First Cup of Coffee - January 26, 2024

Defining success, tips on how not to go crazy as a creator, why I think competition is bad for us, navigating toxic positivity, why being told "no," AKA rejection, is so very good for us, and thinking about career paths long term.

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/cxtN6VHbAiI

Transcript

00:01.67
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Ah, but wonderful today is say it with me people. It is Friday woo!

00:20.00
jeffekennedy
Ah, it is January Twenty Sixth and the twenty Sixth twenty four so um I feel like it's been a week has it been a week for everyone I mean that's a funny saying right? because it's always been a week but. Ah, yeah, it's um I think it's been fine for me, but it just seems like a lot of people are having meltdowns a lot of people feeling stressed I don't know what the deal is um, maybe politics have people down. Maybe it's January winter. On my Discord people report in every morning for writing which I love um and several people were saying that they were struggling today. Um, so as if if you're one of those people you know cheers to you I hope you can. Ah. Find some solas and some rest this morning. Um, reaching back to Monday's podcast ah I don't know if any of you go back and like revisit comments on the Youtube video if you only listen and don't watch Youtube. It's interesting because I get comments in all sorts of different places and so ah, it's no single place for a conversation which sometimes I regret but you know I also want people to be able to just access. However, they want to access. Um.

01:52.46
jeffekennedy
But my bestie Grace Draven who listens high Grace! ah commented that she had read an interview with Enya so if you didn't listen to Monday's podcast I was talking about how I'd seen a post about and yet how she never tours. That she lives in a castle in Ireland because if you could live in a castle in Ireland why wouldn't you and she doesn't people come to her. She records there and she stays in. And I'm fascinated by this There's a part of me that has always been fascinated by the idea of of the hermitage of being sequestered cloistered. Um, there's a part of me that is very attracted to the idea of joining. You know like a a holy a holy cloister of becoming a nun taking a vow of silence and only focusing on like gardening and cooking and reading and writing for those of you who know how? absolutely Irreverent and not into church I am you will find that amusing but I mean why can't it be like a Taoist close Cloister I would like that anyway. Ah Grace commented that she I want to find it now hold up.

03:22.92
jeffekennedy
So Grace darling said I recently watched an older interview with Enya who said she doesn't want to be known for herself. She wants to be known only for her music that philosophy has allowed her to remain intensely private. And I think built expectations for her fans that prevent them from demanding her note to know her life's details and grace adds that she likes this and yeah, there's really something to that. Um, as much as we talk about and I know that this is advice I give that. Readers follow authors. They don't follow publishers. Um, the exception to this might be on Kindle unlimited where readers follow particular subgenre trends. But for the most part readers follow authors. They find a voice they like they find a storyteller they like and they're going to follow that person which means that the author is therefore the consistent brand but at the same time It's very very important that we separate ourselves from the person and the product. Um and and I hesitate to use the word product. Ah, but.

04:46.76
jeffekennedy
I mean it as in the thing that we create maybe I should say creation. Let's go with that the person and the creation. Um, and I I know I've talked about many times on here that something that I work hard to do is to make sure to create a verbal division between myself and my work. So instead of saying I won an award I Try to say my book won an award or instead of saying somebody rejected me I will say the book was rejected and it really helps because words matter right. And the way we frame things matters and yet it really makes a difference to to create that separation just as anya is doing she wants to be remembered for her music not for herself. Um, and and we can see how these things are very tied up. Um, because our creation comes from us the best definition I've ever heard of voice is that it is what emerges from ourselves from our beliefs and that you spend a lot of time as a creator refining. Your voice and making it come through purely but it's it's still in it. It's still who you are and that's why ideas don't matter so much as how you transmit them right? That's where the creation comes in.

06:22.90
jeffekennedy
So it's not easy. It's not easy to separate these things right.

06:35.95
jeffekennedy
It's it's not an easy balance. Um, and I think that you could choose to be and Enya and and go that route which obviously has its allure. But I also know there are those of you out there listening. Talking to me sometimes who are you know, putting out their first books and feeling that relentless pressure to market right? feeling that you have to do? um. All of these things right to get yourself out there to get your books out there and it's it's it's a conundrum. Um, but I think the important thing to remember for all of us to remember is to not make yourself crazy right. Um, and I mean that in a very literal way. I mean we throw that about ah and is kind of um you know, metaphorical or slang. Oh oh, he makes me crazy or you know this job is driving me crazy. But.

07:44.89
jeffekennedy
There there is a very real factor right of that if you're not careful you you can, um, you know it disturb your mental peace. You can have a mental breakdown. Um I know. Several people have been talking about that sort of recognizing oh sorry that was Captain I don't know what he was barking out. There wasn't anything he doesn't bark often. So. Anyway I think I probably don't have a lot more to say on that except that you know just cut yourself some slack. Um, there are there are people out there. Okay so let me talk about this a little bit. It's been all the range in the writing world. To do these? Um, this clifton strengths assessment right? and I I know I've talked about it because I I did it a couple of my friends were like well do yours do yours figure out what yours are and there's a gal Becca Syme who does ah. You know, apparently some really great coaching related to that and she's trained in it and everything but she helps people you know they take the assessment and you can get like your 5 strengths or your 10 strengths are all the way down to 36 and then she helps people according to you know like.

09:14.59
jeffekennedy
How this can make you work better as an author avoid burnout all of this kind of thing and and I yeah so I got my top 5 and I'd mention it because like my number one is connectedness which I find kind of funny but I think in some ways that that is. Sanity preserving for me when people ask me why I don't get caught up in some of these dramas I think that's part of why because of mice I don't know for I don't know if I have a better if I'd taken the class. So I just read up a little bit on it. But I think some of it is the the Taoism is my sense of being connected to all people and all things being one with the Tao and I saw a couple of authors talking about this the other day and they were kind of. Matching their clifton strengths on their categories by colors and they're like oh I envy you you know like this color and that kind of thing and it turned out that 2 of these people like among their top strengths were competitiveness and. And it didn't surprise me because it was like oh I guess that's partly why this is a useful test for people because it was um oh well. Yeah, that explains why they come across as so competitive and and I don't think I've talked about this in a long time. But.

10:46.50
jeffekennedy
I am I am not a fan of competition. Ah, and it's something that I discovered through many years of study again of taoism that competitiveness through that lens is considered to be a kind of poison. That affects ah mainly the person feeling it but then also the people around it and and when I tell people this There's always a certain percentage of people who are eager to tell me how very wrong I am. Especially people who come out of like the american and I'm going to just say America maybe it's true in other places but you know like the sports system you know where they're taught that like competition is good. You know and. You know, learning to work with a team and they'll tell me you know, like how competition drove them to do x y z and maybe if competition is one competitiveness is one of your strengths. That's true. You know because because you want to rely on your strengths you want to rely on those things. Those skills that work best for you right? But I think being competitive is a poison and I'm very much a believer in comparison is the thief of joy that if you compare yourself to other people that you.

12:12.65
jeffekennedy
It will not make you happy. It's just never going to make you happy because you will always find someone else who seems to be having more or doing better and I think authors are thrust into competition with each other. Ah the whole. You know, getting so many ratings the rankings you know, like whose book is above whose book and who's selling better than someone else and and there was something that happened this week in one of my author groups where one of the people who does the coordinating puts up. Weekly discussion topics and they asked for authors to share how long it took them to become successful and I had talked to her one on one and I know that her intention was to. Show people that success doesn't come overnight that it's not an immediate thing. Ah and you know and so for me when I address this and she specifically asked me to weigh in because I am the ah. The cane shaker I feel like you know like I've my wand here where I can wait for permission or give you blessings and then I reverse it and it's the cane shaking where I'm like you kids get off my lawn. Um I don't know when I became the age that I am but.

13:41.13
jeffekennedy
It happened along the way and the truth is is that I have been a published writer for 30 years now I don't know how that happened and you know and now I have 65 published titles. And yeah I have. You know seen it come around and go around a bunch of times now. So when I weighed in to to talk about this. The first thing I did was say it really depends on how you define success and I told a story which. I've told many times but I feel like I see people ask the same questions over and over again. So I figure that's good to repeat stuff because there's always someone new coming into the scene. Um, but you know I started out as an essayist and so my first success was having an essay. Published and I was so excited about that and then I had um you like a number of successes like that and I wanted to make my living as a writer so I was building that career and this is a long time ago. This is the early mid 90 s and. Ah, before blogging really kicked in and I sold an essay to red book which I don't know if it's still out there but great big women's magazine and they paid me a dollar a word and so I got paid $3000 for one essay

15:17.57
jeffekennedy
Which was even more money back in 9094 and it was it was amazing. It was really wonderful and people said to me congratulations you've made it and I can't tell you how many times people said to me, you've made it. And if I had been able to work it so that yes I was selling one piece a month for $3000 then I could have been ah I could have quit the day job and become a writer but of course freelancing doesn't work this way you know and ideally it's like well maybe you. Sell several articles at 1 time and you know you space it out which is great if you do that. But you know that particular editor left the magazine I didn't sell anything again to redbook and not long after that blogging cost magazines to crash. Writing became cheapened and ah you know it was became you like never again for a dollar a word you know and I have I have novels that have never made that much money most of them have made much more than that. But I do have a few that have never made that much money.

16:35.98
jeffekennedy
So anyway, the the point is I do have one. Um, you know what is that measure of success for me, you know there have been various milestones and you know it's thirty years in I just got my first six figure deal which I'm thrilled about It makes me really happy but you know that didn't happen right away I wanted that to happen in the mid 90 s but it happened when it happened and in some ways I'm very glad that my career has had a slow trajectory because. This is what I wanted I didn't want to be flash in the pan crash and burn which I saw happen over and over again, but part of what happened in this is that a lot of people, especially some of the ones who rank them so you know say oh well that they have this high competitiveness. They're very happy to jump in and right away say you know I ended up making $50000 self publishing by my fourth book and and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with somebody saying that it's it's good to illustrate the successes. But the thing is is that it's like survivorship bias you are always going to hear these kinds of stories where people have something great to say. Ah, the people who really hit it and like.

18:08.41
jeffekennedy
You know some of them really planned it out and they did great. You know they wrote the book they launched their series in a particular order. They did the marketing all this kind of thing and they hit that KU algorithm and made a whole bunch of money by the third or fourth book and. They're excited about it and it's wonderful and congratulations to them. But it doesn't work for everybody and so the people it doesn't work for they feel like they did something wrong and and that's not the case sometimes sometimes it's just. Book doesn't hit um sometimes and this is the thing about self- publishing and I I was struck by something that a friend one of the aspiring writers and I'm calling her aspiring because you know like she's got a couple of. You know things out so far and working on the next but she was sharing with me ah an article on toxic positivity and how this kind of raw raw environment could sometimes be more damaging for exactly this reason and. This person said that they had heard an author talking about that the problem with self-p publishing is is that nobody ever tells them no and I thought that that was really powerful because it's being told no is really good for us right.

19:40.57
jeffekennedy
It's even though we hate it even though we hate those experiences and I'm thinking about like Grace who had a small press publish 1 of her first books and they put a horrible cover on it and it didn't sell and that was a a no, right. Um, trying to query books to agents or to traditional publishing and having them be passed over those are Nos and you take those nose and you figure out why isn't this working and you make it better and so this is part of what I'm talking about that. Why I am glad that I got all of those nose early on because it gave me a kind of grit. Um and a kind of balance that the nose don't matter so much anymore. It's like okay well. Here's 1 knows what's my path to yes. Um, so I think that that's a really important take home and I hope that that this sort of stream of consciousness made sense. Ah. Send me your comments let me know and I will talk more about it on Monday um, but I feel like this is really important. Um, no no is good for us so you know savor those and you know this weekend.

21:11.70
jeffekennedy
I'm going to be pretending that I live in a castle in Ireland and nobody can talk to me without you. Ah, the great thing then is that I can come out of my castle I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you Monday take care bye bye.