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How to Write a Novel (with Amber Royer) · The Daily Writer

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome creative geniuses.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode 92 of the Born to Create Podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kent Sanders, and this is the show where we explore the mindset, habits, and skills to help you make a bigger impact in your life and creative work.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can find previous episodes, my free ultimate toolkit for creative entrepreneurs, and much more at KentSanders.net.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years I've heard the statistic, and you probably have as well, that eight out of every ten people want to write a book.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Based on a lot of conversations about writing with a lot of different people over the last few years, I think that's probably true.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nearly everybody feels like they have at least one book in them, and many of those would like that book to be a novel.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to writing a novel, how do you actually get it done?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you come up with story ideas?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do you ensure that your story is well structured?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of writing habits do you need, and should you use a publisher or self-publish your book?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm so thankful that today my guest, Amber Royer, is here to help answer these questions and give some much needed guidance to all these issues and much more.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: She is an accomplished novelist and a writing teacher, and she's going to share a lot of wisdom that we'll get to in just a minute, but first of all, let's dive into our Ask Kent segment.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the show where I answer your questions about creativity, mindset, habits, and writing.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Brad Blackman wrote in with a question about creative habits.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, How do you build creative habits when routine leads to boredom or worse, burnout?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Brad, what a great question because the whole idea of habits and a regular practice or a routine in many ways seems counterintuitive to creativity.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: For those of us who are artists, we tend to perceive that creativity always means we're doing something that's new, different, or fresh.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what we often miss is the fact that a system or a habit is actually the gateway to something that's new and fresh instead of being the enemy of the new and fresh.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So a creative habit is some type of consistent practice that helps us to release our energy instead of working against our creative energy.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, certainly we don't want to get involved in some type of rote habit that doesn't help us meet our goals or it's boring or just is not working.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: There is an element to trying new things and trying new habits or routines or you know figuring out a new way to drive to work or trying a new store or a coffee shop or whatever the case might be.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to have that element where we follow our curiosity.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if we want to really reach important creative goals, we can't always be doing new and different things that aren't helping to lead us anywhere.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think there has to be a balance between following our curiosity, but at the same time practicing some type of regular habits that are helping us to reach creative goals that are important to us.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we take what is working for other people and we implement those habits just sort of blindly without really giving thought to, okay, this is something that's going to help me accomplish my goals.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, at least I know I've been guilty of this, sometimes we stick with habits long after they are not working for us just because we feel like, oh, I've got to stick with this creative habit that's working for somebody else, but it's not really doing me any good.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if I were to set up a regular habit of practicing the tuba, that would be something that would be really frustrating to me.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've never played a woodwind or a brass instrument in my life.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now I can play a lot of other things, things that you hit on, you know, with your with your hands and you know, like percussion instruments and guitar and a little bit of piano and those kind of things.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I I can't play any instrument that you blow into.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if I were to start practicing the tuba, that would be frustrating to me and would not help me to reach the creative goals that are important in my life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: However, I have a great friend whose name is Dave Ivey.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Both him and his wife are amazing musicians.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: They play tons and tons of different instruments.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dave has been a band director for several school districts over the years and has directed musicals, and they're both just phenomenally talented.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Something like a tuba practice habit is going to probably help Dave and Sandy reach their goals much better than it would for me.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, likewise, having a regular habit of, let's say, producing a podcast or of writing blog posts or doing freelance writing, those kind of habits are probably not going to help my friends Dave and Sandy accomplish goals that are important to them because that's not the direction that they're likely going in their creative lives.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the moral of that little story is that we can't just implement habits that other people are doing without really thinking about are these habits, are these practices, are these routines or rituals helping us to accomplish the goals that are important to us.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, Brad, I think really that the answer to your question is we've got to just try different habits and see if they work for us.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And also we can't just view routines and habits as something that are our enemy.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Those routines and habits can really help us to meet the goals that are important to us as long as they're leading us in the right direction.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that just simply involves experimentation.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean curiosity and just discovery is part of the overall creative process.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I would just encourage you to do some exploring, and after you've done some exploring with habits and routines and figuring out what works for you, then just pick something that works and just uh go with it for a while and see how that helps you.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to recommend a great book by Seth Godin called The Dip.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little short hardback book that I really highly recommend.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this book teaches you when to stick with something and when to quit.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's really super helpful.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's very short.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can read it in, you know, probably less than an hour or at max two hours if you read if you read it slowly.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But man, it's such a helpful book that it's going to give you some guidance as to when to stick with something and when to quit.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Brad, thanks so much for your question.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Give those a try and uh let me know how it goes for you.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be sending you an ebook and an audio book of the artist suitcase.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for everyone else who's listening, if you have a question about the creative life, habits, productivity, mindset, or writing, you can send me the question at KentSanders.net slash podcast, or you can just shoot me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if I use your question on the show, I'll send you a free ebook and audiobook of the artist's suitcase.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, I'm really excited today to have Amber Royer on the show.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Amber writes fun science fiction involving chocolate, aliens, lovesick AIs, time travel, virtual reality, and more.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: She's the author of the Chocolate Comic Space Opera series.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the first two books in the series, titled Free Chocolate and Pure Chocolate, are available now from Angry Robot Books, and I'll have links to both of those in the show notes.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Amber and her husband have also co-authored two cookbooks, one of which is all about chocolate, and she has a column through Dave's Garden where she writes about cooking and gardening.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: She teaches creative writing in North Texas for both UT Arlington Continuing Education and also writing workshops Dallas.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amber also said in her bio, if you're very nice to her, she also might make you cupcakes.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which is pretty awesome because who doesn't like cupcakes?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: In our conversation today, Amber shares lots of wisdom about writing and creativity.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Her insights include how to produce a first draft, why the first few chapters of a book signal to the reader what kind of world it is, why the villain is the mirror of the hero, and why some writers are afraid of success.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the later part of our conversation, you'll hear us talk about Avengers Infinity War.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now this episode is being released after Avengers Endgame came out, so if it seems kind of strange that we're talking about Infinity War without knowing what happens in Endgame, the reason is because we recorded this episode before Endgame was released.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So just kind of a note there for all of you Marvel fans who are wondering what's going on with that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, after the interview, make sure and check out our show notes for all the links and uh all the goodness there.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can find those at KentSanders.net slash zero nine two.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get on to the conversation with Amber Royer.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I am so happy today to be talking to Amber Royer, the novelist and writing teacher.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, Amber, thanks so much for taking the time to join me on the Born to Create podcast.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for having me out.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of the funny things that I was sort of laughing to myself about before I jumped on Skype here just a few minutes ago was that it seems like everybody who I interview or know also knows Blake Atwood.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he is like the most well-connected person I've ever met because literally almost everybody's like, oh, how do you know Blake Atwood?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because they see we're friends on Facebook, or you know, he's been on my show as well.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just funny because he literally knows everybody.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So and I you're one of those people as well.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: He does.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um I work with him at Writing Workshops Dallas.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: One of the last things that he did there recently was uh a workshop on Scrivener.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I've had some writing students who wanted to know how to work with Scrivener, so I went and took Blake's workshop and we got to talking, and now I'm on this podcast.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: First rule of Scriver Scrivener is buckle up because there's a lot to learn.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I I love it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in love with Scrivener, so I'm really glad that he's helping people to learn it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's still a little bit challenging to me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I actually put all of my information for the first project I tried to do in it in the note card view.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then that's like um subdata.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I should have taken the seminar first.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we all gotta dive in and learn it somehow.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So hey, at least you took action.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's definitely worth something.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Amber, I'm really inspired by your creativity and particularly how you set up a whole universe in your books based on chocolate.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is a simple idea, but it's so brilliant and so much fun.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really excited to have this conversation with you about your writing and um just kind of digging into all this.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So as we start out, can you talk about just in general the the Choco Verse?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And am I pronouncing that correctly, Choco Verse?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the universe kind of based in chocolate.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you get that idea and tell us a little bit about what that universe is like?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it came from some real world history.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: I had read an article on the history of coffee and how um when it was originally in the Arabian Peninsula, they would always boil the beans before they would allow it to be exported.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: And there was this whole very romanticized history of how this one person's diplomat's wife gave somebody coffee seedlings in a going away bouquet, and then they take it on the boat, and the boat founders, and they find out they're sharing their water rations with these coffee plants, and they try to tear them up and throw them overboard, and the guy has one plant and he gets it back to Europe and it doesn't grow well, so another country steals it from him, and they finally have a workable coffee plantation.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just kind of flip that on into the future, and you have the aliens land, and they want samples of commodities, and one of the first things that they do is wind up at a cafe and they fall in love with coffee and they buy samples of it on eBay, and now you have coffee being grown on the other side of the universe.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fascinating.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: So that that actually winds up part history, part fiction in the book.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then shortly after that, I was doing these um lectures for Royal Caribbean, and we took a tour in Samana, Dominican Republic, of a chocolate plantation.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of started playing around with that idea and put it together with the history of coffee and came up with a future where the aliens took commodities, but since it's not a chocolate tree, it's a cacao tree, they make a translation mistake and they miss chocolate.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: So chocolate is the only thing Earth has that's still unique.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's really fascinating because you you've taken what on the surface seems like a crazy idea, but you have made it logical and rational.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I love the fact that you have developed a way to make that feasible and where it's not just you know, and and I'm I'm kind of a sci-fi nerd, so you know I love all the Marvel and Star Wars stuff.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they just kind of throw in ideas that don't that aren't really based in any sort of reality.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like here's the infinity stones, we don't really know what they are, they're just these magical rocks, and we're not going to explain them, but they drive the whole universe.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love how you have thought this through, and there's there's logic and rationality to it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, there's also this base appeal of the idea that it is chocolate.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes when I hand sell the book, I'll be like, so chocolate is now the most important thing in the galaxy.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: And people turn around and they go, Isn't it already?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: So it ties the appeal that people already have to a substance that's interesting with this whole over-the-top comedy fun.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you gotta ground it somewhere because to me, anything that is just comedy, it starts to lose your audience pretty quickly if there's no substance underneath.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because something can only be you can only sort of sustain that comedy element for so long until you kind of have to to give us a break from that a little bit.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk a little bit about the cover for your book, Free Chocolate?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really like this cover, and I'm curious to know who the graphic designer was and what your process for developing that cover was.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the artist is Ming Chen Shin, and um Angry Robot completely set all of that up and and got the cover, but whenever I saw it the first time, it felt like they had just like reached into my brain because these characters were perfect.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: And um one thing that you can kind of look at is scale, because I don't I don't know um how many of you guys have read the book, but Croskiss is one of the Xantites, and he's the guy, the big yellow guy who's in the back behind Borrow and Brill.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: He really should be a lot bigger.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: But there just wasn't room, otherwise he would have dominated the cover rather than our two pro tags.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you so the scale of him is a little different than it is actually in the book.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: But that that I think works if you kind of imagine that he's standing like way behind them.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: So in this instance, you were really happy with what the publisher did in terms of the graphic design and the feel and the look of the cover.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and one of the things Angry Robot has people do is um pinboards through Pinterest.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was able to give them my ideas of what I thought would look cool on the cover, and it looks nothing like my pinboard, but the dress that Bo is wearing and the jacket that Brill has on were both drawn from the pin board.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: And they did something similar with book two as well.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, does that make it easier with the second book in a series?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because you already have the cover design and aesthetic established, you already have the universe built, and now you're you're kind of extending what you've already done as opposed to inventing everything for the first time.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: From the writing point of view, it definitely does make it easier because you know the characters and you know how they're going to respond in any given situation.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: That totally makes a lot of sense.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I've never written a series uh of books, so you know I would love to in the future, so that's definitely some helpful advice.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can you take us back to where you first started getting interested in writing novels and what your process for writing free chocolate was like, the first book in this series.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um well, if you want to talk about when I first got interested in writing, that's way back in elementary school.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with that.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's when many of us develop this love for stories and writing.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I can remember my fourth grade teacher talking about some story I had written and how I had potential, and I decided there and then I was someday gonna be a writer.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The power of teachers.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: My mom says she remembers something from the first grade, but I have no idea.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I tried to tackle a novel for the first time in high school.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: I was doing a lot with journalism classes, and one of my journalism instructors was very much a novelist.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was dreadful.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: It will never see the light of day, but it your first novel is always when you're learning how the moving parts work.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think people are really hard on themselves about their first novel.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: I teach a lot of writing students who walk in, and because they've written essays before, because they've written, you know, business proposals or things like that, they assume automatically that their first novel is going to be a piece of art.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then when it doesn't live up to the standard that's in their head, especially as a first draft, they get really frustrated.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they'll give up entirely.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I always tell people it's like if you don't have a draft, you can't edit it.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's nothing to edit.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: So there was a quote, and I I I never did find out who originally said it, but it's the idea that if we were a sculptor, we would go and we would pick out a piece of marble, and that marble would inspire us because maybe there's a line here that looks like a dove's wing, and maybe there's a line there that looks like a building it might be perching on, or whatever it is.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: But as writers, we make our own marble, which is so powerful, but it's something that people don't really think about.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: They expect that whatever they put down, however the words are ordered when they first think of them, it's set in stone.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's become canon in their mind, and therefore it's really hard to get people to realize you have to write something in order to be able to edit.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you write that first draft?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this is kind of the million-dollar question, if you will.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say somebody has ideas for scenes, they have a general structure for the story, some ideas.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do you actually go from that to writing a complete first draft, even though it may be a crappy first draft?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you just sit down and buzz through it as quick as possible, or do you have an I a specific idea for every scene that you write out, and that you just kind of follow that outline, or how did you go about producing that first draft?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, whenever I first started writing, I was a complete panther.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that really gets you into territory where you're gonna have a lot of revision to get it into something that has clean arcs.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And um free chocolate was not my first novel, it was not my second novel, it was my 14th novel.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of my first ones were just rambly pieces of vignettes.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't until I learned the power of combining the creativity of being a pantser with structure that I actually had something that turned into workable stories.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the books I highly recommend is Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, not Terry Brooks, Larry Brooks.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, because it breaks down the idea of what you need in structure in different parts of a story.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I am now a super mega planning outliner.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't actually write any of the scenes like right-write them as they would be a draft of an actual book.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't write those until you have the whole thing structured and planned out.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've started doing it that way because it you get attached to scenes, you get attached to tangents and plot arcs and things that take you off in different directions.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: But if you have an idea of the story's spine, you look at it like literally the spine of an L an animal will hold it up.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you don't have that running through the whole story, you're not gonna have something that's gonna feel satisfying to the reader when you get to the end.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: And even if you don't have an extensive outline, I always talk to my students about, you know, the those major turning points.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know where the midpoint of your story is?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what your character's journey is as far as where they're starting the story and how they're transformed at the end?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, can you give me four or five points that are major twists, revelations, um, things that are gonna make an impact on the reader, gonna shock them a little bit or make them have joy.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got that and it all feels like it's going somewhere, then you've got a workable story that you can build into a novel.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of people will think that means that we've taken all the creativity out of it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that was one of the things when I was a pantser, everyone was like, oh, if you pre-plan, then you won't have the motivation to write the novel.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: But I kind of look at it as you're running a science experiment.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's an article and it's something along the lines of this is your brain on fiction, and it talks about how basically we're simulating things when we read.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why you can read a book multiple times and you can still feel that suspense and anticipation because your brain is researching.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Set the simulation.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: So as a writer, you get to do this whole other process where you think you know what's going to happen.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then you start writing it.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times, as you're working through the simulation, your brain gives you something better.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I never completely 100% stick to my outline.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm working right now on book three in the Choco Verse, and I am so far off of my outline because I'm realizing, well, that isn't really what Bo would have done at a certain juncture.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that took her off into a different direction that is more Bo than what I was trying to make her do.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've got the outline.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: It will dovetail back into the outline by the end, but I've also got that freedom of I'm not going to be overly tied to it and ignore this better path just because it's not what I wrote in my original hypothesis.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm hearing you saying, in essence, is think about your reader.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just something that you're doing for your own enjoyment.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want to develop some sort of career out of this or have people take you seriously as a writer, think about your reader and what's going to please them and producing something that they're going to enjoy.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't unless you just want it to be a fun hobby for you or something like that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you're talking about creating something specifically with the reader in mind.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and there's a lot of things you put into place at the beginning of a story that cue to the reader what type of story they're in for.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: And if you switch gears in the middle of it, people are going to be disappointed or they're going to be angry.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's how you set the rules of how your world works.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe there can be a certain amount of peril, but certain things are not going to happen to main characters.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, when I was talking with my agent at one point, there was a character in book two that I had planned to kill off.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And she told me that it was crossing a line from the comic into the darker side of sci-fi.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not that other characters don't die in my books, but this one just the way I had introduced him, it was going to be too hard on the reader.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, You've created a world where bad things can happen, but those bad things aren't forever.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of took that as my capsule for the rules of the Choco Verse.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: It can't be too dark.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: Because then the reader who likes the comic, who has come in for the fun, is going to be really disappointed.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know that that's really interesting because it it occurs to me that You know, every world has its rules.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife watches a lot of Hallmark channel movies, and you never see anything graphic, you're never going to see a fist fight or blood or guts or probably guns in a Hallmark channel movie.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: In the Star Wars universe, you're you're rarely going to see blood in Star Wars.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, any violence, you're not going to it's not going to be graphic on any level.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that is kind of interesting in setting the rules for your world.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: How when you were creating this universe, how did you know what the rules were going to be?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that something that you discover as you go along?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: This this one I kind of figured it out along the way, but you can tell a lot of times when things have been pre-planned, um, or maybe it's an expectation of the genre.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because I read a lot of mystery as well.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: I love sci-fi, but I read a lot of mystery, and you can tell with a cozy mystery what the levels of certain things are going to be allowed.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um with sci-fi, it's a little more fluid because every universe is different.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And you just those first three or four chapters are your opportunity to give clues of what things are going to be like in this world.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And if I can get through the first three or four chapters, I should be pretty much okay with the content of the rest of the book.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, like in a in a cozy mystery, you're not going to see any autopsy scenes like you would on CSI or something like that.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not going to fly with that particular audience and their expectations.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that just makes sense because you know you kind of have to pick your rut, whatever that rut is, and stick with it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: That just produces expectations within the reader.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to be reading something and all of a sudden it takes a hard left turn into some other kind of genre territory.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because you're going to lose a lot of readers and you're going to get a lot of one-star reviews for that.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: So something that you mentioned in the info sheet that you sent me before our interview was really fascinating to me.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the villains as the mirror of the heroes.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I am I'm really compelled by that imagery.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can you expand on what you meant by that and maybe give us some examples of from movies or or other other literature that maybe our listeners would be familiar with?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, that that was in a list of the presentations that I've done as seminars.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I did that one also for Writing Workshops Dallas.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I did it as a two-hour seminar, so I'll try and sum up a little bit.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: This is the idea that psychologically your hero and your villain are dealing with the same psychological wound or character flaw, or in some other way have a connection.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And this is gonna lead to a satisfying conclusion in which your your hero arcs because he or she has understood what the flaw is, often by looking at the example of how the villain is dealing with the same problem.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: And this burns away this goes back to the idea of the wound and the lie.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: So the psychological wound creates the lie that the character believes about themselves and that they have to overcome in the course of the story.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: So the the hero burns away the lie and finds the truth, and the villain stays trapped by this and is unable to completely arc, which is usually why they fail.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's the fact that they have defeated the antagonist that proves the lie false.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: So the character is good enough to win.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: They can trust people in their lives.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, love or honor or whatever it is is worth the risk in the fight.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's something that underpins a lot of fiction, a lot more than you would think.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of times when you have a mismatch and the hero and the villain are not mirrors, it's unsatisfying.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, why is this person fighting against that person?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: And why did the ending work out this way?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: It feels very random.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because we psychologically as humans are always looking for patterns.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's even how jokes work.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: You have the rule of threes because one is an instance, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: And when you do humor, yeah, I do a lot of humor.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: So when you do humor, that third point breaks the pattern.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: We have two points, we expect a line to continue um in both directions completely forever, but you break that pattern on the third point and we laugh.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Or you do it in a different way that's dramatic, and then we feel um disjointed, and and you can give us real chills that way.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: So whenever we see the hero and the villain, and they both have that same psychological wound, that creates a pattern.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we expect all the plot events to follow that, and then we get the conclusion that that makes it feel like it's come full circle.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I guess it's a straight line, like it's gone in the straight line forever.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and when you don't get that, you feel like, why were these two people in the same story?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you just blew my mind a little bit here because you know, it it's not often somebody says something that just completely changes the way I think about a whole host of things, but in this case that's true.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the other day I was watching rewatching the Indiana Jones movies.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're on Netflix now.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I guess they put them on there at the beginning of the year or something.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and when you said that it just reminded me of uh I think the guy's name is Bellok in the first in the first Indiana Jones movie.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, in the first scene, Indiana Jones, he's in I think South America somewhere, he gets an idol and Bellok steals it from him.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point along the way, Bellock makes the point that you and I are very much alike in what what we're doing.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, in the third movie, there's the guy Donovan, who he starts out sending Indy on this mission, and they're you can tell they're almost like mere images of each other.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course he ends up being the bad guy.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's a spoiler for but if the movie's like 30 years old or something.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that is so fascinating.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: Statue of Limitations is up on that.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is really, really fascinating, and I I bet if you know, I bet if we start to look at popular movies and literature, that you're you're saying that does hold true a lot of the times, at least in the good ones.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean the classic example is Batman and the Joker.
• 31:09
  unknown: Yes.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: You look at the Michael Keaton version, they have that entire scene that spells it out with the whole you made me, I made you.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they both have this grudge against society for all of the wrongs that have happened.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of my absolute favorites is um Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting, okay.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because you look at it and Jim is everything Silver wishes he was.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: He's honorable, he's good, and he cares about people.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: And you get the idea that Silver used to be that, and he lost it somewhere along the way.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then you flip it around, and what's missing in Jim's life is he doesn't have the father figure that he needs.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: And over the course of the story, despite the fact that Silver is the antagonist, they develop this relationship where he kind of steps into that father figure role, and that makes the conclusion a little bit heart-wrenching.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation, and we'll get back to it in just a second.
• 32:11
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• 32:16
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• 32:22
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• 32:30
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• 32:33
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• 32:42
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• 33:01
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• 33:03
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• 33:09
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• 33:23
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• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: So are you a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all that stuff?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you this.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you obviously know a lot more about this stuff than I do, so I I want to probe your mind a little bit.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't even planned on asking about this.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I love the MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe for the non-comic book geeks um who are listening.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really intrigued by how in the last movie, Infinity War, that Thanos was basically the protagonist.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious what your take on that is, whether he is the protagonist and how the things that they did in that movie to actually make him really sympathetic.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when you look at it structurally, the protagonist, uh if you go back to the Greek, is the the proto-agonist, so the main actor.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I would definitely say yes for for him in that in the sense that he is the one with a goal.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: And he is the one who at least at the end of this film achieves his goal.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: And you look at everything that is standing in the way of that goal, and that's our heroes.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of it's weird because you almost sort of root for him.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not not really, but kind of.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: A little bit.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like conflicting emotionally.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think they did that on purpose.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do too, and I I hate them for it, but at the same time, I I love being played with as a movie watcher, you know, in that sense.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: And when you look at the end of the film, they usually have it's just like a thing with those films, so-and-so will be back.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: And look at who it says is gonna be back.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the Guardians of the Galaxy, it's not Spider-Man, he's gonna be back.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm really curious how they're gonna resolve the the whole, you know, killing half of the universe in the next movie.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I've totally not spent hours reading theories online, not at all.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I say that with sarcasm, so well, you know.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I could talk about this this stuff all day.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um however, I guess I better move on to some other questions I've got here as well.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And things that I'm that I'm really kind of curious about.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um what would you say are some writers who have really influenced your style and your thinking?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you love you know comic books, sci-fi, mysteries, um, comedy.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a lot of things going on there, and I'm curious who your influences have been.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, you can't talk science fiction that's comic without mentioning Douglas Adams.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, he goes, Gonzo, he goes over the top and he's always ready for the laugh, but he never loses sight of the story.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: These characters are always in one bit of danger.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: The minute they solve that, there's another bit of danger.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's that balance of tension and laughter that keeps us reading.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought about that before.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because if you have too much of one or the other, you're not gonna have a good comedy.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: And if you want to go back to Marvel Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy does the same thing.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's got a good balance of the comic with the tension.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is really interesting how they have so many different genres represented in the MCU.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like Black Panther doesn't have I mean, it does have some comedy, but it's not like slapstick comedy like the last Thor movie was, and you know, the other like um Captain America, um uh it's escaping.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: What what was the second one um called?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the espionage winter thing?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Winter Soldier, yeah.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: That one really didn't have much comedy in it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of a darker movie.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting how they have all these different genres in the same universe.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really compelling to me how they've been able to pull that off.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like if you look at the Hulk movie, it almost doesn't fit with the rest of them as way the cinematography or the levels of humor or anything like that, but they made it fit with that character.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, poor Hulk is just doesn't work as a standalone character very well.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: The poor guy.
• 37:57
  unknown: Yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's good as in an ensemble, I guess.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, any other writers that you particularly really like or that you feel like have influenced you?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, there's a lot of classics, and I I mentioned Treasure Island already.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but one thing I liked about that is the way that nothing is ever wasted in that plot, and all the threads come back together.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: And like I said, I enjoy those complex character relationships, and there's a little bit, it's not a one-to-one kind of ratio, but um, there's a little bit with Bo and Frank in Free Chocolate where they've got a similar relationship where there's antagonism and this whole need for family kind of battling back and forth.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I developed that one a lot more in book two, and I was really starting to see where that influence had come from when I'm looking at how the relationship is changing in the second book.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: So will this be uh just a trilogy, or do you think there will be possibly books beyond book three in the series?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I have outlines for books beyond book three, but um I think at this point the plan is at least have a conclusion that that readers can be happy with with a trilogy, and then if possible, boot it into a second trilogy.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a completely different plot problem for that, and um I I think it could be really satisfying that way.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess that's one of the things that that novelists have to really consider is are you gonna do a standalone book?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be a trilogy?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be you know, something like Harry Potter that was planned out, the whole thing was planned out in advance, seven books, which is just a gargantuan task, it seems like to me.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have any advice for people who are thinking about writing a novel?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if you have what you feel like is a good idea, should should you plan on a trilogy before you even write the first one?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Write the first one.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've talked to writers and they have spent so many hours planning.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um but what happens if the first one, when you finally sit down and write it, doesn't come out as well as you'd hoped?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: Or if you can't find a home for it, then you've spent all this time plotting out.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: I've talked to people who've plotted out 15 books in a series.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: And they have they have binders and files and character interviews and all of this kind of stuff, but they don't have a draft for book one.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't have book one, you can't sell it because nobody's gonna buy from an unknown author just based on an outline or a plan.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: You you have to be able to write a good story and stick the landing on the first one.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't have the first one, all of that extra planning, I mean, have some ideas, have an idea where you're gonna go with it, but put your time in getting the first one right.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then whenever you get it to the point where you have an editor look at it, likely things are gonna change.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: So much so that by the time you get to book 15, should it happen, um, it's probably not gonna be the same story that you started with.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: It totally makes sense.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really does.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So is there something within, do you think the psychological makeup of writers that causes us to want to plan and outline and kind of do all these side things without getting into the meat and actually writing the book?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something about overcoming our fear or maybe we don't want to confront the fact that we're not as good as we think we are that makes us do all the side work, but we don't actually write the book?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's kind of where the the proof is.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sometimes it absolutely is that.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I think some writers are afraid of sharing.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um they're afraid of failing, and sometimes they're afraid of succeeding.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do you mean what do you mean by that?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can you expand on that a little bit more?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, what what does the world look like if you succeed and all of a sudden you become a published novelist and whatever is in your book is out there for public consumption?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I I know writers who they'll get to the point where they have almost finished their book, but they won't finish it.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I've sat down and talked with a couple of them, and in at least a couple of cases, it's been the whole idea that if I finish it, I have to share it.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: And if I succeed at this, I have to share it with a lot of people.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that can be intimidating.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is there an element to this where and this would apply to any kind of art, whenever we accomplish something or finish something, then that can change our relationship with our social group or our peer group or our family where maybe we're the only person among them who has tried to accomplish something that's out of the ordinary, and and now that's going to change our relationship with them, and and and for that reason, maybe sometimes we're scared of success.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we're scared that we're just a one-hit wander and we don't actually have what it takes to do something long-term.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think both of those things really do play into it.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um because whenever you do something that's public art, you're putting yourself in the public eye, and it does change a little bit about the way people think about you.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that could be good or that could be bad, and it it also can open up psychological wounds.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people who write the same kind of themes.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: This goes back to the idea that when we're telling a story, we're telling the stories that we need to hear.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because a lot of times we carry our own psychological baggage and our own psychological wounds.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times you will see writers write the same type of people or people dealing with the same type of situations.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: And It can go back to I'm opening up myself to you as a reader and letting you see what's in my head as far as where my psychological wounds come from, as far as what I think about certain things, um, as far as what I feel about justice and love and violence and all of those things that go into a story.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that can be very intimidating too, especially if we're not yet comfortable with what we do think about certain things.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: But but it is kind of interesting because exploring them within a fiction context is a way to talk about those things and address problems and sort of dredge up things in our psyche or our past without talking about them directly.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we can do it kind of vicariously, which is a lot safer.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's safer.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: And also with fiction, nobody can tell what's you and what's not.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can sort of hide behind it a little bit.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I've had some students who are trying to decide between writing a memoir and writing a novel.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, you have to live with the consequences of a memoir.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas with a novel, if you take um those characters and mix them up enough with other characters and with people you've invented, they can become something unique so that you can explore that relationship without it being a one-to-one where people are like, this is you talking about me in your book, and you know, having to deal with that kind of fallout.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, lawsuits and who knows what, and you know, slander and all those fun things.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk a little bit about what it has been like to do a traditional publishing deal versus let's say somebody who wants to self-publish?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: What are what are like the advantages and disadvantages maybe of each one?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I'm opening a huge can of worms, and that's a huge topic.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: But generally, what has your experience been working with a publisher?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I've had a an excellent experience with you know, they they did an awesome book cover.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: They got it into Barnes and Noble so that most of the stores in my area had two copies of my book.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's so cool.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um they they line up publicity things as far as getting interviews and things like that.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um all of those things really bring it down to where you want to spend your time.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think there's always a trade-off.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, um, the trade-off between self-publishing and traditional publishing is a trade-off between control and clout.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: It it totally makes sense.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now explain what what you mean by clout a little bit.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you can you break that down a little bit?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it if you're a self-published author, you're gonna be on Amazon along with everybody else, and you don't have somebody who's in your corner if somebody decides to step on what whatever you're doing and is like um where where they're trying to pirate or post or all of that.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: If I have a problem where I find a link and it shows that my book, usually they don't even have the book, they just have the link, um, is supposedly somewhere I can contact my publisher and they have the clout to fix it.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um if I want to, if they're gonna be in a bookstore, um, it's a lot harder to get a self-published book on the shelf, whereas with a published uh publisher, they know that it's been vetted and it's been edited.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and there's a a series of trust that comes between bookstores and publishers.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so that kind of clout is what I'm talking about.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: They they can fix things, they can get you in places, um, people take it more seriously um as having been vetted and having been edited.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's kind of an automatic trust level that comes from that because it's been through the publishing process already.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the trade-off between that and control, it's like I was telling you, I I didn't have as much input into my cover as a self-published or published author would, but I had enough trust in my publisher that they were going to do something awesome.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if I really wanted control, um, I would do the self-publishing route.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: But when you have that kind of control, you also have the responsibilities that come along with the publisher for all of the marketing, um, for hiring an editor, you know, all of those things.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it takes a lot of time.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really where do you want to spend your time?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: Where do you want to focus?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I I'm not gonna say that one route is better than the other.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: People make money doing both, people find fulfillment doing both.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the cool thing today is you know, you've got options.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, can control is only good if you know what you're doing.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you have no idea what you're doing with editing or cover design or you know, working with Amazon or all of book formatting and all that stuff, then that's a major stress point because now you've got to figure out all that stuff, and that's time that's time you could be spending creating or networking or building relationships or marketing or whatever.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but if if that's your thing though, it can be very successful.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: It really just depends.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: It does, it does, and there's lots of people who do both, you know, for different projects, which is which is kind of cool because then you have options.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So as we begin to wind this down, I know we didn't get to all of our questions, we're gonna have to schedule a part two for this at some point, because I've got lots of other stuff I want to dig dig into your your brain about.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: What is one habit or practice?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I know there are many with you, but if you could identify one habit or practice that you feel like has really contributed to your success as a writer, what would it be?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Just a regular writing schedule.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you take a break from a project, it's really hard to get the momentum going again.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: But if you work through it until you at least have a draft, because I don't know if you've ever stopped a draft in the middle because something happened and you had to go take care of something else, and then you come back and it's like two months later, you've lost the direction, you've lost that focus that you had that was getting you through the draft, and it's really hard to pick it back up.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and just always make sure that that you're working on something.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you get out of the habit of writing, it's a lot harder to feel like this is something that deserves time and focus and deserves a place that especially before you get published, it it's hard to justify that much time.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you can Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna ask, do you have any kind of a suggested sort of rhythm or schedule for somebody?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say somebody has a full-time job and they want to write a first book.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: How often should they be writing?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: How much time should they be spending each day?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a better time of day to write than other times, or does it totally depend on a whole bunch of unknown factors?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I hate to be prescriptive on that because I, for one, am a night owl.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: So if I tell you that you should write from 10 p.m.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: to 2 a.m., that's really not gonna fly for a lot of time.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um people really they function better in the morning, or the only time that they have is their lunch break and two hours after dinner, you know.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it really is about fitting this into your life rather than following a prescribed path.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: And one thing I like to do is give students a worksheet, and that worksheet will kind of break down okay, this is how many words you need per week, or this is how many pages you need per week to have a draft in a month, six months, or a year.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it allows them to see the amount of work that's involved and figure out how they can break it down because a lot of times people will look at that worksheet and they want to write a novel, but they've never really thought about what goes into writing a novel.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: They really want to have written a novel.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hear that a lot.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to have written something, but the actual writing of it is is actual work and blood, sweat, and tears, and time away from Netflix and all those things.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: And you really need to count the cost and think about what you're getting yourself into and how you can succeed at doing it, because a few failed novel attempts make it harder to feel like you can succeed, if that makes any sense.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, totally, totally.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: I work with um I've taught guitar for many years and work with a lot of musicians and other creative types, uh and uh when you're trying to teach somebody guitar, if they have a hard hard time getting it, it's harder for them to feel motivated to continue on with it.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, I uh So with with some people that you've worked with, does there come a point with some people who want to write where maybe you don't say this to them, but in your own heart and mind you kind of think, you know, maybe you shouldn't be writing books, maybe you should pursue something else.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that kind of okay to think sometimes?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know, not everybody's gonna be writing to the level where they can be published.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: But that doesn't mean that writing isn't going to be an important part of their lives and an important part of their psychological defense mechanisms, ways of sorting through life and everything.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and sometimes people will take a turn.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they they will write and write and write and not get it, and then all of a sudden they get it, and it's been several years and it's powerful, and you're like, where did that come from?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't ever tell anybody not to write.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: But does but does there sometimes come a point where someone has tried to be a novelist or tried to get published, and you know, time after time it's just not working?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Does there come a point where you say, okay, maybe this particular type of writing is not what I should be doing, or maybe I need to try something else, or I don't know.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think you hit it with type of writing.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because um I I took a long time to get published.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, I started writing when I was in elementary school, and um, you know, I my first book came out when I turned 40.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of times you handicap yourself because you think you know what type of story you want to tell.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: It might not be the type of story you're good at.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to write heavy-duty literature, I wanted to write the great American novel, I wanted it to be moving and deep and all of those things, and Faulkner, I am not.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's when you start to embrace who you are as a writer, embrace your own voice, find the genre that really speaks to you, that you're gonna be able to find the power of your own writing rather than trying to copy somebody else's.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it can take a long time to figure that out.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I know a lot of writers who are publishing their first book in their 30s and 40s, and I would say don't give up just because the market isn't ready for what you want to do.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh honestly, I don't think free chocolate could have been published before Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a great point.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Really good point.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, just because what you're writing is saturated in the market right now doesn't mean that five or ten years from now it's not gonna find a place.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the cool thing, is you know, once you write a book, it's it's out there.
• 56:00
  unknown: Yeah.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Forever too, you know, ideally or in theory for people to consume.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I've talked to a lot of people over the past couple of years, and maybe it's because, you know, I'm in my mid-40s and you know, I'm not twenty-five anymore, and you know, when you get to this stage of life, you start to think, okay, now I'm kind of entering into the second half and and all that stuff.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I've I just thought many times, okay, in in a hundred years what are my great-great-grandkids going to remember of me?
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or or great-great-grandnieces or nephews or or whatever, you know, what are they gonna remember of me?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are any audio or video files that contain my words or my image, are those gonna be readable in a hundred years by some crazy computer device?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know, like literally how are they gonna remember us decades from now.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think books are one of the few ways that we can most ensure that our legacy and our thoughts and our our memory is gonna be retained for future generations, particularly print books.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm a really big proponent of print stuff.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you are as well, so yeah.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: And even if it's not widely published, um I've I've had people who want to do a memoir project or they want to do a story collection for their family.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it's basically family history or fictionalized family history.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so even if you're not going for basically going for the gold with the whole publication deal and all of that, you can find a place to be creative and you can find a place for writing that makes sense for you.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, but we have to get in there and dig into it, you know, and not be perfect at the get-go.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: So well, Amber, I really appreciate this conversation today.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've given me personally a lot of things to chew on and think about.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know this brings a ton of value for our listeners, so I really appreciate you taking a big chunk out of your morning to chat with us.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for having me.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: This was fun.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can our listeners connect with you and your books?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, if you're looking for me, AmberRoyer.com is an easy place to find my blog.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there's lots of worksheets for writers there and news information on the Chalcoverse.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my publisher, Angry Robot, their website will be a good place to find more information on interviews that I've done and things like that.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you're in Texas, I do writing instruction through continuing ed UT Arlington and also through Writing Workshops Dallas.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes so we can easily find it.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks again for doing this, and uh, we'll have to schedule a part two at some point for some follow-up stuff and other inevitable questions that I'm sure I'll have.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: That sounds great.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thanks so much.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Amber Royer.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know I learned a ton of things, and it was honestly hard to boil it down to three takeaways, but I've managed to to try and do the best I can with that.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's always hard because my guests share so much wisdom, but I always like to boil it down because it helps me to think through ways to apply what they've taught me and what they've shared in the conversation.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this is my best shot at the three biggest takeaways from our conversation.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number one, you have to write a first draft in order to have something to edit.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know this sounds like a very simple takeaway, and you're probably listening to this and going, well, of course, you have to write something first before you can edit something.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I think many times it's really difficult for us to write that first draft of anything.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not even just a novel, it's a first draft of a nonfiction book or a blog post or a chapter or a letter or an even a job application for that matter.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to sit down and write that first draft.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere there has to be that balance between structuring what we want to say and outlining it, and in the case of a novel, figuring out what the story arc is for the characters and all that stuff.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be a balance between all that, but also just sitting down and getting it done.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Amber gave some great tips for how to actually develop a writing practice so you can get the first draft done.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: She mentioned being planned and organized and developing a schedule or habit of writing.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't matter what that schedule or that habit is, as long as you have a habit of some kind.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even really matter so much as to how much you write every day.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you just write five words every day, you're not going to get very far.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: But whether it's 200 words, whether it's a page or two pages or five pages or five hundred or a thousand words, it doesn't matter really so much what it is.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: The more important thing is that it's consistent and it's regular.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have a consistent and regular habit, it really adds up quickly over time.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even if you just write 500 words a day, you're gonna have well over a hundred thousand words by the end of the year, which is far more than you need for a single book.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: So get that regular habit going so that you have a first draft so that you can have then something to edit, because you cannot edit what you have not already written in a first draft form.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's takeaway number one.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number two is a good villain is a mirror of the hero.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now this was probably my favorite insight from this whole conversation.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Amber pointed out the fact that in a good story, many times the villain and the hero are closely related, not necessarily like they're related, but la as in blood relation, but they're related because they share the same wound or the psychological flaw that they have, and they are connected in that way.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the hero has a story arc, the hero changes because they understand what their flaw is.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: They believe a lie, and they have to overcome that lie.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the character flaw is.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: They believe a lie about themselves and they have to overcome that lie in the story, and the villain takes a different path.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: They don't overcome that flaw or that wound or that lie.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you look at the end of um I think Amber mentioned uh the Joker in Batman, and what comes to mind for me is the scene at the end of The Dark Knight, the movie from 2008, which starred Heath Ledger as the iconic uh in my opinion, the best portrayal of the Joker ever.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's that scene at the very end of the movie where Batman is he has the Joker hanging upside down, and the Joker quotes that line from Jerry McGuire and says, You complete me.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really that sense of they're related because they share very similar flaws.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the Joker and Batman are are two very psychologically scarred people.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, they're they're alike in a lot of ways, they're also different in a lot of ways as well.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: So look for this uh concept in uh movies that you watch, in books that you read, uh in comic books or graphic novels or Hallmark movies or whatever it is that you like to watch as far as stories go.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Look for this idea that many times the the villain and the hero are closely connected and they're alike in many ways and they can be mirror elements of one another.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number three is simply a key question that we need to ask ourselves, and that is, am I afraid of success?
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love this insight that Amber shared about how sometimes we want success, but we're we're also afraid of it in many ways.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is that when we put our art out there as writers, as creatives, as artists, when we put our stuff out there for the world to see, we we give people an opportunity to comment on it.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that also gives people the opportunity to dislike it or to leave negative Amazon reviews or to criticize us or whatever it is that they want to do to comment on the art that we're putting out there into the world.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to ask ourselves, are we really ready for that?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes we're so afraid of having negative feedback on our art that we hesitate to put our stuff out there.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes w maybe we even go so far as to self-sabotage ourselves.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Amber mentioned this tendency of some people who will they'll write a whole book and they'll get right up to the edge, but then they won't put the book put the book out there because they're just afraid of the feedback that they might get.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself the question what does the world look like if you succeed?
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: What does the world look like if you succeed?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can get that picture in our minds, maybe that helps take away some of that fear that we can have of possibly succeeding.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean success is a great thing, but but there can be negative feedback that comes with it, and we have to be prepared for that.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: Something else that that um that I want to share here about this question, am I afraid of success, is the idea that whenever we uh strive for more in our lives, whenever we try to become more successful or we try to create things in our lives, and if we have any measure of success, sometimes that is difficult for the people around us to deal with because there's kind of a sense in which if if we want to rise above mediocrity, then our success is almost like a statement around uh it's almost like a statement about everybody else who's around us.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that old idea of the crabs in a crab basket, where when you have crabs in a basket and one tries to crawl out, the other crabs will try to pull that crab down.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: So in your life, if you're trying to succeed and to make yourself better in some way, maybe you're trying to to write a book, maybe you're trying to to do more speaking, or maybe you're trying to build a business, or you're trying to lose weight or get healthier or to change your appearance.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you're trying to do to become more successful, sometimes there are people who get irritated by that in our lives.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's because your success makes them realize that they're not really trying.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of a harsh thing to say, but it's absolutely true.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to be committed to speaking the truth, even sometimes if it's uncomfortable.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have people in your life who uh maybe they're acting strange or funny because you're trying to succeed in your life, oftentimes I think that's why.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's because when we put ourselves out there, when we try to become a better version of ourselves, people sometimes view that as a referendum or a statement about their lack of success or their lack of of really trying to become a better version of themselves.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: So just being aware of that dynamic can really help us sometimes.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, friends, that's uh a lot of thoughts.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Amber shared a lot of great content in this episode, and I hope that you really enjoyed it.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know I certainly did, and would love to have her back for a part two at some point.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are my thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you think about this episode.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that by leaving a comment on the episode at KentSanders.net slash zero nine two.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can also do that by heading over to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and a review on the show.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would really appreciate that.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: That helps other people to discover the show.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank Amber for taking the time out of her busy schedule to share in this amazing conversation.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you enjoyed what she had to say about writing and creativity, please let her know by sending her a message on Twitter at Amber underscore Royer.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I want to thank you because without you, the show wouldn't exist.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you taking time to listen to this episode and to support the show.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to check out my free Ultimate Toolkit for Creative Entrepreneurs, which is packed with 24 amazing resources to help you write and self-publish your book, unlock your creative genius, grow your business, and become more productive.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the free toolkit at Kent Sanders.net slash toolkit.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today's quote comes from Jack London who said you can't wait for inspiration.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go after it with a club.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and designed to make a difference.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now go create something awesome today.