First Cup of Coffee - Tuesday September 30, 2025

Magic Reborn has 17,000 words and the first act has been written! Can pedestrians trust the crosswalk? My methodology on how to use 24hours in a day to your advantage, especially as a writer. And It's Octavia Butler's world and we're just living in it.

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Transcript

This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K Lambert, author of Epic Fantasy romance.

 0:07
 I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

 0:19
 Good morning, everyone.

 0:21
 Today is Tuesday, September 30th, 2025, last day of September.

 0:32
 How is that even a thing?

 0:33
 I don't know.

 0:34
 Tomorrow's October.

 0:35
 I mean, that's how it works, right?

 0:39
 So hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

 0:44
 I, I got a lot done.

 0:46
 I didn't play as much as I should have.

 0:50
 Today I get to go spend some time with friends and I'm very excited about that.

 0:55
 So that'll be great writing updates.

 1:01
 Magic Reborn is coming along.

 1:02
 I tapered off a whole lot at the end of last week.

 1:06
 I think I overtrained a bit, but I am a little past 17,000 words and I'm work.

 1:14
 I'm edging my way up to the end of the Act One climax, which I know is always slow for me.

 1:22
 Act One being the first 25% of the book and the point at which all the stakes are set.

 1:28
 So I'm, I'm thinking more than I would like to.

 1:33
 For me, the key to fast drafting is to not think, don't think me boulder UN quote.

 1:42
 So I am, I'm getting there.

 1:46
 I'm thinking a whole lot about details and things that I needed to put in and coming back.

 1:57
 Adding in these POVs from characters that we haven't heard from in a while is is really fun.

 2:06
 I'm enjoying bringing them back, but also I'm having to access them again.

 2:12
 It's good, it's fun.

 2:13
 I have a great job.

 2:16
 I don't know.

 2:16
 I, I, I tell you all these like little prosaic details of my life which people may or may not care about.

 2:23
 But I mean, it's like a shift for us because we walk the dog in the morning.

 2:28
 And sometimes David goes with me if he can.

 2:30
 Some days he's not able to walk so well because of the Parkinson's, but if he can, he goes with me.

 2:36
 But Doug, Doug wants to go for his walk every morning.

 2:39
 So we have a school down the road from us and we have to cross this road twice.

 2:48
 This sort of like our our walking route.

 2:51
 We've considered changing it up.

 2:53
 I used to do it slightly differently, but pretty much no matter how you slice it, you end up having to cross this road twice.

 3:00
 At one point there's a crosswalk which like almost nobody stops for.

 3:06
 And then the other point is there's no crosswalk.

 3:10
 And this is a very rural neighborhood, so it's not a big deal except for this like half an hour window when everybody is like, the teachers are going to work and people are dropping the kids off and then coming back from dropping the kids off.

 3:29
 And also it's a bedroom community.

 3:31
 So then there are people who are going out towards town.

 3:34
 So I finally looked up load these many years later.

 3:39
 I was like what time do classes start anyway 'cause if we get the timing wrong it can just be a real bear to try to cross that road.

 3:48
 In the last year or so people have started stopping for this crosswalk more, which is nice, except that not everybody stops.

 3:58
 So.

 3:59
 So what are my pet peeves in life?

 4:01
 And I, I actually don't like pet peeves.

 4:06
 I don't think that you should keep peeves as pets.

 4:08
 You you should let them go, but don't feed them.

 4:13
 Don't feed the black dog.

 4:15
 Don't feed the the Gray peeve.

 4:20
 As an aside, I saw that Sydney put together a real of- 

 4:26
 I forget what to I have to look up what she called it.

 4:28
 So she called it Jeffe Mentality, which I think is funny right there.

 4:33
 But she did a clip of me saying various funny things and it's it was interesting to see them all together like that.

 4:44
 I don't think of myself as a funny person, but but this room was funny.

 4:48
 I mean, I laughed at myself anyway.

 4:51
 One of my I feel like it's dangerous.

 4:53
 It's more important than a peeve.

 4:55
 Maybe it's a black peeve is when somebody stops and waves you across the road and cross.

 5:05
 You know, like, it's especially bad if it's if there's not a crosswalk and they wave you across, but maybe there's two lanes and someone's zooming up beside them and that person doesn't stop.

 5:16
 Or maybe the person coming the other direction doesn't stop.

 5:20
 And so, you know, I appreciate the courtesy and the niceness and all of that, but also sometimes it's just stinking dangerous.

 5:32
 Like, no, no, don't, don't wave me across the road if you don't know that I'm going to be OK, right?

 5:39
 So anyway, I do appreciate that people are stopping for this crosswalk now.

 5:43
 And it's starting to get to be like a gestalt thing where there's kind of a bend, a little bit of a bend and a hill.

 5:50
 So people come around it way too fast.

 5:52
 They also speed and so they're coming up way too fast and they're not expecting to stop for this crosswalk.

 5:58
 It's this is all a very complicated situation, people.

 6:03
 Anyway, I finally looked up when the classes start and it's like the high schoolers start at 7:50 and the middle schoolers start at 8.

 6:14
 They're all in.

 6:15
 Or I maybe it's like grade school and middle school, something like that.

 6:19
 One's at 7:50AM and one is at 8AM

 6:22
 You have to go to town to go to high school.

 6:25
 So I figured out, you know, OK, 'cause I knew that we had to leave on dog walk, which takes like half an hour by like 7:15AM so as not to get really caught in this traffic and be unable to cross that street for a long time.

 6:46
 So with winter coming on, winter is coming.

 6:50
 The, you know, it's getting, it's dark right in the morning, so we wait a little bit later.

 6:57
 We can't go in the summertime.

 6:59
 It's easy 'cause we can leave at like 6AM-6:30AM

 7:03
 Piece of cake.

 7:03
 Nobody's out.

 7:05
 Weekends, Weekends are great snow traffic.

 7:09
 But it occurred to me because I am apparently a rocket scientist, I was like, aha, what if we wait until after 8:00?

 7:19
 So now we have changed our routine and we will go at 8:00.

 7:23
 So I'm recording podcast before dog walk.

 7:26
 I'm sure this is fascinating.

 7:28
 But that way the sun's up and which means it's a little warmer.

 7:33
 So when it starts to get really cold, that'll make things marginally more comfortable.

 7:40
 But it's interesting because it enables me to shift more of my work things into the morning because and as you know, I keep charts on everything.

 7:51
 I track all of my metrics.

 7:53
 And the earlier I start my first hour of writing, the more productive I am.

 8:00
 And I have thought before that ideally I should get up and just write.

 8:08
 And I know that some people do that.

 8:10
 There's, I don't remember who I I almost hate to give credit for these things because I think people give them cute names and then they do their cochy stuff on it and they're it's nothing new.

 8:24
 It's just that they were the 1 to give it the cute name and put together a snazzy website and charge money.

 8:31
 But but morning words.

 8:34
 Somebody started calling it morning words.

 8:36
 Maybe 50 people started calling it morning words.

 8:39
 But I know many people who have gotten themselves out of writing slums by doing that, which is you wake up and before you do anything else, you you write.

 8:49
 And, and I think there's a lot to that.

 8:51
 Actually, it works well for me to write earlier.

 8:55
 I end up sliding other things into my early mornings, you know, things like contact lenses and toothbrushing.

 9:05
 I always want to ask people how literal they are.

 9:07
 You know, it's like, before you do anything else, do you like, roll over in bed and pick up your notebook or your laptop and immediately start writing?

 9:16
 Maybe.

 9:16
 Maybe that's one way to do it.

 9:21
 You know, for me, I wake up and I, and I check my phone, which I probably shouldn't do, but I like to see if anybody has messaged me during the night.

 9:31
 And then I do the Wordle, which I, I like doing.

 9:36
 And I say good mornings to the various people that I say good mornings to.

 9:40
 Jane Hackman.

 9:42
 Check in, make sure that nobody has died and left their demented husband wandering the house.

 9:51
 I know that that's not funny, and it's not actually funny to us either.

 9:56
 But I do have several friends that after the Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa tragedy, we check in daily because that was one of our questions.

 10:06
 It's like, how did none of her friends know that she was that sick and that she died?

 10:13
 So the realities of our lives, those of us who don't leave our houses very often, we do this having fabulous Sydney who fully embraced.

 10:28
 I noticed the title of Sydney the tyrant.

 10:33
 Do the put this together and do the social media and stuff has been great because that I can just record this and have done and get right to writing.

 10:44
 So I could maybe write if I'm awake early enough, I could do an hour writing before the podcast.

 10:51
 I don't know.

 10:52
 We'll see, we'll see.

 10:53
 Moving dog walk to 8:00 is like this revelation.

 10:57
 And I guess my point, I actually do have one, is that there are always ways for us to change up our schedules to make our lives smoother, less friction, you know, frictionless.

 11:13
 We, you know, would love to get to the point where things are frictionless for us.

 11:18
 And, you know, we get wedded to routines, but only because they become habits, right?

 11:24
 You can make new habits.

 11:26
 And sometimes choosing a habit that is going to be better for you in many ways is.

 11:35
 I mean, it can, it can change everything.

 11:37
 It has these ripple effects, right?

 11:39
 A story I have told before and I think about often is I was having an argument online, as one does in a chat room, and people were talking about not sleeping well, right?

 11:54
 And we were talking about these sort of general rules for sleeping better.

 11:58
 And one of them is to get rid of screen time, you know, like an hour before bed is, is a very simple 1 and surprisingly hard for people to do.

 12:11
 And I had said, you know, no, no screen before bed will help you, you know, simmer down, help you, you know, your brain quiet.

 12:22
 I like to, you know, I think that the Kindle, the Ink 1, whatever it's called Paperwhite, the Paperwhite with the ink, you know, that's nice 'cause you can put it on dark mode.

 12:35
 It's not that blue screen thing or blue light or whatever the hell it is.

 12:42
 So I read on paper or I read on Kindle before bed.

 12:45
 But anyway, a couple of people were telling me, and these were the people who had complained the most bitterly about not being able to sleep well, that they they couldn't possibly not do this.

 12:56
 One person like had some company where he had like people all around the world and he would actually like sleep in his gaming chair and wake up throughout the night to answer questions from people.

 13:11
 And I was like, you know, that's an insanely bad sleep hygiene, insanely bad.

 13:16
 He's like, well, I don't have a choice.

 13:18
 I have to do it this way.

 13:19
 And it's like, do you though?

 13:21
 Do you have to?

 13:23
 And another gal who had been complaining very bitterly and is a very entrenched personality in many, many ways, which, you know, these things go together, right.

 13:36
 But she said, well, that she couldn't do that because she had to record her steps for the day that she had to, you know, like when she got into bed, then I don't know, you know, like eek out that last step of getting into bed.

 13:50
 And then she had to record it on her laptop.

 13:52
 And I'm like, write it on a piece of paper.

 13:54
 She's like, well, that won't work, 'cause you know, that's like, well, no, we, we do things because that's how we choose to do them.

 14:02
 And so all of this is useful for people who are trying to build better writing habits because that writing habit, what you're doing in order to write needs to be the most important habit.

 14:20
 And all the other things are built around that.

 14:23
 And there, there are certain things that are unavoidable, right?

 14:25
 You know, like, you know, waking up in the morning, maybe the first thing you do is hit the restroom, right?

 14:31
 You know, because hey, human bodies and all of that sort of thing.

 14:36
 We have to do these things to to tend the mortal coil, as it were.

 14:42
 But other things can be moved around, right?

 14:46
 You know, a dog can be trained to wait till 8:00.

 14:49
 He might not be happy, but he can be trained.

 14:53
 You know, we have ways that we are enslaved to other people's schedules.

 14:58
 What time does the the school start?

 15:01
 What time are you expected to be at your day job?

 15:05
 You know, like maybe it's a shopping.

 15:07
 You have to open it because your customers expect you to be there.

 15:10
 And so there are certain things that are, are less movable than others, although you can negotiate things.

 15:18
 When I had my day job, one thing I negotiated for was to work for 10 hour days.

 15:25
 And so I would work like 7:00 to 6:00 with an hour lunch break and have Fridays off to write, you know, and then you have to, you have to do it.

 15:38
 You have to make sure you actually write on those Fridays and not say take a lot of naps, which I may have done.

 15:44
 Also, it kind of comes around to this whole thing of people saying, well, I don't have time to write.

 15:48
 And The thing is, is you're never going to have time to write.

 15:51
 You're never going to find time just lying around.

 15:54
 The, the big exception to this was lock down during the pandemic.

 15:58
 A lot of people started writing because they actually did have time lying around on the ground.

 16:03
 Otherwise, we don't.

 16:06
 You have to make the time, have to make the time to write.

 16:10
 And one way to do that is to look at which things are fungible, which things can be swapped out, can be moved around, can be rescheduled.

 16:21
 Do you have to do this thing at this time of day?

 16:24
 And yes, sure, there are some things that, yeah, you know, like you have kids, you have a time that you have to get your kids to school.

 16:31
 And it's like, but what about the time before that?

 16:33
 What about the time after that?

 16:35
 If you look at those things that cannot be moved, cannot be negotiated, then look at what you can do around that.

 16:44
 You know, these things that you thought maybe were entrenched, maybe they're not.

 16:50
 Maybe they're only that way because you have this idea that you have to be available all night long.

 16:57
 You know this, you know, sort of telling yourself that you're indispensable, right?

 17:03
 It's like, well, if they couldn't ask you a question at 2:00 in the morning, when would they ask it or who would they ask it of, right?

 17:11
 I had science fiction fantasy book group last night.

 17:14
 It was a small group, which was too bad.

 17:17
 Where were you, Dina?

 17:20
 I think a lot of I notice a lot of people don't come when we read sequels, which is understandable, although I think it was last month we had read a sequel and I had not read, I'd read book one, but not book 2.

 17:34
 And this was book 3.

 17:36
 And I ended up, I started reading book 3 and then I bounced and but I came to the discussion anyway.

 17:43
 And it was interesting because I did get to talk about why I bounced and we and I got to hear the rest of the discussion.

 17:51
 So I think even if you don't read the book, Dina, that you should come to the discussion anyway.

 17:57
 But in this case, we read Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler.

 18:02
 And I mentioned this, I think in the last podcast.

 18:05
 But you know, she is such a good writer and that I'm trying to, when I read someone who is such an amazing writer, like this story is dark, it's not fun.

 18:18
 And one of the first things that Jim Sorensen, who leads the group, does, says, you know, he'll ask like, who read it?

 18:26
 How did we read it on audio or traditional style?

 18:31
 And he'll ask who liked it, who who finished it, who liked it.

 18:36
 And it was funny because we all responded with this sort of and, and he said within a certain measure of liking, right?

 18:44
 Because none of us like, we all read it.

 18:48
 We all finished it.

 18:50
 We were all incredibly compelled by it.

 18:53
 Liking is not the word because it's, it's a painful story.

 18:59
 And that's an amazing writer who can get you to not be able to put down a story that is like almost physically painful to read.

 19:11
 And one of the other people in the group brought up how how immediate and visceral her descriptions are that there's one aspect of parable of the talents is people have created these slave collars that are locked on and controlled by a remote control.

 19:29
 A fairly familiar trope I guess at this point, but it inflicts so much pain on the wearer if they misbehave that it basically turns people into animals.

 19:41
 And Octavia Butler, for very understandable reasons, is very interested in the idea as a creator of slavery.

 19:52
 And, you know, she wrote Kindred, where a modern black woman ends up in the body of a black slave a couple centuries before.

 20:00
 I haven't read it.

 20:01
 And I want to, you know, so exploring the idea of what turns people into slaves.

 20:10
 What?

 20:11
 Destroys their humanity and one of the people in the group brought up the idea of like that you could feel it like when they first put the the collar on the protagonist and how horrible it is.

 20:24
 So anyway, it was it was a difficult read.

 20:26
 I have more things I want to say about it, but I spent too much time talking about walking the dog, so I'll have to talk about it on Friday.

 20:33
 I'll make a a note to do that because she does a lot of interesting things structurally that I want to talk about.

 20:40
 But yeah, when you read a book that like, even though you don't like like it, but you are compelled by it, that's if you are a writer, that's a great opportunity to study.

 20:54
 How do they do it 'cause Octavia Butler does not spend a whole lot of time on sensory description.

 21:00
 Like it.

 21:01
 One of the first things you learn as a newbie writer is this whole thing of like, well, use the vibe sensors and you can sometimes spot newbie writers 'cause they'll be like, she saw this and she heard that and it smelled like this, and then she felt this and it's sort of like going through them.

 21:18
 And they'll do that like over and over again.

 21:21
 And it's like, well-intentioned.

 21:23
 Great idea, good way to get at things.

 21:26
 Now let's walk it back, looking at how Octavia Butler describes things that make you feel as if you were suffering AT2I.

 21:40
 I don't know.

 21:41
 I can't tell you.

 21:42
 I don't know how she does it, but she does.

 21:45
 All right, on that note, I'm going to try to get my own less brilliant words to work this morning.

 21:55
 I hope you all have a fantastic week.

 21:57
 I hope that you find a way to shift something around just to make we won't go for frictionless, but maybe a tad more friction free in your life.

 22:11
 You all take care.

 22:13
 Bye bye.