Avoid Creative Burnout with Lydia Michaels - Write 10K In a Day : Avoid Burnout: Unleash Your Prolific Potential

Marissa chats with author and life coach Lydia Michaels about her craft book, Write 10K in a Day. Discussed in this practical episode: the challenges of being an indie author/entrepreneur, writer burnout, time poverty – particularly for women, why setting boundaries on word counts is a good idea, signs of burnout, paying attention to ROJ (Return on Joy), and so much more!

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Transcript

[00:12] Marissa: Hello, and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me. Quick FYI, we have some openings for new sponsors, so if you would like to advertise with us here on the Happy Writer podcast, please let us know. You can find contact information@marissamayer.com. podcast one thing making me happy this week, our wine is ready to be bottled if you don't know what I'm talking about. So last fall, the place that we bought it had wine grapes growing on these big, beautiful trellises. I don't know anything about making wine. Never done it before. But I thought, well, they're there. Let's give it a chance. So we've harvested the girls, stomped them. Very old school. Did the whole, like, add yeast, fermentation, CO2. I don't know. It was so sciency. It was like living in a laboratory for a couple of weeks. And now it's been just like sitting in these glass carboys for nine months, I guess. And it's finally time to put it into bottles. And I'm excited, but also really nervous because I'm like, what if it's terrible? But it is an experiment. And the experiment is nearing its end, and we finally get to see how we did with our very first small batch of homemade mystery wine. I say mystery because we have no idea what kind of grapes they are. Yeah. So I'll let you know how it goes. But I'm excited. I'm curious. I'm a little scared. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. She's the author of over 40 novels and the consecutive winner of the 2018 and 2019 author of the year award from Happenings Mediataindeen, as well as the recipient of the 2014 Best author award from the Courier Times. She's a certified life coach who specializes in author coaching, work life balance, and plot development, and is the CEO and founder of the East Coast Author Convention and the behind the keys author Retreat. Who how does she balance it all? I cannot wait to find out. As we talk about her nonfiction writing guide, write ten k in a day. Avoid burnout. Unleash your prolific potential. Please welcome Lydia Michaels. That was such a nice introduction.

[02:53] Lydia: Thank you.

[02:54] Marissa: My absolute pleasure. I am so thrilled to be talking to you. I tore through this book on vacation very recently, just here, maybe like a month or two ago. And the whole time I was reading it, I was like, this author is a kindred speaking to my heart on so many things that I care about. I have to talk to her. I have to have her on the podcast. So I am just thrilled to have you today.

[03:19] Lydia: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I love talking about plot development. I love talking about the business. I love talking about burnout because it's such a big problem in our industry and in other industries as well. So thank you so much for this opportunity of sharing your platform to talk about this with people who might benefit from it.

[03:41] Marissa: Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for your time. So, before we get started talking about all great things, the first thing I like to ask my guests is I want to hear your origin story. You are many, many, many books into your career, but if you could go all the way back, how did you get on this path?

[04:02] Lydia: Well, so my background is in education, and I am a dual certified teacher who with a specialty in special ed. And when I was home having my daughter, I ended up staying home a little longer while she was a toddler. And the first book that I wrote was an accidental happening. It was about a really toxic relationship I had been in as a young girl. And it started because a friend of mine had asked me. She heard a song. She asked, she said, oh, I heard the song today. It reminded me of so and so that you used to date. And I said, oh, there's a blast from the past. And I said, what was the song? And she said, I can't remember it now, but I know I'll hear it again and I'll tell you. And it was driving me nuts. So I. This was around the time, I mean, because I've been, you know, in this industry since 2007. So this was just when you could start searching music online kind of around that time, or around the time that I realized you could do that. So I started searching music from the, you know, that time of my life, and I realized how many memories were held up in that music. And as I started opening them, they were little, like, pain points of memories of things that were compartmentalized from this horrible, toxic, abusive relationship that I had survived. And I was very young, and it was a secret that I kept. And I realized that I had kind of just pushed these memories down so far that I forgot a lot of them. So I started really having this moment of, like, where did my memories go? And I started rummaging through old boxes and looking for old journals because I've always written. I've always liked, you know, I wrote terrible poetry when I was an angsty young girl, and then, you know, I would write journals and all kinds of things. I always loved writing. And I started collecting everything I could find from that time in my life to organize it and figure out a timeline of what exactly happened to me. How did I get through that? You know, I was so young, I kept so many secrets about what was actually going on, and I struggled to organize all this collective information I was getting. And I was literally driving to places I used to hang out and waiting for. Memories would just pour into me, and I'd be like, oh, my gosh, there's so much compartmentalized feeling here. So I started putting it into chapters, and the next thing you know, I had a book just like that.

[06:20] Marissa: Voila.

[06:21] Lydia: Just like that. It was like four months of, like, deep, deep reflection, and it formed into a book. And one night we were sitting at dinner, and I said to my husband, I go, so how about I wrote a book? And then he didn't understand why I would write a book about this particular person who was nothing, you know, kind to me. And I said, it just happened. And then I, you know, I had some girlfriends who were in a book club with me, and I was like, you know, I actually wrote a book, and they started reading it, and they were like, this is fantastic. You have to publish it. Well, back then, dark, anything dark, was really hard to publish because everything was traditional, and this was a very, very dark story. And it was a very dark story about a very young person. And that made it even more taboo because, you know, young people live perfect, safe lives, and nothing bad ever happened them. Right, of course. So the traditional publishing industry wants us to believe. So, you know, I submitted it a bunch of times, and what's interesting is I'm actually very extremely dyslexic, and I went to before, you know, ieps existed, and our education system kind of got a handle on that. I went to a specific private school for dyslexia, and when I only could go there for a couple of years because it was extremely expensive, and when I was pushed back into, you know, the general education education population, I was, my, gosh, so far behind. I mean, I couldn't keep up with projects. I couldn't read fast. I'm a very slow reader, so writing was never supposed to be in my career path. And it took years for me to figure out the publishing industry. This was before we didn't have forums about how to do it. We didn't have, you know, like, you couldn't go and join a Facebook group. That wasn't a thing. And so what they did have was there was this. It was about eight inches thick, and it was published every year and updated. And it was a big directory with phone numbers and addresses, and you had to snail mail every submission you wanted to go out, and you had to print out portions of the sample or the whole book. So it was like, you know, $40 a shipment, and you would have to wait a long time for the snail mail to come back and you provide the return address. It was a very long process.

[08:29] Marissa: And in that process, anybody got published back then.

[08:33] Lydia: It really, really is. So through that process, I was really studying everything I could about writing. I realized how much I really loved writing this, and I kept writing this kind of series that was based on true stories in my life, and they were really hard to sell. They never did sell, and that's fine. But at that time, a girlfriend of mine said, why aren't you writing what you, like, write something like what you read? So I said, you mean like a romance? She said, yes. And I said, okay, well, I can give that a try. Well, turns out I love writing romance. So I could, like, pump out these stories so quick. And then next thing you know, you know, I had a publishing deal and then another publishing deal, and then another publishing house wanted more books from me. And then I got a deal with Penguin, which was just penguin back then. Now it's Penguin random House. But I, you know, I busted into the big six like it was crazy, this rise that I had. And then I think the most traumatic thing for me that really, this is where my burnout set in was. The small presses started crumbling. They started going bankrupt. There was some that had some really corrupt things going on. There were a lot of rights that were retained, and authors were kind of left without their revenue that they had earned, without their pre order payments, without the rights back to their books. And everything crumbled so fast around 2015, it really, the floor just fell out from under me on a lot of books. And I had no choice. I was a traditionally published author. I had no choice but to jump feet first into the deep end of indie publishing. And I never expected to be an indie writer. Now I feel like that's so the norm. It sounds ridiculous even to my ears, to think how intimidated I was by this because there's so much information out. But even in 2015, there really wasn't this information. The information we have available now is from the. If you ask me, I mean, I'm going to speak directly about our genre. It comes directly from these incredible, mostly females who are figuring out how to be CEO's of their own business and balance the craft with the business aspects and the marketing and all of that. And we wear a lot of hats. And I am not a master of it by any means. I'm definitely a victim of burnout. I'm a workaholic. But it's been quite an experience. I mean, I've had moments where I was on an end cap snuggled right between Tim Barnes and nobles on the end, captain of the aisle snuggled right in there with Sylvia Day and El James. And, you know, 2022 was a terrible year for me. You know, and it's, you have to in indie publishing and I mean, I am a hybrid. The majority of my work is now indie because I get nervous about putting it back in two presses. But I would still pursue traditional if there was the option for that. And this situation was right, I. But I will say this. You have to drive this career like a stolen car. You take your foot off the gas. It's very, very hard to keep it moving at all times because a lot of the time, the things we have to do, I mean, I'm constantly saying, you know, the time it takes me to teach someone how to write my newsletter. For me, it takes an hour and a half to get it through to them, what I want it to say, how I want it to look, you know, and then that's not even counting the corrections. It takes me 15 minutes to write it myself. So there's so much we do on our own because it's the way we want it to be on our brand. And I'm not really sure how much we can actually delegate in such a personally crafted niche of a, you know, every author brand is different. And we work so hard at making sure that that branding stands out. So it's, it's hard to be everything and everywhere at once. So that's where burnout comes in.

[12:30] Marissa: It is indeed.

[12:32] Lydia: That's the, uh, that's the timeline of my career, basically.

[12:36] Marissa: Yeah.

[12:36] Lydia: Yeah.

[12:37] Marissa: No, I mean delegating. I also am a workaholic. Have workaholic tendencies. Tendencies and perfectionist tendencies, and, like, can be very particular. And I went through a couple of different author assistants early in my career and was just like, so disappointed in the work. And I just feel like now I just have to redo everything. What's, what's even the point? I do have an author assistant now, Joanne, who helps a ton with this podcast, and she's great and like once I found her and had someone that, like, I trust her to, to do, like, the quality of work that I expect. And she knows my voice. She pays attention to the brand. Like, all of those fears just like, vanished. But it takes time. It takes work to get to that point. And sometimes it's hard to, to take the time to get there. That's the problem with delegating.

[13:28] Lydia: Yes. And not only that, it's hard to find. It is, there is a skill set, you know, so there's a skill set and it's very hard to find people who get the vision, possess the skillset and are willing to sink as much into it as you, you know, the business. And, and it's hard. You kind of have to come to a point and say, okay, I'm going to teach you how to be me. You have to be able to be me if you're going to be my publicist, if you're going to be my assistant, if you're going to be my voice and my, you know, my helper on all these things. And when you find a Joanne or, you know, I have a couple friends who really do, they have hit the gold mine and like, assistants who are by their side, they keep, I mean, like, really incredible. And I've had a couple, too. But then, you know, life gets complicated. Something takes them away. They need a break, you know, like, you know, spouses have health issues. There's all kinds of reasons that happen. You know, there's, I talk about that in ten k about there is such an unpredictableness to life and it's, there's, I'm just coming off of a six week stint of just life just seemed relentless for the last six weeks for us. We had a lot of family friends who had health problems that were very concerning. And, I mean, I literally had to accept that my brain was shut off for that time, not going to work on my deadline, and I had to be graceful with myself and accept that so that I can recharge and get there, you know, and that's, that's a key thing.

[15:02] Marissa: It is. And it's so hard to do. And like you say, you talk about how when you're in this career, you feel like you can't take your foot off of the gas at any point, but sometimes you have to because if you don't, then, I mean, to keep the analogy, you run the risk of crashing and burning and now you're really going to be behind. So it's really important to kind of pay attention to those signs, to recognize when burnout is looming, and to respect, respect what your body needs, what your creativity needs, and give yourself the time to recover. But it is hard to do, and I recognize that and you recognize that. And of course, that's part of the reason why I think books like this, talking about not only how to be productive, not only how to run a successful career, but to do it in a way that's healthy and in a way that respects your own creativity and your own needs, is so needed, so important. So tell me a little bit, or tell listeners a little bit about this book. Write ten k in a day. Avoid burnout. Unleash your prolific potential. What was the catalyst for writing this book, and what can writers expect from it?

[16:18] Lydia: So it's interesting, it kind of came full circle for me. It was my 40th book, so I knew, okay, this is gonna be my 40th. Maybe now is the time to write it. It was during 2020 that I really put it together. And what I had was this enormous folder of hacks and tips and life, you know, like, just like, ways to do this author life and the things we shouldn't do and classes I took and all these notes, and I would constantly be like, oh, I did. You know, what was that thing that I took at Inkerschan or this or that, or, you know, where's that little piece of information I had on this? And I, again, it was like how I started, where I started putting things in order, and I was like, wow, you know, this would make sense in chapters and not only in chapters, but in parts. Like, can I section this off? This is the craft. This is business. And what is this? This is wellness. And the wellness was so, such a big, looming thing for me. And I do debate. I think the one thing I will say about ten k, I will give this warning about it. It is a large book. It is 150,000 words.

[17:21] Marissa: That's a big book. I wasn't expecting it to be so big.

[17:25] Lydia: It is a very, very long book, and you are not meant to sit through and read it all in one sitting, by any means. I would suggest that every author out there, especially indie authors, take the time to read the burnout section because it will resonate. I would also suggest that the craft, the thing I think I can geek out over craft and plot like that is my specialty. I work with, you know, New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, helping them. They will say, oh, I'm just like, you know, I'm stuck on this. I can't figure out how to get through this. I'm you know, I'm in a rut. I keep feeling my books feel the same. My books feel the same, and I can work with them one on one as a coach, doing, plotting with them. And it's such a very kinesthetic experience for me. Like, I'm up and moving and plotting and thinking, and I use big whiteboards and all these things so I can geek out, out all day long on plot. The business part of it, I would say the one thing that I do say about the business section is that it is transient. You know, I remember rating this and going, oh, like, who has time for TikTok? Another note? And, of course, that I'm like, geez. Like, that's the one that blew up, of course. And, like, so I, you know, it's, we never know what's going to be the next big thing and what's not, what's going to be actually the thing that sticks and what doesn't stick. And so the business part, there are some nuggets in there worthwhile, but I would say to me, that's the part to skim because it's what was working. Facebook groups were really big. Now, I don't know that they are that big takeover parties even happen anymore. Like, everything's constantly changing and evolving. So the business part of it, as far as author business tips, I think you really do have to stay current on those things. And I think that's where, you know, sky Warren's a great asset in the business for that, you know, with her mastermind and, and Alessandra Tory with anchors, and there's, there's, there's several that I love taking classes and learning. So I put this together. I put everything together, organized it into three sections, and then figured out how to tell my story. And Dee Dee Lorenzo, author, Didi Lorenzo once said, you know, it's really just a love letter to authors from you. And it truly is because I wanted to write about burnout, because I was so severely sick from burnout, having dizzy spells and blacking out, and I would just overwork myself. And, I mean, I say, everyone says, oh, are you teaching them how to speed write? No, I'm teaching you how to truly, truly grasp what plotting is and why you need to set boundaries with yourself. What's my biggest writing day? Gosh, I think it was something along the lines of, like, 28,000 words or something. I mean, I I can write in a day, but what is the cost of that?

[20:14] Marissa: Yeah.

[20:15] Lydia: Is it actually good writing after so many hours, or is it junk and what's happening to my hips and what's happening in my circulation and what's happening to my brain and those neuro pathways that are, you know, getting deprived of nutrients and fresh air and sunshine. And those things are just as important as the skill that we have to bring the book. And that's where I think authors lack advocacy. And I think it's so crucial when we have these big conventions and experiences together. We're all coming back. We're all, you know, getting sick, and we're like, oh, it's communal living. You know, you're in a hotel, you're touching things. No, that's not it. It's the push to get everything done before you go. And it's the spike in your adrenaline that's making your immune system bonkers and saying, what's happening? We're on a plane, okay, now we're in a hotel. And, you know, your immune system's on overdrive. And then you come home, and the minute you come home, your immune system goes, oh, I know this place. I recognize the smells. I'm gonna shut off now and cool off. It's been, like five days nonstop. And then you go out and get the mail and you pick up a germ there and you're sick.

[21:29] Marissa: Yeah.

[21:29] Lydia: And let me think that we are getting sick from this communal living. But it's really the extreme conditions we're putting our body through of this fight or flight, and it's putting. It's just putting so much pressure. We are doing so much at once. And when we're writing, you know, if you're writing quality work, your body can't tell the difference between, I'm writing, you know, a high speed chase, and my life is on the line. Your character's life versus the reality of that happening. Your your hormones and your body and all these things are going to be triggered into. So it's a very push and pull thing. Especially, like, if you're. The higher the stakes of your book, the higher the stakes your body's going, man, we live a tough life. I just had this amazing love scene, and now I'm on high speed chase, you know, so we put our body through a lot of things, and we are not giving ourselves enough downtime. Another thing that this was a part that was taken out of ten k, and I still to this day, because it's so jam packed with information, I wish, in a way, we were able to squeeze it in, because when you think about romance, you know, we are 40 some percent of the book industry you can't combine two other of the best selling genres and even come close to making what romance brings into the book industry. As far as you know, it's this multibillion dollar industry, and romance is so at the forefront of it. Yet for decades, we've been underplayed and pushed down, and there's a stigma and, oh, you write romance, you know, you get a lot of that. And the thing is, is that we are. We are representing not just what women want to read, but what women want to produce and what we are capable of creating. And now with indie work, we are showing we are just not only just capable of being authors, we are capable of being incredible publishers on our own.

[23:33] Marissa: Entrepreneurs.

[23:35] Lydia: Yes. And there's so much that comes into that. Speaking directly two women for a minute, if I can, because that's my, these are my people in my genre that I really relate to and identify with. There is a whole element of time poverty on women. I think it's Miss Gates, Bill Gates wife, you know, Melinda. Melinda. Melinda. I want to, I always call her Kathy. Melinda Gates. She does a whole thing on time poverty. And it's fascinating. And it really, you know, the problem is that a lot of women today still are doing, taking on all of the household responsibilities they once did on top of working a 40 hours job. And I know there were times at the peak of my burnout where my husband was working 40 hours and I was working 80, and I was overworking myself. And then the expectation of what's for dinner, who's making it? Do we have the ingredients? Do we need to go to the store? All of that fell back on me as well. And that's a whole nother another challenge to conquer. And everyone's different, and everyone has different dynamics in their household, but that's a weight that exists as well for a lot of female entrepreneurs. And it takes a certain amount of bandwidth to do all of that. And with ten k, the burnout section and the well being section is more about it's time to set boundaries. Can I write almost 30,000 words a day? Sure. Is that good for me? Absolutely not. The maximum that anyone should be writing is probably 10,000 words a day. Is it possible? Yes, it is. And it's possible to even do it. Walking around, getting sunshine, getting fresh air, stretching, moving. But it takes balance and discipline and a desire to have that balance in your life. And I truly do desire that. Does that mean I achieve it every time? No, I, like I said, just got real complicated. I, you know, went through I'm in a. I would say I'm in a burnout state. And that has more to do with where I was at my career when life got complicated this past quarter, you know, and those trying to juggle everything and then having, like, a crisis on your hands is tough. Yeah. We can't predict when people get sick. We can't predict when loved ones need our help, and we have to step up and do those things. And it's very hard when you have a career that needs to be driven like a stolen car to figure out how to do that. So those boundaries, working them in, figuring out how to drive the stolen car of a career on cruise control is really, really important. And I think that's more. So what this book teaches you how to do.

[26:20] Marissa: Yeah. So when we talk about burnout, I think a lot of people, I mean, kind of like when you start to feel like you're getting a cold or getting sick, it's so easy to just. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just going to power through. And similarly, with burnout, it's so easy to just talk ourselves into. No, no, no, I'm fine. I got this. It's all okay. It's going to pass. If I just keep pushing through. What are some of the signs of burnout that people, writers in particular, should be paying attention to?

[26:54] Lydia: So that's a great question. So one of the big ones is a lack of joy. And I talk a lot about joy in, in the book, and I talk about, I call it the Roj because we, we focus so much on Rois, which is your return on investment, and that's that, you know, happy little number that says, oh, the money you put out, you made more money back, so you're in the green. But what about the joy we get back? And the Roj is your return on joy? And I think that, that joy is such a simple thing to monitor, and it's something we kind of. How many times do people actually stop in the day and say, am I enjoying this? We don't. We'll eat, we'll take a sip of a drink and say, oh, that's good. Or, you know, we'll. We'll taste a bite of pasta and go, oh, my gosh. Yes, you know, but what. When our actual activities and the things that we spend the majority of our life doing, our jobs, we very rarely pause to take a pulse and go, am I enjoying this? Am I happy right now? And that, I think, is the first thing to keep an eye on. If you are so the easiest one. You're scrolling along on social media, someone you care about, someone you like, someone you're proud of, they've earned their success. They had bad days, too. They worked really hard for it, but you're just like, it's too much because they're making, you know, we forget sometimes that social media is a highlight reel lost. It's very. It's, you know, a spotlight and it's a glimpse, and it's. No one's going on social media and broadcasting their terrible failure. They're going on there and telling you about their incredible win, and they're making themselves look shiny. And it's a very hard game to play properly about, you know, self promotion. And there's so much self promotion in this business. So, you know, we. We hate talking about ourselves, but we're taught to talk, to talk ourselves up and all of this and it. So. But when you start feeling that, I used to call it, like, the Facebook bellyache, when you start feeling that, that bitterness, that is a sign of burnout, and it's one of the emotional ones. It's a tell, like, an emotional tell that'll say, like, okay, I need to stop looking left and right, and I need to look straight ahead at what my goal is and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing. And if there's a bitterness, you're even deeper into it. But on top of that, you could have. So there's symptoms and then there's, you know, signs. So, like, some. And in the book, I talk about your response. So you could be proactive or reactive. And I use a comparison of a fire hydrant, not a fire hydrant. I'm sorry, a fire extinguisher versus a smoke detector. So the earlier things are going to be like, your smoke detector, it's going to say, hey, a symptom of what could possibly become a fire is in your house, and you have this annoying whistle, and what do we do? So everyone has fire extinguishers, their code, and everyone has smoke detectors in their house. But what do we do when the smoke detector starts to chirp? When that battery starts running out? Chirp, chirp, chirp. Likely, rather than replace the battery, the first thing we do is just take it out. And now, now we're in danger. We might have smoke. We don't even know that little warning chirp has just gone away. And that's what we do. We hit the snooze button on these little chirps in our life. You know, gosh, I have insomnia oh, another headache. Oh, I'm moody. My appetite's all off, you know, like, I'm grumpy. I'm, you know, all of these things. Then you get into the area of the smoke has become a fire, and now you need a fire extinguisher to put it out. Now you're in. You went from proactive, from a protective device, a protective warning that. And we have these things in our body that say, hey, this is a warning. Listen to it. But if we ignore them, it goes into reactive, like a fire extinguisher where now you have a fire. Now there's going to be damage. And that damage comes from, hey, you kept getting headaches. You were being. You had insomnia. You were being moody. Now look at you. You've gained 40 pounds. Or, you know, something even more dangerous. You know, there's all these things become bigger and scarier things if ignored. So you want to stay in that little chirpy zone of warning. Warning, you know, and, like, as much as I had to take last month off to deal with family stuff, which was very unpredicted and not the plan, and I had to push back a deadline, and I had to make arrangements, and I'm still in a very nervous state of, am I going deadline? Push back. I had a friend who was going through something and say to me, hey, what if I. What if I come down to the shore and we just sit on the beach on Thursday? And I was like, you know what? That sounds great, because the truth is, my instinct is to jump back in. You know, I worked really hard all week trying to catch up and do all those things, and I did it. But I still need to be gentle with myself. I still need to say, you know, the last month was really stressful, and it's okay to accept that that was stressful and sit with that for a minute. And those chirp warnings that we get in our body, you know, these things that say, God, I'm moody, I'm tired, I'm grumpy, they turn into bigger things. And some of the other ways that they might show up in your life is, for instance, you work so hard and your book releases, and you feel nothing. That is burnout. That is burnout, and you feel nothing. Because not only we have chosen to keep pushing that, we don't sit with the pain. We don't sit with the sorrow. We don't sit with the grief. We don't sit with the stress. We don't sit with the bad feelings. And there's a duality to humans, and we have ugly parts and pretty parts. And, you know, if we don't sit with that, we learn to just not sit with anything. So when the book releases is, we're so busy thinking about the next five steps, how to promote it, how to get the sales, how to get the marketing going, how to do this. And what about the sequel? We want that. You know, we want to keep that train moving, that. We don't sit with the joy, finding time to sit with the joy. That's when you start to snowball, and it really is. If you want to speed up your career, my best advice to you is to slow down. And it seems so counterintuitive, but it is the truth of it, because you will lose all the love you feel. None of us really became writers just because, I shouldn't say none of us. Hardly any of us became writers because we were like, writing sounds like a great career path. Let's go there.

[33:34] Marissa: We all kind of make so much money doing this.

[33:37] Lydia: Yeah. We all fell into it by some kind of accidental circumstance. And maybe some of us are really lucky enough that we actually have professional training. It's very rare that I meet an author. I mean, even the top of the tier bestsellers that are like, oh, yeah, that's what my college degree is in. I have my master's in. Right. Very, very rare. You know, I meet more editors like that than authors. We all have these, you know, we have backgrounds in law, and some of us are in the medical field, and some of us were teachers and bartenders and all kinds of things. You know, we don't have this background in the writing. We don't have this background in craft. We don't have this background in business or marketing or advertising. Very few of us do. The ones who have great advertising usually do have a background in advertising. I'm very jealous of them.

[34:27] Marissa: You know, get a creative writing degree. Get a marketing degree.

[34:30] Lydia: Yes. I mean, like, you want to make the money, learn how to market, like, whatever you want, and market it, you know, but it's, you know, it's just. It's so interesting how we all come with this collective knowledge from all different areas, but we're so set on learning what we don't know, what we weren't trained in. We shut off so much of ourselves, and that's where the burnout starts to just slowly singe away at us. You know, it just eats our soul.

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Marissa: I want to go back. You said, if your advice is that if you want to speed up your career, slow down. And I love that. And I absolutely love the idea of return on joy, you are preaching to the choir. I am all about how can we have more fun with writing. So would you dig into that a little bit deeper, this concept of, if you want to speed up your career, slow down a little bit?

[36:11] Lydia: So when I wrote this book in 2020, you know, I was realizing certain things that I really, I stopped thinking about all the things everyone was telling us. And I know now we live in such a scary time of, like, you know, fake news and journalism. What does it mean anymore? And it's a very bizarre time we are in right now, especially in America. But in 2020, it was kind of the cusp of that. And I realized because the speed at which people were getting platforms, everyone could proclaim themselves an expert. And I will say that over and over again, I am no expert. I am is not like, I have mastered avoiding burnout. I know the things I need to do, but that doesn't mean I'm always up every morning doing the work. You know, it's not to eat right, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee we're going to be thin and healthy. You know, it's doing the work. So there is a level, a level of discipline that comes into that. When I was writing this book, I sat back and said, okay, I'm being told by 8 million experts what to do. First of all, how many of them are actually experts? And very few were. So then it was like, okay, let's discredit, like, what is this person's authority who's saying, you have to have a Facebook group, you have to be participating in this, you have to do this, you have to do that. There were so many have tos. So I kind of did an audit of all the things I had to do, and I made a list of them and I looked and I really sat with them again and said, do I have to do this? What is going to happen? Is my little, like, speedy car of a career going to, you know, chug to a sudden stop and I'm going to go bankrupt if I stop doing takeover parties, which are exhausting. And, you know, when we used to do these all the time, it got to a point where we did them so much that it was literally just these, like, giveaway mongers that would come around and take all the giveaways and you'd never hear from them again. And you start to realize things. You start to realize very green authors will say, what do I do about this person who just, they signed up, they took my book, funnel book. They opened it, they didn't finish it. They unsubscribe from my newsletter. What do I do? And I'd say, you don't do anything. They just saved you money. You spend all this money on growing your newsletter, on your audience. The bigger it gets, the more expensive it is to maintain. And you, why would you want someone taking up space that costs you money? You're paying their rent to be there. Why would you want them there if they're just not interested in what you have to say? And it's a very eye opening thing to accept that not everyone's going to like you and not everyone needs to like you. And if the people who don't like your voice as an author or what your content is that you're putting out there, if they don't like your brand, if they don't like your stories, that's perfectly fine. And if they can identify themselves, they are saving you the job of having to find them because you don't want to stuff your newsletter followers with people who aren't interested in what you have to say, people who don't care what you're writing, they're just taking up space and costing you money. So the green author might mourn that and feel, like the dejection of it and all of this, and that's just a waste of time. Just accept it and move on. Understand that when we're, when we used to have these, like, you know, takeover parties and we would do these things and, you know, you can get in this giveaway if you sign up for my newsletter. These are people who are not interested in you. They are signing up for a gift, not because you said something that really resonated with them. Your goal is to find that hot audience warm to hot. Nothing cold, nothing lukewarm or tepid. And that's what you want to focus on. Where are my people? If you have a Facebook group, right, and everyone has shut off their notifications and you're getting before you know, you feel this pressure, this constant pressure. I have to post. I have to post in my Facebook group. Not only that, I have to post on my page and I have to post on my Instagram and I have to post on my tiktoks and I have to do all these things. You have to, have to, have to. But then at the end of the day, your, your interactions are so low because algorithms and this and that. Are you at, is your time actually getting its return on your investment there? You're investing this time. Time is money. Are you seeing the investment you need? No. Why are you still doing it then? Why are you still doing this? Oh, you're doing it because you have to. Because all of these self proclaimed experts said, you have to have this. You're an author now. You have to have this platform that. So my advice is, how can you do less? Where do you want to show up for your readers? Where do you, and this can, this applies to any business. Where do you want to show up for your audience, your customer? And for me, I made a choice. I said, oh, gosh. And I had a Facebook group that, I mean, it was big. It had, you know, almost, I think it had over 10,000 followers and, you know, subscribers, but they just weren't interacting anymore. And the minute they turn them off, they're just dead in there. It's just dead space. And that number, that ten k of, you know, people in your group means nothing because they're not even being notified anymore. So you're not communicating. And there's a quote about communication that goes. Misconception about communication is the idea that it is actually taking place. I might have just butchered that. But what is we communicate and assume everyone's understanding what we're communicating, whether it's through a post, a vocal comment, you know, an interview, a video, we, we say it so because we put it out there, obviously everyone heard it. No, they might not even understand the way we're using content. So you have to communicate in a way that is manageable and sustainable for you to do everything else that is meaningful. To have this career, the first thing we have to do is create products. To do that, we need to have time to write. If we're doing so many things that writing has dwindled down to maybe ten or 20% of our time, we are going to take forever to publish books. And then you're just going to be running a marketing business. Is that what you wanted? All of us came into this because we loved the creative process. We loved the experience of writing. And that has become a small, it shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, and then all of a sudden you realize, why am I miserable? Oh, because I'm in a marketing and advertising business, not a creative, artistic business anymore.

[42:47] Marissa: And it does start to feel like the hamster wheel effect, too, where you're constantly chasing more followers, more likes, more comments. You know, just, there's, there's never a point at which it feels like, okay, that's good. Now I can just let that coast and go back to doing the writing. Like, once you get into that mindset, it's really hard to pull away from that. That's so important when you can pause and be like, but wait, what is it these people actually came here for? Probably my witty tweets. They're probably here for books, right?

[43:20] Lydia: And are they getting it? So, you know, we all make decisions for me right now. Like, I just wrote a newsletter about twelve life lessons that I learned in this hiatus I took last month. And for me, that brings me actual joy. I don't care if I ref, I used to only reference books. If I had that associate link that got me a commission on clicks through Amazon. I don't do that anymore. The time it takes to manage these associate links, to follow their rules, to do all these things to not, you know, I would not, I stopped doing things like that because it was always chasing this. And I said, let me just write something from the heart. I love communicating with my newsletter subscribers from the heart. And I actually write columns that have nothing to do with my romance books. I have, every week I have a quick weekly buzz that's, you know, it's set up very quickly with, with a picture, a quick blip and a button. And if you're interested in that, click it and it'll tell you what's free, what's on sale, what's coming up, what events up next. I always feature other authors in there, too. I do stuff your kindle deals through book funnel. I do all these things. That's Wednesday. You can digest it in about 30 seconds and move on with your day. I don't want to interfere with their day selling to them. They understand what I'm selling. After that, I have a personal newsletter that I write. And I write very from the heart pieces. I mean, I just wrote about the five love languages. Like that book. I didn't mention the book to get the click commission. I just mentioned the book because it lives in my head rent free. Wanted to talk about how in life, understanding people's love languages really helps us communicate with other people and form relationships. And that is the Lydia Michaels brand. To me, it's about, I not just write love stories. I write about relationships and the human condition, and I want to write about that sometimes not in novel form, sometimes I want to write about it in nonfiction form. And I use my newsletter as a platform for that. So they might not hear from me in those personal ways on some kind of consistent schedule. It might be once a week, sometimes it might be once a month. But when they get it, my open rate is crazy because they are also interested in what I have to say. This is a beautifully curated list of people who cared about what I was going to say. And they signed up because they like my stories, they like my voice, they like my thoughts, and they want to hear them. So it's a warm to a hot audience. They didn't sign up for a giveaway. They signed up because they liked what they. What they were reading. And I want to nurture that. So I do nurture that. And I've stopped really having my Facebook group is gone. My TikToks have slowed down. And while I understand you can be the next Colleen Hoover because of TikTok, it's really a lottery ticket situation. You know, the likelihood of that. How much time are you willing to invest before you go? Okay, I'm not going to win that lottery. You know, it's. I think there's a lot of great things that can come from it, but is also okay to choose and say, I don't need that. I don't need that. I'm going to save the time and effort it would take for me to produce three tick tocks a day. I mean, like, the stats we're given, I read these, you know, reports all the time, especially in January. It's very inundated for me of strategy and reporting. And I get these reports and it'll say, okay, here's the suggested 2024 data. They want you to post five to eight stories a day. Then they want you to double down and put all of your stuff on every platform. So if it's on TikTok, it's on YouTube, it's on Facebook reels, it's on Instagram reels, it's on this, it's on that. The amount of time to do this, and for me, I'm like, okay, I'll start doing that. And usually in the beginning of the year, that first quarter, I am like a rock star, showing up for everything. And then by the second quarter, I'm burning out, and I can't keep up with it because it is unsustainable for us to do that, as, you know, one to two person shows. Like, we're running these things with maybe one good, qualified assistant if we're lucky, but the majority is running them alone, and it's just too much.

[47:34] Marissa: Yeah.

[47:34] Lydia: And I would rather. I am finding peace and accepting. I can do so much. What is important to me. How do I not give them quantity, but the best quality of me? And that's what I focus on and slow down to doctor.

[47:51] Marissa: Yeah. And then that's how you end up, you know, what are you, 17 ish years into your career and you've written more than 40 books? It's going to be really hard to do that if you're just 100% focused on the marketing and the social media and all of these other things that you're told that you have to do all the time.

[48:10] Lydia: And I will say this, you know, we have. I do. Since, I think, 2016, we've been doing the behind the keys retreat. And that's, you know, at the Jersey Shore in February, it's quiet, it's cold, and we put about twelve authors in a house together. And they are. We always try to include at least one to two brand new green authors because I think it's important for them to have a seat at that table. And a lot of times there's imposter syndrome, and they think, why am I here? And they get very emotional. And I, you know, we learn from them, too, because they're new and they're reading things that we're not paying attention to because we think we figured it out and we forget everything's always evolving. But I have worked with, I mean, I've had millionaires stay at the retreat. And from their author career, you know, I've had authors who are making incredible money, you know, bringing in close to a million a year net. They have great ways that they're doing that. And then authors who actually are making millions, and it's amazing. And then I have the authors who are bringing in $40 a month on royalties, and they're going, what am I doing wrong? So that collective of thinking and talking is really incredible, and it's the most inspiring week of the year for me. But at the end, I always have to come down from that adrenaline rush, come down from that high, get over whatever bug I picked up from pushing myself and, you know, taxing myself for the week. And then I have to say, okay, all of that was great information, all of it. Wonderful advice. What are you choosing, though, if you can? And I look at it like an ice cube tray, a little old fashioned six cube ice cube tray. And I say, if you can only pick six things to focus on, what are you putting in this ice cube tray? Well, first we have to put writing in one tray. We have to put writing in one little cube because you have to do that and you have to have some kind of social presence that you maintain your brand on. So, yes, you have to have some time for marketing. Now you only have four cubes left. So while this whole idea of like Patreon or Kickstarters or, you know, multi edition books all sounds incredible, and what a way to jumpstart your career and sell this. What is sustainable for you? What is actually realistic that you're going to do and still love it? I see certain authors who write and they publish. I mean, a year ago they were at 50 books and now they're at 65 and they're just relentless. And they are on that hamster wheel and they cannot get off. And I look at them and I think, are they happy? And I don't think they are. I don't think they're having joyful relationships outside of writing. I think it's so important to push yourself to have a hobby. I garden. I love my gardens. It is a place where it has nothing to do with writing. And for the longest time, I didn't have something like that. I had books and even I would read and I couldn't read for pleasure anymore because I would think what people are doing in them and what they do there, and that's smart. And look how they did this. And, you know, what are we doing in plots now and characters? And it's really, really important we have something called completely unrelated to pull us into being just human.

[51:20] Marissa: Okay? I cannot believe that we've been talking for over 50 minutes, like, gone by so quickly. And I had a million other things that I wanted to ask you about. But we are running out of time. So I'm going to do just like a real quick speed round.

[51:36] Lydia: Okie dokie.

[51:38] Marissa: Number one tip. What someone should do if they feel like they're facing burnout - what should they do today?

[51:44] Lydia: Take a break. Stop, walk more. Match your word. Count to your steps. Get up every hour. Go around the block. You don't have to go far. You don't even have to put on sneakers. You could do it in your slippers or flip flops. It doesn't matter. Don't you don't need workout clothes or anything. Go get those things. You need fresh air, sunshine, a breeze, oxygen in your lungs. Go walk. It boosts creativity. There's tons of studies you can read about how that will you regenerate so much in your creative mind, in your clarity, and you're thinking, oh, get up and move. Get away from the work for a minute. Go do something physical. What is your number one way that you celebrate martinis?

[52:28] Marissa: What is your love language?

[52:31] Lydia: My love language is acts of. I like to speak acts of. I always say people have two love languages, so I like to speak acts of services. I'm Italian. I love to cook for people. I love. If you don't eat my food, you don't love me. So if I offer you food, you have to take it. I'm a great cook, so, you know, you're not missing out. And then I like to hear, the one I like to receive is quality time. So I always say, like, you know, I'll tell my husband, I want you to help me straighten up the kitchen afterwards. I really don't want him to touch anything. He'll just put things in the wrong places and then I won't be able to. I just want him to stand with me for the 15 minutes that it takes me to put things back after cooking a meal.

[53:07] Marissa: Yeah, that's funny.

[53:08] Lydia: I love that. That.

[53:09] Marissa: Okay, so in addition to this book talking a ton about burnout, it also has a huge section on how to be more prolific, how to get more words and writing done, so long as you are doing it in a way that is healthy and you're not just driving yourself into the ground all the time. So what is maybe your number one tip from that section for how a person can increase their daily word count?

[53:36] Lydia: My tip is going to be, simply put, I think that you can read it in this book. So you can go buy that book. But I'm not going to do the plug where I tell you, go buy the book. It's great, but go buy.

[53:47] Marissa: I'll do that. I'll do that for you.

[53:49] Lydia: But I think if you want to be prolific, understand plot. Understand plot and characterization. Characters drive your plot. But plot is a cookie cutter mold. It is always the same. It doesn't matter who's, um, you know, whose design of the arc you're looking at. It is always the same. Some people will be like, oh, the 75% breakup. Or, you know, they have all these different, like, ways to frame it, to explain it, but understanding plot. My daughter's 17. She just graduated. She's actually writing a book, and she's using ten k. It walks you through step by step. Not only that, I took it and broke it into 40 plot points. And you could put them. You can move them around and slide them into, you know, I want three plot points in this chapter. And. And it gets a little convoluted if you're not familiar with the book. But knowing that plot, we can watch an episode of Game of Thrones and see exactly what's going to happen. We can watch Bridgerton and see exactly what's going to happen. We can watch stranger things and see exactly what's going to happen. We know, oh, my gosh, something's going to die here. Because in plots, these things are just absolutes that happen. Unless you're Quentin Tarantino. So understanding plot. Once you study plot, study it, study it hard. Get to know it once you understand what plot is and that arc formation, and you get that, all you have to do is make flesh and blood characters and then put them in the plot. It's like loading them into a. Like the cart of a roller coaster. And then you just pull the lever and they just fly through the. The architecture of the roller coaster. Your characters are going to respond to different things happening around them differently based on how you developed them. So understanding characterization and knowing how to deeply develop your characters, but really understanding what plot looks like, because once you have that character developed, you just push them through the same. It's like a relay race. You just push them through the same obstacle course over and over again.

[55:52] Marissa: All right, as you've all heard, the book is very long. It's very dense. There is a ton, ton of great information in it. So I will recommend that everyone go buy the book because there's so much more to dig into. But for now, are you ready for our quick bonus round?

[56:09] Lydia: I am.

[56:10] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[56:13] Lydia: Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleepass. It's the only book that I can read over and over and over again. It's a perfect romance to me. And the sequel, Blue Eyed Devil is perfect.

[56:24] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[56:26] Lydia: Right now we have a anthology coming out with several other authors called Steamy ever after. That comes out August 1, and that's with, you know, you'll get. It's a hodgepodge of books from me, Willow Winters, Michelle Windsor, DZ Lorenzo. A bunch of authors have gotten together, Ellie Masters. There's a bunch of us. So that's coming out August 1, and I am wrapping up writing primal kill, which is from my dark paranormal series, the Order of vampires. And that series is. It has, like, a cult following. It's dark. You have to read it in order. They're big, fat books, and it is about a vamp, an ancient vampire order hiding in plain sight, living as an amish order. But it's dark and dirty and they're villainous. So you think like, oh, it's amish. It must be christian romance. No, it's not anything like that. Absolutely corrupt and dangerous. Think more. Handmaid's tale. Very patriarchy. Gotta burn down the patriarchy. All the things. And possessive, aggressive hunting and life and death. Very gory and dark. Lots of darkness. So if you like romance and you like fantasy, that's where you want to go. The order of vampires. So that's. I'm in my dark phase right now.

[57:45] Marissa: That was a fun pitch. I like that. Lastly, where can people find you?

[57:52] Lydia: So the best way to find me is basically go on my social media, follow me there, but then get on my newsletter if you want to connect with me. I mean, I. Every time I get a newsletter out, I get, you know, at least 25 emails back, and I answer every single one personally. I connect one on one with my, you know, my subscribers there, and I share a lot of personal stuff there and pictures of my personal life, and it's. It's where I found this is the most manageable place for me to get my writing done and communicate with people who are interested in my brand. You can follow me on social media to see what I'm writing, but if you really want to know me, connect with me. You want to get on my. My mailing list, and that you can do that through social media or through my website, which social media will lead you right to my website, too. So that's a great way to find me.

[58:44] Marissa: Awesome. Lydia, this was such a joy. Thank you for joining me.

[58:48] Lydia: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it, and I'm just. I'm so looking forward to, you know, reading up on some of your books. It was so funny, because I think right around the time you were probably reading ten k, I was at a signing at a barnes and nobles, and I was literally reading the back of Cinder.

[59:05] Marissa: Oh, that's so funny.

[59:07] Lydia: Interesting how, like, the universe, I'm thinking, like, because as you're telling this timeline, I'm like, I think that's when I was literally, like, sitting in Barnes, unable to go, going, this looks good.

[59:15] Marissa: Oh, that's hilarious. The universe. The universe has us tied together. I'm sure of it, right?

[59:20] Lydia: Right? I think so.

[59:24] Marissa: Readers definitely check out write ten k in a day. Avoid burnout. Unleash your prolific potential along with Lydia's many popular romance titles. Of course, we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore, but you can also pick up a copy through our affiliate store@bookshop.org, shop. Marissa Meyer next week, I will be chatting with Remy Leigh about her middle grade illustrated horror novel. Read at your own risk. Please don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Check out our merchandise on Etsy, Instagram, and teepublic, and be sure to follow us on Instagram. Happy writer podcast until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today, I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.