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The Higher Ed Podcast
How to Author on a Busy Schedule with Dr. Kelly Rossetto
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Kendall Hunt Author, Kelly Rossetto, juggles a full plate between teaching college and mothering two small children…and in the midst of it all, she wrote a textbook! Join us in our FIRST author feature episode as we discuss publishing on a busy schedule. We cover balancing responsibilities, time management, realistic timelines, self-care, and what to do when the typical advice DOESN’T work for you.
Dr. Kelly Rossetto and co-author Eric Martin's webinar: "Strategies for Cultivating Resilience in Your Classroom"
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Welcome on in to the Higher Education Podcast with Kendall Hunt Publishing. I am your host, Jen Lewis, Director of Marketing. And I've got one of my team members here today. Meghan, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Meghan Peterman:Hi, everyone. I'm Meghan Peterman. I'm Marketing Communication Specialist here with our Higher Education team. Been with the company for about five years now. And I'm super excited for today's talk.
Jen Lewis:I'm super excited, because this is our very first author feature today. So we've had a couple of people from the company on, we've had some people from our team, but this is our very first author call. So, I'm very excited to introduce to you guys Kelly Rossetto, who is one of our current authors for The Journey into College and Career: Cultivating Resilience Among Challenges. Kelly - so excited to have you. Why don't you go ahead, introduce yourself, maybe give us a little tidbit about yourself, and we can dive on in.
Kelly Rossetto:Excellent. Thanks, Jen. Thanks, Meghan. I'm so excited to be here. I'm Kelly Rossetto. And I am a professor of Communication at Boise State University. And I've been working on the book for the last couple of years. But I'm also teaching courses in interpersonal communication, stress and coping, research methods, and social media and close relationships. So I keep myself busy with the teaching and also managing some of the research requirements, of course,
Jen Lewis:Which is the great segue into the topic of this podcast, which is writing on a busy schedule. And you know, you and I had the pleasure of meeting each other in person at the FYE conference not too long ago. And when I thought about this topic, I was like, "Kelly would be perfect for this," because not only do you do all the things that you just mentioned, but you also are a mom, amongst many things, which we all know, it's a little bit more chaos on our plates every day. So I'm just gonna jump right in and ask the first question I have on my mind, which is what motivated you to write a textbook while juggling all of these other responsibilities?
Kelly Rossetto:Yeah, I love this question. Because sometimes, you get the advice of when you should say yes, and when you should say no. And, you know, sometimes you have that little itch in the back of your brain that's like, do this thing, do this thing. And then life gets in the way. And my co author, Eric Martin, and I have been working on kind of smaller scale research projects that turned into bigger scale research projects. And so that was keeping us really busy. We had some pre-COVID data with student wellness - which, we didn't realize COVID was going to happen - and then COVID happened, so we got during-COVID data, and then post-COVID data. So through this whole process, we were really thinking about resilience. And that little itch in the back of my mind was always a book - a book to think more about student resilience, and how we can better support our students who are really facing a lot of mental health challenges, especially right now. And so, finally, I decided I was going to kinda listen to the itch. And so, I guess what motivated me was that this was really like my passion project. This was the thing that was driving me to do so much of the other ancillary things. It was driving the way that I was teaching. And I needed to get it on paper. I needed to hear from experts around the country. I needed to put it all together in something that could make us all do the work to help support student wellness. And so just having that that passion project to finally grasp on to really kind of made it the easy choice.
Jen Lewis:How did you and Eric meet, by the way?
Kelly Rossetto:We actually met at faculty orientation. Boise State was his first institution, I had moved over from a different institution. We met at faculty orientation - he's in kinesiology, I'm in communication - you wouldn't expect that we would be a combo that would occur.
Jen Lewis:Unlikely duo, yeah.
Kelly Rossetto:But as we talked, we realized we were both really interested in in student wellness. And so we started out- we had an NCAA grant, and we did some resilience workshops. And that's kind of where we began, and then it kind of flowed from there.
Jen Lewis:That's great. I love that because I think student wellness - it doesn't matter what your discipline is, I think everybody cares about it. And I think there's such a need for content about that. So you guys met - who was the first person to say something or have this idea that you're talking about? How did it get started? What was the first thing you guys did to start the process of writing a book?
Kelly Rossetto:Yeah, well, like I said, we worked on the NCAA Wow. How did you guys connect with Kendall hunt publishing? I grant. And then we also worked on an internal grant here at Boise State. And I think that was actually the first one. We were really kind of wanting to do an assessment of what was going on with Boise State students. And so, once we learn that, and like I said, that's what stemmed into being the pre-COVID data that was unexpected. I think at one point, I said, "I'm really thinking I'm gonna need to turn this into a book. I need to have a different format for this." I think, at some point, the - I don't want to say the trajectory, but the monotony - that goes with writing journal articles starts to feel so like doing the same thing over and over again, and I really wanted actually students to have access to the work, as opposed to making it more scholarly, like don't know if you and I actually talked about that when we were scholar-oriented. So I mentioned it to Eric, and he was like,"Are you serious? Are you really gonna do it?" And then it kind of floated down the road a little ways. And then I was like, "You know, I think I'm ready. I think we need to write the book." And he's like,"You're gonna ask me to be a part of it." And I was like,"Sure. You want to be a part of it?" And he was like, "Heck, yeah." And the minute we started talking about it for real, we both got so excited. And I don't think either of us have ever been as excited about a project as we have been with this one. together. Yeah, I worked on the Casing Interpersonal book with Dawn Braithwaite and Jeff Child, so I had met the team, and I reached out to ask if there might be any interest in a student resilience book. And I had seen that Kendall Hunt was really involved with the First Year Experience. And this book is so perfect for the First Year Experience as well, so I thought Kendall Hunt would be a perfect fit.
Unknown:That's awesome. Kelly, I would love to jump back to something you said earlier that I loved. I feel like one of the biggest things we hear with time management is, "When should you say yes? And when should you say no?" and I love that you were kind of like, well, this is kind of too important for that conversation. But I fall into that all the time. Because that's still didn't get rid of the nitty gritty...you still had to then schedule the time and make the space to be able to pull this off. Once you guys decided, "Okay, now it's gonna happen," can you walk us through some of the some of the strategies you used to actually get the writing done amidst many other things?
Kelly Rossetto:Well, like I mentioned, Eric and I met at orientation, which means we had the same number of years in, which means we got to apply for sabbatical at the same time. So we did plan this process around when we would both have sabbatical. And so that was really helpful. I always say,"Use your resources." Time is a resource. And so, when your institution gives you time, take it and and run with it. That was kind of where Eric and I thought, "Okay, we can do the beginning legwork during the fall, and then get the first - because this is an edited volume, right? So we're getting in the content to do lots of the editing. And then the writing of the chapters that we wrote during our sabbatical time. So we actually were working from a distance because I moved to a different town for my sabbatical. And so we would organize, you know, specific work days, but then he also came out to California to visit so we could have some really saturated time to work together. But I think there was a lot less managing of the nitty gritty during that time, just because I had leave. So I didn't have as much service - I didn't have any of the teaching. And so it was once I went back - because it's a long process, right? In the later stages of the book, it became much more about, "Okay, how am I going to manage this time?" And I'll be honest, I am not a super planner. Things are in my calendar for necessity. But I am not somebody that schedules in specific writing time, and things like that. So I really kind of work by deadlines, knowing how long it's going to take, and knowing that I'm always going to meet the deadline. And so I think there certainly were more things I could say "No," to, because I was on sabbatical. And that is just so helpful. But I also ended up, you know, during that time, I created a new course for our department. I was obviously still parenting my children. And so, some of the strategies I use in that sense, because I do strongly believe in work/life balance, is that I would try to work my tail off during the school hours. My kids started preschool during that time. And then I would put it away. And I would take a break from it at night so that I could be fresh with it the next day and stay motivated to really work hard.
Jen Lewis:I love that. I love the unplugging at night. My husband and I do that - try to, for the most part - just getting home and putting our phones maybe back in our nightstand or somewhere. Because you know, when it's not accessible, I think you're just so much more present with your kids. But do you mind me asking, from start to finish, how long did it take you guys to write this book?
Kelly Rossetto:I was in preparation - I was thinking about that a lot. So I'm thinking we were reaching out to authors in the late summer, early fall. And that would have been 2022. And then I think we got our first chapters back. We did a lot of the editing in the spring of 2023 and then into kind of the beginning of the summer. And then it was right around Thanksgiving time when we were going through the iterations of the different revisions. And then Thanksgiving time, I think we turned around proofs and worked on kind of the stylizing in the fall. And then I think everything was complete by December. So a little over a year.
Jen Lewis:Yeah. And during this timeframe, you've got your kids in school, you kind of have somewhat of a schedule, you're blocking your time at night for your family while you were writing. I think this is such an important question for any potential authors or current authors who may agree with you. This question for me is probably the number one that I want to
ask:what do you think were like the biggest challenges? Let's say you've got eight hours. You wake up, you're like, I got eight hours to write today. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges when you're authoring a book?
Kelly Rossetto:Multitasking and distractions, right? You can be in a quiet room, and you're still going to find a distraction. I think email is the killer of productivity. I think some people could lose the motivational aspect if you get in a writing block or things like that. And because this was something that I can truly say, we were having so much fun writing and doing that, I never lost that motivation. We also got extremely lucky with our collaborators. I've heard that sometimes it can be really challenging, that people kind of drop off, or it takes forever to get people to agree to take part in the book. And we had a couple hiccups like that. We had one example where we thought that we were going to have one chapter written. But the focus ended up being amazing, but not what we expected. And so we were like,"Well, we still want that other chapter - what do we do?" And so we're like, "Well, we write it," right? You just have to roll with the punches. And so we did hit a couple of hiccups like that. We had one person who was supposed to write a chapter and then got really busy and was communicative. So that was nice, but got really busy and totally, understandably, couldn't write the chapter. And so, we had to seek out others. And we realized we had another chapter that was filling the need that this other one had. So we were able to balance that out. I think those can be big challenges if you kind of let them be, or you just work quickly to solve the problem and you move on. I think that another challenge can be working with a team, right? And different people having different things on their plate and different priorities. Eric is also a parent and has a lot of different projects going on. And so, of course, there can be times when he wants to hurry up, or I want to hurry up because we're in that mode. And so we always just really tried to work from two ends. So for example, if we had eight chapters ready for revision, he would start at eight, and I would start at one, and we'd meet in the middle, or things like that. We always tried to have those strategies to where we weren't duplicating each other's work. And then we could check it as we went through to the other half, right? So we could always check each other's work after, but we really tried to come up with just those very simple strategies so that it was like,"Okay, it's in, let's do it, let's go." And we didn't waste a lot of time just talking and talking and talking about how we were going to organize or what
Jen Lewis:I have a very specific way that I work in my we were going to do. office all day, because I'm someone that I cannot have the silence. And I think there are different types of writers, different types of learners. People work differently - Meghan, and I work very differently. I have to have some noise in the background. Otherwise, this silence is so deafening to me, so I listen to True Crime podcasts. I don't actually listen to every word, right? But it's that distraction. Did you do anything like that, maybe when you hit a block, or when your space was too quiet, or any techniques or things to share that helped you?
Kelly Rossetto:I can say, when thinking about the environment of where I work, it's very fluid. For me, it's sort of by necessity. I do have an office, obviously. But I don't always do my best work in my office, I think partially because it's too quiet. And I never really think about just turning on music. And so then I opened the door, but then I can be distracted by people walking by, or, you know, whatever the case may be. My best writing actually comes in coffee shops. And that has been since I was writing my master's thesis or my dissertation into my first like job. I think that that is a space where there's things going around on around me, but it's nothing that I can actually participate in. Yeah, I can participate in things on campus. And so then, the only distraction becomes email. So I try to just queue that out. And I'm better at doing that when I'm not in the office environment where I feel like my students should take priority. And so, yes, I like to have the music, I like to have people around me, but they are people that I can't necessarily talk to. I actually really enjoy partner working. A lot of times, I will meet up at a coffee shop with a colleague. As long as it's somebody where we know we're actually going to do work- you know, you have some where you're talking the whole time - then that's really productive time for me. And so that's my best environment. But it's not always feasible, right? Because I have to get to class, or I have advising, or different meetings on campus. When I am on campus, I really try to just kind of hunker down and pretend like I'm at a coffee shop, but I will say that is my most productive, because I think it has the distraction that I can't be a part of.
Meghan Peterman:the productivity advice that you read. Because you read, "Have a very stable writing space where you go so your brain can turn into writing mode," and you're like, "Well, that doesn't really work for me, I'm kind of more fluid and I like distraction." Or, "Make sure that your day is super structured and planned out." And you're like, "Well, you know, I'm not like a super planner." So what I love about this is I think we can get the idea that there's one type of personality that can author a book, and you're kind of living proof that no matter what personality you have, you can you can work with it and you can use its strengths and, especially in your case, it made the process really fun. It's almost like you should write a book on resilience or something.
Jen Lewis:Well, I think it's funny, because at Kendall Hunt, how we always talk about how there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to learning, so I think maybe that's like a big takeaway from today for anyone listening who may want to author a book, is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all for when you write a book. But I do think there are some some things you've talked about today, like collaborators and some of the challenges you face that it doesn't matter what your working environment is; those things are gonna happen either way. But I gotta be honest, I don't like working from home that much. Meghan knows this about me, because as a mom - and I'm sure this is for people without children, too - when I'm in my home space, it's hard for me to disconnect from seeing the things that I need to get done in my home. You know, the dishes, the laundry, the 527 crumbs I see on the floor from my kids' breakfast. So I think when you have that intentionality of going to a coffee shop, you're getting yourself out of your environment, and you're choosing to go somewhere intentionally. So I think sometimes your brain is just more fluid and fires off a little quicker, because you took that time to go somewhere, versus just staying in a space that's quiet and maybe a little isolating. So I 100% agree with you, I need the busyness.
Kelly Rossetto:I think as a faculty member, inherently our brains are divided, right? Because we have the research, we have the service, we have the teaching. And so when you're in your office, what takes priority? Even my office space doesn't necessarily always feel like a writing space. I know some people make up for that by doing a lot of their writing super early in their morning or really late at night, when they don't have the distraction of family, or things like that, but I'm not going to do it late at night, because that's for my mental health. And early in the morning, I'm being a mom. And I usually also try to get some personal health time in and do a workout, or something like that, because that's the thing that I'm not also gonna let go. You know, there's a lot of things in work mode that I'm not gonna let go. But there's also a lot of things in my personal life and my family life that I'm not going to let go. Because I just can't do good work if I don't feel healthy.
Jen Lewis:And I think that's a technique within itself, though. You know, we asked you earlier, were there any hacks or techniques? You say you're not much of a planner. But I think sometimes there are people who are planners. And Meghan knows I'm a huge advocate of this, is boundary setters. And I'm someone who sets boundaries at work: I set boundaries for myself, like with health. I refuse to let those things go, because I'm a better mom and a better wife. So I think maybe that's another takeaway, right? Is you might not be somebody who blocks your calendar, which I also love doing, but you might just be somebody who sets boundaries. And I think that's a really great skill set to work on, maybe if you are trying to author. But we've talked about the timeline, kind of those things - maybe can you touch on a little bit how your team at Kendall hunt helped you and supported you through the writing process? So people can maybe take that away? If they're considering writing a book, what does that looked like?
Kelly Rossetto:Yeah, absolutely. I think that it always felt like the team was supportive, but also flexible. Like if things came up, if we did have a challenge, it was,"How can we help with that?" Offering ideas, but also, if there needed to be a little wiggle room somewhere, we never felt this killer pressure. I don't work well when it's like somebody's hammering me over the head. I like things to be kind of on my own terms, and that can be both good and bad, right? I think when I was a student that wasn't so great, because my advisors were like, "Okay, you're just doing your thing," and I didn't get a lot of advising. But in this case, we really felt the freedom. That gave us a lot of confidence. And I think that's what was most supportive, is that when you feel like people trust what you're doing, and are there as a support system when needed, but not breathing down your back? And maybe that would have been different had we not met deadlines? But we did.
Jen Lewis:And we certainly do have authors that don't make deadlines, but that's okay. Life happens.
Kelly Rossetto:Exactly. And so I think just knowing that we Yeah, I had so much fun watching you guys, your presentation. could reach out when we needed to. We had, probably, quarterly meetings, just to kind of keep everybody apprised of what was going on and where we were at. And we always really wanted to That room was so loud and engaging. And you guys had so keep Kendall Hunt informed, kind of, "Here's our author list," and it was just always very encouraging. And, to me, those are what can be most supportive, I think, was kind of that esteem, support, and the instrumental support were where it was necessary. To send us information on the First Year Experience conference so that we knew to be a part of that - opening our eyes to different disciplines, making us think about social media in different ways. And so I think that we got a lot of the kind of support that we needed. And that made the process just feel like it was our own. It made us feel like we were trusted. But it let us know that these people really cared about the book. And I think that really came to life at the First Year Experience conference. many fun interactive activities, and I wish we would have recorded it, 'cuz it was so much fun. But you know, I would love to give you a little bit of space to talk about your book. Do you have anything upcoming that people can attend that you're doing? Or anything you'd like to talk about for this space? Yeah, I think the first thing to consider is that we are going to be doing a webinar with Kendall Hunt. And so that will hopefully have the same energetic vibe that the First Year Experience workshop had. Of course, it's a little harder when you're not in person, but that will get some of the information out on the content of the book, mostly just about how do we support student resilience? And that's what the book is all about: how do we help students cultivate resilience? This is not something that we're born with, or we're not. We need systems in place. We need structures in place. Just like I talked about with Kendall Hunt, we were resilient because we had that structure, we had that support. And so when we had challenges, we knew that we had backup. And I had mentors, working on a book with Kendall Hunt, and Dawn Braithwaite and Jeff Child previously, they acted as mentors. That's something that we also talked about in the book. And so, we really want to get the word out to faculty, instructors, that we can do things in our classroom that will promote wellness in our students. We also wanted to create this book to be really student friendly. And I have a student working with the book right now that I was like, "Let me know: is it student friendly? Because I really need it to be, I really want it to be." And so the book talks about individual resilience, social community, and so it's really great for students who are transitioning into college, but also as they consider their next transition out of college, bludgeoned into career. And so hopefully, the webinar will bring that to life. And people can pick up the book and enjoy it as much as we did.
Jen Lewis:And it's honestly, it's such a great topic, because when I was sitting in your guys' presentation, I remember having so many thoughts like, "Man, I wish I felt this supported when I was in school." I mean, any level school. Don't get me wrong, I had some great teachers and some great professors. But, you know, this is a different time, right? The landscape is changing and so is education. It's not just a 'show up, you get a grade' and your teacher's like, "Hey, you didn't do this," right? It's. I think, that emotional piece. And that supportive piece kind of always felt a little missing. I mean, I'm going to say in my time, I'm not going to age myself here, but I do think that's what's so great about this book, is that it's showing students that things are trending in a different direction. And there's a human piece to also being a college student. And I think that's one of the big myths in the past. So I really appreciate the content of this book. And I know you guys are going to crush your webinar, and we will absolutely put that in the show notes, where people can watch it. The podcast will probably be released after it, but we will have the replay option for people to view it. We'll also put a link to where people can purchase your book. And we will also put your contact info so people get a hold of you if they want to talk about anything. But other than that, do you guys have anything else? Or Kelly, do you have anything you need to share before we say bye?
Kelly Rossetto:Well, I think one of the things that that we talked about previously a little bit, about what advice would you give to somebody? And I think that one of the things with writing a book is that you always need to - and I say this with research too - but you always have to expect the unexpected, right? There might be challenges. There might be people who don't show up. You might have happy accidents, like we did, where a chapter comes in that you were like, "We didn't know we were going to have that chapter, but this is amazing." You might have collaborators that you don't expect. And so, in the process of research, and writing, and books, and making considerations of that, and even once it begins, just expecting the unexpected, and having some flexibility with yourself, as well as with the process. And if if you can't get to your two-hour writing time in a day, that's okay - use 15 minutes. The next day, that might be looking for images. That might be, thinking about titles, that might be reaching out to a collaborator. Use those little moments that you can, especially if you're really busy, because those little moments are going to eventually add up to the two hours that maybe you missed on that Wednesday that you had blocked out in your calendar, and it just didn't pan out. I tried to be really forgiving with myself. And remain confident that it's gonna get done.
Jen Lewis:I think people are probably so excited to hear you say that, because the biggest thing we always hear is time, right? Time to write a book. "I don't have time to be an author." But I think it's like you said, just giving yourself some grace and leaning into knowing what the timeline is going to be, and that it might be a little longer than that. So I think that's great advice. And we are so appreciative for your time today and really enjoyed talking with you and I can't wait to watch your webinar. I know it's gonna be great. But thank you so much, and I will talk to you guys later.
Kelly Rossetto:Thank you so much.
Meghan Peterman:Thanks, Kelly.