Sometimes I may give you the impression life as a writer is a bed of roses. Today's episode acknowledges that things can go wrong and gives hints and tips on how you can move forward when they do.
Sometimes I may give you the impression life as a writer is a bed of roses. Today's episode acknowledges that things can go wrong and gives hints and tips on how you can move forward when they do.
Hi, and welcome to the writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. Welcome to Episode 75 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur, Wendy h. Jones, I cannot believe at all that we're at Episode 75. And I'm doing another single episode today. And there's a good reason for that, because I want to talk about when things go wrong. And you'll find out why I want to talk about that in a minute. I did say right at the very beginning that this would be a mixture of interviews aren't and single person shows, which was what I wanted to do, because I want to get perspectives from everyone. And we'll be back to interviews again soon. But before we get on with today's show when things go wrong, and I would like to say that I love bringing you the short every week, it's an absolute pleasure. And I do so willingly However, it does take time out of my writing life. And if you want to support that time, you can do so by going to patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones and supporting me for just $3 a month that's the price of a tea or coffee. And it would mean that I that you want the show to continue that you're enjoying it and you're finding all the episodes useful. And I of course would be very grateful. So that's patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones. So what's of today's show? Well, I want to talk about when things go wrong. And the reason I want to do that is because I'm a very sunny natured person. And I'm very upbeat. And I don't tend to talk about, you know what's going wrong. But I might give you the idea that life, the writing life is a bed of roses, it can absolutely be a bed of roses, and I love it. But it can also have its downsides as well. And I wanted to give you a balance, I wanted to give you an honest opinion of what's going on, hang on, I need to take a small swallow of my tea before we continue. So that's just one of the things that go wrong with me. But however, I'll explain about that in a minute. So I want to start by quoting from a poem from a very long dead American author called john Greenleaf Whittier, and the opening two sentences of his poem are when things go wrong, as they sometimes will, when the road you're trudging seems all uphill. And sometimes life can be like that. And it really can. There are times when things just do not seem to be going right and everything you're doing is is going uphill, it's like going uphill with a pack on your back pushing a boulder. Let's make things worse. We're writers aren't we so we're used to making things worse, for our main character, but I want it so that's what I wanted to talk to you about today. So in the last year, we've obviously or even 15 months, the world has been rocked by a virus called Coronavirus. And this has knocked everyone's world sideways. And this was the first thing for a lot of writers and for me that were not sideways because physical events stopped dead. There were no physical events. Now I had a year full of events, author talks, speaking engagements, or well paid. I had booked tours arranged I had book signings arranged, all of that went for a button, everything stopped. And, you know, you think, Oh, well, that's one thing. What can we do to do anything about it? Well, we are pivoted, we did things online. And we moved things around. And we had the resilience at the beginning to be able to do this because we thought it would be over not quickly, but quicker than it has been. So everyone's life has changed. And we've all have to pivot and move and change. And that can be quite stressful. But the other thing that happened with the Coronavirus was that a lot of people's brains went into brain freeze, and we just could not write. And even I found myself like this I just could not write I'm still writing but it was hard. It was extremely hard. It didn't flow. It wasn't easy. And, you know, I've struggled like everyone else to be able to write for the past year. I'm pleased to say that my writing mojo has come back with a bang. And I'm writing up a storm which you'll be glad to know of you're waiting for books to come out. So we all had to pivot and change and move on all, So, with all of that everybody's income dropped. Now, a lot of authors found themselves in some sort of crack in some sort of black hole, where they weren't entitled to any extra income from the government or from grants or whatever. And I fell into that as well. So it meant I had to pivot. And the reason I'm telling you this is because I did things, you know, I set up the Patreon, for this podcast, which I wasn't going to do, but I had to because, you know, obviously, when your income suddenly crashes, you need to do things to try and move it around. Now, I'm not saying that to say feel sorry for me, and I want you to do the Patreon, although you're more than welcome. But it was one of the things I did. And I said, I'd always wanted to set up an academy to help other writers to set up courses to help other writers. And this was the impetus I needed. So I set up the entrepreneur accelerated Academy, which is a monthly membership, where I support writers to write their books and to establish and grow and develop their author business. And if you're interested in looking at that, just as an aside, if you type entrepreneur accelerator Academy into Google, you will find me or you can actually, I will put the link in the show notes. And you can take a look at that if that's something you would like to look at. But that was that gave me the time to do that. So I did move. And I did pivot, and I did change, I set up some online courses for writers. And I also brought out my marketing matters book because I was wanted to revamp it. And it was time for me to completely change my powerpop power packed book marketing. And I brought it out as marketing matters. And so I dealt with that quite well. And of course, life gets in the way, doesn't it, life always gets in the way, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Something will need to happen, you have to go You have to do the shopping. But the shopping didn't just take, you know, 20 minutes like it might have done before, as you flew down to supermarket, the shopping took two hours, because you had to go to the supermarket, you had to stand in queues, you had to you had to wash your hands all the time, you weren't allowed to stand near anybody. And it was everything was very difficult. It took up a lot of physical and emotional energy. And it really did things that we just took for granted. Suddenly, we had to think deeply about and that took up a lot of our mental capacity, which didn't leave much room for writing. And some people might still be feeling that that's the case or not, I've got over that I got over that quite quickly. But you know, when you were expecting to go out for half an hour and do the shopping and you're getting back three, four hours later. It really does take a lot of time out of your day and a lot a lot of mental and emotional capacity. I've also been exhausted over the last year now I've had a lot of people say that the last year, even if they haven't had Coronavirus. They've just been exhausted, they've had no energy for anything. And again, I think that's because we have been, you know, we everything takes so long, everything is so difficult. We're having to think about things in new ways. We're having to do things in new ways. We're having to plan things, nothing spontaneous. Because of all the booking in that you have to do if you read last month's podcast on last month, sorry, if you listened to last month, last week's podcast, and then on, you know, planning on doing historical research, you'll understand how difficult it can be just to do simple things these days. And it takes a lot of planning. And the other thing that happened was the I had several kitchen appliances that need change. Now in the big scheme of things, this doesn't matter. But it does matter when everything's locked down. And when you would normally leap in the car and you would go off and you would take a visit to whatever your nearest appliance store is say Curry's PC World for us. And you would go and look at one you would weigh up the pros and cons and then you would buy one. No, you had to buy one online without actually seeing it. So again, all the researching all the all the you had to do it online. And it was a lot more difficult because then you had to order online and you had to wait for it to arrive and then I had to be fitted and it was to be honest, things just took up a lot more time and energy than they should have done. I've also had computer problems and computer problems that are still ongoing throughout the lockdown. I had a problem with my computer. It was very old. It was an apple market was very, very old. And I bought a new one online. It's an apple Mark I know about Apple marks. This computer did not work. from the get go, and the Apple Computer not getting anybody here because the apple support were outstanding. But when you spend days and days and days of your time, on to the phone to Apple to support to get a computer working, then again, it takes up so much of your mental energy, your physical energy and your time, and things just go wrong. And on the road, this is not a problem. But taking them all together, it begins to get bigger and bigger. And I've still got computer problems, I do not have my main computer at the moment. Thankfully, I do my podcast on my laptop, I always have done. The reason being that I do the podcast and record the podcast in my sitting room because my office used to be a garage. So it's a bit echoey. So it's better for me to do it here. But my computer has I've not had a computer for the last three weeks. First of all, it was with Apple. Now it's with PC World. And I don't know what's going to happen. To be honest, in my future, I can see myself buying a brand new computer that is under one for the one that's under one year old. But I have to say, there's nothing I can do about it. So getting worked up about it isn't going to help. But it is frustrating. Because it's money. It's energy, I need to go and deal with that. And it takes time out of my writing time. And it stifles creativity. Let's face it, because if you're thinking about you know, computer's not working, it takes up a lot of your time and stifles creativity. And I've also had some building repairs that I've had to have done. And again, on its own, it wasn't a huge drama, I could get it done. But it took time trying to ring around a lot of different places to see who was open because everybody was closed because of lockdown, eventually getting someone then when people are doing building works in your house, it was outside By the way, so they were allowed to come and do it. It's so much noise. So there's no way to get any work done. So everything just tends to get in the way. I've had health problems. And I've told you that I've got a problem with my jaw that's still ongoing. I had another appointment with the dentist this morning that I wasn't expecting my dental appointment was meant to be for next week, but next week, next month, but they brought it forward. The dental appointment i thought was going to be 10 minutes turned out to be an hour. You know, all these things just happened to you that just happened. There's nothing you can do about it. But it happens. I've now got another dental appointment next week, I've got a problem with my voice, which is a real problem if you're doing a podcast. But that's related to the amount of things I've had to do on zoom, and also doing this podcast. But I'm going to carry on doing the podcast because I love doing it. But it is putting a strain on my vocal cords. I've now got an appointment at four o'clock today with a speech therapist again online. So I've got an appointment for something that's got to help me with my voice because I'm speaking too much online, and the appointments online. There's irony in that you've got to laugh. I'm not blaming the speech therapy department, they're doing what they have to do. And I'm just grateful I've got the appointment. And I'm grateful for the NHS because I get it for nothing. And, you know, this brings me to what you can do about it. Because I don't want to just give you a catalogue of words. That's not what this is about. By the way, I'm not feeling sorry for myself in the slightest. I'm quite happy with life, although I do need to take another drink. I'm quite happy with life. And I have dealt with everything. You know, it's just that I'm explaining why as writers, when things go wrong, it can hammer your writing life, you know, if I live on my own as well, so things go wrong, I have to deal with them on my own. So, you know, I've got no one to fall back on to help. That's just me. But that's the way it is. I'm not getting excitable about that. It's I'm used to it. But I'm just I'm trying to explain that things do go wrong. So what can we do about it? Well, first of all, part of it is mindset. And you need to develop emotional resilience. Now I have a lot of emotional resilience. And what do I mean by that? Well, emotional resilience is the ability to deal with things when they go wrong. And if a lot of things go wrong at once now if you I mean major life events will hammer your emotional your emotional. What am I saying resilience I'm going mad as well. Now I'm not really I've just got a bad memory major life events if they all happen at once you know divorce death and moving house of that all happens at once your emotional resilience might go for a button. So I'm not making light of anything you may be going through and I am not a psychologist so I'm not giving you medical advice here. If you feel that you're you know emotionally you're in crisis, please seek medical help. I am not giving you medical advice. But I am saying that you can build up emotional resilience by doing things in advance. And having a sense of humour is one of them. And I have to say, I've got quite a good sense of humour. And when things go wrong, I just, on the whole, just laugh, and I think, Oh, do you know what the heck, this is hopeless, what else can go wrong. And I try to see the funny side of things very often, you can't see the funny side of it. If your, you know, fridge freezer breaks down and you don't have a penny to replace it. That's not funny, you know, but you have to deal with it somehow. And it's, you know, you can't build up emotional resilience and advance. So having a sense of humour is one of the things you can do, you can also, you cannot control what goes wrong, no one can control what goes wrong things well, what you can control is how you look at it and how you deal with it, you can, you can, you can control your own way of looking at it. Now I look at it as something else to manage. It's frustrating, I do get annoyed, don't think I'm any saint because I'm not. Because when I don't have a computer, I get extremely, extremely frustrated when I've spent hours on the phone to people. And it's taken me three quarters of an hour to get through to someone in the first place. Because they keep trying to push you to, to go online and look at their help pages rather than phoning them. But you know, you need to phone and talk to them. Because you've already done all that. It says frustrating as heck, I appreciate that. But I have to look at it as I am getting the help. I'm in a country where I can get the help help is at the end of a phone when I eventually get there. And the people at the end of the phone are doing their jobs to the best of their ability. And they're trying to help. And I have to look like that. because trust me, my I would like to just take it out on the person at the end of the phone. But it's not their fault, they did not make any of my appliances break down. And also perseverance is something that you can that you can develop, work on developing perseverance don't give up easily. I'm like a terrier with a rat, you know, I'm, I go for it and go for it and go for it. until I've solved it. I can persevere. And I've learned that through many years I was in the military. And we had to persevere where you couldn't just give up. And I have learned to persevere. And we can plan on persevering. So don't give up is the other thing that you can do. And remember that you're in control, I've said that you're in control of the whole situation, the situation might have happened, but you are still in control of how you manage that situation. And so all of these things, including being positive as well try and look at the positive in it. Now trying to look at the positive of not having a computer. I mean, to be honest, I've got about 50,000 notebooks in my house, I can write on my phone, I can write on my iPad, I do have a laptop, although the laptops getting a bit old, so it might give up the ghost soon. So I'm hoping a computer does appear from somewhere. Or I will be seeing a new computer in my future. But I look at the positive, I do have other things that I can do to help me that I can use I can still write, I've got notebooks and pens, you know, life hasn't come to a grinding halt just because technology gives up the ghost. Yes, as I say it's as frustrating as all get out. But you can do it. The other thing that you can do to help yourself when all these things are going wrong is to rest. Because as I say I was exhausted it all these things exhaust you the fact you've got a pandemic going on, exhaust you all these things happening one after the other after the other exhaust you. So give, give yourself time to rest, give yourself time to regenerate, you know and recover you need that we all need that. And just focus on one thing at a time. Seriously, my brain, sometimes I've got so much to do. And so many things go wrong, I don't know where to start. Then I write a list, I write a list of everything that needs to be done everything that needs to be changed everything that I need to move forward. And then I choose one at a time and I literally focus on that one thing, then I check it off, and I focus on the next thing. Now. Something may come along that's even higher priority. Focus on that, then go back to your list. That's a good one. And give yourself permission not to write one of the biggest issues is that we very often feel so guilty because we're not writing. Yes, I say you should be writing. Yes, I encourage people to write. Yes, I want to write all the time, but I also give myself permission to have time off or to focus on something else. And that's important. Remember What a human being, you're, you're not a writer, you're your name. I am a writer. But that's not my whole persona. I am Wendy Jones, I am Wendy H. Jones, me as a person, I have other things in my life. And I need to look after myself and my physical body. And that's very important to remember. So remember, whatever your name is, you know, whether it's Wendy Jones, or whether it's Joe Smith, you must give yourself time to remember that you're you and to give yourself permission not to write, and give yourself permission to relax as well. because let me tell you, when all these things are going wrong, you are wound up tighter than the tightest spring that's ever come along. Or you'll wind up tighter than the twisted elastic band, and it will take just one tiny crack for it to explode. So you need to relax, give yourself permission to relax whatever you like doing, do it. You know. So what I'm saying to you out of all of this is you need to change your approach, things will go wrong. But you need to change your approach to how you manage it. overwhelm will kill you, overwhelm will paralyse you overwhelm will stop you doing anything. So make changes that will stop you being overwhelmed, make changes that will help you not to be overwhelmed, make changes to your life that will help you to be a better person. And in turn, that will help you to be a better writer. I would like to finish by going back to the author, the poet I was quoted from the very beginning, john Greenleaf Whittier, and I want to quote you the two last lines in his poem. So what it is, the last two lines are, so stick to the fight when your hardest hit. It's when things go wrong, that you must not quit. And that's what I want to say to you. Whatever is going on in your life. Whether you feel you can't write or not. Whether you feel that you can't move forward. Do not quit. I'm encouraging you not to quit. I believe in you. Believe in yourself. Believe in your writing, and believe in what you're doing. Yes, take a rest. Yes, step, step back and look at the bigger picture. Yes, focus on something else for a few days. But then get back to it. You are a writer, and you must not quit. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy h Jones. And you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones. I'm also went to h Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing. Keep reading and keep learning