First Cup of Coffee - October 4, 2019

Talking today about funding the creative life - what's real and what is the fairy tale. Also, of course, cats and New Mexico weather. 

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. So delicious. Today is Friday, October 4th. We are doing the indoor podcast today, as it is pouring rain. Pouring rain out there. Actually, it's backed off a little bit now, but it um I woke up to rain around 5 a.m. I think. Um I didn't get out of bed right away, but it's been um pretty much raining ever since. Lots of water pouring off the canales. And our poor Jackson cat is very bored. Very bored, aren't we? It's really sad that cats don't have um better uh internal lives. He was kind of bored yesterday too, because it was uh not a not great weather. The storm is kind of coming in, and so I think he's feeling he's staring at me imploringly. I should perhaps change the weather for him. The other thing that I can control, but I will not change, is we have this wonderful birdbath fountain, you know, outside the bedroom window. And the birds really come into that, especially in the evening. They just crowd it. There's I I keep meaning to set up my tripod and um telephoto lens, not telescopic lens. I still still like, what was what is the word I want? Give me the word, telephoto lens, to get some pictures of the birds coming in for you guys. They have such a great time. But um, Jackson really, really, really wants to set up an ambush next to the birdbath. He's got it all figured out that if he could just lay there right next to the birdbath, those birds are just gonna come right to him and he could pick them off. And I won't let him do it. I keep making him move. And he's very aggravated with me because I clearly don't understand hunting. Isn't that right? So I'm glad that the uh yesterday commute podcast was quieter. That did make a big difference. Uh-huh. We could I might do a test on the interstate just um to see, but I think also that going the secondary highway was less uh stressful. That might have contributed to my impression that people were less ragey. And uh for two minutes. Really the key, Jeffy, is to leave sooner, right? So just not my forte. I don't know if I joke told you guys, but I often joke that um the title of my autobiography would be I should have gotten in the shower sooner, the Jeffy Kennedy story. But yesterday I got in the shower sooner. I got in the shower right after I did my weightlifting. And so I was um ready to go as soon as I finished words. I didn't get there at eight, but I got there so much closer to eight, like 8:30, that I'm sure it seemed like eight. And Trent Zelazny and Emily Ema were there. Tends to be pretty much just the three of us. Hi, Jackson. You're gonna come get on my lap. If you can't do something interesting, you can at least get petted. Set down my coffee here so he doesn't drag his tail through it. Sitting in my armchair where I can see out the rain sweeping across the valley here. He made me lose my train of thought though. He doesn't have a very loud purr, but he is purring. Maybe you can hear that. You're a sweet boy, aren't you? Oh yeah, I was talking about Emily and Trent. So it's always fun to talk to them. They uh they're both from Santa Fe uh or from the Santa Fe area. Um Emily's parents are Los Alamos scientists, and Trent is the son of Roger Zelazny. So they always have interesting low local gossip to tell, things that I don't know, and history too. Um Trent spends a lot of time managing his dad's estate, so there's always interesting industry knowledge there too. Uh he is also a writer working on some of his stuff. So so yeah, that was I was glad I made it there. Stopped by uh Megan and Charlie's house. Megan's house where Charlie also lives, I guess I should probably say, and picked up my copy of the Orchid Throne, which had uh I'd left there after the party, and it's still my only copy. I still haven't got my author copies, which um Sarah checked with editor Jenny and said that the they should be here this week, but they haven't come yet. That's just I don't know that I've ever had to wait so long for author copies. And it's funny because St. Martin's is so organized otherwise. Oh, now Isabel has come out and she's playing with Jackson. What a good older sister you are. She's acting pretty frisky this morning, so it's good for him to have another kitty to play with. I was actually even contemplating this morning that maybe he needs a kitten pal to absorb some of his energy, but I hesitate to disrupt the uh happy balance in the household, you know. Oh Isabel just dug a little toy, a little spring out from under the table. Jackson's like, whoa, where'd you get that? I suppose this is another form of cat wrangling. Yeah, see, it's totally on brand, you know, cats in New Mexico weather. For those of you who don't know that joke, it comes from way back when, like 10 years ago now, when I first moved here, and I blogged pretty much every day. And I would I had a friend who was very savvy about the business. Uh, she had worked in New York at one of the big five, and she said to me that she thought that my blog could be really good, really popular, um, if I concentrated on industry topics and talked less about cats in New Mexico weather. And she's was undoubtedly absolutely correct, because we all know that I do not excel at staying on topic. Um I just can't imagine trying to write a blog that was only about industry stuff all the time, which is why uh this podcast will never be all industry stuff or you know, like all book stuff or all writing stuff all the time. There will always be a significant portion of Cats in New Mexico weather. So, you know, it may not be the best brand, but it is mine. It is my brand. So, anyway, I did have a topic. What was my topic? Um, I was talking about Emily and Trent. Had a good time talking with them, came home, got some more work done on the fate of the Tala. It's um it's still not fast going, but it is going. So I am trying not to complain about that. I am realized I am doing what seems to be my process of late where I'm going back over and over the first act, layering things in, getting all of my players in place, getting all of the stakes set, getting a lot of the backstory filled in. You know, at this point, there's so much backstory that I feel like I'm um, you know, really need to lay out. Okay, here are all of the puzzle pieces from across the course of these. This will be the seventh book, right? Yeah. Seven books. Which you know, seven is a magic number. Um and that not just because of schoolhouse rock. Actually, I think that was Lucky Seven Samson, wasn't it? It was three that was a magic number. I could still count backwards by threes because of that show. Children of early 70s television. Um but school rock schoolhouse rock was awesome. And I've it's cool that we can look at them now on YouTube, right? It's fun to go back and look at some of those shows. And now I understand little 12-toes. Boy, little 12-toes just blew my frickin' mind back when I was six watching that. Granted, that one may have been a little bit beyond my um intellectual capability at the time. I spent a I kept trying to figure that thing out. Yeah, like if we had 12 fingers instead of 10, and that the 11th and 12th would be like docat doe. And I was just like, it blew my little mind. But maybe start introducing me to the ideas of science fiction and so forth. So uh seven. Seven's a lucky number, and I'm actually kind of pleased that this arc will be seven books. And I like hearing people chime in that shift of the tide was your favorite too. And I agree that the uh, you know, that that whole bit about the dragons that was a pivotal piece, and I felt worth an entire book. And I'm the author, so there. Um, but yeah, I'm getting everything layered in all of the moving pieces. There's a few more pieces I need to work in. That is the disadvantage of a long running running series. I know that um, you know, Nora Roberts, who writes The In Death books as JD Robb, and is so brilliant. I can't believe, you know, she's coming up on her 50th book in um February. And sometimes people complain in reviews that it feels like she just goes in and touches on the secondary characters, you know, like has these brief scenes to update on them, which can feel false. And I notice it sometimes too. But it's like, geez, you know, once you get this kind of cast of thousands, and you have people wondering, you know, like, well, whatever happened with these characters, you know, yeah, we haven't seen them for several books. It's like, well, what can you do but sort of touch on them? For me, I'm I think I've got all of my players in their various places, and I'm just trying to make sure that their threads are entering the story organically. And this is probably a standard I hold myself to that I don't need to do, but I am a believer in that in the first act, all of the stakes should be set. And for me, that means all of the characters should be introduced or referenced. I just um I don't much care for it when a character comes into the story very late in the story, um, out of the blue, unless unless there's a really good reason for it. Like um because they only enter the story at that point in time. It's it's more it's um I mind it when it when the character could have been introduced earlier and wasn't, um, either through because the author forgot or um wanted to keep it as a surprise. It kind of comes around to that thing about um surprises or mysteries being earned. Like there are few things more infuriating than a mystery or some kind of enigmatic story that is solved at the end by giving a piece of the puzzle for the first time. Like it would be like having the in the Who Done It when the the murderer turns out to be uh like this random serial killer who was going through town and had never been mentioned at any point in the story. It's been done. That's certainly been done, but it's unfair when the appearance is given of okay, here's all the clues. Can you solve the riddle? And that's like, oh, but I didn't give you all the clues. Ha ha ha! So that that's my issue there. And oh, I've been meaning to say we've been watching Pull Dark. I I know I referenced it the other day. Kelly Robson got me watching Pull Dark, and fortunately, David does really like it. Um, so it may be a winner for the both of us. And I have to admit that, yeah, I am now totally in love with uh is his name Aidan Turner? Oh my god, this man. I'm also more than a little in love with uh the gal playing De Melsa. Um or maybe I'm just in love with Ross Pauldork and De Melza, which is fine too. Let's check his name. I think I was looking at it last night. But it's um well, what what a great show. Yeah, Aidan Turner and then Eleanor Tomlinson. She has the most incredible smile, and she's uh it's perfect casting because she has this smile that comes from a genuine place in her heart. You know, it's not a practiced in the mirror kind of smile, it's this smile that radiates joy. And I really feel like Ross Paldurk, you know, who essentially marries beneath him because Demilza is not uh, you know, not refined, not hybrid, she's not quality. But I think he marries her because of her joy in life. I haven't read the books, I'm trying to decide if I should read the books. Uh that was one of the things that Emily Trent and I ended up discussing yesterday were a bunch of books, uh, you know, and some of them were Zelazny's books, and I, you know, I really never read much of him. And you sort of get in this place where it's it's like, well, should I go back and read old books? Should I read new ones? And right now I'm not reading fast at all because I really need to um I I I know I still haven't finished Arrows of the Heart. I need to just sit down and read it because I I have barely any left. And maybe I'll try to get that done today because I have the signing tomorrow with Jane Linsgold, and she sent me her book that she's signing, and I would like to read some of it at least before the signing. And then I have um a crit read to do for uh another author friend, and then the blurb read for Grace Draven. And then it's like, well, Jeffy, when are you going to go in and read the pull dark novels? Yeah, well, so many books, so little time, right? That's the way it goes. I've been thinking about, I think I meant to mention this before, and and I maybe did touch on it some, but it keeps coming back to me when reading or listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. One of the things that she says in there is she does talk about how monetization affects creativity. And she urges people, you know, writers, not to make their writing pay the bills because it cripples your creativity. And she talks about how she'd made that agreement with herself that she would not make her writing pay the bills so that it would she'd have the freedom to create, you know. And and I have a few issues with this. One of them is she says, well, that she kept her job for a long time, her day job for a long time, um, until her fourth book. And then her fourth book was Eat, Love, Pray, which, you know, that's great if you have something that's a phenomenal success, like Eat, Love, Pray. But what do you do when you are many, many, many more books past that, and you're still, you know, you haven't hit the jackpot on books. You know, is it still fair then to say, oh no, you shouldn't try to make money with your writing? It can be a very, very long time to hold your day job and not devote yourself to the thing that you really love. And I'm not saying she's wrong, but she she takes a position of that she like she says that she still puts the creativity first, that she wrote eat I may have said it in the wrong order before, eat pray love, eat pray love, um, that she had written that to make sense of her travels, um, and that you have to write things for for yourself first. And I do think that there's a lot of truth to that, um, to write things for yourself first. But I feel like it's disingenuous of her to pretend that there weren't other forces at play, because I happen to know that she received a six-figure advance to write that book. Um, it was not an inconsiderable amount of money. And that she planned with her editor where she would travel in order to make the best travel memoir. I think it's in the foreword of the book or something like that. I could go look it up, but I know I read about it. You know, so it's like, well, and it's not that I have a problem with her doing that, because I think that's smart. If you are doing something for a living and you are wanting to be able to sell the thing that you write, then yeah, you say, okay, I have this idea that I'm going to take this journey of self-discovery and write about it. And you have an editor who says, Great, we're going to give you a six-figure advance to write that book for us. Um, where are you going to go? And that was essentially what had happened was she said, Well, I what I want to do is I want to go to Italy, and then I want to go to this ashram. Um, and I'm not sure where to go for the third place. And they debated where she should go. And I think she was going to go in a different order before. And, you know, so the idea that somehow she did the traveling only for her own self-discovery and did the writing to make sense of it, and only devoted herself to the creativity, is actually not true. And I think it's unfair to present that as being the only authentic way to write, because you don't always get to do that, right? I mean, somebody has to pay for the pasta in Italy. And it's something that we tend to sweep under the rug. Uh, that was something else that we talked about over writer coffee yesterday, and I don't even remember the specifics, but we were talking about someone or another, and we said, well, yeah, and of course, this is a person who does not come from a wealthy family and is not a trust funder, and so actually needed a job that would pay money. And so much of publishing is privileged, is full of people who come from um well-off backgrounds, and you know, and are they're subsidized. They don't have to make certain amounts of money. So I do feel like it's unfair to tell people, well, you know, keep your day job no matter what. And I believe this came up, I saw it floating around on Twitter too. Um, you know, you have a few choices that way. If you keep your day job as a writer, if you're many people aren't really qualified to do much else, you know, like they're that means that they're going to be waiting tables or working as a barista. And you know, sometimes that work can be really soul crushing. You know, it's exhausting. There's a reason why it's like a minimum wage job, right? Uh or if you do have your education or degrees or whatever, and you do something like what I did, where you have a career with like an environmental consulting firm, then it's not like you can just do your day job and then you know, be there eight to five or whatever, and then you know, and write the rest of the time. I I did two careers for 20 years and it was exhausting. It's not easy to do. So I'm not sure I really have a point, except that it sort of gets under my skin when people say things like, oh, well, you know, keep your day job so that you can, you know, have you know your creativity liberated from monetization because money is bad for creativity. I think money just creates pressure, is all. And I don't know that I believe pressure is always a bad thing. And I think sometimes, you know, I I think not even sometimes. I think absolutely the money I make from writing is the most wonderful money I've ever made. I love feeling like I am producing this thing that comes for myself and that the money comes in for it. It's a wonderful thing. And I've been pontificating for some time now, so I'm going to sign off. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Um October, right? Enjoy the autumn. I know a lot of you have been laboring under heat. I hope it cools off where you are, and that you get to enjoy some real autumnal weather, and that um you find some things to bring you delight and gladness, right? And I will talk to you all on Monday. Take care. Bye bye.