First Cup of Coffee – April 4, 2025

On the challenges of working from home and/or yourself - which is most creative careers - and finding the balance between imposing a disciplined schedule and also being kind to yourself and enjoying the flexibility.

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Transcript

00:01.56
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:12.35
Jeffe Kennedy
Ah, which is delightful. Today is, say it with me people, it is Friday. 4-4-25. Ah, and so we are. I'm still... for four twenty five

00:26.07
Jeffe Kennedy
and so here we are um i'm know Regaining my full energy from being sick. Uh, that was a doozy of a bug, but I've been getting a lot done this week. I've been working on the second book for tour.

00:43.60
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I rose in the mirror and so, um, yeah. And like trying to, I've been working on that very hard. Um,

00:56.21
Jeffe Kennedy
I have completed the smoothing and revision that I needed to do, which it turned out I needed to do even more than I thought I needed to do. There was ah in several places quite a bit more smoothing than fully realized.

01:16.66
Jeffe Kennedy
But that's because I've done so much chopping up and rearranging and so forth. So that's what I've been doing actually all week long. And I ended up revising at a rate of 87 pages a day. Yesterday I got through 140 pages.

01:31.69
Jeffe Kennedy
So today I've got um just four pages left, which I figure will ramp me into finishing. um I still have to write that ending, write my new ending, rewrite my ending, which I'm guessing is going to be about What are we looking at here? 10,000 words, maybe more or less.

01:57.22
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I go to Apollycon next week. I fly out next Wednesday morning. So I'm very, very hopeful. I can send this book, um, Tuesday afternoon be before i leave.

02:10.30
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, if not, I can work on it on the plane Wednesday, Wednesday, And, um, and I really don't have much at the con on Thursday.

02:23.97
Jeffe Kennedy
So, um, certainly not until evening and stuff. So, um, Apollycon is funny because they have this author reception on Wednesday afternoon, which is really the only opportunity to you get to like see everybody.

02:41.36
Jeffe Kennedy
And so I'm looking forward to mingling with people there. and um, So, you know, like I kind of want to be there for that. I, I land like when that starts. So I'll probably get there like an hour late, but that's fine. And then I'm having dinner with friends that night.

02:57.60
Jeffe Kennedy
So that'll be great. And then on Thursday they have the panels and stuff. And so when you plan to go and all this kind of thing, you don't know whether or not you're going to be on a panel and,

03:12.62
Jeffe Kennedy
Apollycon is so weird with their programming. um i I think they don't like me. ah But it's also weird how they decide who gets to be on what stuff.

03:24.63
Jeffe Kennedy
um Also, authors that pay to sponsor things get priority on being on panels and stuff. And I always regard being on a panel as contributing content.

03:37.22
Jeffe Kennedy
So I don't wanna pay extra to to do that. Um, so they had originally given me one thing where they asked me to moderate a panel on historical romance at eight in the morning.

03:52.55
Jeffe Kennedy
And I just decided no So I actually have all day Thursday if I need it Friday, i won't, but, um, I did tell my editors, uh, that I would get it in on the eighth. But I think if I,

04:08.32
Jeffe Kennedy
Need another day or two. I mean, I'm already late. It was due the first, um but they're being very nice about it. oh One thing, which I know I've mentioned on here before, but is always worth revisiting, is traditional publishing is ah pretty accustomed to authors blowing past their deadlines, and they do program in Buffer for that.

04:32.85
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I am not an author who typically misses her deadlines. And so I don't like it, but, uh, the flu, the flu knocked me out or whatever it was I had.

04:47.65
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but and I'm over looking over here. Finally, last night I had the energy to pack up books and boxes for Apollycon. Um, and so I'm sending those to the delightful Deena Ray, who is serving as my assistant for this con and thank goodness for her. Thank thank you, Deena. Cause, uh, she's really being a driving force for me to get so much done for this con.

05:13.66
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, her enthusiasm has been invaluable. And so I really appreciate she lives locally. So I'm shipping her big boxes of things, which I ended up paying a huge amount of money to ship because I'm doing it last minute, but the wages of sin, right?

05:37.00
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I did make a semi, semi unprecedented decision to ship a couple of things instead of figuring out how to pack and schlep them, uh, with the full intention of being kind to myself. There was like this one thing, the, the big banner thing. I was like, yeah, I could carry that on.

05:57.56
Jeffe Kennedy
And I thought it's nine pounds and it's not terrible, but I thought, why do you do this to yourself? Um, So I'm not, I'm not doing it to myself. I'm instead paying to my $25 to ship it.

06:12.09
Jeffe Kennedy
It's funny how you decide on amounts of money, you know, like where you're cheap and where you're not. um You know, like I'll, I'll pay $25 to watch, to stream a movie I really want to see.

06:23.76
Jeffe Kennedy
And I do that in part because I can justify it as it would cost me more if like two of us went to go see it the movie theater. ah You know, and like how much money I would spend eating out.

06:37.31
Jeffe Kennedy
that kind of thing. So it's like, you know, it's the same thing with when you choose the plane tickets, you know, and you're like, well, should I pay a hundred dollars more to go with this immensely more convenient time?

06:50.26
Jeffe Kennedy
Or should I save that a hundred dollars? And it's like, you know, that when you're there that you will, that you're so yourself who is like slogging through the airport and dealing with shit, that you'll be like, why didn't I just spend another hundred dollars? sir Ah, it's a, it's always a funny trade off.

07:10.16
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, so I think something I started to talk about on Monday morning too, and I don't think i I don't know if I completed the thought, um, something else I've started doing in the morning is, um I've figured out like what time i need to be at my desk.

07:31.90
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, whether I'm doing podcasts or not. Basically, I'm just trying to be at my desk by eight o'clock, no matter what. And then I can putter around with various businessy things. And I'm Darynda and I have started working together again via Zoom.

07:47.34
Jeffe Kennedy
And so we're um and we meet at nine. so And I'm an early riser, you know, so I get up and I do yoga and I do various things like that, you know, get ready, shower, all of these things, ah feed the cats. and But the thing that I've started doing was after being sick, I'd realized how much I really enjoyed eating.

08:11.22
Jeffe Kennedy
sitting in my reading chair in the morning, because I would like drag myself out of bed and go sit in my reading chair with my my coffee or my warm drink or what have you and read.

08:21.74
Jeffe Kennedy
And the, know, cats will come and lay with me. And it's a very peaceful time of day. And it's not something I normally grant myself on a daily basis.

08:33.28
Jeffe Kennedy
But a lot of it is because I was, I wasn't using that time in a very worthwhile way anyway, you know like I would wake up and I would look at my phone and I would read and that kind of thing.

08:46.36
Jeffe Kennedy
So instead I'm doing this a little bit more intentionally that, um, I, as long as I know that I need to be at my desk by eight, when I get up, do my yoga, get ready, do all of these things that any time I have left in between, which is often like 45 minutes, at least sometimes a little longer than I can,

09:09.66
Jeffe Kennedy
sit in my chair and have my coffee. And as the weather warms up, if it ever warms up, we've had a very cold spring. We're supposed to get snow tonight. ah But then I can sit in the great barber and drink my coffee. And I don't know why I don't, because I do know why, but it's one of those things that, you know, when you think about like being a full-time author,

09:37.40
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, you like it's this dreamy life, right? For some reason, I always think of um like an E.M. Forster novel. that the name I want? Yep.

09:48.04
Jeffe Kennedy
Like A Room with a View or one of these where, I don't know, I always have this image in my mind of the bucolic... oh life in the country, wearing a white lawn dress and sitting at a little table and scribing.

10:04.85
Jeffe Kennedy
i don't know if it's like Austin-esque or what. But i am i don't actually live my life that way.

10:16.50
Jeffe Kennedy
I do, however... ah especially lately, I've been reminded of the flexibility of my career and my life compared to other people, right? You know, like you just forget how other people live or the structures that people labor under, you know, that like I decide I want to be at my desk by eight o'clock, but there's nobody standing over me making me do that.

10:41.86
Jeffe Kennedy
And on the one hand, I do believe that that is, part of being successful in an independent creative career in particular, being able to apply that discipline, you know, to, you, because no one else makes you work.

10:59.95
Jeffe Kennedy
You, you have to make yourself work. Um, you know, some people are good at that and some people aren't, um, for a very long time when I had my day job in environmental consulting, I still worked from home and we had this one guy who,

11:15.50
Jeffe Kennedy
um with was a friend, I actually got him the job, who worked with our team. And he um had been in the military, which I do think is relevant, because if you're in the military, you become very accustomed to having an externally imposed structure.

11:33.42
Jeffe Kennedy
And he was um not not a personality who could work from home and make himself work.

11:46.70
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, like, and we knew that he wasn't getting things done. And we found out later, like he would do things like log into the group chat and then go take a nap. Right.

12:00.00
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, so there is this, this balance always about the balance, right. Where you, you need to have that ability to you know, like not,

12:13.46
Jeffe Kennedy
log into the group chat and take a nap, you know, to not um read books or scroll the internet instead of writing, you know, however you need to do it. i You all know that I really like Becca Sime's advice, and she was posting the other day that we need to to break this mythology that successful people get up very early and get their work done early.

12:36.16
Jeffe Kennedy
That worked for me. And, you know, so I'm trying to be better about copywriting these kinds of things because I do think she's right. You know, like you have to find the time of day that is the most productive for you. You have to um work with your own rhythms.

12:54.07
Jeffe Kennedy
But also, you know, passing along that advice, you do have to make yourself do it. And there's this idea, you know, like that you'll be inspired. And you know and we kind of love those stories, right, where you, um you know, like Anne Rice talking about writing Interview with the Vampire in like 72 hours, you know, writing it over ah a long weekend or some such episode.

13:26.06
Jeffe Kennedy
ah And I know from other references that she was probably doing a whole lot of cocaine at the time. And so, you know, when people talk about staying up for three days straight, there's generally some kind of other...

13:44.68
Jeffe Kennedy
fuel involved there. of Ms. Darynda Jones, it's going to be Diet Coke. ah But she used to do that and now she can't. you know She burned herself out doing it that way.

13:59.49
Jeffe Kennedy
I allowed myself to be distracted by an incoming message. I should have muted my notifications and now I lost my train of thought there. I always wish I could like hear you all.

14:12.20
Jeffe Kennedy
<unk> If you remind me. what I was saying.

14:18.43
Jeffe Kennedy
I guess I was just talking about that, you know, that balance of being able to stand over yourself, hold your own feet to the fire. I would say, you know, a huge piece of this is figuring out when you are productive.

14:31.07
Jeffe Kennedy
And you all know that I'm a huge advocate for, um for observing yourself, for treating yourself like an experimental subject and tracking, know,

14:41.54
Jeffe Kennedy
what you do well. And I've had a few mentees start doing this. And to my, I don't know, my great shining pride, they have discovered, um you know, like how fast they actually write.

14:54.33
Jeffe Kennedy
So setting themselves a goal of writing like a thousand words an hour or 500 words an hour, you know like whatever, whatever other people say you should be able to do.

15:06.66
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Like i have one gal who found out by tracking herself that she writes about 200 words an hour. And that if, and she realized that if she had simply known this and accepted it about herself and planned accordingly, that she could have gotten the same amount of work done simply by planning on that she's going to be writing 200 words an hour and however many hours a day she's able to write and not spent all that time beating herself up for not doing more and then sort of spiraling into this feeling terrible about the fact that she's not being more productive.

15:46.36
Jeffe Kennedy
So I think you have to find out when you are productive. um I started writing in the early morning because that was, I finally took the advice of writing every day at the same time every day.

15:59.76
Jeffe Kennedy
That worked for me because I wasn't getting any writing done. This is low. These many, well, decades ago now. awesome Amazing.

16:11.51
Jeffe Kennedy
And so the only time the way my life was structured, I had so much stuff going on early morning before work was the only time that I could write every day, same time every day.

16:24.23
Jeffe Kennedy
And now I've found like I'm not, writing at five in the morning. I know some people that like the morning pages idea works if they get up and write before they do anything else that that works.

16:38.71
Jeffe Kennedy
um For me, this current system of working, starting at like nine and Darynda moved her schedule to suit me. Cause she, you know, wants that being able to have the accountability of working with me.

16:54.13
Jeffe Kennedy
oh you And I said, well, about nine. you know I found like even when you know for a couple years there we were not working together, you know I more or less start writing at nine.

17:07.97
Jeffe Kennedy
But also giving myself this room because I do have a more relaxed schedule than most people. I don't have a commute. I don't have a day job.

17:18.89
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't have meetings that other people schedule for me. You know, I have a lot of control of my life that way.

17:29.79
Jeffe Kennedy
And I tend err on the side of maybe err is the wrong word. I tend to push myself too hard. You all know that. And so I am working on being kinder to myself, giving myself more room.

17:46.07
Jeffe Kennedy
And so like this time in the morning where I just sit in my chair with my coffee and I read my book and cuddle with the cats and maybe not making myself work till five o'clock every night.

18:01.58
Jeffe Kennedy
Right now I'm in catch up mode, um but I'm also feeling a little bit like You know, okay, yeah, I need to pay extra for the UPS three-day select.

18:13.40
Jeffe Kennedy
um But it's gotten done. And sometimes I think, you know, getting it done is what we can do, right?

18:25.71
Jeffe Kennedy
So this was kind of random thoughts on a Friday.

18:31.49
Jeffe Kennedy
But, yeah, that's where I'm at. So i think, you know, like getting sick like that sometimes is a good reset. We don't like it, but it's also, um yeah,

18:44.18
Jeffe Kennedy
kind of gives you an opportunity to to start anew, right? So I hope you all had a great week. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I will talk to you on Monday.

18:58.39
Jeffe Kennedy
You all take care, okay? Bye-bye.