Navigating Criticism and Creativity with A.A. Sekhon (New Author Series)

331 / How can you balance craft and criticism? How do you know when to take feedback and when to reject it? 

A.A. Sekhon shares insights on filtering feedback, writing historical fiction, and staying creative when you don’t feel creative or inspired. 

• Navigating the difference between writing and marketing skillsets
• The role of constructive vs. destructive criticism
• Finding your first readers and building review momentum
• Leveraging an academic background to enrich storytelling
• Why writing for yourself can unlock creative freedom

✨ This week’s sponsor is BookFunnel.com.

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⚡Links:

• A.A. Sekhon: https://assumptionsbook.wordpress.com/purchase/
• Book Funnel: BookFunnel.com
• Indie Author Magazine article about Sara Rosett: https://indieauthormagazine.com/sara-rosett-shares-how-shes-built-a-cozy-career-in-indie-publishing/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And honestly, it is sometimes hard to suss out the difference between the two. But essentially, if someone is saying, okay, when reading this, maybe I needed more clarity on this. When reading this, I felt like it dragged in this part, but it was okay over here. That's a more nuanced approach. That's more indicative of constructive criticism.

Jami 0:24

Welcome to the Wish by None Men podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have AA second. We do, and it was really great.

Sara 0:34

It was really great. We talked about a lot about criticism, handling criticism, when to take criticism, when to decide it's not for you.

Jami 0:43

How to recognize constructive criticism and just destructive criticism. Yeah.

Sara 0:49

And writing during dry spells. Yeah. And or being creative during dry spells, and sometimes how your creativity, it's you just have to keep it going in different ways. It was really interesting. And a lot about historical fiction because AA writes Victorian sort of thriller, mystery, character-driven novels. So we talked a lot about research and finding your market. So it was really good. Yeah, it was. It was. We have BookFunnel as a sponsor for this episode. We will talk about them a little bit more.

Jami 1:20

Okay. Good. What's been going on with you this week?

Sara 1:22

For me, it has been all revision all the time. That's all I'm doing. Trying to get as much done. But with revision, I can't do it eight hours a day because my brain just can't handle it. So I work intently for a couple of hours and then I'm brain dead. And I'm like, okay, I'm done. I'm mentally and physically exhausted. Isn't that weird? I'm tired because I use my brain so much.

Jami 1:44

Who knew? Yeah.

Sara 1:46

So basically that's all I've been doing writing-wise. It's not very exciting. But I did get a link from Indie Author magazine. I did an interview with them recently. Did you see it? Yeah. So that's out. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And that was a fun interview. And we talked a lot about just changes in writing career. We talked about the podcast. We talked about the letters. It was a lot of fun. It's so good.

Jami 2:10

What about you? Oh, I'm not physically writing. I'm mentally writing. No, I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I gotta think. Well, that's a that's an important part of our process. It is. And I wish I could think and write at the same time, but I gotta I kind of if I do that, I just end up with words I can't use, and I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm gonna go. That's another thing. But it's it's all good. It's all good. Still dealing with the dogs. And what else? What else? I guess that's it, really. Just doing that. I feel like one of the kids. I don't do anything during the summer. Yeah, I'm fortunate that I can do that because I'm not the primary breadwinner, thankfully. Oh, I know something. I've started this thing on TikTok and Instagram. Let's talk book publishing. So if anybody wants to follow me, we're I'm just doing a weekly unless I've come up with something I want to talk about more than that. But I just a little thing. It's right now kind of geared towards new authors, but it's I was sort of thinking I would do all levels and cool. Yeah. And what are you talking about for those things? Just like the first thing I talked about was people worry about think too many steps ahead. Like when they're first writing their book, they're just like, I don't know what to do about marketing, and I don't know what to do. How do I find a publisher? How do I find an agent? Do I need an agent? Do I need a publisher? All of those things, and really it can serve as resistance and keep you from writing. Certainly did for me. And so really you just need to get words on the page. You need a book before you need a word. Yeah. And so that, and then yeah, this week I talked about we don't pay anyone to publish our books. We don't pay anyone to books.

Sara 3:56

You don't have to. No. Even if you go with a traditional publisher, you should not be paying the agent.

Jami 4:03

So an agent, the agent gets paid when they sell your book. The traditional publisher gets paid when they publish your book and the book sells. And all of that is settled it up front. Like you know that. And yeah, I just things like that. Things that a lot of people don't know. And of course, our most of our audience already knows those things. That's great. What's it called again? It's called let's talk book publishing. I've just really been kind of hit with what kind of what do I bring? What do I bring to this industry? What do I bring to this industry that I love? And my top t 10 strengths are very relational. And I just feel in positivity is one of them. And I like to help. And so yeah, I wanted to do that.

Sara 4:45

I think that's perfect for you. And I love that because a lot of the things, it doesn't need to be a whole podcast episode. Some things we talk about, and we're like, well, that was that's not really enough for an episode, but for a TikTok just to explain something simple that people have questions about, I think that's great.

Jami 5:02

And then one more thing, and this is just this is unlocking a manifestation for anyone who wants to join me on the journey. Yesterday in the clubhouse room, people have been talking about Publisher Rocket. I'm like, I really don't think I utilize that as well as I should. And so I opened it and I just put in one of my categories that my book, the most recent book is in, and it a bunch of books came up and it tells you how many days it's been out, how many pages it is, what its rank is, how much it makes in a day, and how much it makes in a month. And I know those those numbers aren't exactly right and they can be off, but I saw the Calamity Club, which the author is she wrote the help, and the Calamity Club is all over social media right now. It's about it's a viral book, it's doing great. It's ranked number two in the store, and it said that it is making forty eight thousand dollars a day. One point one six six million dollars a month. Y'all, I didn't know it was possible. I as much as I've been in this business, as many success stories about as I've heard, I that just did not fit in my brain, and I can't stop thinking about it. And it just shows that even though we think we're like positive and we're open to things, I did not even know that was possible. And then some Kat Johnson did a little research and it looked like that at its height, Fifty Shades of Grey was making a million dollars a week. That is insane. And I know those books are traditionally published, and so the traditional publisher is getting their cut, but that is just if that doesn't tell you there are a lot of readers we're not reaching, I don't know what else would. And so that is I think I find that hopeful. I just find that amazing. And so anyway, the potential. Yeah, good for her, and wish her all the success and because it's motivating. It's just very encouraging to me that this business is not dead, that people are still finding books, there are still readers that we haven't reached.

Sara 7:17

There's a a lot of potential, and I think a lot of the author community lately we've kind of been in shock because things have changed so much. And the path that was very simple to follow in the past, not that it was easy to do, but there was an easy way that you were like, Oh, do these things and you'll be successful. That's been blown apart. We've all been like, uh, what do we do now? But obviously, there's still potential. There's still people out there looking for books and reading books and loving books. So that's awesome. Yeah. So we should also mention BookFunnel is our sponsor for this podcast. They are they deliver ebooks and audiobooks to readers and they connect to your email service and they take care of tech support. So readers aren't emailing you about how to download your book, which is wonderful. It's like the number one benefit is that you don't have to deal with I don't know how this, how your e-reader works or your phone works.

Jami 8:12

You're not having to deal with that.

Sara 8:14

Yeah, their avatar consumer is GLADIS, I think. So, yeah, so if you haven't checked out BookFunnel, we both highly recommend it. We use it all the time for delivery of ebooks, audiobooks, arts, books. I can't imagine not using BookFunnel to get books to readers. So check that out at bookfunnel.com. And we should probably get on with the interview.

Jami 8:35

We should. It's really great. All right, here is AA.

Sara 8:39

Today we are really excited to talk with AA Second. Hi, AA. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

I'm fine. How are you doing?

Sara 8:45

We are great, and we are so happy you're here. Let me read your bio in case people aren't familiar with you. AA Second is a scholar of history and human nature fueled almost entirely by historical facts and caffeine. AA strives to bring the past to life with both compassion and unflinching will realism, whether in works of fiction or teaching at university. AA is the author of Assumptions, the first book in the Passing Normal series, in its forthcoming sequels and its eventual prequel. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Tell us how did you get into writing? Oh, as a career path, it was some circumstances that that happened to me. Now, I had been just writing for my own enjoyment since I was, I had probably in middle school, but as far as making a career out of it, I happened in grad school to develop fibromyalgia. And that put the kibosh on a normal nine to five career for me. So I just thought, okay, I've read a lot of books. I enjoy writing. A lot of authors in history have been kind of sickly. It's not gonna put you out of the game. And and I do still teach part-time, but that's about all I can manage.

Sara 9:51

So what is your definition of success? We like to ask everybody this.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

If I can write something that I enjoy reading that someone else also enjoys reading, and if it can find the audience that enjoys reading it, that is success.

Sara 10:10

Yeah.

unknown 10:10

Yeah.

Sara 10:11

It's like a little Venn diagram, isn't it? You get the all those things together and you find that sweet spot in the middle. What do you wish you'd known about writing and craft?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I wish I had known from the get-go to find a marketing team, get an agent, that sort of thing, because it is a very different skill set to be able to write a book versus being able to market a book.

Jami 10:33

Oh, yes, yes. We both know that very well. As does our audience, yeah.

unknown 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Maybe some people can pull it off both of them, but I am not that person.

Sara 10:45

Well, tell us a little bit about your writing process. How did you come to write your first book? And how did you get through that process? Well, sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

For the the first book assumptions, I had been wanting to write some kind of, you know, historical fiction and or mystery sort of novel. I had wanted to set it in the Victorian era, maybe in the British Isles. And it was actually, funnily enough, on a plane ride back from Japan that the idea came to me because I had just been a couple of weeks in Japan and I had witnessed all of this modernity layered over a very, let other people say, face sort of culture. There are certain protocols that you follow, all of the very strict codes of behavior. And it reminded me, I had heard about the Victorian era with my grandparents talking about their parents talking about it. But it was another thing to witness something somewhat similar in person, just as far as the very strict mores.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

And on the plane ride home, I'm not a person who usually can sleep on flights. So it's it's sort of that sleep-deprived brain, you've got all the ideas churning around, having just had that experience. And I had I started writing it down on a cheap little notebook from the hundred yen store, which is about like the dollar store. The first line came to me then, and I just went with it. And I had the first few chapters down by the time we landed.

Jami 12:11

Oh wow, that's amazing. That's funny. Yeah, you you came up with a probably higher brow concept than I did on an airplane. I can't I wrote rom com and I came up with an idea of a talking cat, a cat with a POV, not a talking cat. A cat with a POV.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Well, I was gonna say there's high brow, there's rom com. There's it all has its place. Every there's an audience for everyone.

Jami 12:32

There's an audience for everyone, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

You just have to have the authors find the audience and lose them.

Jami 12:38

Yeah, that is true. And so speaking of that and marketing, which you had mentioned before, what do you wish you'd known about it? What about it is so challenging to you?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

For one thing, it is expensive. Yeah. And so I I tend to save money anyway, but I wish I had started setting aside money specifically for marketing a bit sooner, just to be able to be able to do some some things a little sooner than I did. But also just the importance of finding the the right fit, like the right marketing team, the and the people who know their genre, who typically can help you get your book in front of the right audience. That's important. So they're the fit between the the agency or agent, depending and your work.

Sara 13:22

People are always curious, how did you find your first readers? Because that seems to be a hurdle. Once you figure out kind of who your people are, then you can find more of them. But how did you find your first readers?

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Oh, I started so small. I, you guys, I started so small.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

That's how we all start. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah. The the first readers were just some of my friends and family. And then from there, I asked them, hey, if you enjoyed it, could you leave a review on Amazon? Could you do this sort of thing? And then from there, I got in contact with as well the publisher once I had the money for it, and said, Hey, could you my publisher is Rowanvale Books, and they offer a service where they have a pool of readers who volunteer to read books and you can pay them for the service. Hey, can you have people leave reviews of my book? You of course have no control over what the review will be, so you better hope the readers like your book. But still, it is a way to get reviews. And of course, anybody they could leave a review with that service on Amazon, on Goodreads. And of course, anyone that you personally know or friend of a friend who is willing to leave a review, don't be afraid to ask them. You know, good, bad, or indifferent, please leave a review.

Sara 14:36

Yeah, and it's often a good idea to put something like in if you do an author note at the end of the book, you could say, if you've enjoyed this, I would love it if you would leave a review and just leave it at that and let them take the initiative. But yeah, it is hard to ask for reviews, but it's something that is very helpful for your book once you can get that going. So yeah, it's a good thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And I do find that that readers who do enjoy certain books or even if they have certain suggestions that could have been improved this way, those readers they tend to be willing to share their opinion if they feel strongly one way or the other. So as long as you think you may have gotten a reaction from your readers, they'll probably be willing to leave a review, which is a good thing.

Jami 15:17

Yeah. But reviews are it's tough. And Sarah longer than me. But I just put out a new book in May. And that book is in a different genre. I made it completely hard for myself. Different genre. I didn't go into Kindle Unlimited, I went wide with that book, and because of that, and then I did NetGalley Co-op and a couple of other review services. NetGalley was another one that I used, yeah. And I just thought, well, that's enough. And in the past, I've always had an advanced reader team. Like by day four or five, I've had at least a hundred reviews, and then it's gone up from there. I just got that's been out since May 18th, and I just a week and a half ago hit a hundred reviews. It made a big difference not having a group of people lined up to read the book in advance and put a review up. I've been doing this a long time. I know that. And that is in a lot of ways a rookie mistake. And I made it. We all do. You know, it's just tough. It's just tough if you don't have a real plan for it. It's tough. What are you glad you know now?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

I am glad that I know that for one, I needed a marketing team because just when I first started out, I'm from a family of entrepreneurs, and this sores the the mentality of, oh, I can do that. No, no, you really can't.

Sara 16:46

Some people are gifted in that area and some people are not.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

It's the thing of, okay, this is not your bailiwick. You know, hand it off to the people who have expertise in this area. We all have gifts differing. These are not yours, these are theirs.

Sara 16:59

Yeah, I think with indie authors, it's often hard though to hand things off because we do feel like, oh, we're doing all of this, and nobody knows the book as well as we do, and nobody will put the time in that we will. But then you're putting your time into marketing instead of maybe writing the next book.

Jami 17:15

Well, for the right amount of money, they will.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

So, you know, again, start saving for it early, just set the money aside.

Jami 17:23

Yeah, I think that's important though, because as self-published authors, indie authors, which most of our audience is, they are bootstrapping a lot of it. And I did, it's it's kind of known in the industry that I've sold plasma to pay for my first edits. So it's it is a lot of bootstrapping, but and we tend to think, yeah, we can do it all, but maybe you need to look at hiring somebody else to do that. Maybe your time is better spent writing the next book or doing other things rather than trying to market that book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

And and in fairness too, shop around, shop around, find the right fit for your book. And also if there's someone who's almost as good of a job as someone who's easily twice as expensive, go with almost as good.

Sara 18:08

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, how did you vet the people that you worked with for marketing then? How did you buy them?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

The publisher had some suggestions. I also did some homework on my own just looking at I looked at the books that I liked and tried to do research on okay, who marketed these books? Or anything like that. And I got quotes from just three the top three different ones and decided, okay, how much, what are they quoting me? What will they say they will do? What is that compared to what I could do?

unknown 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

And how much are they charging value for money? So I I went I went with not the top, top one because that was out of my pay grade, but but next best. So yeah, I feel like that was and they did a wonderful job. They were both very good marketing companies. Just because one was more expensive doesn't necessarily mean that it's better than the other one.

Sara 19:03

So yeah. I think that's very interesting. And so can you tell us a few things that they did for you? Because most indie authors don't go out and recruit PR or a marketing agency.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Sure. So they went through and looked at the genres that my book fell in. They read the book themselves, of course, which was is always a good, you know, starting point. That's a good thing. But they went and saw, okay, what books do we think that this book is similar to? And which uh where do we find the audiences for those types of books? So doing a bit of research on where perhaps to find the right readers that would fit the niche. It is a really a niche book that I've written as historical fiction mystery.

Jami 19:43

A bit of a historical mystery. So yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah. When you wait, when you start with he awoke in a morgue in London, that's going to be a certain kind of reader. That's not going to be for everybody. But uh so they did some very good research on the readers, where readers might be likely to encounter the book. Also hooking me up with websites, which I actually, you know, that basically they were good at getting connections. And then I put in the work, for example, for some of the websites that they hooked me up with, being giving, you know, I could give an interview, I might write an article for the website talking about certain aspects of the writing process. Yeah. It's it's not just, oh, you hand it off to marketing and you don't think about it. You are still engaged as an author. But everything from different websites and articles, interviews, podcasts like like this and podcast right now, right?

Jami 20:32

How do so uh do you think with your sub the subject matter of your book and the genre and everything, do you think it helps your academic uh background, career help definitely? Yeah, yeah, with different. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

You think about things that someone who is perhaps unaware of that history might not even think about. For example, one, of course, all the different social mores that you have learned about, read about, all that sort of thing, which is important for a Victorian novel, but also just the day-to-day living. I would look at the Victorian era as the transition in into our more modern era. They did have things like they had the railroads, they had the London Underground, just not like it is today, but the early version of it. But they also had things like cholera. They had things like coal fireplaces that would be like, oh, that's a health hazard. Don't do that today. Yeah. And I guess as as Americans, we might be more familiar with this, but lack of a social safety net. Yeah. Having been over here in Europe for a bit, it's very different. More similarities with the modern day United States and Victorian era England than I do with modern day United States and modern day Europe in some regards. Just as far as the classism and the tr striving to survive.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

But yeah, again, for example, in Victorian era, someone could catch a fever and just die. You've died of scarlet fever. It's sort of what is it, Oregon Trail, you have died of dysentery. Sorry.

Sara 21:59

I've been shocked too. Doing historical research about some of the things that you know before penicillin, you just did not have the ability to recover like you do now. And then I'm working on a book right now, and I learned about insulin in the 20s was when that became a thing where you could get insulin and you could survive, you could live. And so, you know, you think about these things now, and it's just so common to us. You have to completely change your mind frame when you're thinking about your life.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yes, and even things like I mean, we've heard probably in the news about Mitch McConnell. When he was a child, he had polio. Polio. That was a thing that was very common during the Victorian era. Polio. Many people were crippled for life because they had polio. And that was just the breaks that you got polio, now that's your life. Try to survive if you can, rely on your family, hope that your breadwinner and your family doesn't die. You talk about lack of rights. Women didn't have nearly the rights that that we have today. There was any pick any ism that's negative, racism, classism, sexism, all that you can see their precedence in the Victorian era. There's a reason we are where we are today.

Jami 23:12

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So then on so those are the things that helped you. But on the flip side, was it hard? Because Sarah talks about this a lot, like deciding how much research needs to go in a book. It's good for you to know, but does a reader need to know that? Was that hard?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, that I had to, I edited before I even submitted this to anyone to look over, any editor, anyone. I edited the book myself, probably somewhere between 16 and 20 times. Oh wow. Yeah. J just to put myself try to put myself in the reader's shoes. Let's pretend I'm not a historian. Let's pretend I'm not fascinated by the minutiae of a certain era. What does the reader actually need to know? Right. Correct. Yeah. And in fairness, I was somewhat inspired in in this search to parrot down and parrot back as much as I could for the reader's benefit by some of the authors from the Victorian era, because some of them have this talent of they're using the more old school vo vocabulary, what to our ears might sound a little more advanced. And yet they can, it's still understandable. You still get the meaning from context. It's a bit briefer compared to some of their peers at the time. And then others are go on for 10 pages describing curtains in one room of one house, right? No one needs a 10-page description of curtains. You're getting paid by the word at that point. I am not. To hold the reader's interest in this era where information comes at us practically by the nanosecond. It's important to make sure that things keep momentum.

Sara 24:55

Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that sometimes you don't see it until you finish the book and then you go back and you figure out, oh, it's really slow here. Need to pick this up. And yeah, I get the descriptions of the curtains can go and all that stuff.

Jami 25:07

Yeah, exactly. I remember reading Aragon. Do you remember Aragon? I remember you read that. And I really loved it. I read across every genre. It doesn't matter if I like the book, I like the book. But I remember thinking, and this is well before I ever thought about writing, was okay, I don't need to, I don't need a three-page description of that doorknob. And I promise you, not nothing against Christopher. I can't say this. But I don't need that. I remember just flipping the page, going, okay, now we're to a point where things are happening again.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

That was me reading Thomas Hardy's Test of the Derberville. Oh yeah. Yeah. Which even one of Hardy's friends back in the day said, I like most of your books. I don't like this one.

Jami 25:56

Yeah. That was funny. Well, your publicist reach out to us about having you on. One of the things you sent us a list of things you could talk about. And really that's I looked at it and was like, oh, we need we need somebody to talk about this. So let's talk about, let's talk about criticism. How can you take it without letting it do derail you? And including how to tell the difference between helpful feedback and truly unhelpful feedback.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yes, I would term that, you know how like people will say, oh, it's constructive criticism. There genuinely is constructive criticism that will help you make your work better, and that is wonderful. If you are receiving constructive criticism, just check your ego at the door. This is someone willing to give their time to help you listen. Could be even be a service you paid for, in which case, hey, get your money's worth. On the other hand, the reverse, yeah, you you very nicely term it unhelpful criticism. I would building on the model of constructive criticism, there's some criticism that feels downright destructive.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

I would call it destructive criticism. And that you need to take with a grain of salt. And honestly, it is sometimes hard to suss out the difference between the two. But essentially, if someone is saying, okay, when reading this, maybe I needed more clarity on this. When reading this, I felt like it dragged in this part, but it was okay over here. That's a more nuanced approach. That's more indicative of constructive criticism. Destructive criticism, I can give a great example. There was a friend of a family friend, right? So someone I do not know. And the family friend, Blenderhart, she was trying to help. She said, Okay, this guy, he writes stuff set in the past, you write stuff set in the past. Have him have a look over your manuscript and give some feedback. Right? Okay, mine is think of it as like vaguely in the style of Upton Sinclair, kind of Victorian-light type language and mystery and character-driven and et cetera. Right. And atmospheric. This guy, this guy did write stories set in the past. That was technically true.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

But he wrote basically 1920s, 30s detective stories that practically had she was a leggy dame, that kind of genre, but modern day language in it. And and this guy, my style of writing was such not his cup of tea.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

That he gave back the manuscript and there was only one comment in red on the front page, and it said, It's like you vomit words with a frowny face. And that was it.

unknown 28:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, that's not helpful. That's not helpful. And that is destructive criticism because everybody writes in whatever genre they write in. My book never tried to be a noir detective novel. It's not. It's there's a bit of mystery, sure, but it's historical fiction, mystery, feel for Victorian time, sort of character-driven thing. And it was at a time where I was debating should I pursue either getting published or self-publishing or anything? Would anyone actually want to bother to read anything that I wrote? I I had at the time I was dealing with depression, I had very low self-esteem. And it was it gutted me to read that destructive criticism. But conveniently, I happened to be in the bookstore about a week later, and I picked up a book that was at the time very popular. Now, in deference to that book and that author, because everybody has their audience and their genre, what's for one person is not necessarily for another person. But I picked up that popular book and I started reading it. And I made myself finish the first chapter and I put the book back on the shelf, content not to read another word of it, and thought, you know what? If this can get published, I can get published.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Absolutely. It's the ups and the downs. You take you have to learn to take it with a grain of salt. If you are struggling with depression, seeking help for depression is also helpful. Let me just put that out there.

Jami 29:51

We're big therapy proponents on this show. Yes, we are.

Sara 29:55

I think genre is so important when you ask for cr for feedback, criticism, feedback, whatever you want to call it. Because a person who reads mostly romance is not going to light my books. They're going to be like, oh, there you need to up the romance. And somebody who reads a thriller is going to say, Oh, it's kind of boring. You need a ticking clock in there. And you can add those things in the genre I write, but it's the balance that you need for the people that you're trying to reach. So that is so important to think about. Oh, is this person that do they mesh with this type of book? And sometimes you don't find that out until you get the criticism back. And then you have to go, oh, okay, this is not actually helpful. It's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah. And it is often helpful to look at, okay, my book, what books, obviously every book is different, but what books are already out there that this book might be somewhat similar to? Correct. Look for that and be like, okay, do I know anyone who reads those books? Or if you're with a marketing person, can they find people who like reading those books? Because then maybe they'll like your book too.

Jami 31:09

If you do get cr constructive criticism, it's good criticism, but you don't necessarily agree with it, or it doesn't, it's not fitting where you're wanting this story to go or the character to be. How do you make the determination, you personally, how do you make that determination to accept their accept it and change it, or just stand on your own words and keep it?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

We all have those times. I try to look at the two things. One, the effect that making the change would have on the story. Like what how does this change the trajectory of the story? What else would have to change if this changes? And sometimes that's for the better. Sometimes you wind up going down paths you might not have thought about. Right. But other times you think, okay, no, that actually won't work with the story because it's it I'd be a couple of things. Either I'd be riding myself into a corner, or the main thing to me is this in character for this character. That's the main thing. Somebody could say, Oh, I want the character to do this, and I'm thinking that's great, but that character, based on everything going previously, probably wouldn't do that.

Jami 32:16

Now in a million years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Because that's just not that character. That's not how they're wired. Now, this other character over here, maybe they could do that. Maybe that could be incorporated somehow, maybe. But you have I do write character-driven fiction. It has to be internally consistent. And if a character should do something that's not typical of them, but still something that I think they could, under the right circumstances, perhaps do, then there needs to be maybe some reflection by them of, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this. But I just can't leave it alone. I gotta see what that sort of thing. There has to be you have to make it consistent. It must be consistent.

Sara 32:56

Yeah. Yeah, you need that sort of transition as they're mulling it over the character themselves sometimes. Yeah. Another thing was about if you're having a hard time writing, if you're blocked, why practice matters, and maybe it's not necessarily getting down new words. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Sure, sure. My own experience, because I am a person with due to the fibromyalgia, I have a somewhat compromised immune system. Not as bad as someone going through chemo, but certainly not normal. And during the pandemic, my brain just went into survival mode. It's like you want to write, you want to write new creative stuff in that sequel you're working on? Good luck. We're gonna think about how many people have died today. Isn't that a cheery? It's not good. So I found myself having to do things to get my brain, if not fully out of survival mode, to just put it on the back burner so it's in the background of the mind and not in the foreground, at least for a certain period during each day, right? Yeah. Just need some break. And it could be diving into the series that you like, it be the books or movies around. I was always reading. I was always reading that I could still do. When I finally felt up to writing, I found that I couldn't work on anything that I attached any importance to even when my brain was still in survival mode. So I just I wrote some back and forth stories with friends who also enjoy writing. Silly stuff. It could be like, here's a short story, it's set on Mars. What are we doing this week? You wrote a paragraph, I wrote a paragraph, it's fine. Or, or even I have a group of friends who enjoy like the DD style role-playing. It could be, okay, we managed over during the pandemic over Zoom to have a DD session and we're gonna have a next one next week. In between, are our characters doing anything? Do we want to write, take turns writing what our characters are doing? And it's zero stakes. It's just you and your friends. Or you're or maybe you're writing a little silly story for yourself and if this happened, and it doesn't have to be anything. Right. And that is what I think really helped me get through the pandemic so that when it finally was over, I could get back to actually writing things that that I put a little more importance behind.

Sara 35:09

But just saying it doesn't have to be something that's going to go out in the world, it really takes the pressure off and it lets you probably be creative in a way that you weren't able to be during that time. Because I understand not being able to write during certain times. Certain things happen and you're just not able to write. So, but maybe you aren't working on the great American novel. You're working on this fun little short story that you've never had time to write.

Jami 35:33

Nobody may see or they may or may never go out.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

No one has to see this but me. I you know, I could live and die, and no one would set eyes on it but me.

Jami 35:42

I remember in January of 2021, I don't know if you're familiar with Clifton Strengths. I am top five, one of my top five strengths is empathy. And I remember saying to my husband, I cannot take one more world worldwide catastrophe. I cannot. My brain will not hold it. And so, yeah, I had a really hard time during COVID and just feeling creative at all because it just zapped me. And I so many people wrote during pandemic. That's when so many the market was flooded after that. Many books were born. Yeah. And I'm like, I am so jealous of those people who can just escape what's happening and write. And I'm not built that way, and I had to just accept it. I didn't really know that about myself until that happened. And I think that's important too. You just kind of have to accept it. You're not gonna change a lot, especially when you're my age, you're not gonna change a lot of your ingrained personalities. I think that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

I'm the same way. I would watch the news and watch the news, and then there came a point where I'm like, I can't watch another news item. I just can't. Yeah, I want to be able to sleep tonight to some degree.

Jami 37:02

Exactly. I I've since 2020, I have said more than once, I don't like living through history. This is the thing. Let's just go back to just do it just the boring times. What's gonna happen in 2020 seventeen or 20 all since 2020? It's like we're living through history and I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Well, history has never stopped, and the fact that we ever thought that it did, yeah, we, at least as Americans, we were living in the Pax Americana. And frankly, that is over.

Jami 37:33

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. How do you write as if no one is watching so creativity can actually flow?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

When I first started writing, like I said, that those first few chapters book, yeah, I never thought that it would see the light of day. I was writing it purely for myself. And I was writing it because, let me see, what was it? There was a piece of writing advice. Write the story you wish existed.

Jami 37:59

Yes, I love that. I did that. That was the book I wrote, the my first book.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

And just and just just do that. Do that, write it for yourself, pretend no one else is ever going to see it. When you're writing the rough draft, pretend no one is ever going to see it. This is only for you. You want to write this story because you wish it existed. That's all. That's it. And then later, if you look at it and if you think, oh, somebody might like this, then sure, go ahead, edit once you've edited it yourself. Maybe see if uh an actual editor would see what they think of it and go through the whole process. But when you're first writing that initial rough draft, you have to turn your critic off, your inner critic. And that's hard, but it's easy if you write on like a dollar store notebook that you don't think anyone else is gonna see. I don't get a hundred yen store notebook. I'm just writing on a plane because I can't sleep. It's yeah.

Sara 38:47

It's a good way to think about it. It is a changes your way of thinking.

Jami 38:51

Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard for our audience. There is a we've talked about this before, but there's a frantic energy in the self-publishing, indie publishing sphere because and I think it's in the tried publishing sphere too. It's just different. But we control everything so we can control when that next book comes out. We can put a book out faster than it once every year or whatever. And so that that frantic energy can sometimes, not sometimes a lot of the time, interfere with that creativity. And I I had to take a break because my sister died. And I vowed when I came back. Thank you. I vowed when I came back that I was not going to get caught up in that. That didn't work very well, but I have been able to recognize it and pull back. And so now I'm less frantic than I was right after that book came out. So yeah, it's a real thing, and it really does zap creativity. And I don't really care who you are. I really believe that if that's that that energy is there, it does motivate some people, but I think it really zaps creativity for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Honestly, I would agree. It of course depends on how the person's wired, but I'm similar to you in that respect.

Jami 40:09

Yeah. I know I've got listeners going, ah, it doesn't bother me.

Sara 40:14

But then you wonder, because we've seen a lot of people that have burnout because they have a frantic pace and then they just can't keep it up for 10 years or you know, five years or whatever. But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

And that's the thing is my fibromyalgia, it makes sure that I don't get too far into the burnout because my body will tell on me and I will be bedridden if I let the burnout creep in. It's kind of self-regulatory in that respect.

Sara 40:39

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And a lot of us we have those same limiters, but we don't recognize it until it really hits us and stops us in our tracks. So I think a lot of us are learning about that as we're going through these phases in the industry, as the industry changes. This has been great. We've really enjoyed talking to you about these subjects. We like to ask everybody what's the best thing you've done to set yourself up for success?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

I would say being able, and this is a very hard skill to learn, but being more able over time to be less attached to the bottom line sales figure results and just try to trust the process that the people who need to read the book, it will reach them given time and effort and marketing, and it will happen when it happens. And that's hard. It's so hard, which is why I say I've gotten a little better at it. Not like I've fully turned the corner.

Jami 41:41

Correct, correct. Yeah, that's very good. I think it's important for everybody to think about and listen to, and enjoying the process rather than the result, looking at the result.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

Just because you try to be a little less attached to the result. The only thing we can control is the process. That's all we can do. That's annual. You try you put it out in the world, you let it go. Yeah.

Jami 42:02

This has been great. Thank you so much. Tell everybody where they can find out more about you and your book and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Sure. Everything from info about the book to all of my social media stuff to where you can order it is at my website is assumptionsbook.wordpress.com.

Sara 42:22

We will have that link in the show notes. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish I'd known for writers.com slash support, or you can find us on Substack. And don't forget about BookFunnel. Go check them out. And we will see everybody next week. Bye, everybody.

Jami 42:37

Bye.