First Cup of Coffee - February 16, 2024

On Sheryl Sandberg's LEAN IN and great advice for women in business that's given me insight into my own writing career, including keeping my eye on long-term and 18-month goals, and why I don't love the heroine's journey.

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Transcript

00:01.95
jeffekennedy
Good morning. Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Ah delightful Today is say it with me people. It is Friday who. February sixteenth hope you all had a great week. valentine's day in the middle of this week I've always had very mixed feelings about valentine's day despite the efforts of people to make it be. You know, like the the Leslie Knope. Ah, galentine's day and oh it's about love I think it still serves as a reminder to too many people whether or not they have the kind of romantic love in their lives that they would like to have.

00:57.39
jeffekennedy
Which is occasionally true. But I think probably more often. Not so ah, my heart goes out to you if if you're one of the not so much and if you are one of the hell yes, then more power to you. Ah, it's been an okay week for me. Um. First order the fao realms just feels like it's creeping along and I've had a better week than I did last week so I'm I'm taking that as a win. Um, and and really I'm making more progress than I think I am which is. You know another one for the books on not to conflate the reading experience with the writing experience. This book is writing slowly. It's going to read super fast I know that and I keep thinking oh I need to pick up the pace and not spend so long on Xy or z but I'm really not. Um, and right at this point I've got a little less than 18000 words to go which theoretically I can finish next week that is the plan um more or less right. I don't know if I can actually make that anymore. Let's see so what is next week I am not taking the holiday next week. Well yeah, so if I got 15000 words next week and I got a decent amount today theoretically.

02:29.72
jeffekennedy
I could get this finished by next Friday which is the plan we'll see I mean it's got to start writing faster someday soon right? Any minute now and then I'll spend the week last week of February revising. Um. I have been revising a bit as I go more so than I normally allow myself and part of this is because um, ah, why is it I think it's because and I know I've talked about this before so sorry, but it's. This has been such an interesting book to write in some ways. It's a push for me because it's a different style and structure and also because I did go off this original idea of this movie and I think that really screwed me up I think it was too much. Planning I think having that synopsis that I made. Um, when we first went on on submission for it slowed me down and messed me up. Ah, in retrospect I'm kind of glad that we did not sell this when I thought we would just because it's changed so much and i'm. Really trying to break that gridlock of expectation of how I thought the story was going to go because I am just simply not capable of writing it that way. So um.

04:01.89
jeffekennedy
I guess it's going fine it's fine I had been planning on starting to write reluctant wizard Alise's book at the first of March so I'm I'm still more or less on schedule to do that. We'll see what happens. Um.

04:19.34
jeffekennedy
I'm kind of feeling like I want to take a spring break. So I'm going to talk to talk to the hubs about that um might be nice just to take a week off um I've been kind of continuing my trend of well it's not a trend. I was going to say of reading nonfiction I'm reading like the second nonfiction book that I've read this year I don't think that counts as a trend I've been reading quite a bit lately which is nice but I've been on a good reading trend books that I've been really enjoying. Um, so right now I'm reading lean in by Cheryl Sandberg which I mostly remembered hearing about and not actually experiencing for myself. There was a huge backlash against it remember ah but I started reading it because Emily Chang who wrote Brotopia.

05:17.31
jeffekennedy
Which I really enjoyed and highly recommend mentioned it quite a bit and Sheryl Sandberg worked at Google for a long time. She's also a Harvard graduate Harvard Mba and then went to Facebook and and you know it's funny. It. It's interesting to read the book and realizing how little it deserved the backlash that I remember reading about it I remember women being so angry about it and saying that the last thing they needed to do was lean in you know that they didn't need 1 more. Sorts of pressure and that's not her message at all. It's very interesting given what the message of the book is which is actually containing amazing advice for women in business and how to overcome some of our natural. Tendencies or let me walk that back not natural tendencies programmed tendencies and um and cultural expectations and I remember reading about this before but oh I should find the. Specifics hold on. Okay so I pulled up Kindle on my phone here. Ah so she talks about a 2003 Columbia business school professor Frank Flynn and New York University professor Cameron Anderson

06:46.81
jeffekennedy
Ran an experiment to test perceptions of men and women in the workplace they started with Harvard business school case study about a real life entrepreneur Heidi Royson the case described how royson became a successful venture capitalist by using her outgoing personality and vast personal a professional network that included many of the most powerful business leaders in the technology so sector Flynn and Anderson assigned half of the students to read. Heidi's story and gave the other half the same story with just one difference they changed the name Heidi to Howard professors Flynn and Anderson then pulled the students about their impressions of Heidi or Howard the students rated Heidi or Howard as equally competent which made sense so sense. Since their accomplishments were completely identical yet while students respected both Heidi and Howard Howard came across as a more appealing colleague heidi on the other hand was seen as selfish and not the type of person you would want to hire or work for. The same data with a single difference gender created vastly different impressions and I think that this is so important I mean we kind of know this is true but it is really really important to remember that.

08:08.83
jeffekennedy
You can do absolutely everything the same but gender is still going to affect how people perceive you and 1 of the things that she brings up a whole lot is the ah the idea that women are expected to be nurturing. And work in a collective and they are not supposed to have self-terest and in the business workplace self interest ambition wanting thing for yourself is rewarded and is rewarded. And men are much more likely to do that and if women do that they're not only not able to get the same rewards. They're negatively ah, affected by it because people think that women shouldn't behave that way. And I think about this a whole lot and I might make myself unpopular with this idea here because I know lots of writers out there. Love the heroine's journey as opposed to the hero's journey and I know that Gail Carriger you know. Wrote this book on the heroin's journey drawing heavily from mythology all this kind of thing. Ah, and for those who aren't familiar it. It's based on the story of ah of isis I believe and.

09:32.77
jeffekennedy
I'm sorry if I got that wrong. But I think that's right I did read her book. Um, it did not work for me and I'm just gonna flat out say that which I know makes me unpopular because so many women writers love this and they love the idea of. That this is a journey where as opposed to the hero going through and finding and conquering and discovering that the heroine is teambuilder and working communally which is more how women work and it just kind of bothers me because yes I do believe in working communally. Um, I'm sure I am very much a networker I'm definitely a delegator. Ah, you'll like the Clifton strengths thing Connectedness is my number one strength. Ah but I still love the Hero's journey I Love the idea of personal achievement. Um.

10:25.65
jeffekennedy
And not necessarily the drawing on the community. But Sheryl Sandberg gives some really interesting advice because she's saying well if you are in the workplace and you are for example, negotiating for a better salary or negotiating to take over a project. That if a woman says I deserve this or I want to do this that is negatively perceived. It is seen as a woman being unpleasantly ambitious whereas a man that's a rewarded quality. And so what she suggests is that because women are rewarded for working communally that instead she says we um, we benefit from this. We instead of I had a great year. We had a great year and it's it's full of really great advice like that. Ah, and I sent my former boss from the inside environmental consulting firm I worked with a quote from it this morning and she hadn't read the book either and it's like I feel feel like every woman you know should read this, especially if you're working in business and. And I should send you what I said or I should read to you what I sent to her let me pull that up really quick on my text app on the computer here is ah she was talking about trying to make a decision about working for Google.

12:00.78
jeffekennedy
And ah she had spreadsheets which I kind of identify of course and love and she said well that she her spreadsheet showed that going to work for Google at which at the time was tiny and disorganized was a bad idea because she had several job offers and Google was the worst.

12:20.60
jeffekennedy
So ah, but her the guy who hired her whose name I don't recall I'm sure he's famous. Ah, he said only 1 criterion mattered when picking a job fast growth when companies grow quickly quickly. There are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing. There's less to do and too many people to not be doing them and that hit me so profoundly because this company that she and I used to work for there was never enough work and. And we were made to feel like this was our fault that we needed to get out there and hustle more clients and hustle more work and I don't know maybe it would have helped but I tried and was not good at it. Ah, but you know there was always it was um. Because it was consulting firm. Everything was based on billable hours. So you always had to be working on a project and so you would get so many hours to work on a project and you'd be in this position of slowing down of deliberately slowing down the work so that you had enough. Hours to fill your time because if you weren't billable then you got in trouble and you were forever like so seeking out other people in the company. You know do you have work for me. You know can I work on this project and people would hoard their projects so that they would have enough billable hours and it's like wow.

13:48.71
jeffekennedy
Really it enlightenning to me that it's like okay that was a sign of a company that was growing very slowly or not growing at all and eventually my team was cut which is how I ended up going full time writing before I was ready. But another thing that she suggests that I find really helpful and I'm going to share with some of my writing people my my mentees I suppose is that she suggests having a long term plan and an eighteen month plan because 1 of her contentions is is that especially these days. It's very difficult to plan your career that there is no career ladder she calls it a career jungle gym where you get to move around and you know make leaps some lateral to different things which I like that image but it. You know I feel like in all of the career advice and success stuff. People always talk about oh well, you know you need your six month plan in your 1 year plan in your 5 year plan in your 10 year plan and all of this and that never made sense to me because. And and she really brings us home because when she was graduating from college Mark Zuckerberg was seven years old there was no way for her to predict that she would want to be working in Facebook someday but she did know the kinds of things that she wanted to be doing.

15:15.00
jeffekennedy
And that's really come home for me because I've always known the kinds of things I wanted to be doing and we talked about that at the book of that last weekend at beastly books because Vela who did a great job moderating asked us all the other 3 of us had all started out in science. And she was asking how we had made that transition and what was the difference and I said well you know I'd been working in brain science in neurophysiology because I was so interested in consciousness and like what part of us is the meat suit and what part of us is something else and where does that come from. And I realized that I'm writing that my books that that's a big part of of what I write about so I'm still doing the same thing. So I found her take on that really interesting. Um and and helpful because. You can plan like eighteen months ahead and I find that particularly interesting that that's kind of where we are in publishing right? You know, especially if you're doing traditional publishing but also self- publishing you're looking ahead like eighteen months and then the long term plan is kind of the. You know what is it that you really want to do with your life. What are you trying to do and it's it came at a good time I'm I'm a believer that books deliver themselves to you at the right time and it it was really helpful because I was talking with some other authors the other day that.

16:47.14
jeffekennedy
You know there are people who are writing like fantasy romance my same is genre in I've decided I'm this is slight ah side note but I decided I'm sticking with epic fantasy romance because that really is what I write and and. I think romanticy is meaning something different to people I won't object to my books being called that. But really, my books are epic fantasy romance. So it'll be interesting to see what tor calls onerra. Or whatever it ends up being entitled. We still don't have a title. Um, this is the problem with my side notes as I lose track. Um to I remember now. Um I every once in a while I toy with creating a pseudonym. And writing a Kindle unlimited title that is more like a fantasy romance romancy in Kindle unlimited because there are some people who are making big money in there and that's one of my criteria. Um. It's funny because I think Sheryl Sandberg is so wealthy at this point that maybe she doesn't remember although she does talk about meeting a job and running out of her savings and needing to be employed. But I have to make decisions for like what books will make money as well as my long term plan.

18:14.89
jeffekennedy
And I was thinking about well you know maybe I should you know maybe I'm doing this wrong and then but reading this I'm remembering that the reason that I'm writing books the reason I write the kind of books I write ah there is a balance there in that I need to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on and all of that. But also it's really important to me to write the kind of story I want to write and not to write what someone else is writing and I think that that's important for all of us when I was talking about that one of the other authors. In the group said that she thought it was funny because she'd been thinking that maybe she should write more jeffe- like books instead of such fluffy books and and I sent her the grass is greener gift which I think was know it's appropriate. But I also think that that's not. Bad to be thinking those things I think that's part of the evaluation process where you look and you think well should I be trying this on should I do these different things. How can I improve how can I grow so this has been a really great book for for reading that I also read Ali Hazelwood's bride and enjoyed it very much. It was just perfect. Really excellent. It's it's really an urban fantasy. So I think it's funny. It's being called romanticy but that's the hot thing. But yeah I found it. Delicious I planned a post a review.

19:50.59
jeffekennedy
I've recently also read the midnight library for Matt Haig I read that for a book club and I do want to talk about that and I read Nettle and Bone by T. kingfiser and I really enjoyed that as well I might talk about those more next week I didn't expect. To talk about lean in for this long. But yeah I highly recommend reading it? Um It's really insightful and a fairly fascinating too. Always a plus I hope you all have an amazing weekend and I will talk to you on Monday you all take care. Bye bye.