Latest / No Mess, No Magic / Is Scrolling Making Writing Less Enjoyable?
Transcript
- Monica Hay: Hello and welcome to No Mest and Magic, a podcaster writers. This is a solo episode. I have not done one in a very long time. And so here I am doing one for the first time since must have been March or April when I started the podcast. I have Some fun updates to talk about. Twenty twenty six has been a really big year for me. Twenty twenty five was not my favorite, I'm not gonna lie to you. And a lot of people I knew also really struggled in twenty twenty-five. I feel like twenty twenty five was like the the year that everyone says was kind of as shitty as twenty twenty. I could be wrong. Maybe you had an amazing year. Tell me in the comments. So let me first talk about my updates. I feel like I don't update you guys very much because most of my episodes are interviews with other people because I love the interview format. And so I want to talk a little bit about what's going on with me. If you give a shit, you might not give a shit, but if you do, keep listening. This year I have my very first fiction piece published in the anthology called Born of Rage, which is an anthology all about female rage. And the proceeds benefit the women's march in the US. my short story is called The Shape of What Remains. And it's all about a girl who loses her magic and her grandmother on the same night. And it's kind of wild to have. Piece of fiction out there in the world. I have my nonfiction. So my my master's thesis is published, but I never talk about that. I never tell people to read it because like it's my master's thesis. And it's funny because I wrote that in 2019. So it's been a long time now. It's been many years since I wrote that thesis. And it doesn't really feel like a reflection of me anymore. And my fiction feels much more like a reflection of me. It feels really good to be a published author. And it's funny because I have these moments where I'm like, well, I'm not a real author because I don't have a full book out. there's that that piece of me that thinks because I don't have a full novel, I'm not a real author, even though I have nonfiction published and I have fiction published. So this is just to say that many, many writers deal with some kind of imposter syndrome. I actually got to attend Let's Get Bookish, which my dear friend Annie and her co-host did in Amsterdam. It was a book event that was hosted in a beautiful church in the middle of Amsterdam. And I got to sell copies of the anthology there. I got to share my booth with my dear friend Chelsea, who has also been in the podcast. So if you've seen her, or if you listen to her episodes, you'll know who she is. She's a tarot reader, and she was was doing tarot readings while I was talking about the anthology. That event was really magical. I also think it's very interesting to see the demand between a regular novel and an anthology. Anthology can be a tough sell. And I knew that going in. And so I didn't sell a ton of copies of the anthology. I sold a few. And, you know, my friends who had full novels sold many more of their novels. And I say this because I think it's a good lesson in that certain things, there's the like the market is just demands of less of it, right? I think for anthologies, it can be a tricky sell depending on the topic. And I actually think the Born of Rage anthology has done pretty well for the fact that it's anth anthology. But yeah, that's just a reminder that the industry of that writing a book or writing a short story or whatever you do comes with a level of of consumption, right? And I think it's very easy for writers to get up in their heads about, man, I only sold this many copies. I guess my nobody cares or nobody's interested. And every every reader is different. I'm very grateful for all the readers that really excited about the anthology and want to read about female rage. So I had I had a blast. My favorite part though about that event was not the selling the books. It was connecting with the other authors there because I was as an author who was attending to sell books. It it kind of feels like you're part of the crew, which is really nice because I've only ever attended these events as a reader. And I got to meet some really lovely people. Shout out to Stephanie, Stephanie Storm. I also had a podcast listener approach me and tell me how much my work impacted her. And let me tell you, I like pretty much cried because it's being a business owner online. I I think it's it's funny because we don't all I don't always see the impact of my work. If I, you know. I'm attending an author event and readers come up to me and tell me what their books meant to me. That's really lovely. I haven't experienced that yet because I, when I sold my book at the event, I I didn't have a lot of people be like, I've read the whole book and I love your short story. Being a business owner online means that you don't really always know what's happening in the world. You and Again, I'm gonna mention my co-leader, Amy McNee. She's talked about this on her Substack, how you don't really know who you're affecting and whose lives you're changing. There are people who probably listen to this podcast and read my newsletter and like watch see stuff on Instagram. And I've never seen their names. I don't know who they are. And I'm still affecting them and I still have an impact on them. But we But I don't even know about them. Right. And it's it's easy to feel like I'm shouting into a void sometimes because I don't have, you know, a million people going into my comments or into my DMs telling me about my impact. And so this is me low key asking you to tell me how I've impacted you. And you think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. I it's nice to just get that reminder that. You're doing good work. even a few weeks ago, I got an email from a guy who did my boot camp a couple of years ago and said that it really helped him. And it was just like, thank you for telling me this. And I got an email from another person a couple of weeks ago about how grateful they were for the matchmaking program. those emails keep me going. Those DMs keep me going. So thank you for them. Another random update I have to share is I've been writing short stories. And I think I've might have talked about this a bit on the podcast, but I used to be very weird about short stories. I used to not really like them. And this year was like the year of short stories for me because last year I did an event, a summit called the Write Your Own Way Summit with my dear friend Lauren. I will link her in the description below because she's fantastic. She talks about the Enneagram and writing. And There was a talk at the summit about short stories. And she kind of convinced me to to try short stories. So that is what I did this year. I have written three short stories, which seemed not like a lot because short stories are supposed be short. My short stories tend to be a tiny bit longer. I could probably make them shorter. My first short story that I wrote for the anthology was I think 8,000 words, something like that, maybe 9,000 words. The one I wrote and submitted to Flame Tree Press for a romanticy submission, that was 4,000 words. And then I just finished a short story that is, I believe, 10,000 words. And so I am still a little bit slow with them. And it's it's teaching me how to write the beginning and the middle and the end in a way that a novel doesn't, because novels take so much time. And with short stories, I can just do it in a in like a few weeks or maybe a month or s or two, which is lovely. Like you can finish something so much faster. And I love the feeling of being able to finish a little bit faster and see what my process looks like. So they've been fun and I also really love that it's been experiment experimental for me, guess you could say. Another announcement is that we fill up the Query Lab. So I was very excited, but also very nervous about offering the Query Lab because it's nothing like anything I've offered before. And we got some amazing applications, and I'm really grateful for all of you who applied. And we have a lovely cohort coming in for the first beta round. And so I don't know what things will look like in 2027 if we'll offer it again. I hope we do. Because I am excited about it. So stay tuned if you want to join the Query Lab or apply for the Query Lab. We might do another round or continue doing the program in 2027. And I'll let you know if we do. My next announcement is that I'm actually going back to school. I have registered for the Academy of Coaching and Counseling in Amsterdam. And I'm actually starting next week. And if you're listening to this after October 31st, I've already started. And I'm very stoked. It's a two-year program. And you might be thinking, well, Monica, you're already a coach. So why are you going back to school? And yes, I am a coach. That said, I am really excited to learn more and dive deeper into some coaching. Coaching studies and counseling studies. The reason I'm I register for this program is because at the end I can be a registered counselor in the Netherlands, which is really exciting for me. And I will be part of the complimentary healthcare system here, which I don't know a ton about it yet because I've only been here for two and half years, but it's not the same in the US. So here I can I can register in the the complementary part of the healthcare with the NFD. And I love that I can do that here because in the US I would have had to go down a very different route to become like a f official counselor. And here I can do something a bit more accessible that's that's more built for somebody who's working full time because I'm still still gonna be working full time when I go through. I'm also really excited because my ultimate goal is actually to register and become a parts work practitioner. And because of that, I want to do a really in-depth foundation for coaching and counseling, especially the counseling part. And then once I have finished that and have 400 hours of coaching and counseling, I can apply to be a parts work practitioner. If you haven't heard me talk about it, I'm very obsessed with Parts Work. I've talked about it probably on many, many podcast episodes. If you're curious about what it is, the movie Inside Out is basically based on Parts Work. And yeah, I'm I'm just really excited. I'm excited for this new chapter. Everything is changing in my life. My husband also has an announcement in his life, which I'm not gonna really talk about on here because, well, he's the one revising this podcast right now. Hi, honey. I'm not gonna go into that because it's his personal life. but we have a really everything has changed for us this year in such a good way. And it's such a breath of fresh air from last year because last year was awful. I'm not gonna lie. 2025 was really hard. And I know a lot of people look at my life and they think, it's it must be so perfect because you live in Amsterdam and et cetera, et cetera. And I am very grateful for living here. Don't get me wrong, but it's not easy to be an immigrant. And I do call myself an immigrant because I am one. I plan to stay in the Netherlands long term. I plan to learn Dutch. But also it's not easy to be away from your family. It's not easy to make a living being a self employed person. And so yeah, I'm just really grateful that things have worked out this year and that change is on the horizon. Also, just want to say if you're listening to this and you've been listening to the podcast, a really sincere thank you. And I really mean that. Like, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being in my world. Thank you for. showing up for me. thank you if you've purchased anything from my small business. you don't know how much it means to me. I'm so so grateful. And so I I just have to give you a shout out for those lovely people who are listening. And if you are listening, please tell me hi in the chat or I guess not the chat, the Spotify comments or the YouTube comments. So s say hi. Tell me who you are, tell me your name and what you write because I'd love to see some of the folks that are listening because I I truly wouldn't be here without the people who support me and without people listening. So I just I just have to tell you thank you so much. It means everything to me. Okay, now that I have done my update about myself, which I haven't done in like a hundred years, let's talk about the topic today. The topic today is actually about is scrolling making writing less pleasurable and enjoyable? And this whole conversation comes from a reel I saw on Instagram a couple weeks ago that kind of like fucked me up a little in a good way. She was talking about digital and hedonia. And I want to say that's an informal term. It's not a clinical term. I think the DSM V has a lot to answer to. If you don't know anything about the DSM V, it's like how people in the industry, like in the like therapists and stuff, and psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose. And it's not perfect by any means. but the digital anhedonia is not like listed in that. However, I think it's a really important conversation for a lot of writers right now. So, and I I bring this up because and I think many of us have been there. We show up to write and we want to reach for our phone and scroll TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, whatever we like to do, whatever whatever we scroll on, we get this like novelty, like it's this endless novelty of really cheap dopamine. And I know that term is like. there's a lot going on in the brain when we scroll, but the easiest way to talk about it is cheap dopamine. And we get more delay gratification with writing. And so what's happened, what's happened when we get so used to being entertained by short form content every few seconds, that sitting with a scene and sitting with our writing feels really boring and unbearable. And I actually have a theory, and I think I've noticed this for myself, that my brain has gotten used to scrolling short term short form content. And now it's making my writing actually less pleasurable. Which I find really sad. And I say this because as a kid, I could show up and write for hours and hours at a time. Sure, I was a child, so play was more part of it than it is now. But I didn't get bored at that time. And this was before social media. This was I wrote my first book when I was 15, which we'll never see the light of day because it's it's a 15 year old book, first of all. So so I wrote that book, completely obsessed with it. And social media didn't exist. This was 2000, I don't remember the early 2000s. And I didn't know what scrolling was at that time. And so I often, as an adult, have this wistfulness of back when writing was was fun and pleasurable and I was obsessed with it. But at the same time, we as adults and also kids right now, like a lot of us are very addicted to technology. And we know this, and we also are aware that it's really hard to get away from it. For me, I find it very hard to regulate my attention as an ADHDer. And so I it's very easy for me to just show up and look at my phone and scroll, especially when I'm tired. I find that in the evening when my medication wears off between like five to seven, even eight p.m. my ability. to regulate my attention and my energy is very affected. And so it's really hard for me to not scroll. And I think there's a conversation around digital anhedonia of because we've gotten sh so used to short form content, our brain just doesn't find writing the pleasurable the way it would if we weren't addicted to our phones. I truly believe that if I wasn't, if my brain hadn't gotten used to short form content on Reels or YouTube Shorts or TikTok or whatever it was, that writing would probably feel more pleasurable when I show up. And this brings me to another topic that. I actually was chatting with my friend Riley about of writer nirvana. Most writers I know are chasing this feeling. Okay. And a lot of writers can get to it pretty quickly and pretty easily. But I think it's not something that we always show up and get every time we write. And look, I chase that feeling too. I want to show up and the and the flow state comes and I'm like obsessed with writing and it feels so easy. I know I have friends who do have that. if you listen to Danny's podcast episode, the last, the most recent episode, she gets writer nirvana very quickly. And I love it. I love being in the flow. We all do. that said, I think. Short form content for me especially at least I don't know if it's like this for everybody else. So you can tell me in the in the comments on Spotify or YouTube if you feel like this has affected you. But I do think that my addiction to my phone has affected my ability to get to writer nirvana. And I think for some writers, and this is just a theory, I think sometimes if we show up and we don't reach writer nirvana. We feel disappointed. We feel like, it was a wasted session, or something's wrong with me. Or I didn't get where I wanted to go, or this is wrong somehow, or I'm broken. There's a lot of things that might come up. And I I I want to invite you to imagine that boredom, frustration, and resistance are not automatically signs that something is wrong with your process. Your brain might be used to short form content, first of all. And also sometimes sometimes the day for Rider Nirvana just doesn't happen, even when we haven't been scrolling at all. Think the problem becomes when we treat flow as evidence that we that's the only way to enjoy writing. And what happens if we sit down and we don't experience it? And so, yes, we can look at okay, I've been scrolling on my phone. And so I my brain is very used to short front content. And how can I shift that so that writing feels more pleasurable? That's something I'm hoping to do is spend less time on my phone so that when I show up to write, it feels more pleasurable and I can reach writer nirvana faster or more often. But I also think it's important to remember that if we don't reach writer nirvana, that doesn't mean there's something wrong. We might start telling ourselves like, I'm blocked or uninspired or not in the mood. And we see that discomfort as evidence that we don't want to write, but often that discomfort is a normal part of the creative process. If we leave every time writing doesn't feel pleasurable, we may never actually get to experience what comes after the uncomfortable moment. And I've had this experience where I'll show up and writing is like for like 15 minutes or even longer. Maybe it's meh the whole time. And I'm like, okay, I still showed up. Maybe it's meh for a minute and then the flow hits. And so I I say this because sometimes we just show up. And we're like, okay, it's it's crappy today. I'll just walk away now. But can we stick with it even when it's uncomfortable and even when the flow isn't giving us what we want it to? You might be wondering how can I be wondering how can I actually create a more enjoyable relationship with writing? Do I need to just get off my phone? And I have like a lot of feelings about scrolling and social media. And I have days where I'm like, okay, I want to leave these apps. But then I also remember that I've met some really amazing people on Instagram and Facebook, all these different places. And I don't necessarily see leaving as a part of my my journey right now, at least at this time. And so how do we take back some of our time so that we can show up and actually enjoy writing? My first tip is stop asking writing to compete with your phone. And this is very boring advice. My phone's right here, right next to me, which is not good what I'm saying. I recommend if you can't put your phone in another room, because I know some people might say, I have kids and I need to be there in case somebody calls, at least put your phone in a spot that like you'd have to probably get up to reach it. So whether that's like on the floor on the other side of the room or like somewhere that you can't just grab it off of another like a an like easily grab it. Put it away from your easy grabbing. That did not sound good coming out of my mouth, but we're gonna stick with it. our phones obviously provide effortless simulation. You you show up to write and you're like, man, like this requires effort. Whereas if you're stuck writing and then you're like, Look, there's my phone and there's Instagram and TikTok and all these lovely apps that require no effort at all, obviously you're gonna be tempted to grab your phone. I also, there's some apps I recommend. There's ways to block these apps, these addictive apps. So I use Opal on my phone. And that blocks Instagram and a bunch of other apps at certain times of day. And it's like impossible to unblock it. Like you can set it to be really hard to unblock it. Fun fact: the day that I was announcing the Query Lab with Linda, and we had an Instagram live, I completely forgot that Opal was on. And the moment that my Instagram live was supposed to start at 7 p.m. my time, my fucking app Opal blocked me on Instagram. And I was like panicking. And I was like, Linda, hang on. And I had to use my like one emergency unblock. And that was the first time I've ever done that. So lol. It does really work. I think my second tip is learn to chase slow burn dopamine. So slow burn dopamine, I also like to call the slow burn pleasure. Obviously, if we are very used to short form content or scrolling on our phones, our phones offer us that immediately. And writing doesn't always give us that experience. Writing requires some discomfort in the moment so that later on we can feel more of a joy of reward. And the satisfaction of creating something will accumulate over time. Like looking back at this. this year, 2026, and writing three short stories, I have a lot of satisfaction knowing that those things happened and knowing that I showed up for myself. Finishing a scene, solving a story problem, completing a draft. eventually holding something in your hand, or even having shown up for an hour. Those things feel really good when you've done them and when you're when you're in that that feeling of, I've I've done something to fulfill my creative process. It's almost like when people talk about eating candy and then they feel like shit afterward. They eat a ton of candy and they're like, my stomach. That's what like scrolling on your phone feels like, right? it's candy and then you feel terrible afterward. Whereas writing might feel hard in the moment and then it feels really amazing afterward. my next tip is to practice tolerating the boredom in writing. Because not every writing session is going to feel magical. Sometimes a scene's not working. Sometimes you sit and think, This morning, actually, for example, I showed up to revise my short story. And I was like, my God, the first half of the short story is way stronger than the second half. The second half is a hot mess. I don't know how to fix it. And it did not feel comfortable at all. And I was like, wow, I want to just throw this short story away. And so practice tolerating those feelings. Boredom and difficulty doesn't mean something's automatically wrong. Sometimes it means that we're learning about our creative process. Sometimes it means we're in the middle of a tough story problem. Sometimes it means that we're doing something that requires a lot of sustained effort. That's not an easy thing for the brain. Can you feel the boredom a little longer? Can you practice tolerating it for longer? And can you also allow the feeling of frustration to be there without interpreting it as a failure of you as a writer? another tip I have is to transition yourself into writing instead of just showing up and expecting yourself to be able to write. And this might not always be available to you every day, but if if you go from scrolling on your phone to being like, okay, I'm gonna write for two hours, your brain might be like, excuse me. This was really pleasurable and easy. And now you want me to write and show up. So I would recommend sit for a couple minutes in boredom and like practice in deep breathing. Do a meditation. Just like just notice your body, notice your thoughts. If that sounds boring, correct. If you're like, just thinking about that makes me sleepy. I get it. All right. But if you want. your creative process to be shiny and lovely and nice, gonna have to learn to tolerate some boredom. All right. You could listen to some music, you could drink drink a cup of tea sitting in silence alone. You could take a walk. There's a lot of things that you can do. You don't have to necessarily just sit and deep breathe. You could also go on a walk or do something a little more active. But I encourage you to get a couple of minutes away from the scrolling. And my next tip is more of an idea than an actual thing that you're going to do. But I want you to Redefine what your idea of success is in your writing sessions. If you expect yourself to go into deep flow and write a nirvana every time you show up, you might be disappointed. You can ask yourself, okay, I can love flow, but what else do I like about the process? What else is enjoyable? For me, I often find that when I show up to write, you know, there's there's a lot of things that I find enjoyable. I love Coming up with new ideas. I love writing descriptions of random things. I love seeing a story move. I love being with my characters. There's a lot of things that I like about writing, even if I don't go deep into flow immediately or at all. So what would that be for you? What would the enjoyment be if you don't enter flow? I think learning how to appreciate the moments where writing doesn't always feel magical is important. Sometimes the joy in our process is the part of figuring it out and sitting with a hard problem. sometimes it's about finding a solution for a difficult issue, watching yourself create something that didn't exist. Those things, even if it feels hard in the moment, will give you that slow burn pleasure that Scrolling will never give. You don't have to feel euphoric every time you show up to write. You can feel a little grumpy even. What matters is that you show up so that the flow can happen, first of all, because the flow won't happen unless you show up. And second of all, it also matters to just give yourself space to write. That's what matters at the end of the day, because giving yourself space to write is what will give you. the slow burn pleasure that we've talked about. Thank you for listening and I hope to see you in another episode very soon.