First Cup of Coffee - February 2, 2024

A deep(ish) dive into my process today, to give an idea of how far down the intuitive writer spectrum I am. Also more on nuking the idea that slower = higher quality, and quieting the conscious mind to liberate the subconscious.

The Thread I mention is here https://www.threads.net/@jeffekennedy2016/post/C2pXUZTLwq4

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Transcript

00:01.75
jeffekennedy
Good morning. Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Ah Ambrosia today is say with me friday.

00:20.92
jeffekennedy
February Second welcome to February Two Two 24 so many twos. Ah so today I am going to talk a little bit more about process and do a deep dive into my process. So for those of you who heard me talk about this before I don't know you may be excused you you you've already passed the quiz. Ah, um, before I get started though I do want to say that wild and windy tickets in Phoenix are now available. Um, they're oh almost available. Let me take that back I'll put a link in the show notes but it will be why am I not finding this February Twelfth to Fifteenth Twenty Twenty five so a year from now if you're into life planning. Ah, this is what you do tickets go on sale tonight at seven P M mountain time got to love a thing that's on mountain time. Um I'm going to be there. CM Nascosta is going to be there a bunch of other great people will be there. It should be a lot of fun. It's um, at a cool hotel with like a really nice pool in February so you all know why I signed up for it. So anyway, um I don't know how fast those tickets will go. They might go fast. So if you want to come.

01:54.44
jeffekennedy
And you want to see me and a bunch of other fantastic authors. There's so sorts of wonderful authors coming then ah, yeah, come do that? Um, and let's see what else so part of. What has elicited all these things for me, you know like I talked about Monday um, big annoyed because I saw yet another class I see so many classes on this whole like outlining for pantsers plotting for pantsers that kind of thing and and I got. I got weird pushback and I know I've already talked about this someone I won't talk about it a lot but people are like what's well with having classes. You don't have to take it this kind of thing and it's like yeah, but like if you go through and read my thread. Maybe I should link to it I'm going to link to my thread. Okay. I saved it so that I'll remember to link to it. But it's interesting to read through the thread and see how many people told stories about being really crushed by teachers telling them that if they didn't outline their book ahead of time. That there was something wrong with them that they weren't doing it right? and I got a fair amount of and I'm just going to flat say it sanctimonious replies where people were like all processes are good and you know we don't need to slam each other which is true. But if that was not my point.

03:29.73
jeffekennedy
My whole point is that there is this pressure out there to pre-plot to outline 1 gal said that she had a professor a writing professor tell her that if she couldn't learn how to or told the whole class but her specifically too. She couldn't learn how to outline a book ahead of time that she would never be a writer and she quit and she didn't write for 30 years and fortunately she came back to it and now she's written 70 books. Other people said you know thank you for validating me, you know I keep feeling like I'm doing something wrong and. This is the problem when things are targeted at cancers and I really want to not use this word anymore I want to get rid of it. Um, so but then I feel like I have to use it to communicate effectively but people who write intuitively with. Classes are targeted at them. There is the implicit idea that they need to be taught that they have to learn and I know I already ranted about this but I'm still getting replies on it. Um, we don't teach people. We don't direct stuff at the people who already outline or who do a lot of pre-ploing the other thing that came out ah sort of elicited a lot of this was um, you know I get another hot take someone did a hot take on um, saying that.

05:01.88
jeffekennedy
People who write fast basically people who write fast write garbage right? You know these people who write so many books are ah you know they're churning out crap and they use words like churning or cranking and all this kind of thing and.

05:18.43
jeffekennedy
You know I understand that some of this comes from a place of of jealousy and inadequacy and I coach authors all the time who are slow writers. We all have our own process some of us write faster than others. Um, and there is. I understand it's frustrating to be a slow rider I always feel like I should write faster than I do and I know I'm a relatively fast writer. It's just that's just part of the gig I mean I just think we're all always going to feel like we need to write faster and if you are. A relatively slower writer. It is frustrating and one of the ways that some slower writers seem to try to console themselves is by telling them that it's better quality and spoiler alert. It's not It's just not and. So I don't know if I've talked about this in some time but 1 of the pieces of advice that I give often when people want to try to produce faster and we're always looking for what I call like productive creativity sustainable creativity. We want to find a speed at which we can write that preserves quality that preserves our sanity. Um, but that is also optimized right? We want to be able to write as fast as we can ah and so one first step to take is to.

06:49.10
jeffekennedy
Divorce yourself from the idea that slow speed equals higher quality and this is a pervasive idea in our culture I don't know about other cultures. You know obviously I'm a us girl I grew up in the us education system cher creek school district. Ah, um, learned to read and spell with sesame street like it I I watched the first episode when I was like 4 years old now you know how old I am if you didn't already. Ah, but anyway I digress as usual. Ah, but in school we are taught that going slow improves our quality and maybe if you go to like private school or something they don't teach you that but at a public school where the. Teacher is addressing students of all abilities that is the perennial advice right? Take your time think it through check your work right? Um, you know I don't know if you all got that advice but you'll like the whole. When you take an exam to go back and check your answers and I figured out fairly early on in my life not to check my answers because I am one of those people that my first answer is much more likely to be right.

08:17.41
jeffekennedy
But that's because I'm intuitive right? You know I do a lot of things out of my subconscious There's a lot of things that I know that I don't consciously know and if I think about it too hard I screw it up. So if I go back and change my answers on the test I will inevitably change them wrong I I never ran stats on it. But like I would get my test results back and it would be like my first answer was right and I changed it wrong once I started second guesssing myself deaf to second guessing people stop second guessing yourself. This is the whole point of being an intuitive writer and. I am not going to violate my own precepts by telling all of you who pre-plot who diligently outlined who works so hard at it. You know if that process works for you great but you can learn to rely on your intuitive self on your in. On your self- consciousscious self self-conscious I say self-conscious. That's funny um also self-conscious but your subconscious self yourself I keep watching to say wrong your subconscious self is this huge huge resource. That in our current culture. We are not really taught to use now I talk about Hama Daoist um I don't always talk about how I studied chinese internal martial arts for like 15 years and one of the things I learned was to ah communicate with my subconscious.

09:50.84
jeffekennedy
Um I learned exercises and Meditations to clear my conscious mind and allow my subconscious intuitive self to rise up and um, help me with what I want right help me with stories help me with all kinds of things.

10:10.50
jeffekennedy
We're doing a deep dive on my process 10 minutes in that's so far. It's not that deep um not on Dallas and so I'll stay away from that but learning to trust your intuitive self is it's a huge gift. It's. It allows you to um, bring in the stories from other places whether it's from your internal self or from somewhere else I've talked often that I love that analogy of that writing a story is like building a campfire. And people from other worlds come and sit at the campfire and tell you their stories. It is not a thinky thinking process. So we have to get past this idea that going slowly which really is. Part of the conscious mind right? where you're like thinking and the smoke's coming out of your ears and it's like I have to think through step by step and that's how you have to talk to um, whereas there's there's no rule. It's not a real thing that. Slow speed equals higher quality. It's not true and if you can get over that idea it liberates you because for me if I'm in the groove if I'm really working intuitively and I'm just allowing that story flow to come in.

11:41.32
jeffekennedy
The words fly. Um, it's always when I'm overthinking that I slow Down. So So that's one piece. Um, how do I write and and we've all been talking about how we do this and you know there's lots of different examples and. And I should clarify that this whole thing about whether you write intuitively or analytically I think that's a useful spectrum or whether you're an architect or a gardener. Um, you know like whether or not you plan everything down ahead of time to the least detail. Or whether you just plant the seeds and stand there spraying the water on it and wait to see what comes up. It's It's a spectrum and we all do it different ways. So my process I always start with story and character I I know who the person is. And their situation. Um, and usually not much more than that and then I build it from there and by building I mean I start writing I just sit down and not sit down I get on my walking desk which I do think that the walking helps. There's been a lot of studies to show that walking helps with like a trance induction I feel like Trans induction gets a bad rap. Some people react badly when I say it all you're doing is allowing the conscious mind to quiet and the creative self to.

13:15.52
jeffekennedy
Have free rain right? So I start writing the story and no I don't really take notes I don't have a plan most of the time. Um, all I have is that character in that situation and so I start writing them and I start learning who they are and what they want and need from writing this story and to me it feels very much like getting to know a real person. And people are are beautifully complimentary to me and and it makes me so happy when they say that my characters feel like real people because they feel like real people to me too and a friend of mine who is a writer and um, pretty critical I feel like she doesn't give praise easily. She's complimented how complex my characters are um and I was thinking about and this is something we talked about in that thread too is like 1 of the classic pre-planning ways of writing is goal motivation conflict. It's something that's often taught. Characterization what is their goal. What is their motivation. What is their conflict and I could never do it because I could never reduce it down to that and now I understand why and and I'm kind of sorry that I spent all this time trying to wedge myself into that model and this is the problem. Um.

14:49.40
jeffekennedy
For all those people coming at me saying you know there is nothing wrong with learning new things I agree there is nothing wrong with learning new things. What is and I will say it is wrong to try to force yourself into a tool that does not work for you. And some of us will spend a lot of time contorting ourselves because we think what we want to do is wrong, right? We think oh I have to learn this goal motivation conflict thing spoiler I'm doing lot spoilers today aren't I that's silly. Anyway, you do not you do not and and you know I've got the permission wand here. I'm waving the permission wand if goal motivation conflict doesn't work for you. Don't do it? Um, so I just start writing um and I clear my mind and I walk and I do my best to channel my character. Um, if I do anything besides that it slows me down. Ah, and yes, this does mean that sometimes I don't figure out who my characters really are until much later in the story sometimes I discover their secrets at the very end. Of the book when they reveal it to someone else and I'm like holy shit. Um, sometimes yeah, ah all of these things are a mystery to me as much as is if I'm reading a book and and yeah, then I go back and I layer in.

16:22.38
jeffekennedy
I will go back and adjust the voice I go back when I finish I revise from the beginning and I adjust the voice but let me dispel a myth here because something I hear all the time is like well you may draft fast and and I do it takes me. Well I think I said this on Monday but I'll repeat. Um, you know like 55 to seventy days to draft a like 100000 word novel. Um, which I would like to go faster but that works for me I do not revise as I go sometimes i'll. Back up like a page when I first get started in the morning just to kind of get a running start to kind of anchor myself in the story again. It depends it depends on how how vivid the thread is in my mind and but I don't. Really revises I go ah but people will often say well you know it's 1 thing to draft fast but then you spend so much time rewriting and revising and I don't I don't I spend um 1 or 2 wo weeks revising and then that's my final. I am very fortunate that I am I don't know I have enough of an eidetic memory that my spelling and punctuation and grammar and all of that is fairly clean I do weird typos especially when I'm really in the zone which is fascinating to me because i'll.

17:53.35
jeffekennedy
I'll make homonym arrows arrows cut I make homonym errors in speech too. Um, homonym arrows what would those be I will make those errors when I'm really in the zone and I'll find them when I go back through like instead of writing. No. N O I'll write K N O W  for no reason, no reason at all except for like my eidetic memory conscious brain is like not exactly engaged and I figure well, that's that's good thing right? um. So yeah, typically I write through all the way to the end sometimes I write through to midpoint sometimes stack 2 climax and then go back to the beginning and and revise but my revvising process is really a layering. Um I usually end up cutting about like a thousand or two thousand words which are almost always like red herrings or false paths or repetition sometimes I repeat myself and I'll end up adding like 5 to 10000 words on revision mostly because I'm an adder on revision I will end up fleshing things out. Making layering in details amping up the fight scenes because I'll allow myself to sketch in the fight scenes because I hate them. Ah and I keep track of the structure as I go so when I talk about that I do the eighteen three act structure I keep track of my word count.

19:26.88
jeffekennedy
As I go um I just use word and I you know, check my word count for each chapter and I have a spreadsheet where I put that in and I can kind of see where I am in the story and I use this mostly to predict when I'm going to finish because once I have that first 25% in place. Then I know how long the book will be so I could probably say a whole lot more about this. But this is why I am a far end intuitive writer because I don't do any planning at all. So on that note I'm going to send you all into the weekend I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I will talk to you all on Monday you all take care bye bye.