your words. So what are your thoughts on that?

Abi: I would say yes and no.

I mean, there's certainly poets who are drawn to a more capital P Poetry, academic style that we were talking about. There are also poets who are really going to be invested in the performance and in the live experience of poetry.

I love that you've been to some slams and have explored that because I think for a long time, there's been a very strong division between what counts as “poetry” and how is slam a part of that.

For me, I think slam is an incredibly important part of the richness of the poetry landscape. I am not a slam poet, but I have been to many slams in the past, and I think they're incredible.

I think the translation of a performance piece onto the page is so difficult because of the rawness and the humanity and the performance of it. I think that there are some presses that actually do a really great job of bringing slam into the page, and the one that I'm thinking of most is Button Poetry.

They have a very great YouTube channel where they have many slam videos, and they are a great tool and resource for slam poets, and all poets, but they do a great job of bringing slam poets into book form.

Sometimes that takes revision, and sometimes that's just a matter of translating, but I think that it's all part of the experience of poetry.

Prose readers out there, you might be listening and say, “Every time I've encountered poetry, I don't get it. It's not for me. I don't see it. I don't understand it.” Maybe an experience in school made you not like it, which is, of course, very understandable.

Joanna: Very common.

Abi: So common, yes. Maybe it's just because you haven't found the right type of poetry. Slam might be the poetry that gets you.

Joanna: Yes, and I mean, I guess the word slam is a kind of more violent word. Then there's, as you say, performance poets. It's a continuum, right? I'm thinking of a British poet, Kae Tempest. I don't know if you've heard of her. She even does sort of epic, long epics.

Abi: Amazing.

Joanna: A lot of these performance poets memorize their work, it feels. So they're not really reading from the page. This is something that totally freaks me out, by the way, and I have barely ever read any of my work in public, even on a podcast. I find it extremely difficult. So as a poet yourself—

Abi: So, I'm so excited to check out this writer that you mentioned, and hopefully our conversation will inspire you to share one of your poems on a future podcast. That would be a challenge—

Joanna: Very unlikely!

Abi: Something to think about, maybe for the future. It is difficult. I think so many writers are introverts. I'm an introvert, but I still have to get up there and talk to people.

Something that I love about reading poems out loud is that I feel like a poem, it exists on the page, but going back to what we were talking about earlier, about what makes a good poem, a poem comes alive in the body.

I think reading a poem out loud is a great tool for revision, so you can feel where you stumble when you're reading it out loud, or where your breath speeds up. Prose writers too, when you're revising a paragraph, read it out loud. See how it feels, see how it lives out in the air.

Then stepping in front of an audience and doing that is a whole other level. It's a whole other piece of the puzzle. I have maybe two ways of thinking about it.

To not necessarily focus on the people who might be staring at me, but to think about the poem itself, its texture, and by diving deeper into the poem, letting it come out and reach an audience.

The other tool I have, very practically, is a tool that I have read about in terms of, if you're ever giving a job interview, this is helpful. I saw this happen on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, if anyone is a Grey's Anatomy water.

Joanna: I am. Yes.

Abi: Love it amazing. Okay, do you remember the episode where Amelia Shepherd was going to do the very intense brain surgery on another doctor, and she and her resident at the time did the super the Superman pose?

Joanna: Oh, the Superman pose. Yes, the strong pose.

Abi: Exactly. It's where you're standing, your feet are shoulder width apart, your hands are on your hips. You're looking up into the sky as if you're a superhero about to save a city.

It's actually scientifically proven that it gives you, I don't know if it's adrenaline or just subliminal confidence, but it's a tool that gives you the ability to back yourself.

So if you're giving a reading, or giving a performance, or going into a job interview, or preparing for a hard conversation, take five seconds to stand with your hands on your hips, or sit with very good posture, and take a couple of deep breaths, and then begin. This might not work for everybody, but sometimes it's helpful for me.

Joanna: Yes, and there's actually a talk on that, a TED talk. I think it's Amy Cuddy who did a talk on that, and it definitely sort of went around.

Again, I think for introverts, it's whatever helps you get started. I often find that I'm most nervous just before I go on stage, and still, as a professional speaker, I still get very nervous, get like a bad stomach and all of that kind of thing. I think it's also just a case of acknowledging this is just a human thing, but—

Abi: Absolutely. It's human. Whether you are delivering a poem or having a conversation, nerves are human. If you weren't nervous, it's you wouldn't care, right? So I think it's a beautiful sign to be a little nervous.

Something that I was always told when I was young was to slow down because when I get nervous, I talk fast. So slow down, enunciate, give yourself a deep breath, and let yourself be human and be vulnerable. Say, “I'm nervous.” Right before we started talking, I said, “Jo, I'm a little nervous.”

So it's okay to be vulnerable. I think in today's world, vulnerability is a really beautiful tool for connecting with people. So let yourself be human, and don't force yourself to be someone that you're not.

Joanna: Yes. So let's get back to the collection. I'm thinking of doing a short story collection, so obviously a little bit different, but I was wondering about how did you choose the poems that went into the collection?

Abi: I'm so excited about your short story collection, so I definitely want to hear more about that.

For me, the collection, it started out kind of as a surprise, actually. I've been in a couple of writing groups for a few years now, and around the same time, two of my writing groups wanted to swap manuscripts instead of individual poems.

So everyone at the time had these projects that were clear projects, and I thought I just had some poems. I wasn't quite sure if they were anything, but I pulled them into a file, and I realized that I had 50 pages, which is on track for a full length book.

For poetry, you often need 48 to 60 pages as a minimum, and so I was in that ballpark. I used this opportunity to get feedback from my writing groups because a set of 50 pages isn't necessarily a “book”, but I was able to use these tools to identify the key themes at the heart of the project.

Then that set me down the path of writing and revising into the work that had already emerged. So for me, it kind of took my community to say, “No, this actually is on its way to being something. It has legs.”

Then once we were able to say, oh, well, I'm thinking about womanhood. I'm thinking about societal expectations. I'm thinking about self-actualization. Then I was able to go in and say, well, what are the holes in the story? Because even a poetry collection can have a narrative arc from poem to poem.

So what are the holes in the story? What images are popping up consistently that I might want to do a little bit more work with? From there, I was able to set on a path to revision into the book itself. So, for me, I kind of sidestepped my way in.

I'm curious for you, have you identified a theme first? Or are you just starting to look at a bigger set of short stories you've already been working on?

Joanna: Well, the main reason is because all of my short stories are in ebook and audio, and I really want to do a special print edition. A lot of us now use Kickstarter to do really gorgeous editions.

So I guess I'm more looking for a theme. I am thinking of writing a couple of extra ones that will be exclusive that are around the theme that has emerged.

What was really useful for me was to put all of them into NotebookLM—I don't if you've heard of Notebook LM, Google's notebook—and say, “What are the themes across these stories?” It was able to pull stuff out of my work that it's really hard to see in your own work.

Like you said, you had a community do it. I'm not very good at groups, to be honest.

Abi: That's fair. I mean, I think it takes sometimes extra eyes. It's always harder to edit yourself than it is to edit other people. It's harder to write marketing text for yourself than it is to write it for someone else, because when you're doing it for yourself—it sounds like you may have experienced this too—you're too close.

It's too personal to be able to say, what is this actually doing? What does this actually mean? So I love it. If you're not a person who writes with writing groups, which is, of course, a completely valid experience of being a writer, use the tools that are out there.

I'm a pretty firm believer that it shouldn't necessarily be the ending place, but I think if you're using it to start and say, “Well, what are the themes that I'm I've naturally gravitated towards?” Use that as your 10,000 foot view.

Then you can go back in and say, oh, I see that happening here, but I want to expand it. Or I think this part of this theme is missing, so that's what I'm going to write my way into.

I think that's a great use of a tool that's becoming very widespread and accessible for many folks who might not have a built in writing community, or choose not to have a group of people to have that feedback from.

Joanna: It came up with some great titles as well. This is the other thing, right? Doing a title of a collection, you could just say, “Poems about womanhood,” like you said. I mean, that's just not good enough.

Abi: This was one of the last things that I found for my book. I went through many other titles before I landed on this one. What I did was, I actually wrote out on a piece of paper every single title of all of my poems, and I circled the words that came up and the themes that came up and the phrases.

So I kind of jigsaw puzzled my way into my book's title. So if anyone out there picks it up, which I hope you do, the title of my book is night myths • • before the body.

So my challenge or my puzzle will be, when you're diving into the book, where do you see these words popping up? Where do they come from? And how does that extraction into the book's title reflect back on the body of the book itself?

Joanna: Yes, titles are tough at the best of times. Although I would say, just to be clear, like with poetry books, especially, I couldn't tell you the title of most poetry books that I've bought from people.

One of my favorite poets is Ben Okri. He's Nigerian-British, and I couldn't tell you most of his book titles, but I remember his poems, and I know his name. So I think that's probably more useful, right?

Abi: Absolutely, and that you're remembering the poems. That's clear that it's a poem that stuck with you, and you know who wrote it. I hope if Ben's out here listening—

Joanna: Very unlikely.

Abi: You never know. That's beautiful because we're doing this work, and we're putting ourselves on the page, and the goal, the dream, is that our work impacts someone, and it resonates with them. It's the piece of writing that they needed to read that day for whatever reason, for whatever is going on in their lives.

It's clear that you read Ben's poem at a time when it just hit you, you needed it. I think that's the biggest gift of all.

So everybody is going to have a different mind, and you might be a person who has total photographic recall. You can see the book cover in your mind. You can see the book title. You might be able to read a poem once and memorize it. Many of us are not like that, and so if you can remember the poems and the writer, that's gold.

Joanna: Well, on that, as you were talking there, I was thinking about Ben Okri, and I've seen him read his poetry a number of times. The particular occasion was back in 1999 and I didn't know what to do with my life, and I heard him read some of his poems, and it really helped me make a change in my life.

It's interesting because I have all of his poetry books in print, but it was actually hearing him in person and listening to his voice that made it resonate. So I just wanted to say that to encourage people, which is—

Abi: That's beautiful. I love that. I love that it took, again, a human experience of being in a room and hearing a voice. I think that, of anything, is maybe the call to action of finding a reading in your local community. Maybe at the library folks are having a reading, or maybe at a bookstore.

I think right now, the literary community is in in such need of support. I would say, especially in the US, where it's important to go out and support your local businesses, to support your readers and your writers.

So go to a reading, even if you don't know the writers, because you never know what's going to impact you and how you're going to feel about it.

Joanna: Well, all of this is absolutely wonderful, and we obviously want people to write poetry for whatever reason, but I do have to tackle the sort of commercial side of it.

You work in the industry as a business as well. You work for a company, and you publish books, and people have to make money from books. Poets have to make money somehow, even though most of them don't make money from poetry, obviously, but some poets are doing absolutely incredibly well.

I think Rupi Kaur, one of the sort of original Insta poets, her Milk and Honey collection, it's everywhere. In the indie author community, we have Pierre Jeanty, who's been on this show. Haitian-American, sells on Shopify. Both of these are seven figure poets, which is just incredible. They make far more money than I do!

Abi: This is a great question, and it's a hard one to answer because the commercial reality is not great. I would say that that Rupi and Pierre are incredible exceptions.

I love that their work has brought them commercial success and financial success because it's also brought more awareness and more attention into the poetry landscape.

Prose books are so visible and so prominent, and poetry is visible, but it's not quite as financially viable as prose. So it's just not a great money maker most of the time.

That said, I would say that there are some ways that you can engage with poetry and find a form of supplementing your income if that's something that is necessary for you. More and more journals are offering poets money for publishing poems, which is so important and beautiful.

So you might see a journal offering $50 for a poem, or $100. I'm not quite sure in the UK what that would translate into in terms of pounds, but I believe that there are some UK journals as well who say, “When we accept your poem, we'll offer you some financial remuneration.” That's on the poem level, the individual poem level.

Of course, when you're publishing a book, there are a couple of avenues. You may receive in advance, which is an upfront financial sum that then when you sell books, you kind of don't earn anything until you've made that money back.

Or royalties, which is where when somebody buys your book, a percentage of that goes back to you as the author.

Presses also have to balance their budgets, because the cost of paper has changed, the ink has changed, printing costs, the team for the press itself. So there's a very tight budget when it comes to the publishing landscape in general, and I would say, especially for poetry.

There's just less money exchanging hands, except in the case of maybe Rupi and Pierre, who have incredible breakthroughs, and they've done a lot, I think, to really change that landscape. They've made a big difference.

So if you're a writer out there, even if you're not making that money back by buying a book, buy the authors books because it lets the press keep going, and it lets the press continue to offer the funds to their writers. That's maybe the biggest tip, I would say.

I think we live in a really creative economy world right now. We have people having multiple side hustles, or being able to monetize so many different aspects of their writing.

Get creative. If you have an idea and you haven't seen it done, give it a try. I think there's so many ways that folks can change their financial picture.

I think Pierre using Shopify is a great example of that, and Rupi on Instagram. So many different ways of getting that visibility that then can translate into financial success.

Joanna: Yes, I guess it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning around the permission to play.

because I guess we create also because we want to share that with the world.

We do have more opportunity than ever to put our work out there. I guess the final question for you is, with night myths, what are you doing to get your work out there? Obviously, you're pitching some podcasts, but you know—

Abi: Oh, that's great. Here I am. I'm talking to you. Everybody is going to be different, and I would say, when it comes to marketing, whether it's a poetry book or a prose book, there are so many ways to do it.

There's no one right way because the right way is the way that's going to work best for you, for your network, for your community, for the energy that you have, and the time, So many writers have other day jobs, have maybe their parents, have other commitments that take time out of your day.

So what I would say is —

Follow that thread because there's never going to be an end date and nothing is ever going to be enough. So figure out what the right thing is for you, and then lean into that.

For me, I started by making a website so people know where to find me online. I think a website is a great place to start if you don't really know where to begin. It can be simple. It can have a photo of you, a short bio, if you've published anything, links to those, and ideally a contact email or form.

This way, it gives you kind of a literary home base on the internet. There are great tools like Squarespace or Wix that have templates that are really easy to replicate and personalize. So don't start off fancy, but give yourself a virtual presence and use that as your foundation to build.

So I started with my website, and I also have been thinking about a couple of different avenues that balance my skill set and then also my time. So I have been posting on Instagram. I would encourage poets to choose maybe one platform where they feel comfortable.

Social media can pose its own challenges, so it doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be Substack. It can be Bluesky. It doesn't have to be everything.

If you're not a big social media person, start with one and just start being visible, because that's going to be a way for people to get to know you as a writer, as a human. Especially if you're an introvert, putting yourself out there in a way that gives you a little bit of breathing room.

So start with social media, and if you're not comfortable talking about yourself, it's a great opportunity to shout out other people, to talk about what you're reading, who has an event that you're going to, what book have you read recently. By building a community of readers, you'll get people who are excited about your work.

So that is a tool that I've been leveraging. For me, as I shift into marketing my own book, I am working on setting up readings. So if there are any listeners in the US especially, I don't have any plans to come to the UK yet, but the future is bright.

So set up readings wherever you like to shop for books. In your local bookstore, go to them say, “Hey, I have a book coming out,” or, “I'm a poet, I'd love to be a part of an event.” That's a great way to very tangibly connect with people.

I'm also reaching out to the other networks of communities that I have. So, school affiliations, alumni groups, professional orgs.

That could be practically, it could be thematically, those are great ways to talk about why you're doing what you're doing.

So with you, Jo, I was so excited to talk with you, because I love how you have this balance of writers talking about craft and also talking about the publishing arm and the business of being a writer.

I loved how that connected for me with my work as an editor, and working a lot with prose, actually, but writing poems on my own time. So I thought, thematically, I really wanted to speak with you. So thinking about what's out there in the world, doing research.

The worst that can happen is they say no, and that's okay. It's a numbers game.

Joanna: It is a numbers game, except that when you pitched me, like you found things we had in common, and so your pitch was effective. So I would say to people, it's better to take those 30, then go and investigate those 30, have a listen, and then only pitch the five that actually resonate with you.

Every day now, I don't know what happened, but I guess a year or so ago, traditional publishing discovered podcasting. I get five to ten pitches a day now, from most of which are completely inappropriate.

Then I got your pitch, and I'd never heard of you, and I was like, this is perfect. I accepted you really quickly. I was like, yes, I want to talk about this. So a good pitch where you feel something in common with the host is so effective. I've really loved talking to you. So let's tell people—

Abi: Amazing. Thank you. This has been such a fun conversation, and I'm just so honored. As you said, we didn't know each other before this, so it was so beautiful to get to know you and your work, and I'm so appreciative of it. I've loved getting to really dive in and listen even more to your podcast.

As for me, I am findable on Instagram. It's going to be @AbiPollokoff, just my name. You can also, I would please encourage you to find my book out there in the world. It's called night myths • • before the body.

It's an eco-feminist look at womanhood, and the body, and self-empowerment. So I hope it will resonate. Find them from your local bookstore. If a book is too much, which, of course, I understand, you've got to balance your budget, please follow me on Instagram.

I also have some poems available on the web, which you can find on my website, which is AbiPollokoff.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Abi. That was great.

Abi: Thank you so much, Jo. It's such an honor and a treat to be here and talk with you today.

The post Language, Line Breaks, And Punctuation. Poetry With Abi Pollokoff first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you explore the edges of your creativity to find your next becoming? How can you turn the evolution of your life into art? Pia Leichter talks about her creative courage, different ways to rest, and intuitive book marketing in this interview.

In the intro, Lessons from Six Years Writing Full-time [Sacha Black]; Reflections on big shifts in life, creativity, and mindset; Spotify Transitions Select Audiobook Distribution Services to INaudio [FindawayVoices]; Death Valley fulfilment; and Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition; Writing memoir and non-fiction — I'm on the Writers Ink Podcast; plus Lindisfarne on Books and Travel.

Plus, AI can be used in films that could win Oscars [The Week]; and Executive Order to advance artificial intelligence education in the USA [White House].

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 

Pia Leichter is an award-winning creative director and coach, founder of the Kollektiv Studio, and the author of Welcome to the Creative Club: Make Life Your Biggest Art Project.

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

You can find Pia at kollektiv.studio.

Joanna: Pia Leichter is an award-winning creative director and coach, founder of the Kollektiv Studio and the author of Welcome to the Creative Club: Make Life Your Biggest Art Project. So welcome to the show, Pia.

Pia: Thanks so much, Jo, for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up, tell us a bit more about you.

Pia: A creative director typically can work in different creative fields, such as advertising, film, fashion, you name it. I came from the world of marketing and advertising, so in that landscape, a creative director oversees the creative vision for different brands and different projects in the studio.

They marry artistic expression with commercial objectives. They also manage a creative team and kind of blends magic and logic, strategy and creativity, to create an impact in our clients’ lives and the lives of their consumers.

Joanna: That sounds pretty cool.

Pia: It was pretty cool. It was good. It was really good. It's where I spent well over a decade. So it was very rewarding work. I mean, as a creative director, at least in that world, you can have either a design background or a writing background. So I was like the copywriting background.

Joanna: Okay, and what is it you do now then?

Pia: Now I work as a creative partner, working with— Well, I think the simplest way of putting it is, I help people create. I help people create brands, businesses, dreams, art, what they're being called to create. People who do things differently to make a difference, those are generally the people I work with.

I call it sort of a creative midwife. So I help people at different sticky junctures in life, often when we're at this creative evolution point, when what we used to create was successful wonderful, whether it's a business or a creative venture, but it's just not floating our boat anymore.

We're just being called to do something different, and that can be both thrilling and terrifying at the same time, because it's like — 

Then what's great about it is I have different tools at my disposal. I'm also a certified coach, so I bring together coaching and creativity in the form of narrative development, storytelling, brand strategy, to actually help bring whatever it is they're looking to bring to life into the world.

So I get to combine both of those things, depending on where people are in their journey.

Joanna: Why this book, then? Because it sounds like you've got lots of different strands to your business and your creative life.

Pia: That's a fantastic question. When I left my agency, the last agency I worked for, I think it was 2021, my mother passed away suddenly. She gave me the passing gift of courage and a reminder that this life is finite and we just got one, as far as we know.

I had been flirting with the idea of channeling my creativity into building my own business for a long time, but I was comfortable. Things were good, good enough. Good enough. So I think I was scared too, of like what would that next thing be? What would I even do? How would I survive? What does it look like?

So that kind of kept me stuck, speaking of creative evolutions. So when she passed, it was like, hey, what am I waiting for? If it's not now, then when? So I left that job, and I launched Kollektiv Studio.

That was an epiphany moment for me, like, wow, I don't just get to create other people's dreams, I get to create my own. Then from there, it was just a wild and wonderful and weird journey into entrepreneurship.

Then the second epiphany with the book came from getting a call from my hybrid publisher, the founder, also great salesman and great writer. He asked, you know, have you ever thought of writing a book?

I believe everyone has a book in them, but I definitely have thought about it. I had a conversation with him, and he shared a stat like, 90-something percent of people that say no now to writing a book will actually never write that book because if not now, when?

So I had my second big light bulb moment of, “Wow, I don't only get to channel my creativity into commercial endeavors. I actually get to channel it just to make art, to make things, to write a book that feels important or meaningful to me.” A whole new path opened up to me.

So that's what led me to write the book, and I'm really glad I did. It was a really transformative process. It took me places I never thought I would go, I couldn't even imagine going. That wasn't necessarily the intention, but it was definitely a growth opportunity, and still continues to be.

Joanna: Yes, because it's definitely a combination of self-help and memoir. I've also written a memoir, Pilgrimage, and it was also one of the, I guess, hardest books that I've written, and transformative, as you say.

For people who feel like they want to write something so personal, but they're holding back because it is work in many ways, and it's a journey, and as you say, transformative—

Pia: Well, asking a really powerful question is, what happens if I don't write it? What does life look like? What then? What happens if I don't write it today, or in a year, or three years?

It could be writing a book, and it could also just be doing that thing that's really calling you. Then what? Then you keep doing exactly what you're doing. At some point, the desire to create that book, to write that book, to create whatever that thing might be, becomes stronger than the fear. That would be one thing.

The second thing is remembering that you don't have to do it alone. I think what held me back was this thought, this myth of the lone genius writer in a cabin in the woods. Creating it all and their typewriter, and it's just all of the words just flowing out.

I thought, oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm going to be able to just do that, like just spit out a book. It turns out, just like creativity is collaboration, I didn't have to. There are wonderful editors and people along the way that help us create a book, create anything. We don't have to do it alone, and we often don't do it alone. So there's that.

Then the third thing that helped me was remembering that — 

So we got this one life, we might as well live it in the way that feels most fulfilling, and whatever makes you feel most alive.

Often, what makes at least me feel most alive is also a little frightening but thrilling. I feel like, gosh, I'm doing it, I'm here, I'm living this thing. That feels really important. So those are three potential motivators for starting to write something deeply personal or vulnerable to you.

Joanna: I guess another reason is kind of taking control of things, looking back and kind of taking control of the narrative. As you say, you work with people in the narrative coaching side.

In the book, there was a line that said, “I used to think life was happening to me.”  I feel like a lot of people feel that right now. There's some big political things going on, big historical things. There's AI going on. It feels like history is happening to us. So if people are feeling that—

Pia: Well, it's remembering that we're always at choice. Even when it might not feel like we have a choice in the direction of our lives, we do. We get to choose. We get to choose what we want to do next at every point. I think that's easy to forget in the overwhelm of information and the current political climate.

With all of the really fast paced changes that are occurring in the world, it can feel really overwhelming. I think just remembering that you get to choose. You also get to choose to not listen to the news in the morning, if that feels like sensory overload or too much.

You get to choose to pick up a pen, and you get to choose how you want to direct your next scene. You get to decide. I don't know, for me, that feels like creative agency. That feels like creative power, knowing that you are creating your experience, that you are an active protagonist main player in this game called life.

I think taking some kind of action. First —

and that can be something small or large, right? Then actually taking action to make it real is a way of creating evidence for yourself.

Like, yes, I get to choose. I can take a day off of work tomorrow and go finally see that art exhibit and eat that cardamon bun I've been dying to eat. I can do these things. That can feel like beautiful pockets of freedom. I think the more that we practice that creative director of our lives muscle, the stronger it gets.

Joanna: Yes, because, as you say, you can do small things. It doesn't have to be changing everything. I do actually want to come back, because you said earlier about this sort of question, what is my next becoming? Then you just said you need to get clear on what you want to do. These are really, really big questions.

I recently turned 50. It was one of those moments like everyone has. I've been a writer now for nearly 20 years, and this sort of, “what is my next becoming?” is something that I've been thinking about. I know people listening, because the way the author life and the author industry is really changing, like—

Pia: Well, I think we get closer to what feels like fun. Sometimes these questions can feel so big, and it feels weighty and meaty and important, and yes, of course they are, but also we get to move towards what feels really fun, like what lights us up. It could be anything.

I feel like they're insights into our own becoming within that, within the things that we gravitate towards that make us feel alive, or make us feel joyful. It can be either small or big, but just getting curious about what really feels like fun.

When was the last time you really had fun making something, doing something? Is there a red thread? Is there a pattern that you might be able to notice? I feel like there's something in that.

For me, recently, I've been having a lot of fun working where there was like synchronicity. I started working with someone who actually read the book, who we became friends, who's a fantastic musician and producer.

We decided to take the poems out from my book and create a spoken word album, and he's creating tracks for each poem. That feels like so much fun. I don't know, maybe the next becoming is just allowing myself to create what is lighting me up, and what makes me smile, and what feels good, what feels warm.

It's like, ooh! It might not make the Billboard Top 100 list, but it's really great to be able to co-create with someone who can take your work in a completely different direction, and the process of doing it makes it into something else. Like the poems now become something else.

So I don't know, it's just a small example of what feels like fun, and it was a nice reminder that, yes, move towards that. That feels fulfilling, and then let's figure out what the next thing might feel like. Instead of sort of this big, definitive answer, like, what will the next 50 years of my life look like?

I think we are fluid, changeable beings. We will change, luckily. That's the beauty. So maybe just reconnecting to what feels joyful right now can be a first step. I'm also turning 50 next month, so I feel you.

Joanna: Well, there we go. Well, I guess I find the word “fun” quite difficult, I must say. I think it's my upbringing, but there are things that I enjoy. It's interesting with writing. I don't know if you've heard of type 1 fun and type 2 fun. Have you heard of this?

Pia: No, tell me, please.

Joanna: Okay, so type 1 fun is, like you said, it's kind of joyful. You know, like having a drink with friends, having a dance. It's fun. Type 2 fun is you do something that might be pretty painful at the time, like I walked these pilgrimages, and maybe at the time it's not what you call fun, but you look back and go, yes, that was worth doing.

That's like type 2 fun, and you smile as you remember it, but it was hard. I feel like writing books is type 2 fun. It is not necessarily a joyful process.

Pia: Well, before I answer that, I just want to point something out. I think what I'm hearing you say is fulfillment because what feels fulfilling doesn't always feel fun at the time. I really agree and align with that.

We could use the word joyful too, whatever word resonates most. Fulfilling, what feels like fulfillment is important because that means it's connected to something that has really deep meaning for you.

Whether it's your values or what feels like your purpose that you're actually living and expressing. It feels really fulfilling when you're living in alignment with what you value most. So the book was definitely fulfilling.

There were pockets of fun, but they were pockets. It was also challenging, definitely, but it felt really fulfilling. It felt like, yes, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. It just felt that way, and that kept me going.

I think that keeps us going when we're doing any kind of creative project that requires a long commitment, it's when it's connected to our big fat why, or what feels fulfilling, or what has meaning.

I think it's really important to create from that place because it's our light in the dark. It's like those moments where you're like, okay, I'm done here. It kept me going, you know, a reminder of why I was doing this in the first place.

Joanna: There's another challenge in the book. It's a provocative question that will trigger all the workaholics listening. You say, “What if my creative genius, and yours, lives on the other side of rest?”

I read this, and I was like, rest?! Who do you think we are?

Pia: I think, at least in Western culture, we're geared to connect and believe that our value is based on what we produce, and hard work and work ethic is really prioritized. It's just something that's very important culturally.

Like, “you got to work hard,” and, “blood, sweat, and tears,” and, “give it everything you got,” and that there's meaning in that.

I'm not saying there's not, there's space and place for passionate, focused work, but there's also room, and it's very important, for rest and ease. There's a place for doing, and there's a place where we get to also be because we are human beings.

There are a lot of insights to be discovered and dots that connect and eureka moments to be had in this daydreamy, restful, ease-filled place where we're not so focused on a task or getting something done.

Neuroscience shows that this is also how our brain functions. We have the default mode network, which is also called our imagination network, which is really closely correlated with creativity. It's the thinking that happens when we're not consciously thinking.

The dots that connect in those moments, the illumination that happens when we're just allowing things to marinate and just be and process, kind of percolating like coffee. It's really, really important for our creativity and for ideas to be able to have that time as well.

So it's not an either/or. Both the default mode network and the control network work together.

So creativity also requires that analytical mind, like the research and evaluation, but incubation and illumination are equally important. Yet in our society or culture, we tend to prioritize that which can be quantified.

You know, like, “Well, I have done this amount of research, so therefore I've been productive,” and — 

That's just as valuable as focused, task-based activity.

Just to say, I'm a recovering speed queen. I grew up in New York City, so I'm not a Zen Buddha person. I am practicing. I am practicing slowing down.

I'm finding that when I do, when I catch myself when I'm rushing for no reason, or when I'm overdoing the doing, there's a wealth of information and insight that emerges when I just give things space. Sometimes nothing emerges, but I feel my energy shift and different, and then I show up to the work differently.

It's dangerous to start getting into the sort of equation of, well, I'll rest so that I can be more productive. No, that's not what I'm saying. We can get into that way of thinking, and it's just the same way of thinking applied to rest.

So, no, not necessarily, but I find it incredibly important for the creative process and also just that energy of being alive. We also get to just be, and our just being, there's value in us just being who we are. It might sound counter cultural, but that's what I believe.

Joanna: Yes, I like the term active rest, obviously, because I find that exhaustion is when I'm kind of watching Netflix or whatever, and that doesn't help my creative. Well, it probably does in some level. It helps my creative side because there's a lot of story, there's a lot of storytelling in great TV.

It's the resting the brain kind of thing. I don't want people to think that we just mean rest means lying on the sofa or like going to bed, although sometimes that is a good thing.

Also for me, I guess the filling the creative well. Which for me, involves travel and reading and all of that kind of thing.

Pia: I love that you're pointing that out, Jo. There's this wonderful article—and I can't remember her name, you can put it in the show notes [Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith]—she writes about seven different types of rest, because often we just equate rest with laying on the couch and it's not.

There are all different ways that that we can rest and regenerate. Some of them could even be like light socials and regenerate through relationships. It really depends on the person, on the individual. What makes you feel refueled and recharged?

I do feel that for most of us, daydreaming, and just allowing, just being, is an important part of the rest portfolio, if you will.

For me, to answer your question, rest looks like meditation, movement, and believe it or not, in a way, journaling—like just free writing—feels restful to me in the sense of, I'm just allowing thoughts to pour out and just kind of be rather than trying to write coherently, or make sense, or add value, or whatever the words are.

That's really helpful, and movement, also. Even though I'm not resting, just moving creates a different space for ideas to bubble up. I often get strange thoughts, good strange thoughts when I'm moving my body. Also while I'm meditating, even though I'm able to see the thoughts that are passing by, I'm like, oh, interesting.

So I think it's about finding what feels good to you, but it's about also honoring that part of you that is not doing and working to produce something all the time. There's a place for that, but there's also a place for seven different types of rest, we can call it that.

Joanna: Yes, indeed. It's interesting because there are some people in the writing community who say, “Oh, you must write every day.” I always say, no, I don't write every day.

I call myself a binge writer. So I do the book, and then I do the project, and then I launch the book. Like, right now as we're recording this, I am in launch phase for my book, Death Valley. I'm not writing. I'm in the sort of restful, kind of exhausted, kind of like, oh my goodness, I'm never going to have another idea again.

But even this morning, I actually felt a little twitch. I felt that twitch of interest in other things. So that's when I start going, oh, okay, maybe my brain is getting ready again. So, yes, this kind of going in and out, I guess, of the output phase. Input phase, output phase, rest phase.

Pia: Yes, cycles, just like seasons. We're cyclical, you know, and things have cycles. I can really relate with, you know, after I wrote the book in December, now I'm still in launch mode. Launch mode lasts a year at least, which is interesting to me.

What's great is it's activating different aspects of my creativity. So it feels like there are different parts of my creativity that I'm applying in the launch phase. I think that's interesting, and it also gives the book writing creative space some air, which I also need. So I can relate to that.

Also, self-doubt creeps in some time where it's like, oh, I have a newsletter. It's like, oh, I can't possibly think of anything. Everything is so busy. What am I going to write about? I don't know.

The minute doubt creeps in, just like you said, then the next day it's like, oh, I'm going to write about doubt. It's like an idea pops up, and it's just trusting that you have a wealth of ideas within you, and when you give it some space and you trust that they're there, they will emerge. That, I'm sure of.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So coming back, right at the beginning you said about artistic expression and commercial objectives, marrying those two as part of being a creative director. So that sort of brings us to this. You mentioned there, launch mode happening for a whole year.

So you're now on the commercial side of this book. So tell us about that and about—

Pia: Well, as you mentioned earlier, Jo, that writing the memoir was one of the toughest—I don't want to put words in your mouth—I think you said one of the hardest ones?

Joanna: Something like that.

Pia: Something like that, yes. Well, I think marketing this book feels a little bit more vulnerable because I'm sharing very personal stories, in service of the reader and the book, within its pages.

So I am learning how to step deeper into the arena and be vulnerable and show up and ask and tell like, “Hey, I have a book. This is what I'm doing,” and to ask more people to get involved as I go through this launch process. So that feels vulnerable to me, and sometimes really challenging.

Getting reviews is challenging, especially when it's about my life. So I feel like I'm building really important muscles for my creativity so that I can more freely express myself.

At the end of the day, people are going to experience my work and myself however they experience it. That's their experience, and they should have whatever experience they want to have. Just like Mel Robbins says, “let them.” Let people have their own experience. It's not mine, it's theirs.

It's that separation that is really important, I think, when you are showing up and sharing something that feels vulnerable and powerful and important, but vulnerable. So I'm learning. I'm learning to stand for my work, and also, in this case, it also means standing for my story.

I think that's sort of the extra component that makes it more like the growth opportunity I mentioned earlier. So it's been a wild ride, because even though I come from this world, I've never marketed a book before. So there is just so much to learn.

There's actually so many things that you could be doing as an author when you market your book, and a lot of money you could be spending on it. So, to me—

I'm still sort of figuring out what that looks like. I had a pre-sale community that was incredibly important to the success of this book, and I'm really, really grateful I had a pre-sale. It allowed me to build community, and it helped strengthen that asking muscle.

Like, “Hey, I've written the draft, but I'm not done yet, but I need your help to take the book to print,” and reaching out to almost everyone I knew to ask. That was a huge muscle builder. So now it's reaching out into the wider world to share the story and to explore different avenues.

Next up, Amazon ads. Let's see what happens. You know, reviewers. It's just finding different avenues. I'm sure you have a lot of insight around this to bring the book into the world.

Joanna: You're exactly right, there are so many things you could do. I actually love that you've talked about launch mode for a year because in the kind of indie author community that I'm part of, we tend to just move onto the next book.

We're not so interested in launching. We're just loving writing so much that we move on to the next book. I think having that commitment to pushing the book for longer is actually really good.

Especially with an evergreen book like this, it's not going to go out of style. It's not based on the news, it's not political. So you can basically market this forever, which I think is great.

You talk there about aligned and impact. So, and I mean, then you mentioned Amazon ads, which is interesting. I would be interested how you feel that goes.

Obviously, you pitched me, and I was interested. So is that going well?

Pia: Yay! I'm so glad you were. Yes, it is going well. Here's the thing, I think creativity can feel very uncertain, right? We don't know what we're going to create when we set out to create anything.

I think podcasts and showing up and sharing our stories is also uncertain. You haven't met me before, I haven't met you. That's also the beauty because we don't know what we're going to co-create together in our conversation and what that could be like.

So I find it, again, it's that combination of nerve-cited. You know, nervous and exciting, and thrilling and terrifying. I feel like, as we move further, I like to call it as Brene Brown says, like the arena.

That quote from Roosevelt: As we move further into the arena, it's we make ourselves more visible, and we get bruised, and we get ripped and cut. People will see us more and have something to say, but at least we're out there, like living. You know, we're doing the things.

I think that requires courage and belief in what it is that you're creating and in yourself, I suppose. Also I'm going to say the word you don't like again, fun. For me, sometimes we forget that we also get to make it joyous, like it can be a fun experience.

So far, this is fun. I'm getting to know you, and we're having a conversation, and hopefully connecting with your audience and people to share stories. So I don't know, it feels good.

I was on social media for my business, very heavily for quite a number of years, actually. I was on X building a pretty large community for a while, and then not to get deep into politics, but with certain recent shifts in the social media landscape, it just didn't feel aligned anymore.

Even though it was really counterintuitive, like, oh, really? I'm going to build my business and keep launching my book without it? Like, really? But it felt right. I was like, nope, it's not feeling good for me. It doesn't feel like this is my path.

We can keep doing that. So I'm currently exploring that, and that's led me to podcasts. That's led me to reach out to build and strengthen community, have more meetings one-on-one, exploring events.

What are different ways that I can meet people and share this story and hear their stories? That feels exciting, even though it's a bit daunting, because it's like, oh, I haven't really seen how this is done before. So that's what I mean by aligned, just to further unfold that.

Impact is, well, this feels like impact. Being able to have a conversation, being able to connect, and hopefully with other people. So impact is not only sales or reviews, which are, of course, very important in the life of a book, but also human impact, reaching people.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, I am having fun having a conversation with you. I think, and you talk about intuition in the book as well, I try to have an intuitive—you know, obviously I prepared and I sent you questions—but I feel like the conversation becomes quite intuitive, and we get into things as they come up. That's what I enjoy as part of being a being a podcaster.

I did want to come back on the commercial side because I'm obviously making money from my books, and many of the listeners are, or they want to. You have a section in the book where you talk about this. You talk about your money wound and also your scarcity script.

I wondered how you think that appears for writers and authors? Because let's face it, you have to sell a lot of books to make decent money.

Pia: That's a great question. Well, how we do one thing is how we approach everything. So it's how you approach books and money, it's also life, how you approach money and life generally.

The same speaks to ideas. Like scarcity could be, of course, scarcity of fun, scarcity of opportunities, but scarcity of ideas. Where am I ever going to get another idea? There's not enough ideas. What am I going to do? Then that sort of becomes a block, or could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So how do we start to shift?

Well, it's trusting that there is an abundance of ideas within us. There's proof of that. Like, look, Jo, you've written, did you say 45 books?

Joanna: Yes. Something like that.

Pia: If that's not abundance, honey, I don't know what is. I find that helpful to anchor into trust and into the process of actually creating. So I didn't write the book from a place of “if I don't make this book a financial success, I won't survive.” I think that's a difficult premise to write a book from, given the state of the industry.

I wrote the book from a place of “I want to share something that has meaning, and I want to give it the best chance at succeeding in the world and reaching people.”

The scarcity, I don't know, when it comes to writing books, what I really think about more than money, is I think about trusting that you have the book within you, that you have the ideas within you.

Then the money part is releasing, hopefully, that you're in a position that you can release the expectation of what it needs to deliver financially and just do your best to get it into the world and have different income streams. That's been very important for me and my creativity.

So not having my only income stream be this book. That would feel very tight for my creativity, that would like start to strangle it, I think. Having multiple ways of creating income feels like abundance to me. Like, look, I can do this, I can do that.

It could also be this book, that maybe the income the book generates is not just through sales. There are other doors that it opens that become really interesting and fascinating.

I kind of try to detach from expectation and outcome, however hard that might be. That, to me, sometimes can feel like scarcity. Like, if I don't get this, then what? It's more like, well, I trust that I'm going to get the opportunities that I need, and then I'm going to receive what I need, and I'm going to do this for the love of doing it.

However utopian or whatever that may sound, it feels important to me and to creativity. I don't know if I fully answered your question, but that's what comes up for me, as you asked it.

Joanna: Yes, and I am absolutely into multiple streams of income and abundance of ideas. In fact, only this last week, I learned something new from someone that I'm implementing right now, and having another stream of income from that. It's like, new ideas appear every day.

I actually love that you said about people sold books before social media, and so they can still now. I think that's so important, because people are like, “Oh, well, if I can't use this,” or, “I left this platform and went here, and there's nobody here, and what do I do?” I'm like—

Pia: Absolutely, and that's where we can apply our creativity. If you're writing a book— you are creative whether you write a book or not—but especially if you're writing a book, then you acknowledge your own creativity.

So imagine just applying that in different ways. Like, hmm, what are different ways I could get this book into the world? So that's what I'm playing with. There's some that I might be able to see, and others I might not, and other ways people might help me see.

They go, “Oh, have you thought of that?” “No, actually, that's really interesting.” I think people come into your life also to show you. I heard something, actually, it was from a tarot reader, full disclosure, but she's wonderful. She said that the affirmation or the thought is, “allow me to recognize the opportunities.”

That shifted something from me. I really loved it, talking about scarcity and abundance. Like allow me to recognize the opportunities. Hey, wait a minute. That means the opportunities are already here. Oh, how cool. That's like game changing for me. They're already here. I just need to recognize them.

Sometimes if we get hooked to what something has to be. Like it has to wear this specific Yves Saint Laurent outfit, and if it's not wearing that, then it's not the opportunity.

Letting go of what it has to look like or exactly what it has to do or be, kind of frees us up to see, “Oh my god, look. It's wearing a vintage Dior dress from the 70s. Wow, look at that opportunity.”

Sometimes opportunities can come to us in a lot of different shapes and forms, but we need to kind of release the grip a little bit and trust that they're here. It's available to us. We just need to recognize them. So that was something I found very helpful on my journey.

So it's like, I don't know what this will be. Let's see. Let's see what opportunities I might be able to recognize as I go journey through the process of marketing this book.

Joanna: Well, it is a great book. Welcome to the Creative Club. So tell us—

Pia: All the usual places. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org, are the three main ones. I am at Kollektiv Studio. So that's Kollektiv spelled actually in Danish because I currently live in Copenhagen. I lived in London before I moved here, and before that, many other countries. So Kollektiv.studio.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Pia. That was great.

Pia: Thank you so much for having me, Jo. It was a wild ride. I really enjoyed it.

The post Make Life Your Biggest Art Project: Pia Leichter On Writing, Creative Courage, And Changing Your Narrative first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you implement ‘See, Do, Repeat' in your writing and author business? How can you embrace optimism as a creative entrepreneur and move past fear of judgment to publish your book? Dr Rebecca White shares her journey and tips.

In the intro, Short form audio opportunities and tips [Self Publishing Advice]; Wiley's guidelines for AI usage; Collective licensing for UK authors [The Guardian]; Entrepreneurship and writing, I'm on The En Factor Podcast;

Plus, Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition on pre-order, and I’m on the El Camino de Santiago Pilgrim Podcast talking about my walk along the Portuguese coastal route.

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 

Dr. Rebecca White is an award-winning entrepreneur, executive board member, professor, and the author of See, Do, Repeat: The Practice of Entrepreneurship. She's also the host of the En Factor 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

You can find Rebecca at DrRebeccaWhite.com.

Joanna: Dr. Rebecca White is an award-winning entrepreneur, executive board member, professor, and the author of See, Do, Repeat: The Practice of Entrepreneurship. She's also the host of the En Factor Podcast. So welcome to the show, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Thank you, Joanna. I am honored to be here. I love your podcast, and I'm excited. I am reading your book Pilgrimage, and I just love everything that you've done. So it's really great to be here and have this conversation today.

Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much. So first up—

Rebecca: I grew up in this small town in West Virginia. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's quite rural. I always had these dreams and interests of doing other things rather than being in a small town.

I had a wonderful mother. Her name was Betty White. So great name, maybe not the Betty White most people think of. She had an entrepreneurial mindset back before we even had the words to put with it, and so I learned about this whole mindset from her as a child.

It's really driven everything I've done. It's kind of like it grabbed me, and I had to hold on. So I've really applied an entrepreneurial mindset in everything that I've done, from being an educator to a book author to a podcaster to even a corporate board member.

You mentioned all those slashes in my career, I think that's part of being an entrepreneur as well, this whole idea that there's always something new and a new opportunity to explore. So it's really just been a part of my life, and everything that I've done, I think because I learned it from her.

Joanna: That's cool. When you said West Virginia, I just had that song playing, “Take Me Home, Country Road.”

Rebecca: Yes, everybody knows that.

Joanna: Yes, that's the only thing. I've never been there, but that's what it brought to mind, which was quite funny.

So you were in the small town and you had this mindset, but how did you get out of the small town and get into work? How did you make it out of there?

I know some people listening, it might just be a life situation they're trapped in, or a job. Many people are in a job, and they might want to be more entrepreneurial, but they didn't have the mindset that your mom gave you.

Rebecca: That's a really great question. For me, it was education, and I just kept going. My parents valued education. My mom was very curious, and she was way ahead of her time, the way she approached life and saw things.

She had her own business. She was a florist. When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, she invited me to come back and take over the business, and that's like the last thing I wanted to do. I had worked in that business all my years growing up.

It was great for her. It was a great opportunity for our family. It afforded my brother and I the opportunity to get an education. Once I left and went to college—and I didn't go that far away at first—but once I went to college, I just knew that I wasn't going to go back.

There wasn't a lot there, and fortunately, my parents didn't expect it. So for me, I was young, and so it was through taking my first job and then going back to school. There's all kinds of stories in there that I could share, but really—

At a young age, I just had sort of a wanderlust, I guess. I felt like there were always opportunities out there that I wanted to check out and try.

I also got married in the process, later divorced. I went to graduate school, I got my masters, and then I got a job teaching with my masters and found that I did well with that. So I went back to get a doctorate, and after I got my doctorate, I accepted a teaching position in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I was actually educated in Virginia at Virginia Tech, and then went to Cincinnati, Ohio. By this time, I had two small children and I was divorced. It was quite a challenging time for me. I managed to write a dissertation with two small children as a single parent, it wasn't easy.

Then I took that job in Cincinnati and started building programs and really became part of a movement in entrepreneurship education. Actually, my PhD is not in entrepreneurship, but that's because they really didn't have that kind of degree back then.

So I got a PhD in strategic management, and took my first job. There weren't any entrepreneurship courses offered at that time. So I was very fortunate, I had a dean at the time that was very supportive and allowed me to pursue this interest in offering an entrepreneurship course.

We offered a course, and it was something the university had never offered, so I had to create it. I explored the field, the discipline, the few people that were out there doing this. I did my research and created this course.

Then we raised money. So just like any entrepreneurial adventure, we had to raise enough money to start a program. So I went through all the steps, really, of a startup to build an entrepreneurship program at this university in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In doing so, I really kind of launched my career as sort of the second tier pioneering group in entrepreneurship education. Since then, I've just had so many opportunities to work with programs and work with students around the world in this space of entrepreneurship education.

So really it was education that, for me—it's not for everybody—but for me, it was the way that I was able to get out and build this career.

Joanna: If you don't mind, you referred a few times to the past—

Rebecca: Yes, I'm in my 60s now. So I've been teaching and doing this entrepreneurship gig for almost four decades. It's been a long time.

What I thought by now, Jo, would be that I would be retired, or at least close to retiring, but the opportunities just still come along, and they keep getting bigger, it seems like.

Joanna: Also, I wonder whether entrepreneurs ever retire!

Rebecca: I don't think so.

Joanna: No, exactly. You want to start something else, right? Let's get into the book.

Rebecca: Teaching all those years as an entrepreneur, I saw a lot of change in our field. So when I first started teaching, it was all about starting a business. In fact, in the earliest years, it was more about small business.

Everything was taking what we had studied in business school, which was primarily around corporate business, and applying it in a miniature way, if you will. It really didn't work, and so the field started to develop its own body of literature and research around entrepreneurship.

That direction was really interesting because although it started in this whole area of creating new companies and running small businesses, it really morphed, I would say, into a focus on the mindset of entrepreneurship and how it applies in almost virtually any context.

I started out my description of my background by just saying that I've applied it everywhere, and so that became really interesting to me. I've always been fascinated by the way people think and by the stories.

You mentioned my podcast, and it's why I love my podcast. I just love to ask people lots of questions and find out about them and the way they think.

So this whole book is really, I would say, 20 years of research that I had been doing trying to understand what this entrepreneurial mindset was. We talked about it a lot, but it didn't have a whole lot of definition. People always seemed to know it when they saw it, but they didn't really know exactly how to describe it.

It's applying it in so many other contexts. We've had students come through that have been interested in starting not for profits. They've started churches.

They've developed new products that then they licensed. They didn't even start a company around them. I found I was always drawn to the creative students, and I think you and your audience would appreciate this, because I saw over the years that most creatives had to have some of these entrepreneurial mindset skills.

They were going to be in a position where they were taking advantage of opportunities, and they were going to have to raise money, or at least find a way to pursue their craft. That included maybe some marketing. It included maybe raising money from donors and investors.

So I became very interested very early on, for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindset for students who are not studying business. So that's been a lot of the focus of why this book was written.

I spent a lot of years trying to understand an entrepreneurial mindset. So this book was really an effort to bring all this academic literature to a popular audience and share the idea of a mindset in a very, very simple and easy to remember and understand framework.

So that, “see, do, repeat,” it's based also in what we call competencies. A lot of fields, like nursing and healthcare, have used competencies for a long time to find a way to measure tasks that are challenging to define and measure.

So it's identifying three competencies of an entrepreneurial mindset. Over the years, these are the three competencies, and then associated with each of them are multiple skills that I found have been repeated among all entrepreneurs.

Then the perseverance and resilience to execute past failure because failure is definitely a part of every success journey.

Along the way, the people who are not successful as entrepreneurs tend to get stopped. They may recognize an opportunity. Multiple times a day, I have people reaching out to me with, “I have an idea. What do you think?” The difference is, do you take action on that, and then do you keep going and execute past failure?

So there are a lot of things we could talk about with that, but that's the principles of the book. It's really to take all this academic research of an entrepreneurial mindset and make it something simple and something that people can apply.

Rebecca: Sure, absolutely. I'll use my own example if that's okay. So what happened with me, I've been writing for a long time, academic writing, and it's a completely different animal. I've also been a writer for, you know, always.

I write for fun, and I write for therapy. I know you've talked about The Morning Pages by Julia Cameron. My mom gave me that book many years ago because she was an artist. So I've written for therapy. I love writing.

This particular book, I was approached by a pretty well-known book publisher in the academic world write books, not for textbooks, but for faculty. Those books are much more academic and they combine research. So I was approached by a book publisher to write a book on entrepreneurial mindset for that audience.

So that was pre-pandemic, and so I started exploring that. I had conversations with an editor that was assigned to me, and so we were getting started on that whole process when the pandemic happened. So my editor lost her job, and I was assigned to somebody else, and we didn't have a great fit.

So I stepped back from that, and I thought about it, and I said —

So the opportunity started to emerge for me, and I started to recognize in my world that there was probably an opportunity out there for people to learn more about this. So I think for any book author, it's paying attention to the world around you.

I talk about this in my book, about how we recognize opportunities.

That's a big part of the creative process.

So for me, a lot of it was there were messages coming from outside that maybe I had the expertise and the credentials to do this. There were also messages coming to me from other people that I was working with, or people that I was surrounded with, or things that I read that led me to believe there was an opportunity to write for a different audience.

So that opportunity came. The taking action, that was a really tough one because I started down this path, like so many others, without a clue about what it would take to write a more popular press book. So there's a lot of lessons I learned there.

The more I learned about what it meant to get published by a traditional publisher, which was pretty much all I knew at that time, I just saw that it was going to be a monumental hurdle to overcome. So I just started doing my research and started taking action.

I could have stopped there. I could have gone back to writing what I was comfortable with or knew, but I didn't. I continued to persevere, and I had lots of failures along the way.

In fact, this book was first published by, I wouldn't say a traditional publisher, but an intermediary publisher, let's just say that. I don't want to say too much about them because it wasn't a great experience, but I learned a lot along that process.

— or that it maybe could have been, and I had lots of failures along the way.

In fact, not getting paid royalties for a long time, and a lot of other things that just didn't work out.

I've never been an absolutely huge fan of social media, although I do more of it now, and I have people that help me. Students are great with that, by the way. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I feel like the “See, Do, Repeat,” it's played out in everything that I've done.

I think for any book author—back to your original question, long answer—it's really about once you see that opportunity, putting it out there and testing it, and then educating yourself as to what it takes to make it happen, and then continuing to persevere.

The repeat of the “See, Do, Repeat” model is sometimes the hardest one for people to understand because I am not suggesting that you never change course, I'm not suggesting that every idea that you have is truly an opportunity that should be acted on.

So it's not that, but it's about really recognizing that if you remain optimistic and you recognize the problem that you're trying to solve, and you stay focused on that problem rather than the solution you had in mind, you will come to an outcome that will be favorable.

Out of the process, along the same time that I was writing this book, I was launching my podcast. What happened was —

I was able to take my research out of my office, so to speak, and make it available so everybody could hear the stories.

So as I was writing the book, I was able to use stories that I was capturing as I was doing the podcast. So it all came together.

I never could have envisioned that exactly. I knew where I was headed. I knew what the opportunity was that I thought was there, but I had to stay focused on the problem I was trying to solve. So that got me to where I needed to be.

Joanna: Yes, and I think what's also interesting is some people—like you said you had a difficult time with the publisher that you had originally used—some people would have just given up on that book and maybe written another book or something.

You also clearly chose to keep focused on making this book more of a success. So presumably—

Rebecca: Yes. In fact, I'm an indie publisher now, and in large part thanks to you and what I've learned from you. So I published this book in '21, and I still believe in it. I still believe it's an important book, and I intend to continue to market it and sell it and use it in the model, because I still believe in it.

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it, but I also decided that I wanted to have more control over it. I needed to walk the talk what I was teaching my students to do.

So I was Googling around, trying to find out how to get back the rights to my book, and I came across a podcast that you did a couple of years ago. I know you've got about 800 now, so it was in the 600s.

Joanna: This one would have been with Katlyn Duncan, probably. She's got a book called Take Back Your Book.

[Check out the interview with Katlyn here.]

Rebecca: I think that's probably right. It was a few years back, and I listened to that. Interestingly, I have a husband who's an attorney, but in spite of that, this is a very specific kind of thing I wanted to do.

Getting out there and hearing your podcast was the beginning point for me. Then I started listening to more of them, and I still enjoy them.

I have other books I want to write. In fact, some fiction books I'd love to write, but that's a whole other story.

Joanna: I love that. I think what you've done there is great. A lot of nonfiction authors who have—like, this is your whole career. This book is one of the magnum opus style books. It really does encapsulate a lot of your body of work.

So, of course, you're going to keep promoting that, keep marketing that, keep doing other work around it. I think that's really important to say, in the indie community, we often focus on having more books, writing more books, putting more out there, which is one way.

There's also a lot of people, especially in nonfiction, who have one sort of key book, even if you're going to write more. Then that's the sort of focus of their talks and their career side. So I think that's completely valid.

You did mention the word optimistic, which I wanted to come back on, because you have a whole chapter on optimism. I'm, by default, an optimist. I'm also a techno-optimist. I think humans will figure things out.

As we talk now, it's April 2025, and we're not going to get into politics and the world, but it is an uncertain time. With AI and all of this, authors can feel not quite so optimistic.

Rebecca: I love that question. I saw this modeled in my mom and my grandfather, in particular. I'm like you, I'm optimistic as well. I think every entrepreneur has to have some level of optimism because otherwise, why would you do it?

If you don't believe that you have agency, if you don't believe that you have some control over your future, if you don't have some hope for the future, why would you do all the work that's required? So it's really, in my mind, optimism is about creating your own destiny through choice and action.

That, to me, is a big part of what an entrepreneurial mindset is all about. Optimism also sees opportunities instead of difficulties. I'll give you an example.

When the pandemic caused us to have to go online with all of our classes and teaching, we had some graduate students at our university that were quite upset over the experience.

I understand everybody was upset. It was a very scary time, and you're right, we still have a lot of uncertainty. I did a little video for them to talk to them about how that period in time was very special, and it was a unique opportunity for them to find opportunity.

It resonated with some of them. Some of them continued to be angry about the experience because, quite honestly, we have a beautiful facility on our campus for entrepreneurship, and they had signed up to be able to take advantage of all the events and programs and things that we run in person there.

The idea that they weren't going to get that, they felt cheated, and I understand that. We did our best to create alternative opportunities for them, but at the end of the day, as we look back on it, I think we can all think of many examples of things that came out of the pandemic which were positive outcomes and opportunities.

Certainly many were not, but that optimism, I think, is something that is critical for entrepreneurs. I talk about it in my book, there are dangers of being overly optimistic, and there's plenty of research that shown that, especially if you're overly optimistic about your financial situation, that can be kind of dangerous.

So it's not a static thing. It really has to do with the way you look at the world. Whether you personalize things, or whether you recognize that everything in the world is not about you. The pervasiveness of things and the permanence of things.

So you can really, if you feel like maybe, anybody that's listening, that you would like to be more optimistic, there is something called learned optimism. There's books out there and plenty of things that you can do.

I think it's critical to have that trust in ourselves. What's the alternative, really, Jo? Do we just stop and sit and complain? You know, that's not much fun.

Joanna: No. I think that is a really good point. I'm sure there is a default level of optimism that people have, and I think obviously you and I have that. As you said, it can be learned.

I think one of the things I've discovered for myself as well. In the beginning of the pandemic—and in fact, I look at my photos, I took a lot of screenshots—in the first few months in 2020, from the January, because I was on Twitter looking at what was coming out of China and then Italy and all of this.

I took so many screenshots, evidence of my doom scrolling. I thought I was going to write a book on a pandemic, as many of us did at that time. Then I obviously realized that this wasn't helpful.

My photos—I take a lot of photos and screenshots and stuff—but my photos change to pictures of flowers and the outdoors and walking a lot more, and I've avoided the TV news.

I do read the news on some apps on my phone, but I don't watch TV news. This is a challenge for people listening, like one of the things I think makes me more optimistic is just curating what goes into my head and being quite careful.

Some people think that's denying what's going on, but I'm very aware of what's going on. I just don't do it in an overly emotional way.

Rebecca: Well, I love that. Making that choice. I mentioned that it's really about choice and agency. There's a lot we can't control. That's just the bottom line, I've learned that, but there's a lot we can control. That's exactly what you're talking about. You can control how much of that you let into your head.

It can be hard. I'm married to a news junkie, and it can be really hard because I want to know what's going on in the world, and I'm like you, I tend to read it more than watch it on TV.

I also choose, for example, during the pandemic, I don't know if it was the same in the UK, but for a while, every night, there would be this thing on the news about how many people had died that day. I'm like, I am not going to bed thinking about how many people died today.

I mean, there are plenty of people that, sadly, die every day, no matter what's going on in the world.

Joanna: It's life. People die.

Rebecca: That's right, that's right. There were people being born as well. So I made that choice. It sounds really weird, but when I made the choice to stop all of that, I remember I had this really vivid dream, and it was in color. I mean, this is going to sound so weird, but I had this dream that I was flying.

It was like I was leaving all that behind, and I was going to accept that whatever happened happened, and I could control what I could control, and that was it. I would suggest that it's about taking control of what we let into our head, just like you said. Choice and action and agency.

Recognizing that there's only so many things we could control, but within what we can control, we have so much power.

Joanna: Yes, in what we can control. Yes—

Rebecca: Nature is great, yes.

Joanna: It just gives you that perspective. I was thinking, because at the moment here in Bath, the sun is out, spring is here, things are growing again. Things in my garden that I seriously thought were dead have started sprouting and growing leaves. It's another one of those, you know, this too shall pass, and the seasons will turn again.

That just makes me feel more positive and happy. It's been a very long winter here. I imagine some people listening, it might still be winter by the time they hear this. I feel like that also makes me more optimistic is seeing how nature recovers every year. Things always get better.

Rebecca: Absolutely. I think I mentioned it in the book too, gratitude. That was something that my mom always believed in. I think gratitude, and just joy. I have to say, I always enjoy your podcast because you are always so joyful in the way you communicate with people. I just think that is very special.

It's so amazing when I meet people that I know are struggling, but they're still able to be kind and thoughtful to the people around them.

Taking, I guess, that pressure off by not focusing so much on ourselves and what's missing, but opening up to the fact that there are other people in the world, and we can bring joy to them and ourselves at the same time.

Joanna: Well, coming back to the book, because you did say earlier that you've written a lot of academic writing as part of your job, and that this was your sort of trying to write something more popular. What I would say is that it is incredibly well researched and has a lot of references.

It is, I would say, more of a crossover to academic books. It's certainly not a pop sort of book where there's no references at all or maybe only a couple in the appendix. For example, the kind of things I've written. I wondered what your thoughts were.

So there are people listening who will be academic writers, and they will struggle with, I think, a lot of the relaxing that has to go into writing a more popular book.

Rebecca: Yes, thank you for that question. That was a struggle for me, and a lot of it has to do with how you're trained, I guess, or prepped for whatever the opportunity is that you're going to pursue with your writing.

For me, I had been living in this world where everything I had written, before it was published, it was going to be peer reviewed, and it was going to be evaluated for accuracy and legitimacy and reliability and credibility. So the idea that I could just write something, I could say it was totally, totally different for me.

I think you're right. I mean, I worried a little bit about whether this book would be readable, but I felt like I really changed my writing style a lot.

Joanna: It's definitely readable, just to be clear for everyone. This is a popular book, but I can also sense the amount of research, and you're very meticulous about that. So I think you have managed both, but it is hard, I know.

Rebecca: Well, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. That's a very high form of compliment for me because I think that fits with who I am and my background.

It was challenging because I wanted it to be readable. The name, as an example, coming up with that “See, Do, Repeat” name, I practiced what I write about in the book.

One of the techniques that I recommend to help get your creative juices flowing is to do something that takes your mind completely off of everything that you're doing. It's called the incubation period.

So I work out a lot, and I've been a runner. So I was working with my editor and publisher on the name, and we had gone through all these names. I went out for a run one day, and I was just really pushing it. I had all this research in my head that we'd been doing, and all of a sudden it came to me.

I'm like, what word—and I'm fascinated by words, I love words, but I guess every author is—but I said, what words would convey this in the simplest form? So that's how I came up with “See, Do, Repeat.”

I think one of the things that helped me most was to really focus on storytelling.

It was easy, again, because I was in the midst of my podcast. Although not every story comes from my podcast, most of them come from entrepreneurs that I have interviewed, either in my classroom or for my podcast, or that I've spent time working with.

I think that's how I made that transition. I was able to reference books and other research that supported what I was talking about, and I tried to keep that, but only on a smaller scale, and then supplement that with stories. I thought that would make it more relatable.

Just that feeling, I imagine, would have been quite different doing this book compared to writing an academic paper.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Did I have fear of judgment? Yes, on every count. That's probably been the thing, if I were going to advise anybody about writing, it's that you got to get over that. I had that very early on with my academic writing. I would hold on to things far too long.

I think this book would have been published many years earlier if I had allowed myself to get beyond that. So, yes. I mean, I had to let go of that.

I went to a conference, it was at Notre Dame University, and I had just published this book. I was among many of my peers that I had worked with for many years, and it was very scary to have my book there.

What's interesting, for that conference now, ever since that—you know, I had books there, and I actually had a little table and sold some of them, not many, quite honestly—but ever since that time, the organizers of the conference have been buying my book for everybody that attends.

Even though it scared me to death to put it out there in front of my colleagues, they're sharing it with other educators.

So it's not the audience I initially intended it for, but I'm grateful that they're doing that. I just had to overcome that fear of judgment, which it's always out there if you're doing something creative.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So we are out of time.

Rebecca: Oh, well, thank you for asking that, Joanna. I just have to say I'm working on a new book now. It's called Choose Yourself, and it's tied to the very last chapter of my book. I'm pre-selling that book on my website in a very different way, and I'm sharing parts of it as I go through writing it.

So it's really a model to help people take that “do” step. So if you could visit my website, it's DrRebeccaWhite.com. I'm also available on LinkedIn, same handle, @DrRebeccaWhite. Then on Instagram and on Facebook, @DrRebeccaJWhite. So I'd love for you to visit me there.

I have a new community which I've started, and I'm writing this new book. Again, it's all to help anyone who wants to do something entrepreneurial or make a big transition in their life, pursue a passion. I'd love to help.

That's kind of my legacy, to help as many people as I can have the joy of an entrepreneurial mindset as they go through their lives.

Joanna: Just also mention your podcast.

Rebecca: Oh, yes, my podcast. I'm sorry. It's the En Factor Podcast, and you'll be happy to know that I have the infamous Joanna Penn coming on the podcast. I think by the time this is aired, it should be available. It's called the En Factor. It's all about entrepreneurial mindset. So yes, please check out the En Factor Podcast and all my other resources on my website.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Rebecca. That was great.

Rebecca: Joanna, thank you. It's been an honor and such a pleasure.

The post See, Do, Repeat: The Practice of Creative Entrepreneurship With Dr Rebecca White first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you shift your writing and publishing process to focus on YouTube and podcasting as a primary audiobook focus? How can you use AI tools to help you create, publish, and translate your books? Derek Slaton goes into his indie author process.

Inspired by Derek, you can now find my audiobooks on YouTube: Books for Authors on YouTube @thecreativepenn; and my fiction, short stories, and memoir on YouTube @jfpennauthor.

In the intro, Spotify has expanded audiobooks into Germany, Austria. Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and Publisher Rocket has introduced more country stores;
Second Edition of The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman;
T. Thorn Coyle on the MidList Indie Author [Wish I’d Known Then Podcast];
What if AI replaces me? [Claire Taylor What If Podcast]; plus, my Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition is underway, coming June/July!

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 

Derek Slaton is the author of the Dead America epic zombie series, with more than 100 books in the main series and many more spin-off stories. I heard Derek on the Brave New Bookshelf Podcast and wanted to ask him some more questions.

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

You can find Derek at his YouTube Channel @DerekSlatonHorrorAuthor.

Joanna: Derek Slaton is the author of the Dead America epic zombie series, with more than 100 books in the main series and many more spin-off stories. So welcome to the show, Derek.

Derek: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you, but first up—

Derek: So I started writing many, many years ago. When I was in high school, I rented Dawn of the Dead on VHS, and the movie itself didn't really scare me, but it was when I went to bed that night and started thinking about, “Hey, what would I do in a zombie apocalypse?” It was like a light switch was flipped.

So it's like I had to start writing down what I would do, and over the years and decades, it just sort of grew from there.

I used to be a photographer. I was a concert photographer traveling the country with bands, and then I moved over to commercial real estate. When I was on the road, I would have my laptop so I would just write.

Over about four or five years, I built it up enough that I could go full time. I went full time with it in January of '24, so I'm a little more than a year into it.

Joanna: Brilliant. Then I want to come back on the zombie books, the tropes of the zombie books. So I read some zombie, like Jonathan Maberry. I'm sure you've read some of Jonathan Mabery's stuff, but he says, “It's not about the monsters, it's about the people who fight the monsters.”

Derek: The great thing about the zombie apocalypse, is that it's happening to everybody everywhere, and everybody has their own story. So there's a million stories that can be told in the zombie apocalypse.

It's not just the strong military type fighting. It's the waitress having to deal with zombified customers, and the high school students having to deal with classmates, and just on down the line.

There's just so many different scenarios. I'm three and a half million words into my series, and I still have another hundred stories plotted out that aren't really repeats of what I've already done.

Joanna: So you're writing about America, but obviously it's very, very big.

Or are you putting in different places? Because place makes a difference, doesn't it? Like it's different whether you're in the Florida Everglades versus up in the mountains?

Derek: It's a combination. I have been all over, but a lot of the places I haven't been, Google Maps of all things, has really helped me out. I'll look at the town, and then I'll drop myself into street view and just kind of walk around the area and see what my characters would be seeing and write it from that perspective.

Also it comes directly from places I've been. I had to make the drive from El Paso back to San Antonio, which is about nine straight hours of driving through nothing. That spawned the idea for the “El Paso: Creeping Death” series, just a million zombies marching towards them.

So it's been a nice mixture of both, and just about every single story has been set in America. I have done one story set in London that's only on YouTube at the moment, but it'll eventually be released in print. Something I want to explore more as the series goes on is how it's impacting other countries around the world.

Joanna: Then I guess I have a question about worldbuilding because with that many words, I mean, I barely remember what I was writing last week.

Derek: It's a combination. I have the rules for my zombie universe, how the zombies are formed, what they do, their timeline and all that. Thankfully, I mean, it's very simple. So if I drop in on a story a week into it, I know how the zombies are, so I'm able to just jump right into it.

I have a have a story bible for the main series, but all of these side stories that are mostly one-offs, I don't really worry about as much because half the time nobody lives through them, anyway.

Joanna: The benefits of horror! I think that's really interesting because when I was thinking about your different places—

Derek: No, just because I have so many stories that are in the pipeline, and just have stories I want to tell. I produce them so fast, I mean, I'm releasing a story of a week.

Even if I had somebody else writing stories, I really wouldn't have a place in the schedule to release them. An hour and a half to three hour story every week is, I think, about as much as my fans can handle.

Joanna: So let's go into your process then. So you said a story a week for an hour and a half, which is funny because most people talk in terms of word count, but you talk in terms of time.

Derek: So it really changed about a year and a half ago, when I started focusing more on YouTube. I changed how I write because it used to just be free flowing, the word count's the word count, the chapters are however long they need to be.

With YouTube being ad-based, I had to change to almost a television mindset of, okay, I need a break every 12 to 15 minutes, which turns out to be about 2000 words.

So I started writing 2000-word chapters, which really, really helped with the speed of the writing because I knew the beginning and end of each chapter. So if I was short on the word count, now I can go back and just add a little bit of banter, then bam, we're there.

As far as the week to week process goes, half the time I'll know what I'm writing the next week on Friday, so I'll plot it out. Sometimes I'll have just a great idea for a story on Sunday night and completely change track and wake up Monday and just dive right in and see where it goes.

Generally speaking, I'll spend two to three days writing out the story, refining it a little bit, and then going straight into the audio, which is where I do the final edit. I'll edit it as I'm producing the audio. So at the end of the day, I'll do the video, upload it to YouTube, and move on to the next one.

Joanna: Okay, well, we have to get into that in more detail. So I heard you on the Brave New Bookshelf podcast, and you really inspired me about YouTube.

Derek: I use a software called PlayHT. It's pretty much the direct rival with Eleven Labs, which is the big AI audio. The biggest difference is that PlayHT offers an unlimited plan. If you're producing as much audio as I am, that's vital, mainly because I need to keep a roof over my head.

I'll produce it chapter by chapter. So I'll paste it into their studio thing, render it, and then listen to it, then make whatever changes I need to make because you can re-render by line. So if I don't like the inflection, I can change a word. It's just quick click, and 30 seconds later that has a new audio generation.

Once I have the finished audio, because I export it by chapter, I'll pull it over in the Final Cut Pro. I'll drop in motion background, so I know where the chapter breaks are when I'm putting it in the ads and YouTube, and export it. Then it's just straight to YouTube and on the schedule.

Joanna: Okay, so a few questions there. For people who haven't done audio with AI—I know what you mean by make some changes—but what are some of the most common issues that you found with using AI voices. I think we're calling it “producing” now.

Derek: Honestly, it's gotten better as time goes along. I just produced eight chapters this morning, so it was a full hour and a half book. Nine times out of ten when I have to redo a line, it's a glitch in the software or it mispronounces a name. Other than that, the instances are few and far between.

So it took me three hours to produce an hour and a half worth of audio content today. So it goes really quickly.

Joanna: Well, that's good, though, because that's still twice as long. I think some people think you just upload the file and you hit output and that's it. Like yourself, I also listen to the audio as I go through, so that is an important part of the process.

So let's say it's this hour and a half book. You then upload it to YouTube. I've been trying to model you, although my channel has lots of different things on it. So when I upload it to YouTube, I've got a description field, I've got the title field, I've got a thumbnail, I've got some other things.

Derek: I mean, really the most important thing are the keywords for people to search and just having a thumbnail that grabs people's attention.

This went back to the winter of December of 2023 when I was switching over to AI audio, I decided to throw up an AI thumbnail, just a random zombie scene.

I put it up there in place of my book cover, and my views doubled overnight. So just having that dynamic thumbnail is bigger than really anything else because that's the first thing people see.

They don't look at your title, they don't look at your description, if they don't click on the thumbnail. If they don't click on the thumbnail, they're never going to see anything else.

Joanna: That is a really good point. I put up my Mapwalker series, my Mapwalker trilogy, which is three books. I did actually make character thumbnails and I put them up, but because the rest of my channel isn't the same, they just look really weird. So I've replaced them with the book covers again. Now your channel, if people go to it— Just tell people where your YouTube channel is.

Derek: Just type in my name in the YouTube search. It’s Derek Slaton. It's the first channel that pops up. It's just “Derek Slaton Horror Book Author” or something along those lines. Just below the channel will be about 40 different zombie story thumbnails you can click on.

Joanna: They're all very consistent. I think that's what's interesting about your channel, it really is super consistent. So I feel like there's two different authors who are listening—well, more than that—but people like me who've had a YouTube channel for ages, and it's full of a lot of different stuff.

Then people who want to do something like you, where it's something very consistent in look and feel. So I feel like your thumbnails are clear, your genre is clear, and you've done all the things that you're meant to do, which is fantastic. You did mention keywords there—

Derek: Yes, I subscribe to something called TubeBuddy, which is all one word. It's actually integrated with YouTube, they're an official partner.

It'll analyze your thumbnail. It'll provide keywords for your type of video. It'll help you pick out shorts, and a whole host of other things. For $3 a month, it's worth every penny.

Joanna: I'm definitely going to get that. That's very helpful. Then you also mentioned putting ad breaks on. So my fiction channel at JF Penn Author is not monetized. As we record this, I'm desperately trying to get it there.

My Creative Penn channel is monetized, and I just click the box that says “yes to ads,” and I've never done anything manually.

Derek: It is very important to you and anybody who is listening, make sure you manually put in ads where you want them, and to turn off automated ad placement.

Especially now, because they are updating their system to automatically analyze your video and put ads where they think it should go.

Especially if you're using AI audio because there will be occasional pauses in there between lines, and YouTube will read that as, “Oh, that's a natural break. Let's throw an ad in there.”

I checked it on one of my videos, and it went from eight ads that I had placed to about 75. That's not going to work.

Joanna: Okay, that's a lot. Okay, so that's something to do for that longer form content. Okay, so in that one and a half hour book—coming back to this one that you've done today—you'd expect to have seven ad breaks in that?

Derek: Yes, this book was eight chapters, and I do an ad between every chapter and one at the end. So it'd be eight ads altogether.

Joanna: Okay. Obviously, this is hard to know, but—

Derek: I mean, generally speaking, you make your most money in the first two to three weeks because that's when it's popular, and that's when you get the most views.

The way I view a video being a success, an hour and a half video, is if it makes $100 and gets an extra 25 to 35 subscribers in that first week. That's about where it typically falls. I mean, I know $100 for a video doesn't sound like a lot, but it's just in that initial week, and then it continues making money essentially forever.

Having that fresh content bringing in new subscribers, new viewers to the channel, they'll click on the playlist like, “Oh, there's 350 hours of stuff here. Let's go listen to older stories.”

So after a while, it just snowballs. So just having that fresh baseline, $100 and 25 to 35 subscribers in a week, that's what I deem to be a success.

Joanna: So is there anything else you do? So you do the TubeBuddy, but—

Derek: I do absolutely no advertising, period. Everything I have across every platform is just natural growth. I have done ads in the past. I stopped in January of last year because I wanted to try it out to see how it would go.

I was releasing weekly content across everywhere, Kindle, podcasting, YouTube. With just that constant stream of fresh content, it's like, okay, I know because I write in a niche, I have a limited amount of fans that are out there.

I was at a point financially where it's like, okay, I'm well above where I need to be to be comfortable. So rather than focusing hours upon hours each week on trying to tweak ads and spend a bunch on that, I'm just like, I'm just going to let it build naturally.

So far, I mean, it's worked great. Last year was my most profitable year, and I didn't spend a dime on advertising.

Joanna: That's why I got excited when I heard you on the Brave New Bookshelf, and people definitely have a listen to that too. It covers a slightly different angle to this episode.

I've always been a fan of content marketing, always. It's how I've built my business. This is another form of content marketing, but it's also revenue, because people can listen for free.

Obviously, I've heard it before, and people listening are like, okay, but indies have been talking about putting audiobooks on YouTube for years. So why now?

So what do you think about that?

Is it just an entirely different audience? Or do you also put your stuff elsewhere?

Derek: I mean, honestly, it's a completely different audience. Because I switched over to AI a year and a half ago, I haven't released anything on Audible or Findaway Voices because for the longest time, they haven't accepted anything but their own AI voices.

So, I mean, my Audible sales were kind of flat lined before I made the jump to YouTube, and they've remained at that level ever since.

What I'm finding is the people who buy audiobooks are one audience, the people who listen on YouTube is a completely different audience, and the people who listen to audiobooks via podcasts are yet another completely different audience.

Joanna: Yes, after hearing you, I was like, of course they're a different audience. I mean, even with my husband, my husband does YouTube, and I don't watch YouTube myself. Yet, he also watches videos.

He doesn't listen to audiobooks on YouTube, but I know other people who do. So I was like, this is crazy. What was stopping me?

So if people listening are feeling like nothing's happening — or I will say, so my channel, JFPennAuthor, is not monetized. So right now, lots of people are listening to the audiobooks, and I am not getting paid.

Derek: Honestly, just have consistent uploads. It'll keep you in the algorithm, and it feeds back on itself.

Recently, I think maybe within the last year, YouTube changed how they promote their videos, what they deem to be a good thing to promote. It went from number of views to how long people listen, and more importantly, how long your subscribers listen.

So last week, my story was three hours long, and my average listen time was right at about an hour, which fed back to it being promoted to new people. So just having those long stories that your fans will listen to.

One thing that helps me is I release my stories every week at the same time. Noon Eastern Time on Saturdays. So within the first hour, I have 400 or 500 people tuning in, and it boosts the algorithm.

Joanna: Which is great. You've become a habit. I mean, this show is a habit for people. It goes out at 7:30am UK time on a Monday, and the same thing happens. So I completely get the habit.

It's just not something I can see happening for my fiction at the moment. Although, it's so funny, because you've definitely inspired me around thinking about all this stuff.

I also wanted to ask you about the podcast thing because, again, I have two podcasts. They're mainly interviews, solo shows, that kind of thing. They are not fiction or audiobooks.

Derek: It's really the same thing that I'm doing on YouTube, only just in pure audio form. So there's no video attached.

I just take an mp3 file of the audiobook, and because I write in novella format, most of the episodes are an hour and a half, two hours long. That seems to be the perfect length for a podcast, so I just release a book as an episode.

I tried it on a whim, and within a month, I was monetized. It's grown over the last year and a half now, and it's grown to the point where, financially, it's just a slight step down from what I'm making on YouTube. So it's just another revenue stream for the same content that I already have.

Joanna: What service are you using for that?

Derek: I use a company called RedCircle. They're a podcast distributor. They distribute to Spotify and all these other places. What's great about them is that they have a sales team that will go out and find the ads that will populate within your podcast.

So just like YouTube, I go in, I set where I want the ads to go, and whenever somebody downloads it, if they download it for later, the ads are already inserted into the podcast. So I get credit for all those.

Derek: It's all one podcast feed. So there's just a new story every week.

Joanna: Okay, right. So that is also called Derek Slaton, is it? Or is it called like Dead America, or something?

Derek: It's called Dead America.

Joanna: Okay, so it's called Dead America. So let's take my Mapwalker trilogy, so it's about 20 hours of audio in total, across three books. I would make that a podcast feed for that series, for example?

Derek: Right. You could break it up into two hour chunks or hour-long stories, however you want to do it, and just have them as weekly releases. Let it build up. The great thing is, once it's out there, once it's monetized, people will come across it, listen to it, and more income.

Joanna: Okay, and can you schedule them? So if I did that, let's say I split them into two hour chunks or whatever—

So it's almost like a piece of work to upload all the files, schedule it, do the ad breaks, and then I just let it go.

Derek: Absolutely. I mean, I have the next three months' worth of podcasts already scheduled. So I sit down one day a quarter and just upload 20 – 30 books to it, and place the ads, and let the auto scheduler do its thing.

Joanna: That is cool. Again, it's so funny the kind of blocks we have in our minds. Of course, again, I'm very aware of fiction podcasting. I just didn't think about that from the case of putting an audiobook up.

I always feel like fiction podcasts have multi-cast and they're very full of actors and pro narrators and stuff like that. So I guess we should tackle that.

Derek: When I started doing AI on YouTube, I had the initial string of protest. I was very open and honest with them, with my fans. Like, here's why I'm using AI, because if I use humans, I could release a story every three to four months. Using AI, I can keep doing it weekly. Almost immediately, everybody bought in.

I've had a fraction of that level of kickback on podcasting, but I was honest with them, responded to their comments with what I just said, and for the most part, it's been smooth sailing.

I even released two shorts back to back. One was human narrated, one was AI-narrated. Despite having the negative AI comments on the AI episode, I actually had 20% more views on the AI episode.

So do you use a variety of men and women and accents and stuff, or do you just use one narrator?

Derek: I have one narrator for all of them. The only time I changed narrator with the AI was when I did the story in London. I used a narrator with a British accent, just because it felt right.

I played around with doing multiple voices, and even polled my subscribers on YouTube. In about a three to one margin, people were like, no, we like the one voice.

Joanna: Yes, and this is another thing.

To me, when I listen to audiobooks, I want the content. It's not about the voice. In fact, I'd rather the voice disappeared. I think the voice disappearing is when people get used to the voice, so that, I think, is what your listeners are saying, which is that we're after the story.

The fact that they're listening to it rather than reading it doesn't make any difference.

Derek: Just Kindle. I'm in Kindle Unlimited because with the size of my series, nobody's going to buy all the books.

Joanna: Do you use AI covers as well?

Derek: Yes, I started using AI covers with releases that started coming out like last summer. Mostly, they've been well received.

Joanna: I've been using a lot of AI imagery for the last couple of years. Again, a lot of people listening are just scared. You know, when you upload a book to Kindle, you have to click the box that says, “How did you use AI?” I'm like, it's not a problem. You just click the box and you say you're using it.

Do you have any issues at all about using any of the AI stuff?

Derek: Oh, no.

Joanna: I love that. I love that. This is, again, why I encourage people to listen to the Brave New Bookshelf podcast, in general, because I think everyone who goes on that show is also AI positive, as you are. They find it just amplifies their creativity. You're a story machine. It's incredible.

If I wanted to do a new story, a new plot line, do anything before AI, I would have had to have risked thousands of dollars for the editing, the audio, and advertising for it.

With AI, I essentially have no cost barriers. So I can write whatever I want without fear, without worrying about, okay, if this fails, I'm going to lose thousands of dollars.

With having a built in audience, as long as it's in the horror/sci-fi/action genre, I know I'm going to make money. It might not be a lot of money, but I know I'm going to make money and not lose money.

Joanna: I totally agree. It's such a spark for me when I have a creative session with AI. If I'm just thinking about a new book—like yesterday I was thinking about something—and I just get on Chat or on Claude, and I'm going backwards and forwards, and it's sparking ideas.

Like you, I feel like it makes me more creative, and it just gives me bigger horizons for what's possible.

Derek: Absolutely, and especially with Claude with the new 3.7 Projects, I can upload one of my previous stories, and it's like, “This is how I want the story to sound. This is what I want you to emulate,” and I can go back and forth with it.

It's like having a writing partner, basically. It's speeding up my process. I bounce ideas off of it and stuff. It's like talking to myself, but a more intelligent version.

Joanna: Exactly. I also feel like the word “co-writing” is becoming more and more true, because it is a sort of true collaborative creative process. Although I've worked with co-writers before, and I'm actually a terrible co-writer because I'm so controlling.

Derek: Yes. If it does something I don't like, I can be like, “No, don't do that.”

“Okay, sorry.”

Joanna: Yes, and it's very helpful.

Derek: I am. I use ScribeShadow, which is AI translations tailored towards fiction. I was one of the early adopters of it. When it first came out, I was like, sure, let's give it a shot, see what happens.

They had like six languages, mostly European languages. It's like, okay, let's throw it up there and see what happens. Italian and Spanish were kind of like, eh, okay, but Germany just took off immediately.

I was just putting up a handful of stories, no advertising still. My first book even got a KDP All Star bonus in German. I've never even had that in America.

Joanna: You didn't have any proofreading? You just went straight from ScribeShadow?

Derek: I went straight from ScribeShadow because at the time, that was before they had partnered with a human translation service that gives them a heavily discounted rate to check everything.

By the time that came along, I had probably 40 books out in German. I went and looked at my ratings and reviews, and I think I had like a 4.3, 4.4 out of five, across all the books.

Then I went and looked at my American versions, and it's like, huh, the German versions are actually higher. So it's like, whatever problem people have, it doesn't appear to be the translations. So I just kept that up because it seems to be working okay.

Joanna: I realize some people listening are just going, “No, no, don't do it!” I have used ScribeShadow, but then I also paid for the proofreading and all of that kind of stuff, but I've only done it for some nonfiction. Oh, I did a short story as well.

I haven't jumped in because, of course, when you pay for all of the other stuff, the costs add up. As you were saying, you wouldn't be able to release at the pace you release, like in German, if you were paying for all of that.

Derek: Right.

So releasing in German, with the way that I am not paying for the extra translation or editing, like just embracing that B movie mindset. Get it out there. As long as it's entertaining, you'll find an audience.

I know full well I'm leaving 15, 20% of my potential audience on the table who don't like the AI translations, but it's not worth the extra time and money that I would have to spend in order to potentially get them.

I seem to have a regular audience that tunes into my books every week in German because, I mean, I'm profitable within seconds of releasing. So it's like if they're happy, I'm happy.

Joanna: I love that. You mentioned there the 20% you're leaving on the table. I literally wrote down before you said that, 80/20 rule, because that is what you're doing. You're doing the 80/20 rule pretty much for everything. That attitude of like the B movie, which, of course, people love.

I think this is what's so interesting. Listening to you, I feel the freedom. I feel the sort of indie vibe in you, which I just love. I was saying to my husband, listening to you, I caught almost like a flame, I feel. That's why I wanted to talk to you and just say thank you.

I've been doing this since 2007, 2008, and I lose track of that flame. So I wanted to say thank you to you for kind of lighting that again. I mean, you're like a proper indie, Derek!

Derek: Well, I'm a huge Iron Maiden fan, and one of the things that struck me interviewing Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer years ago, he's like, “We've never gone for radio play. We play music that we like to listen to. We do what we like, and we found an audience.” They're one of the biggest bands in the world.

Like that B movie mindset, like them, it's like, you know what? I'm going to write something that I would want to read. I've just kept pushing it out, and it's taken a little while, but I have an audience, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

Joanna: Well, great. I think maybe there's some more of your audience coming over.

Derek: The best place to find me is on YouTube and on Spotify as well, The Dead America Zombie Podcast. My books are available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, not only in America, but Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Derek. That was great.

Derek: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

The post Expanding Audiobook Revenue Through YouTube And Podcasting With Derek Slaton first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the different ways you can distribute and monetise your ebooks and audiobooks through Kobo Writing Life? How can you market them more effectively and reach more readers? With Tara Cremin.

In the intro, the potential impact of tariffs and what to do about it [Self Publishing Advice]; Pep talk for authors during chaotic times [Publishing Confidential];
8 ways to get more value from your backlist [BookBub]; Death Valley Kickstarter — and writing thrillers webinar.

Write and format stunning books with Atticus. Create professional print books and eBooks easily with the all-in-one book writing software. Try it out at Atticus.io

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

Tara Cremin is the Director of Kobo Writing Life, Kobo's independent publishing platform.

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

You can find Tara and the Kobo Writing Life team at Kobo.com/writinglife or email them at [email protected].

Joanna: Tara Cremin is the director of Kobo Writing Life, Kobo's independent publishing platform. Welcome back to the show, Tara.

Tara: Thanks, Jo. Thanks for having me.

Joanna: Oh, it is great to have you back on the show. It's actually been four years, which is crazy.

Tara: I can't believe it.

Joanna: I know. So I thought we'd go back to the beginning. Tell us a bit more about you.

Tara: Sure. So I've been working for Kobo since 2012, which feels like a lifetime. When I started, the company had created some great, but kind of relatively simple, eReaders. They were just starting to dip their toe into really expanding what physical devices could do.

Then you fast forward to 2025, and we're the second largest manufacturer of eReaders, after our friends in Seattle.

So part of the work that I do on Kobo Writing Life, I've been working on it basically since day one.

So I've been kind of working on that. The biggest change on the author side that I can really think of is just the expansion of the tools. I think it's easy to not always think back to 2012 because things move so quickly. I'll be like, “Oh, that was ages ago,” but it'll be like four years ago.

When you're actually thinking about 2012, authors were uploading a Word doc and publishing their ebook, and then that was it. There wasn't a lot of different things available or more opportunities.

Now, authors can really easily create accessible and like really beautifully designed ePubs with tools like Vellum and Atticus. They can publish audiobooks to Kobo, they can reach libraries, join subscription programs, and take advantage of all the promotional tools that are available.

So I think the biggest change is just that there's more opportunities now for authors than when I started working in the book business.

Joanna: Oh, and—

I mean, we've heard before some of the stats around the number of self-published books on the Kobo platform. That's grown as well, hasn't it?

Tara: It has. I have some stats for you. When we look at self-publishing on Kobo, it makes up about 25% of the units for single copy sales. Then if we think about the subscription reading, it makes up about 60% of English language subscription reading is all self-published content. It's huge.

Joanna: Wow, that's incredible. So indie authors are important to Kobo, I guess we could say.

Tara: Yes, and it started with somebody wanting to email a Word doc and get it published, which is why Kobo Writing Life was created as a platform. We've really been able to expand it and add additional features.

Something that I don't think we talk about a lot because I'm primarily focused on the English language side, but we also have a portal that's just for users in Japan that's very self-contained in Japanese.

Last year, we actually localized in traditional and simplified Chinese for our friends in Taiwan and Hong Kong. So the Kobo Writing Life platform is now available in eight languages. So we know how integral the independent authors are to the global book business.

Joanna: Kobo originally was Canadian, right? Then it was bought by a Japanese company.

Tara: Yes, so we're still headquartered in Toronto. We have a global presence, where we have offices in Taiwan, in Tokyo, Darmstadt and Dublin, and with a generous sprinkling of people throughout Europe.

We were acquired by Rakuten, maybe prior to me joining, 2010, 2011, and we've been sort of their digital book area of that ever since then. So having this enormous company backing has been really, really helpful, but we do maintain quite a Canadian-centric grassroots focus with the HQ being here in Toronto.

Joanna: Absolutely. So one of the changes you mentioned has been the subscription model. As you mentioned, our friends in Seattle have one that's quite famous that is an exclusive program. Kobo Plus is not exclusive, so people can be in that as well as selling their ebooks elsewhere, which I love.

Like, what is it for readers and listeners?

Tara: Sure, I think it's maybe important to see why people have gone down the subscription route, for people that are potentially a little bit hesitant of that.

So when we're thinking about the book business as a whole, or Kobo's history, I think in about 2015 we could see that there was a whole generation of consumers that were coming that were consuming most of their media by not purchasing it once at a time, and they were signing up for subscriptions.

Whether this be music or movies or TV shows, I think we knew that books and audiobooks were going to go this way.

As a retailer that was really doing a great job at selling books one at a time, we wanted to reach this subscription consumer without disrupting the business we had built and doing it in a way that benefited us, the publishers, the authors, but also the readers who were looking for this.

So we tested this in a contained market. So it was launched back in 2017 in the Netherlands. This is because we had a really great market share there. A strong, willing partner, Bol, who wanted to test this out.

One of the also key factors was that there's some of the biggest piracy rates in Europe were found in the Netherlands. So we wanted to see if we could convert those users who were already sometimes using Kobo devices. They're reading, they're just not paying for the reading.

So we wanted to see if we could make this very easy, self-contained platform, could we convert them to paying users? Then what we found from that is that it really didn't cannibalize the a la carte sales.

We had new customers signing up, and we could kind of see where they were coming from. Some of them were coming over from Kindle Unlimited, some of them coming from piracy. Some of them had been maybe just library users that had been moved into this kind of easier one click model.

Some of them had never read an ebook before, but used it as a way to step their toe into the digital reading. What we found is that — 

So what we looked at with these findings was—gosh, it'll be almost 10 years now, which is wild. Time doesn't exist anymore, Joanna—but with the findings from the Netherlands, we've been able to expand Kobo Plus. As of this recording, we are currently in 23 countries, which is including all of our core markets.

There'll be more to come, probably shortly after this comes out, actually, but I can't quite say where. So 23 countries right now.

Like you've mentioned, we're not the only subscription model out there, but what makes us a little bit different is the focus on the importance of the authors and wanting to give them flexibility, while also trying to reach this subscription reader. So it was really important to us that we didn't lock any authors into exclusivity.

We just want to make sure that the Kobo experience of you publishing widely is really easy and that you're not spending too much time on it because you're balancing all of these other platforms.

So we built this out so authors can pick and choose the country. They can choose all of them if they want, which is what I would always recommend.

If you're a wide author that's publishing globally, I don't know why you wouldn't put your books in, but perhaps you didn't want to hit up your main markets, like the US or Canada. You do have the option of like excluding those, or you can select all of them.

What's a cool way about selecting all of them is that it actually includes future territories. So as we've been rapidly expanding Kobo Plus, you don't have to do anything. Your books are already there when we add to new places. So that's been pretty cool.

You can put your books in, and you can take them out if you're not happy with it. I always encourage people to leave them in, to really try to reach that readership.

Again, we wanted to give authors as much control as possible, and really just get authors to try it out. Like try out an older series, maybe try it out in the Netherlands, where you haven't really thought about selling books before, and eventually get really comfortable adding their catalog to Kobo plus.

So for us, it was really all about building author trust over time when it comes to subscriptions. I feel people are more comfortable with it now than before, and I think it's easy to get people comfortable when the revenue is increasing, I think.

Joanna: So all my books that are on Kobo are in Kobo Plus. I also agree, I think there's a group of readers for whom—readers and listeners, we should say—because this is audiobooks as well, right?

Tara: Yes, it is. Depending on the territory, but primarily they all have ebooks and audiobooks. So from a customer perspective, you can either pay for all you can read for a month, all you can listen for a month, or all you can read and listen. So those are the options.

Joanna: Exactly. So this is the thing, I think as authors, we have to think about different groups of readers. So even as we record this, I've got a Kickstarter happening. There is an ebook, there is an audiobook, which will eventually be on Kobo, but for now, they're just on Kickstarter.

Then there's a gorgeous hardback with foil and ribbon and all of that kind of thing, which Kobo doesn't sell beautiful hardbacks, right? I mean, and neither does Amazon, neither does Apple.

It's a completely different audience, someone who's going to buy that hardback to someone who's going to borrow the audiobook in the Netherlands.

Tara: Yes. I mean, I love seeing what authors are doing with these. That must be so satisfying for you to get that copy of this beautiful book.

So, yes, we really wanted to just focus on the digital experience, especially when it comes to our devices as well. We make some of the best e-reading devices—I mean, I would say they are the best—but like, we're making the best eReaders that are available.

We launched our first color eReaders last year, and the reception to them was just tremendous. So our eReaders have integration with ebooks and audiobooks. You can connect via Bluetooth to speakers or headphones.

We also have Overdrive capabilities, like Overdrive is built into the e reader, so you can access the library from within Kobo.

One of the things that we've been doing, l think we've just launched it maybe last year. You can tell I don't work on the device side, I'm not quite as sharp with my dates.

It's always been very important for us to have it be this open platform. So having users be able to just use the eReader to read books, and if we can make it easy for them to purchase books with subscriptions and convert them to paying users, that's awesome, but we do have integration with Dropbox.

With our newer eReaders, you can actually write notes with the Kobo Stylist, and you can mark up the files themselves, and there's integration within that.

We've recently added Google Drive integration, which is super easy. I just used it the other day when I was giving a presentation, and I had my notes that I was able to convert over and read from my Kobo, which was really helpful.

I was actually able to mark up and make changes as I'm going along on the Kobo eReader itself, which is pretty cool.

Joanna: Of course, if people buy my ebook from the Kickstarter, they can read that on Kobo because it doesn't have to be like DRMed into—that's too technical. It doesn't have to be a specifically Kobo ebook is what you're saying.

Tara: No, no, no. We always just use the ePub standard. Actually, I shouldn't be saying that because you can also add PDFs and things like that. So, no, it's not a locked system.

Joanna: I think that's really good too. So let's get into some of the other things. I mean, like we mentioned, the gorgeous hardbacks that are the current trend in the indie community. I mean, they really are kind of all people are talking about.

You and I were talking about doing this episode because at the end of the day — 

It's like, we move on to the sexiest thing. In 2012 ebooks were pretty sexy, right? I mean, they were like, “Oh, we can do this, and we can do this.”

Then it was audiobooks and print-on-demand and all of that, and now it's gorgeous hardbacks. So let's just go back in to the sort of bread and butter.

I know that's a massive question, but let's pick a few things.

Tara: I think it's still really important to make beautiful books, even if it's digital. I mean because authors are primarily digital first. A lot of publishers are not. They're still really focused on the print.

So I think it's really important to think about making a really great digital file, which, like I mentioned, it's just easier than ever now. You actually don't even have to think about it that much, the tools just do it for you.

I think it's important to have a file that can be read easily because the last thing we want to do is have some sort of technical glitch that is interrupting somebody's hard won reading time.

We really just want the person to be always trying to get the next book, so making sure the file itself is beautiful and working perfectly, I think is really important.

I think it's important to consider making accessible files so that everyone can read your book. Digital reading opens up a world to people that might have limitations around physical book reading.

There are a number of people that can only read digitally, and it just allows for a more inclusive reading experience. So something to be mindful of as well.

Joanna: Just on that—

Tara: So I have a book recommendation for everyone called Content For Everyone, by Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini. We had them on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, and it was just a great conversation.

I would say to check out their book because it has a lot of practical advice for authors on making accessible content. So not even just the ebooks themselves, but also author websites and newsletters. It's really full of actionable tips. They are far more versed in this than I would be to try and reiterate some of their stuff.

Joanna: Jeff's been on this show, and we talked about it then. I got the impression that if you use, let's say, Vellum or Atticus for your ebook publishing, that does cover the content, at least, of an ebook.

Tara: Yes, yes, perfect.

Joanna: Okay, great. So just to be clear, there wasn't anything extra we were missing.

Tara: No, no. Just to make sure that that is kind of being done, and you're not creating files that are inaccessible.

Joanna: Which, to me, it means that Kobo is still getting a ton of badly formatted files, which I thought we were way past that.

Tara: It's not that it's badly formatted, I think you have to consider the millions of books that exist, and especially the older catalog. So newer books might be accessible, but the older books that you've created back in 2012 might not be.

So a lot of the work we're doing is just an education around making sure that your book files are of the best content or the best quality that they can be, like before vellum existed.

Joanna: Oh, yes. I used to use Scrivener back in the day. I know some people still do, but Scrivener, I used to get errors all the time. I love Scrivener for writing, but for listeners, I would say Vellum or Atticus is the best in class these days. Okay, back on to maximizing income.

Tara: So I would say that — 

So when you're thinking about selling books one at a time, and authors primarily are writing in series, or that's sort of the trend that we see through Kobo Writing Life, you definitely want to bundle your books.

Something to remember is that on Kobo, we don't have a higher price cap. So you can go over $9.99, and still earn 70% on each sale.

So with the box sets, again, you want to make sure that you have an easy to navigate table of contents because this is a larger file that readers are browsing through. So you want to make sure that they're able to do that with ease.

Which I'm sure, again, these tools can kind of easily create this for you, but just something to be mindful of when you're bundling the books together.

Joanna: Yes. I think bringing up box sets is really good because the KWL promotion tab is great. I go in every three weeks, and I apply for as much as I can get. Although, just so everyone knows, I don't get every promotion. Like nobody gets every promotion, right? You just have to apply for a ton of them.

Tara: Yes, we rotate around pretty regularly with them because our readers are just so interested in having box sets. It's funny because I think we think about box sets as like a discounted opportunity to have these books, but that's not really how readers are taking them.

They're taking them as like this is a convenient way to have this one series in this one book. So I'd always recommend pricing them for their value and just making sure that they're available for the reader who doesn't want to like click on books one by one, and just have this bigger box set.

Something to keep in mind with the covers is that we do accept the 3D box sets with the plain white backgrounds, but if you're thinking about promotions or applying to promotions, we might be a little bit less inclined to accept those, just because it makes your cover really small and it makes it harder to read.

You already have limited space on a website in terms of a cover, so I really like to —

So you can kind of use it as an opportunity to encapsulate the theme of your series within your box set cover.

Joanna: Then just on that, just on Kobo Plus, we didn't say—So a lot of authors are used to the ‘pages read' idea. How is that done on Kobo Plus for reading and listening?

Tara: The biggest difference, I guess, between Kobo Plus and some of the other platforms is that we base our payment on—well, it's a very similar revenue share model—but it's based on the minutes that your book has been read versus the page reads.

This allows us to treat ebooks and audiobooks the same, and it kind of reduces a little bit of the gamification that we've seen on some other platforms. So we're really taking into account the time that somebody is spending on your book.

Joanna: Yes, because some people were able to game other systems by sort of getting bots or paying people to click through pages and stuff like that. Oh, but it's funny, isn't it? I mean, whenever humans can find a way to game a system, they will.

Tara: We're very clever people.

Joanna: We are. We are very clever people. Okay, so—

Tara: So I would say with audiobooks that we're talking about, so you can publish audiobooks to Kobo as well, through Kobo Writing Life.

You may not see the tab right away, and actually the same with the promotions tab, but you just have to send the team an email to enable this for you.

Just as we were talking about the box set covers there, I think something to keep in mind with audiobooks, we will crop the cover for you. If you want to make sure that you're making the best cover, audiobooks are square and not rectangular, so sometimes we do see kind of like a really squished cover.

That would just be something to be a bit mindful of when you're publishing audiobooks, to just make sure that you're selling the book because we are unfortunately always judging books by their covers.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. I guess—

Tara: There probably is, but I feel like the nonfiction market for us is definitely growing, especially with our new devices. We've done a lot of work to try to cater to the nonfiction reader, and what we call like an immersive reading experience.

You can see this with the writing within the book itself. There's easy ways to flip back and forth between the pages. We basically have the digital version of like a thumb in the side of the pages, so you don't lose your spot, but you can actually flip through the book and then flip back again.

So it's definitely growing, but I think what we see, especially on Kobo Writing Life, it would be fiction that would be primarily what people are reading right now.

Joanna: Well, I'll put another sort of ask in for the promotional tab, which is mainly fiction focused, I find. I do always look for nonfiction promotions there. To be clear, again, for people listening, I do think to sell books on Kobo, it is good to be part of the promotional opportunities. You can really get in front of new readers that way.

So that would be one of the things I would like to see, is more nonfiction and memoir promotional opportunities.

Tara: For sure. I will take this to the team.

Joanna: Yes. Take the feedback!

Let's talk about libraries because some authors are worried about libraries. I mean, obviously authors want libraries to have their ebooks and audiobooks, but they're also worried about the money.

Tara: So it's really easy to opt your books in. It's part of the publication process, so it's in the rights and distribution section. So you just have to set a price in USD, and that'll be your library price for the book. The general rule of thumb is roughly around the same as a mass market paperback.

You just want to make sure that you're not putting the same price as your just straight up digital book because of the loaning factor when it comes to the library books.

Sometimes we have authors that want to appeal to libraries by putting it in at a lower price, and I always kind of remind them that the librarians have two ways of purchasing the books through Kobo Writing Life.

So they can publish on a one copy, one user. This is kind of like when you think of a traditional book, that we have this one book and that can be loaned out multiple times. So that's why you want to increase the price because you want to cover the loans that are happening with that.

They also have the opportunity to buy your book on a cost per checkout option, and that's for a one-time loan for 10% of the price. So if your library book is $19.99, they could also just buy your book for a one-time loan for $1.99. So that can really appeal to them.

We have a lot of the library sales that are demand driven, so it's people actually going in and asking for your book. So it's really great to be able to offer to a librarian, like actually, you can buy it just this one time, and maybe you'll buy it a few times for the lower price.

Then if it's really popular, then you'll buy it for the higher price again. So we see that happening quite a lot. Authors that distribute to Overdrive through Kobo, they earn 50% of any sale that happens.

Joanna: Yes. So just to put people's mind at ease —

So this is one of the ways you can say to people, you can listen or read my books for free. Just ask the librarian to stock them, or just go to your library app. I think that's a good one.

I wanted to come on to the authors who do really well on KWL.

Tara: Well, like you've mentioned, the promotions tool that we have. I was trying to think about instances of authors that have moved widely in the past couple of years and are finding success on Kobo, and they're honestly the ones that have leveraged their promotions.

It can take a little while to build a Kobo audience, and I just always recommend applying to the promotions that are relevant to your books and applying regularly.

I like to think about it as, like, the worst case scenario is that you're putting your books in front of the right eyes. It can just be quite competitive because there's a lot of people applying, but it's our merchandising team that are going through them.

So I definitely would say the ones that are building the audience and finding success on Kobo are really leveraging the promotions with us. Then also, that's audio and library promotions that we have too.

I think if you're publishing audiobooks, and I know this can be really tricky to balance, but if you can make sure that you're publishing your ebook and your audiobook on the same day and do those same releases, I think that's really important to building sales.

We found authors that have kind of reported that it's a bigger impact for their audio when they do that versus when they release it at a later date or anything. So you can try and line them up as the one book release.

Joanna: Well, then that brings me on to something, having obviously done audiobooks for many years. Sometimes I narrate them myself, sometimes I have paid people, but recently, and in fact, my Death Valley audiobook—I haven't told you this—but it is narrated by my voice clone, my AI voice clone.

Today, as we record this, I put a couple of chapters up on The Creative Penn Podcast, so people can have a listen. I've already had comments that say, “I would not have known this was an AI. It sounds exactly like you.”

This will be, I think, the first time in however long I've been doing this now, 2007, I've been able to publish ebook and audiobook on the same day.

Tara: Oh, wow.

Joanna: Because, as you said, it is incredibly hard to do that because most of us, in the past, we've maybe sold the ebook first, made some money, then eventually been able to pay for the audiobook.

Before Kobo, when you could put it up there, you put them on another platform, they never went live on the same day. There was a long time we couldn't do preorders.

So, I guess we're coming onto the AI discussion because AI-narrated audiobooks, certainly for me, ElevenLabs, the difference in the amount of work and pain for me as an audiobook narrator is incredible. So I don't know if I'm ever going to human-narrate again. I mean, it literally is fantastic. So let's come on to AI.

I know this is a tough question, but we have to cover it.

Tara: AI is definitely the biggest thing that is disrupting the book industry at the moment. When it comes to us at Kobo, we kind of go back to the core principles of what makes a reader's life worse, and can we avoid it? And what makes a reader's life better, and can we take advantage of it?

So AI, we know, will open the floodgates to lots of books being published that are like purely machine generated, which really impacts organic discovery, especially for indies. Part of the upside of this is that it becomes a curation problem, and that's something that we're here for. We're here to solve that problem.

So with Kobo Writing Life specifically, we accept AI audiobooks, and we just ask that they're clearly labeled that it's machine read. It's really just a customer expectation or just have something that's mentioning that it's a machine read audiobook.

We do discourage the publication of ebooks that are solely generated by AI, and this is just trying to root out the bad actors. We're not trying to root out any authors who are serious about making a career with their works, but we're just trying to discourage the people that are bad actors within this space.

So when we think about it from an indie author perspective, I think it's good practice to include disclosure, which I think is something that you do, Joanna. I think of you as like a leader in the best practices in this space.

Joanna: I do try. Just on the audiobook, so I have a button, like a yellow button, that says “digitally narrated.” It's so funny because I see now in the traditional publishing industry they're saying, “Oh, we need labeling,” and I'm like, I've been labeling my books for years.

I mean, come on. Like before it was required, I ticked all the boxes and talked about it. Also, I don't have an issue with that. I think honesty is really important. Also, I feel like all these things make my work better. I'm not doing it to try to scam anyone or be worse. I'm trying to be better.

I do think, though, we are in a transition period. I think this will be so pervasive within a year or two that it won't make that much difference. For now, I guess, as you say, it's marking this. So I will be filling in whatever I need to fill in.

Tara: Yes, I think it's good practice. I mean, it is a personal decision, and I think you just have to think about the reader. You just don't want to disappoint the person that is buying your book. Like, that's what it ultimately comes down to for us.

So whether you're using it as a tool to create you a calendar or spreadsheet that makes sure that you're hitting all your preorder dates. There's things that can make your life easier because you have to wear so many hats. So we understand that as well.

So when I think about AI, like from a book selling perspective, I think the interesting opportunity comes in how we can leverage AI in some of our recommendations, like summarizations and curation.

So I can't really go into too much detail on what we're working on yet, but we're really excited about better recommendations and curation that really benefit us all.

We just want to keep people's attention on long form reading by putting really good stuff in front of them, and we can do this without using books as training data inside an LLM. So, yes, we're excited about this.

Any Kobo Writing Life authors that are listening, you can expect some changes for to the Kobo Writing Life terms to come. I hope that things aren't seen as anything that's too scary. We're really trying to just support some new initiatives and be really, really clear about what we're asking for.

We're not interested in making new content. We don't want to make things from books that authors entrust us with. What we do want to do is make reading better and keep people reading more and for longer.

We're trying to earn a space in reading amongst everything else that's going on in the digital world, and we really believe that we can do this.

Joanna: Yes, I like that. It's interesting, though, because you mentioned there about—and this is obviously important—that you're not going to just upload everyone's books to some big LLM and do stuff with it. You're not going to do that.

So we've had to come up with categories, keywords. We've had to have genre-specific covers.

The thing is, if I have a book, say Death Valley—it's like 70,000 words, it's a full length thriller—and I have to write a sales description, which is—well, in fact, Claude writes my sales descriptions now—but it's not long enough.

What you want with some kind of AI curation recommendation engine is the emotional promise of this, the characters in this, the feeling you get by reading this, matches these books over here, which just will not be surfaced in a normal book recommendation engine. In fact, for the last year or so—

I found really some quite old books as well have come up. So is that something that—I know you're not going to read everything in—but what do you think about that?

Tara: I think you're spot on in the kind of way that the book recommendations can be going and can be leveraged. We just want to make more thoughtful recommendations.

It's interesting that you're saying that it's older books too, because that's something that we see with the subscription with Kobo Plus when I look at some of the top read books. They're often coming from like 2017, 2018.

So there's ways to resurface things that exist that people want to read. We can do this in a thoughtful way and an easier way than us having to rely on metadata that's been provided. If I want to be able to find a list of like Canadian authors, it's not as easy as potentially it can be. There's instances like that.

It's all about, again, trying to find the right book for the right reader and just keeping them reading. That's what we're focused on.

Joanna: At the end of the day, I mean, we're book people, and it kind of drives me up the wall when authors get annoyed with other authors. I'm like, look, let's get upset about how much time people spend gaming or how much time people to spend on TV.

We just want people to read books. I know, obviously, that's what Kobo wants as well.

Tara: I think it was like on Threads or a meme or something that I read recently, where it was like, reading is almost radical now.

In a time where we just want faster content and we're consuming things faster, it's a bit radical to be like, actually, I'm going to sit down for two hours and just be immersed in this world and really think about myself and expand my thoughts on other things because I'm not going to be distracted by four things at once.

It must have been some meme that, ironically, grabbed my attention for this radical thought process.

Joanna: That's ironic.

Tara: I know, but I was just like, that's right. It's something that we don't do. I mean, it's, I guess, comparable to going to the movies and like actually sitting there and not being distracted. It's the same sort of thing where it's radical to take that time for yourself, and we want people to be able to do that.

Joanna: We're almost out of time, but I just wanted us to mention the Kobo Writing Life Podcast. Since this is a podcast, people might enjoy the KWL Show, and that has been going for many years now.

Tara: We just released episode 366, which is wild. So you can find us anywhere where you listen to podcasts. We release an episode every week, but we rotate between new interviews, and then we've been resurfacing some of our great content from our backlist with a little thing we're calling the Kobo Rewriting Life Podcast.

So there'll be a new episode, a Rewriting Life new episode, and so on and so forth. There's a wealth of really good information. We focus on the craft and business of writing. It's a mix of traditional authors and indies. Jo, you've been a guest, and we'd love to have you back. I think you're going to come on soon.

Joanna: Yes, at some point.

Tara: I think for anyone that is interested in Kobo, or maybe you're new to what we do, at the end of 2024 we released an interview with Michael Tamblyn, who is our CEO. He is probably a little bit more eloquent than me in explaining the things that we've just talked about.

He really gives a great outline of Kobo, Kobo Writing Life, and I just really like being able to spotlight that because it really informs the fact that Kobo is a book company, and we're being led by a book guy. I think that's something to be celebrated, and just kind of shows our overall focus into the reading space.

Tara: Literally, it's the word ‘book.'

Joanna: I feel like we forget to say that because we know it, but there might be people listening who didn't know.

Tara: I worked there for years before I realized that it was actually an anagram of the word book. I think I was definitely three years in before it hit me. I was like, oh, right.

Joanna: Oh, yes, that's what it is.

Michael Tamblyn is—I've been at London Book Fair—and he's often the very best speaker in publishing. I mean, he really is very entertaining and very positive about indie authors, which I really appreciate. I've heard him defend indie authors to the publishing industry. So I love that, and I'm obviously a happy KWL user. So Tara—

Tara: So you can email us at [email protected]. We're on most of the socials. We haven't quite ventured into TikTok yet, but you can find us on Facebook and Instagram and Threads and YouTube. If you are interested in creating an account or learning more about it, you can go to Kobo.com/writinglife.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Tara. That was great.

Tara: Thank you.

The post Ebook Sales, Subscriptions, Audiobooks And Book Marketing With Tara Cremin From Kobo Writing Life first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What’s the difference between telling a story on screen and on the page? How does indie film production overlap with indie publishing—and what can writers learn from the world of filmmaking? Why might a producer choose creative freedom over big studio deals, and what does that mean when it comes to book marketing?

Gretchen McGowan talks about her memoir Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking, navigating the independent film world, and finding her voice as an author.

In the intro, NaNoWriMo shutting down [The Verge]; Amazon introduces AI-generated Recaps; Thoughts on the creative cycle; How to Write a Novel audiobook on YouTube; Mapwalker fantasy novels on YouTube.

Plus, Death Valley, A Thriller Kickstarter and thriller writing class; J.F. Penn on The Adventure Story Podcast; Death Valley expert Steve Hall on the Books and Travel Podcast; My photos from Death Valley.

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 

Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking.

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

You can find Gretchen at GretchenMcGowan.com and GoldcrestFilms.com.

Joanna: Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking. So welcome to the show, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Thank you so much, Joanna. It's a dream to be here.

Joanna: Well, it's going to be so fun talking to you today. First up—

Gretchen: Yes, well, I'm an independent producer. I come from a freelancing background in the independent film world. We make largely films that are kind of under $15 million, although that fluctuates all the way down to the really almost no budget kind of film.

When you're a producer on those kinds of films, you wear many, many hats, because your footprint is small, your crew is smaller. So you have to be good at many things, or at least pretend to be. A lot of that is trial and error. So that's been largely my background.

I'm now at a company called Goldcrest Films. They're based in London, but we have a branch here in New York, and there I oversee film. So I'm a little less hands on at this point with each film. We also do documentaries, and on those, I'm very, very hands on.

Joanna: You said that you wear many hats, so just be a bit more specific.

Gretchen: Sure. So in the early stages, you're, of course, approving scripts, making script changes with writers. You are casting with the casting director and the director of the film. Then you're location scouting at distant locations, even nearby locations.

You are involved in really every decision that is made, and you're trying to help tell a story with your director. The director really is king in this case, or queen, and you're there to facilitate that. To make sure that their vision of this script is seen on screen by you.

Gretchen: You do. That's one of the less glamorous things, but I still enjoy it because every aspect of that film is reflected in that budget. You have to make sure going into it, it's a little bit idealistic what your budget might be at that point, but it's based upon experience.

So it's not a fantasy of what that budget will be. You'll look at similar budgets where you ultimately landed to create that budget, and to know what it takes to get the film actually to market.

The actual sort of what happens after the filming?

Gretchen: Definitely. To me, the editorial process is the final chance to write the script again. I come from editing, actually. I started out kind of through the back door, in the finishing process in editorial. So it's close to my heart, I would say, the editorial process.

I feel like we can talk about AI and all the ways in which people make films now, but there's still like a gestation period to getting a film completed. It takes a little bit of time to find the story, to find the best takes, to edit out what doesn't belong, and to complete the film.

Joanna: Then before we move on, after this film is finished, is your job done?

Gretchen: Well, that'll depend on the distributor that we find for the film. Sometimes we have a distributor already when we're in pre-production, so we know what our deliverables will be, what the release date will be, what cast we need in place to go to certain festivals and that kind of thing.

Often we are much more indie-minded, indie-spirited, in that we finish that film, we edit it, we do all the beautifying of it, and sound and picture and visual effects, and then we take it to a festival and hope to sell the film.

Now, those days are kind of disappearing because there are fewer and fewer films being made and being sold for many, many reasons. In an ideal world, you would sell that film at a festival, and then they would say to you, “Here's the way in which we plan to distribute it.”

A producer is very, very involved in organizing that, in getting them all their deliverables and making sure the film really has everything it needs to go to market. That probably means going to a lot of festivals and being involved in the campaign as it's rolled out across the country and across the world.

Joanna: It's incredible to me. I've really been learning a lot more about the film business. I think on the other side, obviously, it doesn't look so difficult, but there's so much that goes into a film.

Even, as you say, “a smaller budget of under $15 million,” which people are like, what? That is a huge budget. Of course, it's not really, is it?

Gretchen: It's true. In all these films, probably like any book that you would write, the life of it extends long past when you put your pen down. So you have several films that you're kind of in maintenance mode and continuing to push out there, even though you stopped filming many, many months ago.

Joanna: So let's get into the book. So why did you decide to write a book after focusing primarily on the visual media?

Gretchen: Oh gosh. Well, it was all alone, that's for sure. I didn't have my team around me.

I wanted to write the book because I felt like I was involved in filmmaking at this really special time in the 1990s and into the 2000s, a lot of it here in New York, but also around the world. Making films, we just did it in a slightly different way than we do today. I was afraid we were sort of losing sight of how we used to do things.

I was teaching up at Columbia University a class in pre-production, and then a class in production for directors. I was having so much fun, and the questions that were coming at me made me think, this is really a book, isn't it?

These are stories that they're enjoying. They're getting a lot out of it. They're still relevant. I feel like this could translate nicely into a sequence of stories that could be really entertaining.

How is it different from working on a book? So working on the book, of course I'm carrying all these characters in my head, so I never feel totally alone when I sit down to write.

It's just a completely different thing to be motivated for yourself to write a book, as opposed to these constant deadlines that are coming at you when you're making a film. You have a schedule, you must meet that. Other people are depending upon you.

With a book, I was on my own. There was nobody saying, “You have to finish chapter seven by April 1.” It was just a made up scheme for myself. So the made up scheme continued to shift, as you can imagine.

Joanna: That's so interesting because I chose to be a writer, one of the reasons was to be alone. I know people listening, I think we're all serious introverts in the sort of full-time writer mode, but that was the first thing you brought up there as a challenge, was being all alone.

Gretchen: That's so funny because I feel like I'm a forced extrovert. I feel like I'm an introvert, like you, by nature. Being involved in the film business, I think many of us are just kind of forced into the world of an extrovert.

There's a role on set called the first assistant director, the first AD, we call them. I always think of them as the extrovert for the director because the director doesn't want to be shouting out when the next take is and when we cut. They want to have this person by their side.

So maybe it's just another version of my personality that I'm able to tap, but by nature, I'd rather be sitting at a desk or writing a story like you.

Joanna: Oh, that's great. On that, you said you didn't have any contracts or anything.

Because with nonfiction, you can look for a book deal first.

Gretchen: Well, I'd never written anything long form before. I was a playwright in college, so I had experience writing. As far as a commercial venture to get something out, I said, let's see what we've got first.

I took Marion Roach's class, and she was just really helpful to that end, as far as kind of setting a schedule, having realistic expectations. I took a couple of her courses too. I felt like those things helped me motivate my own schedule.

Joanna: Marion's been on this show several times. A fantastic memoir teacher, so that's brilliant.

So let's get into some more of the book. So you write in the opening about the fear you get as a filmmaker of underserving the film and the audience, which I really loved.

Gretchen: Oh, yes. I only know my own experience in making films, and it is varied. I've worked with so many different kinds of directors, so many different genres, but it's not going to be anybody else's experience.

So as I'm writing, I'm trying not to have the fear of being judged, of someone else saying, “Well, that's not really the way it is,” or, “It was never like that for me,” and I’m sure I'm getting a lot of that as people read it and work through their own experience of making films.

At the same time, I can only tell the stories that I lived, and then try to make it as universal as possible. So for me, that was the challenge.

Okay, here's the core story—and this is something I learned from Marion in reading her book, The Memoir Project—how do I make that ripple out to be a story that's relatable on a universal level.

For somebody who works in print advertising, or somebody who works in any other industry really, it should feel relevant, this experience and the arc of a producer story.

Joanna: Yes, that fear of being judged, that is what I have, absolutely. Everyone's got their fears, and this one is a big one.

It's tough with memoir. I wrote a memoir about pilgrimage, and it was kind of midlife and all of that. I was like, if I put this out there, everyone's going to know more about me. That's really scary, right?

Gretchen: Well, now is the interesting time, isn't it, because now people are reading it. People who I've worked with, people who I've been friends with for years, and they're having their own experience.

The dialogue that's coming out of that is another book probably, too, because they'll say, “Oh, I read the chapter about having made Buffalo '66, and I got caught in that situation. Mine was a little different.” So then I get to hear all these wonderful stories and bring up these memories of what it was like to make films in the 90s.

Joanna: Yes, which is cool. I mean, the 90s, such a great time. Before social media. Oh, could we go back? That's the question.

Gretchen: I know, but it's great to sort of be sparking something in other people that they feel compelled to write me a note or text me and say, “Oh, this reminded me of something.”

So that really was the goal of the book, to say, “Here's my experience. This is what I went through. What was it like for you?” Like your pilgrimage, everybody's had their version of a pilgrimage, and to be able to think, “Oh, the way Joanna climbed that mountain or surpassed that, that reminds me of when I did X.”

That took a long time for me to figure out the universality of things.

In terms of, did this actually happen in this way? Did you keep notes? Have you got notes from back then, or journals? Or how did you recall those things?

Gretchen: Well, I think I have the mind of a steel trap when it comes to certain stories that just are never going to leave me. I do have a lot of friends. Of course, I'm still friendly with a lot of filmmakers and crew members who I worked with back then.

So we can sit down and we can reminisce, and things will come flying back, and I'll say, “Oh, I hadn't thought about that in a long time.” They're the ones that just stay with you, the stories you kind of tell over and over again, even if just to yourself.

I didn't keep a journal back then. I just kind of kept all this tucked away. Then I think also, when you work on one film, of course, you're informed by that experience on the next and the next. So they get buried in you, and they get kind of endemic to your process, as far as how you proceed.

I think about what I said about budgets, you don't go into the next budget of making a film, looking at the going-in budget the last one. You look at the cost report, you look at where you actually landed, what it really took to make it.

Even though it's reduced to zeros and ones, that was the experience of that movie. Every line item there has a story.

Joanna: Oh, I love that. I've never seen the line items on a movie, but I imagine there's some really random stuff on there that ended up needing to be used, or people who were hired. I think that's interesting in itself.

I wanted to also ask you, the book has lots of different places, as you've traveled so much with the filming. I wondered, as a filmmaker—because you're always looking through a lens or you're thinking of how people are seeing it—

Gretchen: Well, as a producer, when you land in a place, you're thinking like a location scout. You're thinking, honestly, what can be useful to the movie? What angles will be useful?

Then, of course, when you've got the added challenge of filming an historical drama, you need to put greenery in front of certain standpipes and that kind of thing. You've got to think like, what's it going to cost to shoot in this direction? And if I turn the camera 40 feet to the left, what's going to be a problem there?

So what am I restricted by is often what you're thinking about, too. I love the location scouting, especially with the director, because for them it's really when the film really starts to take on life.

When we went to Andalusia to film The Limits of Control, a Jim Jarmusch film with Jim, we were at this beautiful site, looking at the ocean into the sea, but the house that he wanted was up on a hill on the opposite side. If you watch the film, you would never know the sea was across the road because that wasn't part of the story.

So sometimes you forget, which is where your editor has to come in handy. They'll say, “You never did shoot the sea,” but we weren't intending to. We wanted it to feel like an isolated home.

So to how that translates into the book, I'm trying to think about ways in which the location comes up. I guess, the thing that's important to me about filming on location, and what I like about the process of filmmaking, is it kind of ramps up.

You location scout, your crew gets bigger and bigger. You're the constant. The script is the constant. You're the last one to leave, probably, too, but you're there for a good four or five months often.

So if you go to Jordan, or if you go to Costa Rica to film, you're not like a journalist, for instance, or for other roles that might travel to these places for their vocation, you're not just parachuting in and out. You're there to tell their story as well.

Many of those people will become extras, many of the people you meet will become crew members or will lead you to a location. You're going to be going to their homes for dinner.

So all these things, of course, are in the book. Everyone becomes a character in your story, and you in theirs for a longer period of time.

Joanna: When you write a memoir, in the same ways you make a movie, you have to edit out a lot of it. You can't write everything. In the same way with a film, you can't shoot everything, but you don't want to because you're crafting this story.

I always feel like with films, there is a sort of, “This isn't real. This is made up.” I guess you do documentaries and things, but you still have to edit for your own story. So how did you manage that with your book?

Sometimes we edit to make things more beautiful, I guess.

Gretchen: I didn't do that. I would say I edited to make sure that the arc of becoming a producer is really in there, and that is the good, the bad, and the ugly. That's everything.

If I told a story and it didn't quite fit, or I felt like I'd already addressed that in a previous chapter or wanted to later, then I had to cut it out, right? Maybe some bits of that got folded into a later story, but there was no use in telling it twice.

We had to see this character growing as a producer and learning from all her ugly mistakes along the way. There's a lot on the cutting room floor, I would say.

Joanna: Well, on that, how much is on the cutting room floor when you make a film?

Gretchen: We try to, especially in the independent world, because we usually only have about 25-30 days to shoot an independent film at these budget levels, maybe fewer. Two Girls and a Guy we shot in 11 days, with Robert Downey Jr, but that was also on one location with three characters.

So there are exceptions to that, but you're very, very lean and very efficient when it comes to how many pages a day you shoot, and your coverage is going to be very limited too. So you need to make sure the way in which you cover a scene is enough for an editor to be able to do their work with.

It's probably a ratio of around five to one, whereas when you work on a documentary—or five to one to ten to one, I would say, how much film goes through the camera versus what the 90 minute film becomes—but when you shoot a documentary, we could have 500 hours of film and whittle that down.

Usually you'll need several editors to be able to pare that back. You'll get everything transcribed. You'll do a paper cut. There are all sorts of ways of trimming back on that, but these films take a long time to edit when you've got so much footage.

Honestly, that's an interesting question you posed, because since digital, the camera tends to keep rolling a lot too. Rather than cutting, we'll keep going and go again, again, again. Often on a narrative feature even, just keep going.

So the editor ends up with a lot more material than they used to. Not all of it is good, but they've got a heck of a lot more to wade through in order to find the gems.

Joanna: I know there's a lot of the stuff on AI around that editing, which we're going to come back to that in a minute.

Going back to the book, I love that you structured the chapters around film types. So like the urban fantasy, and the rogue movie, and the meet cute, which I thought were brilliant. So what were the challenges of structuring it, given the book spans a lot of time?

Gretchen: It's one of the kind of novelties of my career, is that I've worked across so many genres. So I thought it would be a fun idea to do that. I wasn't sure it was going to work. I moved the names around, and they're not always a spot on.

What happens in each chapter is not always a spot on reflection of that genre, but it's close enough to have inspired what happens in the story, and as you say, kind of what didn't belong in that story too. So it was a fun kind of device to be able to play with.

The stories, though, are largely sequential. Sometimes I'll pop in a relevant story from before or after, but only in as much as I say, as it helped with the arc of becoming a producer, becoming a more responsible producer in that character. You're seeing her evolve a bit.

Joanna: Yes, and in your pitch email, you said, “The actual journey to getting the book out there is taking a lot of grit and perseverance, a lot like indie film distribution.” That made me laugh.

Gretchen: So I'm working with a wonderful publisher, but they're not a big Simon and Schuster kind of company. They're a smaller company, and I enjoy that because there's a lot of freedom in it.

Probably because I do come from the independent film world, I'm used to doing a lot of work myself and putting a lot of myself and my own kind of grit and sweat equity into the project.

So that means I did hire—although they have their own in-house publicist—I did hire a PR individual to help me. He is familiar with film, so there's some kind of a nice crossover there. So there are out of pocket expenses that I kind of always knew I would have to put into it.

I make a lot of films with Sebastian Junger, who will write a book for Simon and Schuster on commission, or what have you, and he'll have a lot of muscle behind that from, of course, the organization.

I knew I wasn't going to live in that world, so I was prepared to put a lot more of my own kind of time and effort into it, just the way I am doing with several of our films right now.

Joanna: So, I mean, you mentioned Sebastian Junger there, and I've recently read his In My Time of Dying, and read several of his books. They're really interesting. You have contacts like that, you have lots of contacts in the film industry. I mean, you presumably could have pitched to a bigger publisher.

Gretchen: Well, I found an agent pretty quickly, but she was realistic about, you know, this isn't the indie film world. This isn't Hollywood. This isn't like a tell-all kind of story that exposes certain characters. That wasn't what I was setting out to do. Although she loved the writing, she was excited about the book, she felt like the more realistic option is probably going to be going with an indie publisher.

I heard that, so we gave it a little bit of time, but when we didn't hear back within a month, I said, you know what? Let's just switch gears and go indie because I know I can make it work. I didn't want to spend a lot of time falling down that rabbit hole of waiting, the waiting game. I'm an impatient person.

Joanna: Oh, that's so true. I mean, but—

Gretchen: Yes, I did that. It's interesting, I've been thinking because I am working on something new, I'm thinking that it would be so much fun to—because I listened to your podcast, and I'm highly motivated by all your stories and your guests—and I would love to try publishing the next book myself, but I'd have to finish writing it first.

Joanna: True, but it's interesting to think about that. I think you'd do great. I mean, with your attitude, I think that's the point. Also having impatience, which I think is a hallmark of so many of us in the indie community.

Gretchen: That's great. I mean, how do you get that next podcast? How do you get that next gig? I'm going out to Seattle in June to do sort of a mini tour there.

So how do you make that happen by depending on a large behemoth of an organization that has so many more important authors to pitch and that they can make so much more money from? So you really, like a producer, you really just kind of must do things yourself very often.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. I guess if we think about the budget as well, and about how you make money, if you make a movie for 200 million, and it costs 200 million, you have to do a lot more in order to make the money back. When you have a smaller budget, you know…

So I feel it's a bit like that. People say, oh, you don't make as much money as an indie author sometimes, although a lot of people do make a lot more money. The point is that your costs are so much lower as well, so you can make more profit.

Gretchen: Absolutely. You've been so smart to kind of create this audience who keeps wanting to come back for more. I'd love to be able to do that, to be able to cultivate an audience that knows where to find you, and is saying, what's next?

Joanna: Well, I think that's definitely something you can do.

Let's come back on the marketing because you said you hired a PR person.

Gretchen: Well, podcasts have become so big as a means of reaching an audience that you maybe otherwise wouldn't reach. A crossover, if you will. We do a lot of that in the documentaries that we make, especially to reach an audience, to make people aware of it.

Then with a lot of the docs that we do, we tour them. So it is reminding me of what I'm doing upcoming in Massachusetts and Seattle and hopefully down in DC, and I did here in Brooklyn, and will be doing in Manhattan. Just kind of independently showing people what it is.

I cut a trailer for the book that shows people a lot of behind the scenes fun of putting together a movie. So that's a lot like a teaser to show people what's to come, right? What you're about to read about and what's fun about it.

To be able to get that out on a website and use all those tools that we do in the filmmaking community, by creating an audience, by getting the digital aspects of things going. Then physically getting out there, and getting the word out, and listening to people, and doing the live Q and A's.

Also, really listening to other people's journeys about what they're doing, because everything is copy, isn't it?

Joanna: So you mentioned a tour there. So what are you actually doing with that?

Gretchen: Well, I'll be going out to Seattle in June, and I kind of connected with a lot of old friends who happen to be in Seattle. That will be like an audience. It's a theater. The International Film Festival there has their own venue there. So it's a connection with the local International Film Festival Seattle, which is a big, one. Big, big film festival.

So that's a good opportunity for crossover, isn't it? When we're making a political film at Goldcrest, we're crossing over by connecting with the senators, with the Congress people in DC, and bringing them into the fold. Here I'm doing the same thing with the film world and the book world.

I'm going up to Massachusetts to talk to a couple schools, including the school that I went to high school. They have a new initiative there that's like a trailblazer initiative to get students more involved in their future as they're in high school.

So they're doing externships and they're learning about various careers. So I'll be going up there to speak with them, and I'm looking forward to that because that's just the kind of audience I love.

Joanna: Oh, that's great. So you're basically sort of melding it with your existing work, which makes sense because of the topic of the book, and also using your network.

I think people underestimate using your network for book marketing. Of course, it has to be done in an appropriate manner, but sounds like you're tapping into a lot of things from your film background.

Gretchen: Absolutely, and it's hard to know when you are talking too much about the book. You don't want to overwhelm people with those stories, but I like to kind of bring people into the fold and make them a part of it.

Joanna: Then we've got to get into the AI and technology, because in the epilogue of the book you say, “We make films differently now with more digital and technical support, and you can shoot a live action film in your pajamas, edit it, market it, and distribute it without leaving your apartment,” which I thought was fascinating.

Gretchen: Oh, I think it's really exciting. AI has presented so many opportunities already. I think largely they will be positive, and there will be some that will be negative, but that's like any tool.

We've seen the handwritten ink-to-paper evolve into a laptop, and that's been a tremendous change. I never would have been able to write this book without that.

Then when it comes to filmmaking, there's the great democratization of making a film. As I say, somebody can do it on their own, virtually create a movie on their own.

I've always liked the team aspect of it. AI probably means that could be getting slightly smaller because there are certain tools that can be employed in the editorial process. As we say, maybe 500 hours could be pared down a lot faster.

The human element is always going to be necessary for telling stories. We're not going to be able to remove ourselves entirely, to me anyway, if the stories are compelling.

Joanna: Well, and I don't think it's about removing us entirely. This is kind of the thing. People say, “Oh, it's an AI-generated thing,” and it's like, well, no, it never is. Or not until they're sentient in some way, and have their own ideas.

These are our ideas and our vision, our creative vision, and then we use the tools to help us make the vision.

Gretchen: There is a tool—and I'm not sure I'll know the names of all of these—but there is an editorial tool that will help you with a lot of sound editorial, with voices and being able to do a temp voiceover for someone.

I know there's been a lot of controversy over that with regard to the Screen Actors Guild, but they will be protected is the idea. It could be a good temporary solution as you're just trying to get the film screened and approved by the studio, or what have you.

There are editing tools that will cut back on the workflow process, and have already cut back on the workflow process. From getting the film in camera, all the way to the cutting room for what we call the dailies process. That's already being employed so much of it.

Even just across being able to shoot, the cameras are now digital, the lights are a lot cheaper and a lot lighter. So even just like the physical aspect of being able to make a film has been simplified.

If going in, you haven't fine-tuned your story, you haven't looked at all your options, did you run it past ChatGPT? Which isn't an option I had when I was writing this book—but is there an idea that might have come out of that that would have inspired eight more ideas that you could actually look to employ?

I think that's the exciting part of it, is it will only elevate everybody's work.

Joanna: I'm so glad you feel that way. I also agree. I think the more I use it, the more I feel I am getting better. I feel like the potential is so much more than it ever could have been.

Gretchen: Oh, I worked with an editor on that. An amazing woman named Jen Wolin. I'm on the board of New York Women in Film, and she cuts all our sizzles for the highlight reels for the muse honorees that we have each year.

Joanna: That's good. I imagine you have all the contacts possibly needed. I made a trailer with RunwayML, which is a generative AI tool, which was a lot of fun. Did you use lots of photos and things from history?

Gretchen: Yes. So I went back and I pulled all the behind the scenes work from each of the films that had them. We didn't always have that kind of crew shooting behind the scenes. It's something I really encourage filmmakers to get because they will regret it later.

Even on the busiest day, or even the most mundane day, it's good to have a crew following you because that's going to be your memory of having made that film. I used a lot of photos from the set, a lot of images, and I did an interview as well.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, we'll link to those in the show notes.

Gretchen: Well, I have a website. It's GretchenMcGowan.com. It's G, R, E, T, C, H, E, N, M, C, G, O, W, A, N. So everything's there. It links to where you can buy the book online. It's available as an ebook, and hopefully someday soon it will be available as an audiobook, but not yet.

Also at GoldcrestFilms.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Gretchen. That was great.

Gretchen: Thank you so much.

The post Writing Memoir From A Life In Film With Gretchen McGowan first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some ways you can market a book during a launch period using audio, video, and text? What does my JFPenn voice clone sound like narrating the first two chapters of my thriller, Death Valley?

J.F. Penn is the Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, short stories, and travel memoir. Jo lives in Bath, England and enjoys a nice G&T.

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

You can find DEATH VALLEY at JFPenn.com/deathvalley. The Kickstarter runs until 15 April, and then the link will redirect. It's also available on Amazon for pre-order (available in June).

Hello Creatives, I’m Joanna Penn and this is episode #802 of the podcast and it is Wednesday 2 April 2025 as I record this. In this extra inbetweenisode, I’m sharing the first two chapters of my new thriller, Death Valley, which you can listen to after this introduction.

Of course, I hope you enjoy the story and want to join the Kickstarter at JFPenn.com/deathvalley  but I also thought it might be useful for you in several ways: 

Firstly, it is made with my voice clone on ElevenLabs, so if you have had your doubts about digital narration with AI, then perhaps this might help you think about it some more.

I have found it quite strange proofing the story and listening to my voice, but I love it, and the amount of time it saves me, and effort, is well worth it. My audiobook narrator voice is different to my more casual podcasting voice so you will notice that, but I hope you agree that it really does sound like me. I am planning on licensing it as well in the hope of creating another stream of income. 

If you notice points where you think, that’s sounds strange, or that’s wrong, well, the same thing happens when you listen to human narration. I think this is within the same levels I’d expect from a human.

Why else might this be useful for you? Well —

I am trying to combine audio and video as well as text for this launch. If you go to the Story page on the Kickstarter, you will see I have a video of human me talking and showing you the book —

As well as a book trailer with images generated by Midjourney and brought alive with RunwayML, and also text about why I’ve always loved deserts.

I also have an interview about Death Valley on my Books and Travel Podcast with Steve Hall, a Death Valley expert, and that’s out now. It is an audio podcast – just search Books and Travel on your favourite app, or you can watch our discussion on video on YouTube @jfpennauthor.

Plus, I have made another video with my photos also on YouTube, and of course, I have social media posts every day scheduled with BufferApp, and some paid ads, all underpinned by email marketing.

Yes, I am putting in the marketing effort, because none of us can just stick a book up on a platform and expect it to sell. You have to do something, and you have to push your comfort zone about what you do.

I hope this has given you some ideas, and if you love fast-paced thrillers, or if you want some ideas for your Kickstarter campaign, check it out at JFPenn.com/deathvalley 

The post Death Valley Audiobook Chapters And Book Marketing Tips With J.F Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What's the difference between writing a book and writing a screenplay? What are the different business models? If you've written a screenplay, how can you get it read? TD Donnelly talks about the challenges and rewards of screenwriting, as well as his first thriller novel.

In the intro, ProWritingAid spring sales 25% off; Key takeaways from the Future of Publishing conference [Written Word Media]; Curios for authors; Indie author’s scam survival guide [Productive Indie Author]; Writer Beware;
OpenAI’s 4o image generation model launch [OpenAI];

Plus, check out Death Valley: A Thriller by 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 

T.D. Donnelly is the author of the thriller The Year of the Rabbit. He's also been a screenwriter for more than 25 years, with credits including Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, Conan the Barbarian, and adaptations for the works of Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee and others.

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

You can find Tom at TDDonnelly.com.

Joanna: TD Donnelly is the author of the thriller The Year of the Rabbit. He's also been a screenwriter for more than 25 years, with credits including Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, Conan the Barbarian, and adaptations for the works of Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee and others. So welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom: Hey, Jo. How are you today?

Joanna: Oh, I'm good. It's really fun to talk to you about this. So first up—

Tom: Okay, so I grew up in New Jersey. My father was an accountant in Manhattan, and my mother was a housewife raising three boys, which is not easy, and sometimes doing a little bit of real estate. So nobody in my family had ever been in a creative field.

I had no connection, but what I did have was a 20 minute bike ride from my house growing up, sometime around 10 years old, they built a multiplex, like a 10-movie theater. Back in the 80s, that was quite something.

I figured out that on a Saturday, I could ride my bike down like four blind alleys and along the median of a six lane highway for a little bit. It was probably not a good idea, but I could ride my bike to that movie theater, chain it up, spend three or four bucks for a matinee ticket, and then sneak into at least two other movies after that.

I was absolutely hooked. I was like, oh my god, this is the best. This is the 80s. This is Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back. I was transported every weekend into other fantastical worlds. I feel like it indoctrinated me into story and into the scope of story and the power of story.

It was all the idea that the Japanese, they have a 100-year plan. When you want to become something in Japan, you apprentice for 10 years, and you just spend all those 10 years learning everything you can so you can become an expert. I guess we call it the 10,000 hours now.

I realized at age 15 hearing this, I had like a brainstorm. It was like, hey, if I did that, that's about 10 years of my life. I would still only be like 25 or 26 if I spent all my time just trying to be a screenwriter.

If I did that, I would be 25, and if it doesn't work out, I could still do something else at that point. I'm still really young and all that sort of stuff. So I kind of set out with that goal in mind.

I told my guidance counselor in high school, I was like, “I would like to be a screenwriter in Hollywood.” The guy just looked at me like, where do you think you are? What planet do you think you are on? Just had no idea what to do with me.

He kept trying to suggest other careers that were reasonable, and I just was adamant. So he was like, okay, I'm just going to wash my hands of you and let you go. I've never reached back to contact him, but that would have been funny.

Anyway, I got my undergrad at Vassar with an English and Drama double major. Then I got accepted to USC Film School for a master's degree in the directing program, actually.

My thesis script—this never happens, okay, I want to preface that this never ever happens—was the first feature length script that I ever wrote, and it ended up, two or three years later, being sold in a bidding war.

I ended up getting hip-pocketed. Hip-pocketing means that an agent says, I'm not going to put you on my official roles, and we're not going to go through the official channels and stuff like that, but I will help you. I will read your stuff, and I will give you notes. If something happens, then we'll talk about me representing you officially.

Anyway, I had an agent that was hip-pocketing me, and at the time I was editing to pay the bills. I was editing film and television, in particular television at that point. The producer I was working for wanted to hire me immediately onto another television project.

I said, “I'm sorry, I can't do that.”

He was like, “What? I thought I thought we had a good relationship.”

I said, “No, we have a great relationship, but I've saved up enough money to write for six months, and whenever I've saved up enough money to write for six months, I always don't take an editing job because I don't want to just be an editor. I want to be a filmmaker. I want to be a writer.”

He was like, “Oh. Oh, do you have anything to show me?”

I said, “Well, I have my thesis script that I wrote in college.”

He was like, “Can I check it out?” And he read it, and he said, “I'd like to send it to a couple of my friends. Would that be all right?”

 I said, “Sure.” So I called the agent that was hip-pocketing me, and I said, “Hey, great news, this producer, this guy, he wanted to share the script.”

My agent was like, “What? He can't do that. When he does that, he's attaching himself as a producer.” I'm like, oh no. So he's like, “Who did he give it to?”

I said, “I don't know.” So long story short, too late already. So sorry, so sorry.

He finds out the three people that this producer sent them to, and it ends up it's the head of 20th Century Fox Production, the head of another—like three very big people—and calls up the first one and says, “There's a script that came to you last weekend. It should not have gone out. I just want to claw it back until it's ready.”

They're like, “Oh, we were just about to call you. We'd like to put in a bid on it.”

After that, everything changed. Suddenly, we're in a bidding war. There ended up being three different bidders, and the script sold for—well, let's just say this. At the time, I had over $100,000 in student debt from grad school and undergrad, and with that sale, I paid off every single debt that I had. I was free and clear. It was amazing.

Joanna: So first of all, you seem very mature as a child to decide that you want to—or as a teenager—to sort of decide, yes, I'm going be a screenwriter. Then obviously you making the choice to study it, and then everything falls into place.

I guess by the time you did that major deal in, I guess it would have been the, what, late 90s by then?

Tom: No, early 90s. Yes, early 90s.

Joanna: Early 90s, okay.

Tom: No, '95. Sorry.

Joanna: '95, and you've stuck at this career since then.

Tom: It's weird, but I basically came at it from this viewpoint. I love storytelling. I love stories. I love movies. I love books. My mother would, when I was a kid, she would drop us off at the public library, sometimes all afternoon as she would go out and be doing real estate things. So we read everything in the library. We were indoctrinated in story from a very early age.

I said, if I'm this fortunate to be able to try and fail things, I better do that because I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to have regrets in my life. I don't know why I realized that at such a young age, I don't understand. If you ask my wife, I'm not a wise person. I'm really not.

Joanna: Maybe you're just single-minded.

Tom: A little bit. I said, if I could do this as a career, I think I would be happy for my whole life. That thought, once that got in my head, it kind of never left, and it has absolutely been true.

As difficult as the writing life can be, it is such a joy each day to know that I'm making something that's never been and I'm putting into the world. There are people that are reading the stories or watching the movies that I've been a part of.

For some of them, it's exactly what they needed at a low moment in their lives. Or for some it's like it spoke to them in a really deep and human way. I just think that's magic, and if I could be a part of that, I love it.

Joanna: Well, then you mentioned were difficult there. This is really interesting because, of course, I've talked to screenwriters over the years and sort of dipped my toe in and backed off.

People hear negative things in the author book industry as well, but what are the difficult things about being a screenwriter? I mean, as in, has just everything been amazing, and like you said, you've been happy for your whole life?

Tom: Okay, so one thing, I'll phrase it this way, Craig Martelle in 20Books, they say, “A rising tide raises all ships.” In that my success does nothing to harm you. If anything, it might even help you. If I'm putting out a good book that's in a genre that you're in, it's going to make people want to read more, and probably read your stuff as well.

In the film business, in the television business, that is not the case. It is a knife fight in a phone booth. It really is.

So let me give you a number here, 50,000 screenplays. That is the number of screenplays that are registered with the Writers Guild of America, of which I am a member, every single year. Of those, there's 20 times as many that are written every year.

So that is a million scripts a year, and that's just in the US. That's just scripts that are in the North America market. A million scripts every year. Do you want to know how many films were made in North America in 2023?

Joanna: Go on, then.

Tom: 500. So taking the, “a rising tide raises all ships,” if you end up getting one of those 500 slots to make a film, that absolutely affects me and everybody else. It is not a “we're all in this together,” it is very much cutthroat. The industry is built that way.

A lot of times when there is an assignment, people don't just come to me with a book and say, “Hey, would you like to adapt this?” More often than not, they're going to four or five writers that are just as experienced, just as talented, just as right for the material as I am.

I have to go in, and I have to pitch, and I have to somehow convince these producers and these multi-billion dollar conglomerates, international conglomerates, that I have that special spark that is going to get this project over the line and is going to make this something that is going to make them a ton of money.

That's not easy. That is super hard. In some ways, selling my very first script I ever wrote was an impediment to that because I suddenly was thrust into the lunch meetings, and the getting to know yous, and all that sort of stuff. I was thrown into the deep end before I really had figured out a lot of this sort of stuff.

So I had on the job training, as opposed to make all your mistakes in private, in the dark when nobody can see you. I had to learn a lot of these things the hard way, and it was really, really difficult.

Joanna: I guess of those 500, as you say, I mean, a lot of those are from existing screenwriters, like yourself these days, and also existing franchises. So of that, let's say—

Tom: Not many. Not many at all. I can't really give you a number, but I would probably say only 10 – 20% are completely original material. The reason being, the film business in particular, is the last truly gate kept industry.

Back in the 70s and 80s, the music industry was a gate kept industry. If you wanted to put out a record, you had to have a record deal with a major label.

They would have the fancy studios, and the backup artists, and everything you needed to succeed, but they would take the majority of the profits. You would still make a fortune, so you wouldn't be too unhappy about it.

Then when digital recording equipment came out, all of a sudden, everybody could do it. They could record in their garage something that was good enough and good enough to get on air. Suddenly, within 10 years, the record industry collapsed.

The same thing with Kindle for us. The stranglehold that the big publishing houses has had over the industry collapsed.

For film, it's a collaborative, very difficult experience. It takes a lot of people to make a film. It takes a lot of equipment. It takes a lot of time. So the lowest entry price you can make a film for is still very expensive.

Listen, I've worked with Robert Rodriguez, who made El Mariachi for $7000, $8,000. Amazing guy. I love him to death. It's not easy to do that. It's super hard to be the exception that can make things at that low of a budget level and really do it indie. It can still be done.

There are more and more opportunities do the to do that now, but because everything is so expensive that affects what people buy as well. People want assurances in this industry.

They don't want to buy a spec script. No matter how good that spec script is, they know that spec script has only been read by 10 people, 15 people.

They would much rather have a book series that they know have sold a million copies worldwide because that has pre-awareness.

That has a promise of, hey, a large part of those people are going to want to come and watch this movie. So we can afford to spend the $50 million, the $60 million, the $200 million on that project, to get it up and going. That's just the reality of the business.

Joanna: Although we should say, so you are a screenwriter in LA. You're obviously in the US Hollywood film industry. There is obviously the indie film market. There's film industries here in Europe, there's film industries in India. There's film industries all over the world. So, just for people listening—

Tom: Yes, I absolutely should say that. Not only do I write in Hollywood, I also write on the very high end of Hollywood productions. I did a lot of work on Marvel's Doctor Strange and Cowboys and Aliens and like these big, big, big, big, $200 million pictures.

I know what the budgets are for BBC productions. I know what the budgets are for ITV, for Canal+ in France. I know what they are. They're lower. There's more opportunities in some of those places.

There is a kind of universal understanding that for most projects that end up getting made and end up getting distributed, the price to get into that, the minimum cost for most of these films is still, even if it's not $100 million, $200 million—hey, guess what? $5 million is a lot of money.

That is still a barrier to entry for a lot of people, and it's a barrier to raise that amount of money in the hopes that that is going to make that money back for a lot of people.

Joanna: You know, I was at the Berlin Film Market, and I learned a lot about all of this, and a lot of the networking is about finding all the different ways you can fund things. So you get a little bit from here, a little bit from there, you get a bit over there, and a grant from that location. It's just incredible to me how this works.

Let's talk about the business and the money side. We're going to come back to your thriller writing books in a minute. In terms of the business and the way the money works as being a screenwriter compared to owning and controlling your own intellectual property. So can you give us a bit of an idea about that?

Tom: Yes, that is exactly right. All work in Hollywood is work for hire, meaning when I sell a script, they buy the script outright. They own it, they own the rights to it. They can do what they want with it. I have certain—because I'm in the Writers Guild of America—I have certain rights that are reserved to me.

So if they want to make a sequel without me, they still have to pay me for it. I still get credit on the project, etc, etc, but they do own the things outright. Maybe my deal has licensing money for toys or all of this sort of stuff, but usually not.

Generally, I get paid in stages. I get paid a certain amount for the first draft, a certain amount for the rewrite, a certain amount for any polishes that I do after that. When the movie goes into production, I get a production bonus in the first day of shooting.

When it's completed and the credits have been established and negotiated and dealt with, I get a credit bonus. Then you start to get residuals after that. My wife calls them the green envelopes of joy.

Four times a year, the green envelopes of joy appear on my doorstep, and you never know what they're going to be. You have no idea until you open it. Now you have some idea because it's a big film that came out, and there's a good chance that that first envelope is going to be huge.

It tails off fairly slowly, actually, but over time, it tails off. Eventually you start getting green envelopes of joy that are for $2.50.

Joanna: It might have been a coffee once in LA. It probably isn't anymore.

Tom: Exactly. It feels a little like Patreon. It feels like the studios are now just contributing to my Patreon.

So which is to say that you don't own it, which is a painful reality. Now, though you don't own it, the amount that they pay you to write it is embarrassingly big. The industry compensates writers, or at least writers at my particular area, very well. It is a well-compensated business.

A famous author who came to Hollywood and started writing for Hollywood couldn't believe what they paid until he saw how he was treated, and he said, “Oh, they're not paying me for the writing, they're paying me for the indignity,” which I continue to believe is true to this day.

The writers are not treated the best in my side of the business. I will say that when I hired an editor from Bath, England, who was editing my first novel, she was apologizing and giving me all these caveats as she was giving me the sweetest, nicest notes I've ever received in my life.

She was thinking I was going to be offended by her suggestion of changes. I'm like, oh my god, you have no idea what notes in Hollywood are like. Oh my god. It's just so awful in comparison to this.

Everybody on the indie publishing side of the business, you guys are so sweet and so nice. I feel like I've left the real world and I've entered, I don't know, the world of the Smurfs or something. Everyone's super nice to each other. It's amazing.

Joanna: That is so funny. Well, then let's come back to—

If it's all so wonderful and unicorns and roses in Hollywood—maybe they treat you badly or whatever, but they pay you well—why write The Year of the Rabbit? Which I should tell people I've read. It's very, very good. So obviously you can write, you can tell a story, but why bother when you're just doing all this amazing work?

Tom: Well, okay, so here's one little fact. Hollywood buys between 10 and 20 projects for every one that gets made.

So that means, over the course of my career, they have bought so many projects that I have spent six months to a year writing, and rewriting and rewriting again, and honing to the best of my ability to compete in that knife fight in the phone booth that I'm talking about, and to make it like, just sing, just perfect.

Then it still does not get made, and that project ended up being seen by 15 people in the world. 15 people ever know that that thing existed, and it's gone. It's just out there.

Well, guess what? I've been writing for almost 30 years now. Those rights have reverted. Those projects, there's nothing saying that I can't take those projects and give them a second audience, give them a second chance at life.

Even other ones where it's my work on that project didn't end up get getting used in the final project, but god, I love the idea that I had for that. So what could I do? I decided that now, you know, I'm in my 50s. Congratulations, 50, Jo.

Joanna: Thank you. What a wonderful decade.

Tom: It really is. I'm loving it so far. I am absolutely loving it. It's a time when, for me, I was like, okay, let me look at the latter half of my life, and is there anything I want to do different?

I decided that I wanted to take some of those stories that I was well compensated for writing, but never got a chance to be in front of an audience. I could put these in front of an audience now.

I can have a second bite of that apple, and I can explore this space where I have total creative control, as opposed to almost no creative control over a project. I thought that was fascinating.

Tom: It's actually less than that within the industry. I wish I had the number in front of me. Within the Writers Guild, there's a negotiated point at which you can regain the rights to a project.

Sometimes you have to pay what they paid you, but in a lot of cases, you can literally call them up, talk to them, and say, “Hey, I kind of want to do something with this. Do you guys mind at all?”

A lot of times, they'll just say, “We haven't thought about that in 15 years. No, go ahead. Do whatever you want.”

Joanna: Take it away.

Tom: Exactly.

Joanna: Okay, so that's cool. Okay, so then how did you find the process?

If people haven't read a screenplay, just explain the difference.

Tom: Sure, sure, sure. Well, how should I put this? What you guys do as novelists—and I'm saying you guys, even though I'm a novelist now, I'm still a little bit on the outside looking in—it's cheating. It's not right. It shouldn't be allowed.

I'm very, very mad that you guys get to write the way you get to write, and I'm stuck in screenplay format having to do it the hard way. You guys get to write the characters' interior thoughts and emotions and journeys, and that is cheating and it is wrong.

I have been trained since I was a young person that, no, you can't do that. You have to imply a character's emotional state through very carefully crafted dialog and situation and moments. The entire structure of a scene is designed to elucidate a character's internal state that cannot be understood any other way.

That's screenwriting. That's what that is. I mean, that's why we're so good at dialog. We're so good at dialog because we can't tell you what a character is thinking. Yes, people could do voiceover sometimes, but that is a pitfall of its own accord, unless it's done very, very well. So you have to be careful about that.

So you're stuck to two senses in screenwriting, what you see and what you hear. That's it. No thoughts.

There are heavy structural demands. A screenplay has to have a—there could be a 3-act structure, 5-act structure. You can make a lot of arguments for how it needs to be structured.

Tons of times I'm reading a novel, you know, I get sent several a week from my agents who say, “Hey, check this out. People want to consider you for this.” Lots of novels, their structure is such that it would need a lot of heavy lifting to become a film.

Even Sahara, for instance. In Sahara, the bad guy, all the villains die, and there's still 100 pages left in the novel after that point, 80 pages left at the end of that. You can't really do that in a film.

I mean, Peter Jackson, God bless him, tried to do the ending of Return of the King, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There's still jokes flying around the internet about how many endings that thing has. It just keeps going on and on and on.

I think he did a great job and won the Academy Award, so kudos to him. In general, you can't do that. So structure is something that is very, very important.

Pacing demands, right? Film travels at 24 frames a second through that projector onto the screen, and it does not stop, it does not pause. It does not allow you to go out and get a coffee.

I guess now with streaming, you can pause anytime you want, but it is still designed for you to watch in one go to be sitting there and experiencing that.

Then there's the length issue. Sahara was a 193,000-word novel. The screenplay for Sahara was 23,000 words.

In order to do that, no scene is about one thing. In a novel, scenes are about one thing all the time. In a screenplay, every scene is about four or five or six different things stacked on top of one another, very artfully folded in on each other.

So we're advancing this plot element here. We're advancing this character conflict here. We're hinting. We're doing setups and payoffs for this and that and the other thing that are going to come 15, 20, 45 pages later. All of these things are happening in one scene, and that creates a need to rewrite a lot more than novelists sometimes do.

Some novelists rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, I get that, but for the most part. It makes it hard for discovery writers, frankly. There are not many discovery writers in Hollywood. It's a very difficult thing.

First of all, because you're constantly having to share your work with the producers. So you're sharing outlines and pages and all of that sort of stuff. Just saying, “I'm not really sure what the story is going to be about. I have some ideas, but let me just see where it goes.”

Joanna: I'm just going to make it up.

Tom: You don't get a very good response for discovery writing. Now that said, there are some. Like Greta Gerwig famously said that she has to start writing to understand what her story is, and I love that. I love that there are, even in Hollywood, there are discovery writers.

Her and Noah Baumbach, when they wrote Barbie, did a lot of discovery writing. I think it shows in the work that the depth of the theme of that movie is so evident, and I feel like it doesn't come from an outline. I think that comes from discovery writing, to some degree.

Joanna: I mean, as we record this, even just this morning, I've been editing my Death Valley script again. I guess in terms of editing as a discovery writer with the novel, it's a different process, but it is actually much easier to edit 110 pages, 120 pages, or whatever, of quite spaced out—because of the way screenplays are formatted.

Tom: I mean, it kind of is, but maybe you'll find in some ways, it also isn't. In a screenplay, because things are so dense and so layered, you have a lot more of the “pulling on a thread and the entire sweater falls apart.”

That can happen a lot more in a screenplay sometimes, whereas the spaced out editing of a novel gives you more on ramps and off ramps to get out of the story problems you're creating for yourself in the rewriting process. Maybe. At least that's what I'm finding.

So, yes, I am finding editing my novel is very difficult, and I'm very happy to have somebody doing it with me and kind of for me. I'm in that process right now on the second novel, and every time I go in to fix something, I end up adding new chapters. [Tom's editor is Rebecca Millar.]

I'm like, oh god, what am I doing? Am I ruining this? All my film instincts are yelling at me, “Don't! What are you doing?”

Joanna: I think that's interesting because readers of books, of novels, are a lot more forgiving. When you think about the target market for a screenplay, it is a very small group of very, very picky people.

Whereas the target audience for a novel is a lot wider, and they're not necessarily people who are picky about—or they are picky in some ways—but they're not the same. So it feels like the target audience is so different, even though, obviously, eventually you hope your film will be shown in front of people.

Tom: It's so true. The way I describe it is, when you submit a screenplay, you're giving it to readers who are paid to say no. When you write a novel, you're giving it to readers who have already paid to say yes. That's a radically different experience.

Joanna: And they paid lot less, by the way. Or nothing in Kindle Unlimited.

Tom: It's unreal. Exactly, exactly. That is a major, major difference. In screenwriting, you are writing to a hostile audience, like an incredibly hostile audience, that is all trying to figure out how not to lose their jobs if this thing gets made and fails. That is the sad truth of the matter.

Joanna: So you mentioned there about submit your screenplay, and this is obviously one of those interesting things. For me, and maybe other people listening—

Now, I've obviously been to some pitch things. I am now looking at some competitions. So what are your thoughts on our scripts, if we do write them and obviously try and make them the best they can be first, but where should they then go?

Tom: Okay, so you're getting really into hard questions now. I was told this would not be an ambush interview. This is not fair.

Joanna: It's so not.

Tom: Let me ask you a question, Jo. You asked me for some advice when you were about to go to Berlin, to the film festival and to the film market. Did you take my advice?

Joanna: Well, you said, don't even write a script.

Tom: I was very specific about how you had to pitch yourself, and you were like, “Oh, but we're British. We don't do that. This is Europe, we don't do that.”

I said, “No, they still do it in Europe, just maybe not quite as brashly as the Americans do.”

Joanna: No, I didn't. I don't think I'm very good at that. I am feeling a lot better about that. Now I know a lot more about the industry. I think I needed to be there to kind of understand. As you said, what was so funny was how much, not contempt, but they don't think much of writers, as you said. It's crazy to me.

Tom: No, I mean, from an indie writer's point of view, it's shocking, because all you do is run into people that are, “Oh my god, I love your podcast. I love your book. I love your this. I love your that.”

They're like, “Oh geez, another writer. All right, fine. You've got three minutes. Tellme what you want to say.”

Tom: There is no way to break into Hollywood, and yet it happens every day. There is no way to get a film made in Europe, and yet it happens every day. The sad fact of the matter is, as I already mentioned, because of the cost of making these things, it is very difficult to get scripts read and seen and accepted.

Every step of the process is a struggle because of the time and effort and cost involved in the endeavor in and of itself. So, that said, there are things you can do to increase your chances of having success here.

If you ask me before you write anything, what can you do to up your chances? I will say, if you can write a high concept, low budget, contained-space story with powerful characters and theme, you are going to leapfrog over 90% of all other scripts that have ever been written and put yourself into contention.

Those are projects that are eminently producible. When I say contained, I mean one or two locations. I mean really, really contained, simple ideas.

I was on the screenwriting panel at 20Books Vegas two years ago, at the last 20Books Vegas, and a romance writer said, “Yeah, well, that's all great and good, but I'm a romance writer. You can't write a contained romance.”

I said, “Sure you can,” and I was like, “What about this? Two people—a man or woman, or depends, man and a man, whatever your genre is, whatever your tropes are—are invited to a ski weekend. They're the first two to the chalet. They immediately hate each other. An avalanche snows them in, completely closes them in.”

“The romantic comedy is these two people at each other's throats stuck here, who gradually fall in love as they always should have. Wouldn't that be good?”

The person was like, yes. I think she was writing it down.

Joanna: She wrote it down.

Tom: I think she did. So you can do that with anything and create that, but that is the kind of projects that have the greatest odds because they're producible. It doesn't take a lot.

The lower the price becomes, the lower the difficulty of making something becomes. The easier it is to say yes, and the harder it is to say no, to some degree.

That said, have a log line, number one. A log line is just a couple sentences, two or three sentences.

You know how we all hate writing blurbs? Okay, take that blurb that you have on the back of your book and that you have on your Amazon page, and cut it by two thirds, cut it by three quarters, and that is all you can say about your film.

Until you have that, you're not really in the game. You need to have something super small and super simple.

Joanna: Just a little tip there for people. Just like we now can for sales descriptions, you can upload it to Claude or ChatGPT, and it will give you 20 log lines, 50 log lines, whatever you like. So that's what I do. Only do that if you're happy with the terms and conditions of these sites, but—

Tom: A great thing that AI can do, for sure, is to summarize something that you've already written. It's very, very good for that. I totally agree with that.

So there are some other ways that you can have your project get more visibility. Some people talk about screenplay competitions. I am going to tell you that very few mean anything. Okay, and I will tell you the ones that do.

So ScreenCraft is closing down, Launch Pad, WeScreenplay. Those are all closing down. These were owned by a company called Coverfly, and it's restructuring the way it does its business.

So a lot of screenplay competitions are dying, and a lot of the ones that still exist, like nobody in a place to buy a screenplay and to make a film are reading those scripts.

The ones that do matter, number one is the Nicholl Fellowship. That is the absolute number one. The screenplay that wins will be read by a lot of people in this town and a lot of people around the world.

Screenplays that even make it into the semi-finals or finals, that is a feather in your cap. That is a calling card that you can use to go out there.

There's a website called TrackingB.com. The TrackingB, which stands for Tracking Board Contest, is absolutely legit. Hollywood, in particular, pays attention to scripts that win that or make it to the top of that.

The Austin Film Festival, the AFF, that screenplay competition is very well regarded and does mean something. There's a screenplay competition called The PAGE.

Then there is Sundance and Raindance, both have competitions and fellowships and all sorts of things. They're a fantastic resource. You should familiarize yourself with them. Also South by Southwest.

Those are the ones that are legit and have some amount of people that are legitimately looking for scripts to produce reading. So anything else, I would say, save your money. Don't give them the entry fee because I don't think it's going to mean a lot.

Joanna: There's a lot of them that charge. What about these pitch things? So obviously, I'm going to London Screenwriters' again next month, and there's a PitchFest, and there's sort of 50 producers, execs, agents. It's like speed dating, five minutes. It's absolutely terrifying.

Last year it was ridiculous, and I was just the complete rabbit in the headlights. It was very out of my comfort zone. This year I'm going again, and I think I'm going to be a lot more relaxed.

Tom: They vary just as much as screenwriting competitions. Some of them, like nobody on that panel is going to have any interest. I've been on those panels, and I can tell you, I'm doing a favor for somebody to sit there and listen to people pitch me.

Joanna: Oh, they're not a panel. It's like, you get five minutes one-on-one, and you do that as much as possible.

Tom: Okay, okay. I know that. I know that format as well. You never know, so I can't really say no, but I'll say that, much like speed dating, it's a low percentage game.

Joanna: Fair enough. Fair enough. I did speed dating back in the day.

Tom: You've got to kiss a lot of frogs. So I wouldn't say no to that, even if it's just to have the pressure of pitching and pitching repetitively, which helps you learn how to do that. Pitching is absolutely a skill that you are not taught as a novelist, and you must learn as a screenwriter.

I went to 20Books Vegas two years ago, and this year I was a speaker at Author Nation, and I'm going to be a speaker at a bunch of other things this year, and people are like, “Well, you have one book out? How are you all of a sudden doing all this sort of stuff?”

I said, well, I'm used to pitching. I can pitch myself. I can pitch things. I have training in that, really. That's super important.

Joanna: Also you're incredibly successful, and everyone wants to talk to you.

Tom: That's fine. I mean, sometimes you get blown off by people like Jo Penn, who says, “No, I don't have time for lunch,” and then figures out, “Oh, wait, I know who you are.”

Joanna: “Oh, yes, maybe I'll hang out.” Just for people listening, I didn't know who Tom was. Luckily, I read his book, and it was amazing, and that's how we kind of connected. Then I realized he was this big name screenwriter, so it was an interesting connection.

That's unlikely to happen to me multiple times, and I'll just suddenly meet this director. Although here is a question, I am getting pitched by so many screenwriters turned novelist, and I was wondering—

Tom: Yes. I was I was going to say that. I actually got sidetracked at one point, but I was like, the Hollywood studio system did me a huge favor in shutting down and preventing me from writing screenplays for six months last year during the Hollywood Writers' Strike.

It closed down the entire business. People lost homes, people lost apartments. People had to leave the business. It was a really, really tough time.

For me, I was like, oh, my God, I can actually finish the novel now. I can actually start moving in this direction that I've wanted to move in for so long. Thank you very much. It was very kind of you to do that.

Joanna: There is a lot now. You must have been quick off the mark because I'm getting them every day now. Every single day, people in various Hollywood things sending their novels. It is very, very interesting.

We don't have much time left. I could talk to you forever, but I do want to ask you about AI because obviously part of that writer strike was around the clauses and use of AI.

Film has used different technologies for many, many years. James Cameron is famously working with Runway. There's special effects. Film already uses AI, but it's moving into a lot more areas. So what do you see ahead in terms of opportunities?

Tom: Yes, I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. I think that we are in a time of profound technological change. We've been here before. We've been here many, many times before. I'm young, and I'm old enough to remember the advent of the word processor and the explosion of the personal computer.

Everybody who worked in the white out factory, they had to find another job. Everybody who worked building typewriters had to find another job. There is going to be people that are going to lose jobs because things are being automated out of their purview and automating them out of space.

It's not really something that we need to fear as creatives. Almost everything that we're looking at is not a thing that is going to replace us, it is a new tool that we're going to be able to use in creating art and creating great art.

If you go to YouTube and type in “Hedra” and watch what they're doing, you will see some stuff that is scaring a lot of people in my business. It's a company that is doing amazing video production that is completely AI-generated.

Amazing facial animation and voice cloning work that is giving fairly photo realistic performances of AI actors. I know some actors that are like, there will be no human actors in the next 100 years.

I was like, no. Look at this and see how good can this get. It can get only so good. It can deliver a life-like performance, but it can't give an earth shattering performance. It's not going to change your life. It's going to be good enough. It's never going to be at that level of exception. At least that's my belief.

The same thing goes for writing. If I had a job writing copy for websites, I would be very worried about my job. I think that is definitely something that AI can replace.

Crafting the stories that I can craft with my voice and my weird, twisted sensibility, I don't think AI is ever quite going to be able to do that. As you've said many times on this podcast, it's what you bring that is the differentiator. That is the thing that AI will never replace.

That is also why your readers buy your books. They're buying it for that special JF Penn factor, that special thing. I think the same thing goes for my industry.

Joanna: I'm glad you said that. I do hope that it will bring down some costs in production. For example, I know here in Bath where they film Bridgerton and all of this kind of thing, they're building these sort of digital interiors, or scanning the interior of the Georgian buildings so that the actors can be somewhere else.

They're still acting in the room, but it's just projected onto that green screen. So the future for actors may be that you don't get to travel so much, you just have to act in another green room. A lot of them are used to that, I guess.

Tom: I mean, if you look at all of the Star Wars television series that are out recently, they all use the technology similar to that. Where not only are you acting on a 360-degree cyclorama screen, but you are in real time.

You're not having to imagine what the green screen is showing. You're seeing what the actual surroundings of you are. Absolutely amazing.

There are AI right now that can already dub into foreign languages and do great work with not just subtitling, but actually dubbing projects into foreign languages. That's going to be a cost cutting exercise. There's going to be a lot of stuff that can really, really bring down the cost.

The fact of the matter is, you are maybe going to take a 100-person crew and make it an 80-person crew. You can maybe take a 50-person crew and make it a 30-person crew.

There are still so many jobs that are still going to require people and skilled artisans in their particular fields. I think there's a limit to how much AI is going to be able to save us, but it will be able to save quite a bit.

Joanna: Fantastic. So just briefly—

Tom: Listen, my first novel out of the gate, I'm super happy that it's gotten the response that it's gotten. Jo, you were very kind to blurb the book for me. I really appreciated that.

Joanna: It's a great thriller, for people listening.

Tom: I will say that I'm Amazon exclusive. So it's T.D. Donnelly, D, O, N, N, E, L, L, Y. Year of the Rabbit is the name of the book. If you like action thrillers, if you like spy thrillers, if you like thrillers with a lot of character and a very unique lead character, I highly recommend you check it out.

Joanna: Yes. Why not?

Tom: Year of the Rabbit is about Malcolm Chaucer. Malcolm Chaucer is the world's greatest interrogator. He is a human lie detector that can read every micro expression on your face to know whether or not what you're saying is a truth or a lie.

He knows this because he is a deeply broken man who, for eight years, was tortured in North Korea and suffers extreme PTSD. That is his super power. That is why he is hypervigilant and able to notice all of these things.

Well, during a routine interrogation in New York, he finds out that the person that these people are looking for is his ex-wife. That starts him down a road of suddenly being hunted himself, as well as she is, by nameless assassins.

Actually, everybody in New York that that has access to a computer is suddenly told a million dollar bounty on his head. Can he figure out truth from lies? Can he figure out who wants to kill him? And can he figure out the secret that is the Year of the Rabbit?

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tom. That was great.

Tom: Oh, let me just say, TDDonnelly.com is the website. That's the other thing. Thank you.

Joanna: Thank you.

The post From Hollywood To Novels: TD Donnelly On Screenwriting, Adaptation, and Storytelling That Lasts first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we avoid the mistake of comparing our first drafts with the finished books we love? How can we improve our manuscripts? Kristopher Jansma gives his tips.

In the intro, Finding your deepest reason to write [Ink In Your Veins]; London Book Fair, AI audio and ‘vibe coding' [Self Publishing with ALLi]; Pirated database of books used to train AI models [The Atlantic]; Fair use and copyright with Alicia Wright; The Guardian strategic partnership with OpenAI; Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan and potential around fair use [Ars Technica]; How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed by Richard Susskind; Death Valley, A Thriller by 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 

Kristopher Jansma is the award-winning author of literary fiction novels, short fiction and essays, as well as Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers.

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

You can find Kristopher at KristopherJansma.com or The Nature of the Fun on Substack.

Joanna: Kristopher Jansma is the award-winning author of literary fiction novels, short fiction and essays, as well as Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers. So welcome to the show, Kris.

Kristopher: Thanks for having me on, Jo.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this. First up—

Kristopher: Well, I have been a writer pretty much my whole life. I'm one of those writers who, as a child, you couldn't get a book out of my hand. I have a whole storage unit somewhere full of school journals that are full of little stories and things. It was just something that I took to really early and always really wanted to do.

As I got older, I started taking it a little more seriously. Then I went to school eventually and studied writing. So it's always been a lifelong love of mine.

Joanna: So are you a full-time writer? We're always interested in how people make a living writing on this show.

Kristopher: I don't know very many full-time writers, sadly. So I'm an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY New Paltz College here in New York State.

So I'm teaching creative writing, which is wonderful because I get to talk about what I love all the time and help students with their writing. I'm the director of our creative writing program up there right now.

Joanna: Well, that's fantastic. It makes me understand a lot more why you wrote this book, Revisionaries. So let's get into that. Why is it sort of just a number one mistake of writers, which is comparing our first draft efforts to the finished books we read?

Kristopher: I think it's natural, but I think it's a mistake. I mentioned before, I was a big reader as a child and all through my life, and I think that's how most writers get started.

We fall in love with books at some point, and reading, and I think it's pretty natural at some points to start to wonder if we could do it too. You know, how much fun it would be to do and give somebody else the great experience that we've just gotten.

We model our efforts on the things that we've read before and the things that we admire, of course. Then a funny thing starts to happen, of course, as we get more serious about it, and —

Then I think a lot of people, after having a lot of fun with it at first, start to get really frustrated because they feel like, okay, well, what's the point if I'm never going to be as good as someone like F Scott Fitzgerald. In my case, he was like my hero growing up, or JD Salinger, or somebody like that.

I think what we miss, what most of us don't really learn much about, is that those writers only achieve these kind of great masterpieces after tons of failure, rejection, screw ups, mistakes. A lot of them had a lot of help from other people, like editors and family, and all of that.

So I think then we just have this misconception about how it works. What I think we tend to believe is that there are just certain people who luck out in the genetic lottery or something, and they're just naturally gifted, talented writers, and that they're geniuses from day one.

That was really what I wanted to try to dismantle in this book, was this idea that these great writers—not that they're not geniuses, not that they're not so great—but just that it's not all natural.

Joanna: As you were talking now, I was thinking about also the difference. I mean, as an associate professor in creative writing, you naturally teach—well, maybe you have to teach—specific books, things that are considered classic. There are books that are considered classics.

I almost feel this is another problem is that we compare ourselves to the classics. Whereas take someone like Isaac Asimov, who wrote over 400 books, people always compare themselves to the ones that were most successful. Whereas most books are not those classics, are they?

Kristopher: Absolutely. I talk about this a little bit in the introduction to Revisionaries. I took a class when I was in college, but I snuck into a graduate class, and we read Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. It was all these amazing works by amazing American writers.

I talked about in the book this lesser known work of Fitzgerald that he didn't finish before he died, called The Love of the Last Tycoon, and realizing it was actually pretty bad.

I was finding it kind of depressing at the time, but then realizing later in life that actually that is something that was good. In my mind, I was able to realize, okay, this shows that even somebody that could write The Great Gatsby might write another book that's not so wonderful.

Then, of course, and I did mention this in the introduction, but I think of this a lot. With Faulkner, we started with and the Sound and the Fury, and I didn't know for years and years after that that wasn't his first novel. I thought it was his debut book.

A friend of mine said, “Oh, if you're ever feeling intimidated, go read one of Faulkner's first two novels.” I think it's Mosquitoes and Soldier's Pay or something, and he said, “You'll feel a lot better about your own writing,” and he was right.

Joanna: Yes, I think that's important. Now, you did mention the word “genius”, and you use it in the book to anchor each chapter, but genius is a really hard word. I mean, it's a word many people are uncomfortable with, and I think it's interesting.

Kristopher: I'm glad you mentioned that. Each chapter has a little section called “Fail Like a Genius” at the end that kind of gives you some tips on writing, or exercises you can do that are inspired by the chapter.

The word genius was floating around for me in the very beginning because what I was wanting to do, I realized, was dismantle the notion of genius. As you mentioned, it is such a problematic idea.

As I was mentioning before, if we see other people who are successful, we can just tell ourselves, “Oh, they're just a genius. They were born with some talent or some ability that other people aren't. I'll never succeed because I don't have that thing.”

I think that's where a lot of us begin the writing process, and that this idea that we're trying to figure out if we have what it takes somewhere within us. When the reality is —

Also mixed in, and I think this is where it gets hard, an ability to learn from your mistakes and see where you've gone wrong, and then make corrections the next time.

When you look at these stories of these writers, you realize that this is what they've done as well. It's not like they just sat down one day wrote a masterpiece because they have some magical abilities that you or I don't.

Joanna: This is what kind of annoys me with writing, compared to something like visual art. So here in Europe, if you go to Malaga, you can go to the Picasso's early museum where he was born. You can see some of the pieces that he did when he was a child and then when he was a young man, and you can see the development.

Like, that's the blue period, then that was this, as visual artists experimented. It wasn't like, oh, they suddenly arrive on the scene with a perfect novel, which seems to be the expectation. Even now in modern publishing, it's like, “oh, this debut author.”

I guess we don't have this “show your work” thing in writing, do we? We don't really accept that.

Kristopher: No, we hide those drafts, and we hope that nobody ever sees them because we want to perpetuate this myth that we did just sit down and this wonderful thing came out. There's this mystique around the writer that way.

Debut writers are often fairly young, and you haven't read anything else by them before, so it creates this sense that they just decided to write a book one day, and then this great thing came out. So that's a hard thing to live up to.

A lot of debut authors don't end up publishing a second book, I think because the expectations are so high that the second book will be just as seemingly effortless to do as the first one was. Where, in fact, the first one probably took a decade, sometimes longer, of a sort of effort.

I had the same thought about the visual art as I was working on this book, and music too. Collectors will get demo tapes and rough tracks of artists that they love, and they enjoy going back and listening to the rawer sound of an early version of a song before it got all produced and polished and everything else.

There's something really authentic and cool and fun about that, to be able to hear this is what it sounded like when he was just in the garage with the guitar and the drum machine or whatever. With writing, we tend not to do that.

What we have instead, which is almost, I think, more problematic—I talk about this a little bit in the chapter in the book about Louisa May Alcott with Little Women—what we have instead is, every once in a while, publishers will put out a new book that they say they've discovered by a writer that was never published before.

What it turns out to be is what we would in academic worlds call like juvenilia, or here's a short story that Hemingway wrote when he was eight years old, or something like that, and published in the local newspaper.

They're often quite bad, or they're fine, I'm sure, for an eight year old, but nothing like what they're going to be able to do later. But the publishers, I think, wanting to kind of trick people into believing that they've discovered some new masterpiece that no one's ever read before.

They'll hype it up, and they'll say, “Okay, this is an amazing book by Louisa May Alcott that you've never read before,” and it turns out to be it's a book that she wrote and realized wasn't very good, and so she never published it.

Kristopher: Yes, Harper Lee's story is one that I really love. I talk about this one in the book as well. This, again, was a very confused roll out by the publisher. They claimed that they had a long, lost second novel by Harper Lee, and it made it sound like it was a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.

The new book was called Go Set a Watchman. When it came out, it was very shocking because it involves characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus and Scout and all of them, but as older characters. So it did seem like something that she wrote later about what would happen to them after To Kill a Mockingbird.

People were very scandalized because it turned out that Atticus Finch, who in To Kill a Mockingbird was the snowball lawyer who takes on this case to defend a Black man from the mob. Anyway, in this sort of sequel, he turned out to be like a racist and like a Ku Klux Klan member, or had gone to meetings or something.

People were horrified. How could this happen? How could she write this book about him? What it turned out had happened, finally, we worked it backwards, and we've discovered that that book was actually not even really a prequel.

It was a rough draft, or you couldn't even really call it a rough draft. It was a book that she wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird. She wanted to write about this woman, and she came up with these characters.

When she submitted that book to her publisher, their publisher said, basically, “No, thank you. I don't like this book, but I do like this character, and I do like this world in Alabama that you're writing about. So if you want to go back and write a completely different book now, I would take a look at that.”

So that's the moment when most writers would say, “Okay, this is a sign. I obviously don't have what it takes. I got so far, and this editor still said no, then sent me back to the drawing board again.”

That's, I think, when a lot of people would sort of give up, but Harper Lee had that persistence where she said, “Okay, great. There are a couple of things here that this editor said she liked. I'm going to go back, I'm going to start over. I'm going to take those elements, and I'm going to work with them.”

Then she wrote one of the greatest novels in the 20th century. So she was just so close to it, she just didn't know yet that that's where she was going with it.

Joanna: But then, classic example of someone who then didn't write. I mean, I write a lot of books, and I feel like every time I write a book, more ideas come.

Kristopher: I wonder about that with her. She talked a lot in her interviews afterwards that it was so successful, and she got so much attention, and I don't think she was somebody that particularly desired that kind of attention.

It's a funny thing, a lot of writers—maybe there's some ego to it—we want to share our thoughts and ideas with people, and we think that others should hear or would enjoy them, at least. But we're not really necessarily people that want to be in the spotlight.

A lot of writers are pretty introspective and kind of quiet people who wouldn't mind sitting alone at their computer for hours and hours and hours.

So I think Harper Lee and JD Salinger. I didn't end up talking about Salinger in this book, but I wrote an earlier column about him. I think they had that response to the fame that followed their books coming out, that they sort of retreated away from it.

We do know that Harper Lee worked on at least one other project after To Kill a Mockingbird. She was working on a crime novel. So it was sort of a true crime novel or based on a true crime that had happened. That's never been published.

I don't think she finished it, or at least we don't know that she's finished it. It's never been published, as far as we know. When they found Go Set a Watchman, originally that's what they thought they had found, was the finished crime novel. I don't believe that she ever did finish it.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting. All right. Well, let's go a bit deeper into how we can turn our books into something better. You have a good quote in the book. You said, “I've seen how messes metamorphosize into masterpieces.”

So how can we do the same thing? Like, when you have students and they're like there's something in there, but it's a bit of a mess—

Kristopher: There's a couple of things that came up over and over again in the book, and there's sort of a persistence theme that runs through several of the chapters.

Like with Harper Lee, where sometimes what needs to happen is that we just need to kind of stick with the project a little longer and try something else there and see how that works.

So sometimes that's how the mess turns into a masterpiece. It's just that we continue to dig in deeper and have some faith that we'll get there, trying out some different ideas along the way.

I think a lot of times for most writers, we get to a place where we've done everything we know how to do, and it's still quite a bit of a mess. I think that's when it helps a lot to get some help, basically. This also comes up over and over again.

So a lot of these writers had people in their lives that they were able to turn to for advice, or just to be a helper, a reader. F Scott Fitzgerald's first version of The Great Gatsby, Trimalchio, was not nearly as good as The Great Gatsby, for a number of reasons, and also had a horrible title.

He got it as far as he could on his own. At that point, he had an editor that he'd worked with on his first book, and Max Perkins read it and gave him some feedback on it that was really helpful. He also needed the help of his wife, Zelda, who gave him some ideas about how to better define Gatsby as a character.

So that's another thing that I often recommend, which is —

Then the important thing is then you need to be open to the feedback that they give you.

[Click here for editors!]

I think a lot of times we give the book to somebody, and we hope that they're going to tell us it's perfect. That always feels good, but it's not going to really help us get it where we need it to go.

Kafka, I talk about Kafka in the book, never finished any of the books that he started writing. He always undermined himself and had all this doubt, but luckily, he had a good friend, Max Brod, who had basically pushed him all the time to keep on going and try to finish things. So I think that helps a lot, like bringing it to somebody else.

Then the last thing I would say—this came up a few times too—it's sort of the flip side of persistence, in some ways.

It's very hard. Of course, we spent a lot of time on these books, sometimes years, and we just can't get it to work right.

I really wanted people to see through the project here, through Revisionaries, that this happens to all the writers that they love as well. They work on a project that just can't, for whatever reason, doesn't come together the way that they wanted to.

The best thing they can do is take a step away from it and just start trying to work on something different for a while.

Joanna: But as you said about Kafka there, like I know someone who has 15 books that are not finished. The thing is, sometimes, like you say, you might need to walk away, but maybe you actually just need to go for a walk and walk away for a week and then come back and finish it.

If you keep walking away from projects because it's hard—I mean, the point is, this is hard.

Kristopher: Yes, it is hard.

I wish there was an easy way to know when you're in too deep on something that just isn't working. I was just reading this the other day, Mark Twain, prolific writer, finished lots and lots of things, and wrote wonderful classics.

He tried to write a book about Joan of Arc, I think he said six times in 12 years, and every time he got into it and just realized he wasn't going to be able to finish it. It wasn't going to be able to get any further.

When you're in a situation like you're talking about, where you have somebody who never finishes anything, or starts many things and never finishes them, I do think that is a different problem.

With Kafka, it was an issue of just a lack of confidence. He would finish something and then he would rethink it and decide, “Oh no, no, no, actually, I don't think it's good enough. I have to go back and change it again,” even when other people were telling him, “No, no, no, it's great. Let's go.”

Kafka tried to claw back the manuscript for The Metamorphosis, probably his most famous short story, probably one of the most famous short stories in the 20th century. He tried to get his editor to send it back to him so that he could keep making more changes to it, even right before it got published.

So that is a different kind of problem that comes up sometimes where you're just never satisfied with what you've done. You have to be able to decide, “Okay, this is good enough the way it is. I'm going to let it go and move on to the next thing.”

Joanna: Yes, and so often—well, I mean, obviously sometimes there are some big structural problems, but that is what editors can help with—but often it's the little tweaks. I mean, we all read our work that's published, and we're like, “Oh, I would change that now. I would change that now,” but—

Kristopher: Exactly. I think though, again, as writers, we're always going to have some self-doubt, and we're always going to be, to some degree, our own worst critic. We also have to balance that out against the moments where we feel optimistic and we feel like what we're writing is actually good.

This is, again, kind of a moment when I think having somebody else on the outside give you a pat on the back and some encouragement is helpful.

Jane Austen was a great example of someone. She wrote a few books when she was young, like very young, 16, 17,18 years old. They were finished, and she thought they were good, and other people that read them liked them, but she just wasn't sure. She felt like they weren't as good as she wanted them to be.

Then one of them she waited on for about a decade almost, I think, and then eventually wrote it completely and turned it into, I think it was Sense and Sensibility.

Joanna: Yes, I think we do get that sense. I wrote a book on the shadow, Writing the Shadow, using Jungian psychology. That took a couple of decades, really, before I was ready to do that. I had to write a memoir first, because memoir changes your writing, and then I was like, okay, now I'm ready to write that book.

Kristopher: Yes, it is hard. Although I think when you love the process of it, and you can get to a place where you're enjoying the writing part a lot, that that can be very freeing. Then you're not as concerned about, you know, okay, which one happens first? Or how does this get done before that one? That kind of thing.

Joanna: It's interesting. You said, “enjoying the writing.” In the book, you say, “Take the time to write for its own sake again.” I feel like this kind of simple joy is difficult. I mean, I'm a full time author, and many listeners write for a living, and it's like the industry drives us into faster output.

Publishers don't put as much editing into things as they did back in the day of those classic authors. We have to do a lot more marketing. You're on the show, you are doing book marketing, not writing. So how can we do this?

Kristopher: Yes, this is, I think, really the biggest key for writers today. Like you say, I don't know that it was as big of a struggle for writers in the past because this world of self-promotion that exists for writers today.

Even 10-20 years ago, I don't know that it was quite as all absorbing as it can be now in this landscape of social media, but also wonderful things like podcasts that I find really fun to do.

We started this by asking about, how can we keep fun alive in our writing? I think I enjoy talking to people about what I'm working on. It actually helps me think about what I want to write next and gets me excited to write more. So I try to keep that in mind as I'm doing these promotional engagements and things like that.

I don't feel like it is, or I try not to feel like it's a distraction from the writing itself. At the same time, eventually, you have to be able to log off of Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

You have to actually sit down and write and not feel distracted by the desire to go back in and check and see if anyone else is talking about you or responding to your video or something like that.

So I've started setting up a time in my day when I can turn off all those devices, when I can turn off social media, when it's just me and the computer. That's something that I've had to really push hard for the last couple of years to really carve out time away from the rest of it.

Different writers have different ways of doing this. If there's a room in your house that you can go into and you can leave the phone on the outside, or you can use a computer that's not online, I think those things can help a lot.

Usually, my goal is to do something like 3000 words in a week, which sounds like a lot, but ultimately is maybe like 500 words a day. Maybe a little more during the work week, which doesn't take all that long to do in the course of a day, but it really adds up over time.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, you start to really feel like you've made some progress, finished a chapter or story that way. I think when you can build that into your life, this separate time that's sacred from the other parts of being a writer, the other business of being a writer, I think that's really the key.

I often talk about with my students —

The author is the one who is on the podcast, who is talking to readers on social media, kind of doing that part of the job. Then the writer is almost like a separate identity.

Joanna: I'm not really into golf, but we're watching the Netflix series on golf at the moment, and it's mainly about characters, it's not so much about golf. They're excellent at their commentaries.

These young golfers were talking about how much they have to do social media in order to build up their brands. I was like, oh my goodness, it's the same for everyone now. Golf is what they do, like we do writing, and then they still have to do social media and all that.

So as part of teaching your students, that is what you tell them, right? It's not just the writing.

Kristopher: Yes, so we talk about it a lot. It's funny, my students, some of them are very online and really enjoy all of those things, and they're excited about that part of it.

To some degree, I almost worry more about those students because they're the ones who I suspect that I don't know that they really want to write, I think they want to be famous.

I try to tell them in as nice a way as possible, if what you want is to be famous, there are better ways to go about it than writing, probably more lucrative ways too.

So I do try to make sure that they remember that it is important, but it's not as important as actually writing something good and taking the time to master the craft that you're trying to master.

I think there's an idea out there, another myth maybe that needs to kind of get dispelled, which is that the brand is more important than the writing. We've all picked up a book by a flashy author, and felt like the writing wasn't all that good.

I think that leads to this idea that, okay, well maybe that part's just not as important, creating a persona that people want to follow on online. Again, the reality is that I don't think that that works for most people.

There are always great examples of writers who are quite successful and really don't have a strong social media presence at all, and are still able to do it.

So I try to remind them that it's fine to be excited about that side of things, and if you're good at it, then you should go ahead and do it, but that it's not a shortcut to succeeding in the writing part of it. In fact, I think it's often a distraction.

Joanna: Yes, there's definitely pros and cons. You actually have a chapter on keeping secrets, and you do write there about where's the line between what we do share. I mean, I podcast because I don't really do much social media.

Podcasting is one way that I can be a brand and sell books, but also share some things, but there are lines that I don't cross with my own brand. So what are your thoughts on when we share, when we stay silent, or even in our writing—

Kristopher: This is something that is funny. I think fiction writers, like myself, I was really drawn to fiction early on, partly because I felt like my own life wasn't all that interesting. So I thought it'd be better writing in a way that I can make things up.

Since I've gotten older, I've felt the other way around about it. There are things in my life now that I feel this need to protect, that I don't want to share with other people.

As a fiction writer, I have that option. I can always kind of hide things, or I can change them in such a way that there's still an element of privacy around them.

This comes up in Revisionaries in the chapter on Patricia Highsmith, who was a very prolific crime writer and wrote some fantastic novels. The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Price of Salt, etc., that are still classics today.

What I found was that she had tried a few times to write about her personal life. She was a lesbian, and she was having relationships with women in the West Village as openly as she could at the time, but she was living in a time when writing openly about lesbian relationships could have actually gotten her in legal jeopardy.

It certainly could have ruined her publishing career. Publishers weren't able to publish stories about those kinds of relationships unless they ended in tragedy, because otherwise, it was considered immoral.

So one of her great victories was writing The Price of Salt, which is a novel about these two women, and the relationship at the end is not really a tragedy at all, or arguably is a happy ending. She couldn't publish it under her own name. She published it under a pseudonym, which was a common practice at the time.

It was really difficult for her, personally. She almost fell apart completely in the lead up to it because she was so worried about the exposure that might come from it. The more that it seemed like the book was about to become a big hit, and then it was, the more that she felt like she had just shared way too much.

I ended up reading another book of hers, I had to fly all the way to Switzerland to go to the library and the archives there to dig up an unfinished book that she tried to write about that was also a woman reflecting on her life and her relationships with women in her life.

She abandoned the book after, I think, about 80 pages, and just realized that she just can't do it. She couldn't write about it. It was tearing her up. So I kind of think, and I talk about this in this chapter, that we have to be able to draw those same lines for ourselves.

Like we were saying before, I think it's particularly tricky in today's writing environment where a certain confessional impulse can actually be a big draw. It can help sell books.

My most recent novel came out in the fall, and it's a novel based on my grandmother's stories during World War Two. Everywhere that I went to talk about it, that was the first question people asked.

How much of this is real, and how much of this is based on her real story?

It's like, well, it's a novel. You're not supposed to know necessarily which parts are real and not.

I went through a series of interviews, I was listening to other authors, I think maybe it was like interviews on NPR or something like that. I just was checking for a while to see how many times was the author's own personal life a part of the conversation surrounding the novel that they were publishing.

It was well over 50% of the time that was like one of the first questions being asked. How is this book authentic because it comes from your own experiences?

These are novels, so again, I feel like we should be able to appreciate the beauty of a piece of fiction without having to be reassured that it came from a true story first. Of course, that's exciting to know about, so people want to share it.

Joanna: I mean, I write horror and thriller and crime, and you get a lot fewer questions about, like, how much of this murderer is you? But then I do a lot of research.

So for example, my next thriller is called Death Valley, and it's set in Death Valley in California. There's all of the truth of the place, but then it's fictionalized.

I feel like with literary fiction, that is something that's an obsession with so many. Obviously, there's been some very high profile novels that have been ripped apart because they haven't been, so called, someone's own story. So I don't know, it's difficult.

Kristopher: Well, I think the trouble is when a novel is marketed on the basis of some sort of authenticity, suggesting that the writer's own experiences are informing it, and then it turns out not to be the case.

We've almost turned novels and fiction into nonfiction, and we have that same obligation that a memoirist does, to be fully honest about everything that goes into the book.

When James Frey had his big scandal around A Million Little Pieces, that book was originally written as a piece of fiction. It was supposed to be a novel, and nobody was interested in it. He then it changed it over and basically said, “Oh, what if I just pretend it was a memoir?” Then people loved it.

That's because you've given people this assurance that it's real. Going back to my earlier point, I think as fiction writers, we should try more often not to do that. So it's an easy way to get attention for the books that we're writing because, of course, people want to know that.

Even earlier books of mine, the very first question I would get asked at every event was, “How much of this is based on your real life?” I used to know a little better than I do today. I used to know to kind of demure a little bit at that question and say, “Oh, well, you know, that's personal. That's private.”

Joanna: That's great. Well, the book is super interesting. We're almost out of time, but—

Kristopher: I really wrote it for writers in the earlier part of their lives. I really wished it was a book that I could have read when I was trying to write my first novel and feeling very frustrated.

I wrote three books before the first one that actually sold. Two of them had agents, and then couldn't find a publisher. All through that process I was feeling like, okay, maybe I'm just not good. Maybe I just don't have what it takes.

So this was the book that I wish that I had been able to read at that point in my life when I was worried that the fact that I was failing, or what felt like failure, was not some sign that I would never be as good as I wanted to be, or that I would never be as good as the other writers that I admired so much.

The only reason I hesitate to say that it's just for the writers trying to find a way to break out, is that when I was writing this book over the last five years, I was in the same position again.

I had published two novels. They both came out and did well, and then for whatever reason, I couldn't get the next one sold. Then I wrote another one, and that one didn't sell in the US. It only sold in French translation, which was a whole other story.

Joanna: Random.

Kristopher: Delightful. I hope the French enjoyed it.

Once again, all these years into my writing career, I hit a moment where I thought, okay, maybe that was it. Maybe I lost whatever I had, and now I can't do it again. Then writing this book was a nice way to remind myself that, actually, yes, this happens to lots of other writers.

Richard Wright had this huge hit and then his publisher rejected his next book. There are other stories like that in here about other writers like that. It's not a constant climb, higher and higher. It's an up and down experience.

Joanna: Yes, it's not a straight up-and-to-the-right graph.

Kristopher: Exactly, and there's nothing wrong with that being part of the way that it works.

Joanna: Indeed.

Kristopher: Well, KristopherJansma.com is my website. I'm on Instagram, and these days, Threads. Those are both great ways to find me.

I have a Substack called The Nature of the Fun where I post a short piece every month that's all dedicated to finding ways we discover the joy in our writing process and making it more fun again.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kris. That was great.

Kristopher: Thanks so much, Jo.

The post How Ordinary Drafts Become Extraordinary Books. Revisionaries With Kristopher Jansma first appeared on The Creative Penn.