Latest / The Daily Writer / A Conversation About the Creative Process | Catharine Bramkamp

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A Conversation About the Creative Process | Catharine Bramkamp · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Rider Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an author and a ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our Summer Expert series.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: When I started podcasting over 10 years ago, one of my big motivations for doing that was the idea and the opportunity of getting to have interesting conversations with interesting people who were doing interesting things.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I know that sentence sounds a little bit convoluted on purpose, but it still rings true.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: I love getting to sit down with people who are doing meaningful work so we can talk about the themes and the threads that run through their work, and also to see what you and I can learn from those conversations.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's certainly true of today's episode where I interview Catherine Bramkamp.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Catherine is the author of Out Loud, a Writing Adventure for Women.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now, even though this book is specifically written for women, I find, as I have said before in this podcast, that books or resources or I mean gosh, even music or anything that is created for a specific group of people or a specific target market, if you will, oftentimes that is really, really enjoyable to people who are outside of that target market.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that is certainly the case with Catherine's book.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Again, the title is Out Loud, A Writing Adventure for Women.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're a guy, I highly encourage you to get this book.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually really, really good.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I really, really enjoyed going through it and really enjoyed having a conversation with Catherine about some of the themes and the threads running through this book Out Loud, A Writing Adventure for Women.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Catherine has written nearly 30 books in total, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: She's a world traveler in addition to being a writing coach and workshop facilitator.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: She lives in Nevada City, California, and to the great relief of her children, she says, she's not currently writing a memoir.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in this episode, as I mentioned, Catherine and I talk about a few themes from her excellent book Out Loud, including how the Muse keeps appointments, the value of journaling, and how to function as a writer when you're socially challenged.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So if you've ever felt like, you know, maybe as an introvert or as an artist or as somebody who maybe you feel a little awkward socially sometimes, you'll definitely relate to that segment of the conversation, as I do as well.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I feel a little bit socially challenged, as probably we all do sometimes.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, with that said, you can find out more about Catherine and her amazing books by visiting her website, which is CatherineBramcamp.com, and there will be a link to that in the show notes.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And with that, here's our conversation.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Catherine, welcome to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to connect with you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Once again, we chatted a few weeks ago.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I invited you here on the show.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so glad that we can have this conversation about some themes related to creativity, writing, and just sort of the writing life.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So glad to have you here.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to start out here before we dive into some themes from your book Out Loud.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I know this is a book, it's a writing book for women, but I oftentimes find that anytime a book is written for a particular gender, that most of the time, most of what is in that book applies to everybody.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, at least that's that's what I took out of your book out loud.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's really a phenomenal book.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you know, people who are listening, whether you're male or female, whatever, um, you're gonna really, really like this book.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I love how you've structured it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: The writing is great.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: I love the short chapters.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: So well done.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, congrats on a great book.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think part of it was to niche it um down so that when it's up on Amazon and you know, and and other and um mostly mostly Amazon and playing to the algorithm.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the more you give specifics, the easier it is to be found and to and to rise in the in the um in the algorithm.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that was part of that kind of decision.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And also, as we know, you know, when you have uh you know a broad um idea like writing, like you know, right, you know, writing ideas, writing advice, that is a you can't just say this is for everybody because everybody is a really bad market niche.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So to narrow it down and kind of like, let's talk about grown-ups, let's talk about, you know, and maybe say, you know, women, and how long have women been reading advice books that were specifically for men that we took, you know, lots and lots of information from.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's very that's that's where I went.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of it is unfortunately, we have to play to weird, weird algorithms that aren't even are not even invented by us.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that that's very true.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: That is kind of an odd thing that we have to contend with today that writers of past generations would have would be totally lost without those.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I wonder like if Lord of the Rings was released today, how would that actually do on the charts or you know, stuff by C.S.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis or other, you know, Frankenstein?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, who who really knows?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's a very good question.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that there's actually been like parodies about that, like, you know, if you were trying to pitch Dracula now, how would the algorithms or an agent or you know, the you know, modern modern readers, how would they react to that?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's an that would be an interesting podcast or just an interesting fun thing to consider.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, we probably would not quite make it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lord of the Rings would be too big.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just like you have too many agents.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody would publish that these days, not traditionally, at least.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting thought.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's dive into your story.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, first of all, I'd love to just hear how you got into writing.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always interested in people's journeys, how they get into book publishing, and in your case, you do some other things around writing and helping authors as well.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: So take a little bit, uh, if you can, and and kind of let us go along with you on your journey.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was um, I've always been a writer.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I was one of those little kids who were writing things on walls before I was stopped.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I should probably go back and be like Banskey and write it on walls again.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um I did this always.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, I I got into, I had a I had a friend of mine ask me, when did when did I get into poetry?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm also a poet.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was interestingly, there was a whole group of us, and we all said at about sixth grade, about 12, 13 years old.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a time when we're starting to um think of ourselves, you know, separately than our parents, family.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're starting to create your own consciousness, and that consciousness developed into a poet and a writer.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew that was what was going to always be what I wanted to do.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a bachelor's degree in English and I have a master's degree in creative writing.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I've, you know, I've I've enjoyed diving into that, but I I never used it as my full-time job.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't make my art perform as a career.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that um, and there's a lot of a lot of conversation about this, but for me, I had another job.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had a paying job.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was in marketing.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it you know, most English majors skirt close to more of a you know, marketing communications kinds of jobs.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think part of what the advantage of that is, is it takes pressure off the art so that I could create whatever I wanted to, I could do what I wanted to.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't have to produce income.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a a different approach in some cases, but for me, it was very successful.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I love that.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's something nice about taking part of what you want to produce in life and not you don't have to monetize it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're just creating it for the joy of it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a project like that right now I'm working on that it's uh it's a side side side project, it's a short book that in fact the intention is not to monetize it uh at all.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a fun project that I'm working on.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see what happens with it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder sometimes if in in our quest to build a business in writing, that you know, we just our our tendency becomes I gotta monetize everything, I gotta figure out how to have all these income streams and stuff, which is good and helpful, of course, because we have to eat.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, sometimes it's good to just create something for the sake of the creative activity, which is you know part of what your book is about.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm a I'm a big fan of that because I think that um in the last even the last 40 years, I mean we've turned, we've turned from being um citizens, we've turned from being um, you know, like you know, members of a congregation, we've turned from members of a family, and we've all been turned into consumers.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I found that so interesting because there was such a panic during 2020 that, oh no, now you can't be consumers because you're all at home.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, when did we turn into just consumers?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think that I I want to claw that back for people and and say, you know, you're creative and you're an artist and you are a member of a community and you have something to contribute.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not all about that that monetary and financial exchange, because I think that that's just soul killing.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we would do really well to think, rethink how we are in the world.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a good time to do it.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's part of what one of my larger platforms and goals is.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I love that.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking with somebody recently, and I forget what the exact context was of the conversation, but we were talking about how so many people are going through transitions right now.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: And as I kind of mentally just ticked through people in my family, uh friends, colleagues, you know, peers, I thought, wow, almost everybody that I know, at least let's say from the ages of 30 upward, is is going through some kind of life transition, career transition, some sort of transformation process.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, wow, you know, we need to do a good job learning to adapt to the change that life throws at us.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes that's really, really important.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also a big um, because of my background and what I what I'm currently involved in, I'm a big fan of how art has a huge place in that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because find it using your art, and it doesn't necessarily have to be just writing, you know.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all sorts of outlets, beautiful, fabulous outlets.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that's what nurtures you.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And once you tap into that, then a lot of other things can roll out and you can say, oh, this is who I am.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I need to make this pivot over here and do something differently, or be a different way with relationships or or family or whatever you're grappling with.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I think art is a great channel for that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm a fan of promoting it and supporting it in whatever way that looks, by the way.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I absolutely think people, I think people sometimes um don't realize what they do is art.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, they they they denigrate it because it doesn't make any money.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now we go back to that statement.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, I love to cook.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you someone says, Oh, I'd love to cook, someone else, because it's our current knee-jerk reaction, is like, oh, you should open up a restaurant.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, because that has nothing, almost nothing to do with cooking.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not joyful, that's work.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's part of that's that's part of my thing.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so, gosh, you're right.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: So many things that there's an art to it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Even when I take my car to the mechanic, you know, there is a real art and craft to being able to figure out how do you diagnose um uh a problem with an engine, how do you figure out how to fix it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a good mechanic is not just uh a technician, they are a uh they're an artist and a craftsperson.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way I look at it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh, I do too.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and I and I what's nice is as I've matured and um had construction on my own home for quite some time now because we sort of remodeled a house that we thought was good enough and now it's better.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I watch guys laying cement, my contractor putting a window in, my architect telling me I can't do this.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um they are artists.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I think we would do well to recognize that and and recast how we think about anything that's physical work.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is an art and it's not all about sitting in front of our computers.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, gosh, I hope not.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: I do too.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little, you know, I feel bad for people who have to be, you know, I'm on Zoom calls probably a couple hours a day on average, some probably a little bit less than that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on phone calls and stuff, but people who have to be um, you know, literally sitting at home like on their computer for eight hours a day, I think, man, that's gotta be that's torture.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: To me, that's torture.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very hard.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, those are the people you call for customer service, and they too have an art to what they do.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Oh, let me talk to you know, so and so.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so my my husband just had a challenge with getting um a uh hotel reservation kind of organized.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And every every place he called, you know, he was getting, you know, the manager or getting the algorithm.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So he finally calls the front desk of the hotel, and the the woman there says, Oh, yeah, I can do that for you.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: No worries.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's that's an art.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's an art.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, speaking of art and uh creative impulses, let's dive into a few themes of your book.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd love to just kind of throw four four or five of these out at you.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: These aren't things that I really and uh I love all of all the stuff in your book is great.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: These are a few things that really jumped out at me and that I love to just sort of talk through if we can.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: One concept that is early in the book is you talk about how the Muse keeps appointments, and this is something I've emphasized to people for many years the fact that you if you want to be a professional writer, you've got to maintain a schedule and a habit.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And how writing is really blue-collar work because you show up and you do the work, you don't just sort of wait for this random inspiration to strike.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious, kind of walk us through this concept of the muse keeps appointments and what we can do about that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I um so I love the idea of the muse.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um Sarah um Elizabeth Gilbert has a good TED talk about that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and the the Muse is our inspiration, it's our unconscious.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can, you know, you can you can get scientific about it, and there is a lot of science behind this.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, just knowing I have a muse who is going to talk to me at a certain time helps.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's just how I like to manifest it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the muse keeps appointments.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you show up the same time every day to write, eventually the muse will realize you're serious and she will come over and start whispering much better stuff than what you just spent two weeks flumpsing around with.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't call it doesn't happen all at once, but once you get into a rhythm where you sit down, every more I recommend every morning.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know some people are like, no, no, not early in the morning, but really that's kind of the best time for writers.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I sit down and I write garbage.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna write a whole lot of stuff that's gonna be crummy, crummy, crummy stuff.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay because after a while, which is what I what I love.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm journaling and I'll talk about me.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about me.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, did I tell you about me?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me talk more about me.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, you start getting bored with you, which is a good, it's a good moment where you say, Oh, I am, I need to talk about something else because this is just really tedious.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's when the muse will start coming in and saying, Hey, have you thought about writing this poem?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about writing this blog?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about writing this essay?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about this subject?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty soon this stuff starts coming.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: As it does, take dictation.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had three books in a row where I couldn't like not do them because it did they just the muse is like, Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the character.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: She's talking to me.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any choice.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I and also writing this book out loud.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have much of a choice when when I had my writing group say, I want you to, we we want you to write this book because this is such interesting stuff.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I said, Oh, I don't have time for that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've I'm I'm working on this promoting this other book, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Muse said, Great idea.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I had, I probably wrote it, the draft of it in a month, because she just said, Here you go.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you need to do.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I listened to that because those are going to be really exciting ideas and they're going to have a lot of energy.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: How do you, when you sit down to do a draft of something, do you sit down and you type out a draft?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever use dictation?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: Do you use longhand?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: What is your process for doing that?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a typer because I I like um if I use a keyboard and I have to have a keyboard, okay.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is how bad this is.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have a keyboard that actually attaches to my computer because the the the keyboards with Bluetooth aren't fast enough.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a delay for me and it makes me nuts.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So my son says, Okay, really, mom.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: He gets me a plug-in keyboard, and I have a really loud keyboard that's for gamers.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes this horrible racket that's so satisfying.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even tell you.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I I type, type, type, type, type, type.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I use um, I'm it I love a messy draft.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I I have a I'm a very divergent draft creator.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't work off an outline outline, I just write it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I use Scrivener, which is a really yeah, a really good writing program for that, because then I just put everything in it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm working on a book now where that's all I do is I just put it all in.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second draft, I look and say, Oh, I should probably make more sense than this.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I start making the transitions and start you know organizing it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I I definitely do it by I type in, I don't talk because I have to, and that goes back to don't write like you talk, but I don't dictate because that's too much editing, you know, essentially because talking is very different than writing.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then I um I don't know where I was gonna go for the third part.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just keep it at the lost my train of thought.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think you have to do what works for you.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some people I'm a fellow Scrivener fan, I use it for all my ghostwriting projects, for all my personal projects.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how I would have a business without Scrivener, it is that important to everything that I do.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: But other people hate it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've got another friend who's extremely prolific.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't have a clue about Scrivener, she just uses Microsoft Word, and that's what she uses, and that works for her.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that's great.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, use the use the tool that is going to give you the least resistance.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good word too, is resistance because sometimes I get clients who are so into the tech part of it.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, well, I'll use this new program and it'll be great.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of the programs that are available to us as writers are so complex.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, use what you're really supposed to be doing because you're trying to follow along with this complex program.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just said, just write it down, just write it down.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you get into something that's easy, and I agree with you.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I tell them to use notes that comes free with your Mac program.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I it totally will do the job.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely will do the job.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but sometimes we like to throw, and we have the ability to throw technology in our own way to delay actually doing the work.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when I hear that, I think, oh, you really don't want to write right now, do you?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: There is a whole industry devoted to I think helping writers pro helping writers procrastinate because there's all there's so many the journal for this and a journal for that, and I and I'm a sucker for some of this stuff too.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I recently got it, wasn't cheap either.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was probably$30 some dollars.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a journal made of stone paper.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's really heavy, as you could imagine.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: The paper is luxurious, it's uh waterproof, but it was so heavy and bulky I couldn't use it, and so I gave it to my wife.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um but the it's funny, there's this whole industry, you know, use the same pencils that John Steinbeck used to draft the grapes of wrath, and you know, as if any of that has anything to do with anything.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like we can just get so caught up in the tools and the technology and thinking if we use the same thing as some hero of ours wrote that we're gonna channel the same energy or some nonsense.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, just go give me a pencil and a piece of paper.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh I I think uh people who really want to write, you should be able to sit down with a pencil and paper and come up with something, at least as a start.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have moments so one of my it was kind of hilarious, I was um we have two we had for a while we had two houses, so we were We were, I was commuting from Sonoma County, which is about three hours away from where I live now.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I was driving from point A to point B.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that car was filled with boxes, you know, moving boxes and stuff.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a box in the front seat.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a moment because driving is a really good time to talk to the muse because you're you're you're you're partially focused.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: All your left brain activities is focused.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So your right brain is just like off into the Ethernet.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got all these ideas for a book I was working on.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had nothing to write them on.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had this box.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a pen and I wrote notes all over the box.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when I stopped at a stop sign, I would like to scribble something and I would stop at it and scribble.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: My husband comes home and he looks at the box, he says, What on earth happened?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I said I was inspired and there was the box.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do it anytime.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I keep notebooks in my car.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just get a big enough one so that when you scribble, because you don't want to spend a lot of time focusing on that.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um when you scribble, great.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I tend to not do voice messages for I for whatever reason.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't work for me.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I have many friends who just do voice texts and just text themselves so that they can capture what they need to capture.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, whatever works, but it doesn't have to be hard.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the way to record it, whatever that is.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: We'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a moment to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 23:32
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• 23:40
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• 23:45
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• 23:52
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• 24:01
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• 24:08
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• 24:13
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• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's get back to the conversation.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Let me throw out another concept from your book, and and I appreciate this conversation so much because I think for those of us who who are b we have a writing-based business or we want to grow a writing-based business, sometimes we get lost in the client work and the the business aspects and the deadlines, and sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the creative aspect of what we do.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: So this this is really important.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um so what about this concept of uh I love that your terminology in the book, you said the socially inept.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I laughed out loud when I saw that phrase, you know, and and reading your content on that.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um because so many writers are introverted, they describe themselves as socially awkward, you know, and all those kind of things.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um what should we make of this idea?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is this something good?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is it bad?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do we deal with this feeling of sometimes feeling socially inept?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that probably the one of the biggest challenges that any of my clients have had, and any writer who I come across when I'm at a conference or at a you know a writing meeting, uh meeting, you know, specifically with writers, is that um I have yet to come across anybody who says, Wow, love that social media project I'm working on.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: No one says that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: No one says that.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what is so I I wanted to reduce that down for writers to say you need two things as you write.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And even these two things can be extraordinarily terrifying for the average writer, especially an emerging writer.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you wrote this book and it's uh you know, you're this book of poems, and you are a creative, you're an artist.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then someone says, Bam, now you got to do tech and you've got to do marketing and you have to do promotion, and it's right awful.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and no one ever believes, I'm sure you have this too, no one ever believes us when we say, enjoy the writing, that's the good part.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: The publishing of promotion, not so much, but you have to do it, right?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So right now, my advice is get a website, you know, WordPress.com, start a newsletter, use the website to people have people sign up for the newsletter, and in the newsletter, that's where you can legitimately say, buy my book.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the two hardcore things that writers need, two things.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because why you ask?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because um social media is is lovely, but it doesn't really sell much in terms of books or anything else.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your platform, so everything that you do on social media can go away.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen that.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's very true.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen sweeps of of people's work and their their client base, just the whole darn thing, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and it's not so so it's not stable.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have your own email lists that you own and you have your own platform that you own, those are solid.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you want to, I use Instagram, that's um, and Facebook, those are the two Sims I post on LinkedIn.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So those are three, you know, that's a lot, really, because I have a I have a um I have a a uh program that helps populate that.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a lot of work.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram is like, I have to like focus on it.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not natural to me.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am too old for it to be natural.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was not raised with this.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna cop to that right now.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am not like, oh, look, we're gonna do an Instagram post.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, or we could just look.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's my thing.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like a barrier between me and reality sometimes, most of the time.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to choose a couple, maybe two things where you do an outreach.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal is to get people to sign up for a newsletter.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're not trying to sell something, you're not trying to do more than you're able to do, and then just call it a day.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that and that's why I talk about you being socially inept.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a changing, changing market and a changing, changing concepts.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: For a long time, Twitter was great, and then it and then it became very, very toxic.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I just dropped it.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I I'm not even going on there.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's too yucky.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to choose, you know, you know, what you do and what you follow.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's a lot of energy that you could spend being creative and nurturing your soul instead of nurturing some weird ass, sorry, algorithm.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do you think the reluctance that a lot of people have toward getting more active on social or marketing their books in general, does that is there a connection between that and sometimes the social awkwardness that many creative types feel like?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: Are those, do you feel like those things are related?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the one of the things that helps in promoting a fiction, nonfiction doesn't matter really, is to find what your theme is, what your goal was to write the book.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's fiction, there's usually themes, uh, you know, women empowerment or you know, saving the animal, saving animals or saving the climate.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Usually there's something in there more than just boy me's girl, girl and boy breakup, boy and girl get back together again.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um use that theme to talk to your potential readers and your audience.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are saying, I am going to go, you know, in my case, let's say I'm going to write a book about writing to help authors.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So who do I want to reach?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to reach potential authors because I have something to help them with.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: That changes your conversation and it changes what you're doing in the world.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can push it, put it out there and be more helpful as opposed to it's not about me.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that is it, it gets old fast, actually, and people get tired of you faster if it's all about you, right?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that has helped a lot of my clients when I say, hey, you know what?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're all about local history.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Go talk to the local historians and get on and and go communicate with that group.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are your people.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's your niche market.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of thing that can really help.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's an author.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's an author on Who Shall Remain Nameless for obvious reasons that I follow on Instagram.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a couple of their books.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a fiction author.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: And every time I see their posts on social media, it's always just she's always just promoting her books.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: There's no other post.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: She does it, tries to do it in some creative ways, but every time I see her post, I'm like, can you please post something else that's not just you promoting your books?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Talk about your writing process or feature some other friends that you have who write books, or something that is not just I'm promoting my thing, because it just gets and she's a wonderful author.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: She's written a bunch of books, but it's like it's so self-promotional, it's kind of exhausting.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um, so I just that's interesting because there's a there's a young author who I follow on Instagram, and she writes um um fantasy romance.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's an actual term for romance, it doesn't matter.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: So fantasy romance.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I do not read fantasy romance at all.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Zero.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: But her posts are hilarious, and she has created a little, she's got she's got a little book goblin persona, and and and she talks to the book goblin back and forth, and she talks about her industry, she talks about trends.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: So she's on this in a different way.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So just exactly to your point.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, she talks about her books, of course, but I'm following her because she's interesting.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's you're right, that's what we want to go for.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, for like my Instagram posts, I just put little, I put like um at the end of each chapter in this book, I have um top 10 or top five things to consider.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I post on Instagram.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I have original art sometimes that I do, and then I post here's how to attract the muse.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, five, and I'm done.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I can it can be helpful as opposed to buy my book, which is not helpful.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and I think you've got to have some of those buy my book things.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, people don't know that you have a book or that you're encouraging them to buy it.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: But like a steady, constant stream of of that stuff, I feel like just gets it's boring and it's not interesting.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very much boring and and repetitive, and then people tune you out, just like when they were like like living with a bunch of teenagers.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're not listening to it.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: I want to dive into another uh sort of one final.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a whole list of these, but I only have time for one more of these.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh from your book, Out Loud.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about why journal and why this why we should consider making this a part of our lives and creative process.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: I've been a journalist since I was in college.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I was doing it this morning, and I find great value in journaling.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: But it's been like an ebb and flow in my life over the decades.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I do it more than other times.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: I it's not like I have a daily consistent practice necessarily.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious about um your perspective on this and what value that journaling has in our lives as creatives and writers.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's I've done a lot of research on journaling because that's it it's fascinating to me.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have been a journalist since I was very young, because I'm a writer, so I write.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, journaling, especially handwritten.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's there is actually a difference between the effects of journaling if you handwrite it versus typing it in.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm a big offender, so I'm just gonna tell you, you know, do what I say, not what I do.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, journaling is extraordinarily helpful on a lot of unexpected levels.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: So consistent journaling actually helps people reduce pain from chronic chronic health situations.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: It can change the trajectory of how you're feeling both emotionally and physically.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I found that it's very helpful to, um I'm a big, I'm a fan of the idea of gratitude, you know, gratitude journaling, although I don't have a separate gratitude journal.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just, if I'm feeling really funky, I'll start saying, well, what am I grateful for?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful and I'm serious, I do write this down.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful that someone else is picking up my garbage.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like awesome.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I do that and I come out from a journal journal every morning.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: I come out feeling a little calmer, feeling a little better.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm in a bad space, I drop it all into the journal rather than inflict it on members of the household or my friends.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: That can make a big difference.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I was going through when my mother was dying, the journaling made all of the difference to kind of get it all sorted out so that I had less need to go to therapy.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, therapists now will tell you first up got a journal, go journal about this and then bring that back and we'll talk.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I look at journaling as inexpensive therapy, and you can start looking at your own way of managing things and you can start managing things all because you're journaling.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it just has such a positive effect on so many areas of our lives, you know, just this one simple thing.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Also, um, because I've I've taught classes on journaling, but one of the one of the things that I find, and again, I have a program for it, but you don't necessarily need a program for it.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I journal, I have I have two tabs open, so to speak.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I have journaling and then I have a to-do list.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: So as I journal and I say, Oh, that's right, I need to send flowers to so and so, instead of just keeping it in my brain, because my brain has got very, very reduced amounts of ROM RAM left, um, I put it over onto the to-do list immediately.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Once things are on a to-do list, you get to forget them and you can focus on other things.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Huge help because how many times do we think, oh, no, no, no, I'll remember that?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're obsessed with remembering it and you forget 13 other things.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you're running a household and a full-time job and you've got your creative life you're trying to nurture, and you have either small beings or really tall, surly beings running around in your house, write it down.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, write down how you feel about all of what I just said, and then say, Oh, that's right.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I need to send flowers, I need to send a card.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I write down when my anniversary is because there's just no guarantee that's gonna come up and you're gonna remember.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I found that really helpful too.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Gosh, I can think of so many times over the years when I have been journaling and just sort of writing about some frustrations or some problem, or just kind of trying to process something, and then an insight comes.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I I guess I would attribute this to the muse, you know, or whatever label we want to put on it.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of this self-awareness that comes from writing something out and processing it, and you go, Oh my gosh, I never thought about that before.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, that has been really helpful to practice over the years because it it has made me realize that many times when I s when I start writing about something I'm frustrated about, particularly involving another person, whatever that situation is, then it it'll almost always come back to, wait a minute, I think I've contributed to this more than I realize.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe I'm the problem here.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it journaling can is kind of dangerous in that way.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can you know, you it really is gonna face you to confront yourself and sometimes your mistakes, your insecurities, your failings.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it's one like one of the most dangerous creative acts that you can do in many ways.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I tell I do tell people, because they um even in when I'm running a class on journaling, I've we're not reading this out loud.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a share project.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that no one else should read because as soon as you think someone else will read it, it will change what you write.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's totally not the goal.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I to you and to your point, if if I if I'm dealing with a very difficult situation and I'm writing it out, I've um learned to say, well, all right, what do I want to have happen?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we don't even know what we, you know, what are the goals and and spend some time figuring that out because once we know the goals, then we can back up and say, well, if my goal is A, I probably shouldn't say C.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you you actually can you can coach yourself within your journal and get a better outcome.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's surprising, very, very surprising how well it works.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious what you think about this.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: I have often wondered this myself.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of my journals have been on computer over the years.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I used to print those out and sort of put those in a folder and put them in the closet with my other journals.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: But at this point, I have an overflowing box, a large box full of handwritten and printed-out journal material.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I've wondered what should I do with all this?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna go back and reread all this stuff, obviously.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that stuff I would not necessarily want anybody to see because it's just like my own inner processes and you know, sometimes you're sort of just venting about somebody and some situation you would never want them to see because you don't even believe your own emotions in that moment.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: You just need to vet.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so what are your thoughts on that?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to to kind of, you know, as we all sort of age in life, um, should we destroy those at some point, you know?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because like I can't imagine passing all that stuff.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can't imagine my son would want that, first of all.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Second of all, it would be probably really harmful because he would be like, oh, my dad was really, you know, he's not who he thought he was, or he, you know, really went through like this dark time.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is what he really thought about this.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Those are just my own processes.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: What are your thoughts on what we should actually do with our journals?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I uh so mine are not um um hard copy.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I save mine just on my computer files.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep all of my so the short for me, the short answer is I have a journal file.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: And my my son, I have two boys.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: One is most likely to be able to open up my computer.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I only need to worry about one child.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he's under instructions.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, when you see that file that says journal, trash it, just throw it out, just throw it out.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: That said, that said, perhaps something that we can do in our journaling or as a side note is to write about how we are feeling about history, about the times, about who we are and and what we're doing, because that information is valuable.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I have clients who are working on his on historical novels and and history of family.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the letters and the journals, if you're really lucky, are gold to them because it's a a window into history now.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the tension.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how well I've ever written that.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's I'm with you, I am like you can't, where it's just I need to process.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't need to say process.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I threw out when we moved, I threw out all of my high school journals, which were in a copy.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at them, I'm like, okay, I hate my hair, I get that, and just I threw them out.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, recycled them.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just because I'm not going to visit that again.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's painful.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there is a I think that there's a tension of that.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the answer is to say, vent everything, and then maybe at the end of the year, instead of making New Year's resolutions, you say, All right, what was interesting about this year?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And write it in a different way that can be helpful that you might want to pass down, not to your kids.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your kids do not care what you do at all, zero, nothing, but your grandchildren might care.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very, yeah, it's a very different impetus.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe write down a little letter to a future, a future yet-to-be-born grandchild.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: That might be that solution of holding on to history and uh and you know, giving us a sense of what was really going on and what people were really thinking.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe there's a sense here in which you know our lives are always edited in some way.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because we never really show our complete and true selves to anybody, even if you've been married for decades.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: I've been married for all for it'll be 29 years this June, uh, to my wife.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know her completely.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't know me completely.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's not possible to know another person completely.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know that we know ourselves completely.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is that even possible as a human?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's an existential question.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because we change, you know, so then it's like, oh, this is a new aspect.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who knew?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe maybe it's okay to just kind of look through those are old journals and just go, you know, that was what I felt.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Of the time go through it, and if there's something valuable that other people might benefit from, like a historical thing as you're mentioning, that can be valuable, but like my rantings about this person or this person, or I'm so mad about this, or whatever the situation is.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe those don't need to be seen by anybody.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe just the the act of processing those and writing those in the moment was enough.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the all that's all the value that it needs to have.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they've done a study.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that there's there's science to that.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you write down, and it's again handwriting, if you write down like school notes, for instance, if you write down notes as as you uh as people are lecturing, um the act of writing is what will embed that information in your brain.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even have to reread the notes to have the benefit of what that writing is, which I was relieved because I would write down notes and never look at them again.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I managed to get a degree, so we were okay.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's yeah, that is funny.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was cleaning out some stuff a while back, and I just had all these notebooks that I'd gone to conferences and taken all these pages of notes and stuff, thinking, well, when I get home, I'm gonna go through all this and implement it and just like dreams of stuff.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: And you think, wow, that was a complete waste of time because I just took all these notes and never even looked at them again.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe it wasn't a waste because the act of writing those down in the moment did have some value.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think so.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: So no, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't wasted time at all.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just by writing it, you embedded the keynotes that stuck to you in in whatever the conference lecture was, and that's that's it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what you needed to do.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the only time I ever save notes is if I have random like snippets of uh poem ideas, I will save those, put them into a system so that I can keep them and re- ref refer back to them, and then it all it all goes into recycling.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's perfectly fine.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, speaking of poetry, did you see that Maria Schriver just came out with the book on poetry?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't see that.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: All people I you know, and not that I follow Maria Schreiber closely or anything, but I happened to see it.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: It was CBS has this program on Sunday mornings, they do like these profiles of people.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: Happened to see it a few days ago.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really interesting.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: She basically talked about how she just sat down to write and sort of process all she had gone through in her life, and poetry came out, and I was like, wow, that's really fascinating.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's really, really fascinating.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's something more of us should consider is is poetry.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people think, well, I could never write poetry, or I'm not interested in that, but there's there's something very emotional and very valuable about that art form.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I well, I I do agree.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a poet myself, and then we run, I run a um, not run, I'm on the committee for a poetry festival that um that happens, yeah, it happens every year in April, which is National Poetry Month, um, up in Nevada, in Nevada City Grass Valley in California.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's lots of poetry um events in California, or I think across the or across the country to celebrate National Poetry Month, our our very good success.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: We just did our first annual poetry pub crawl, linking alcohol and poetry, which we felt was going to work out really well, and it did.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if that's like poets drinking, poets drink, I probably not healthy, but it worked.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And to your to your point, sometimes people need um like you need a casual approach to poetry.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have a number of poet, we have um uh happy hour poetry where people just listen to um uh a major poet in our area, and she says, here's a prompt, here's what you can do, and you can read it out loud or not.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's sometimes gathering with other people who are doing the same thing can be very helpful to start you out on that.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think everybody can write poetry, and it's as surprising what you come up with, even if you think you're quote, not a poet.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard beautiful things from people who were, quote, not poets.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and what even makes you a quote unquote poet anyway?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think if you do something that makes you that thing, if you write poetry, that makes you a poet.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I agree.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, nope, I totally agree because the more you do it, the more you look at the world in a different way, and that's the goal is to to see it just to slightly askew, slightly differently.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a gift, and that's what that's what we want to do is to look at things differently if we can.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, your book certainly helps people do that.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think it's fantastic.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you do a follow-up at some point.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I love books with short chapters and they're very actionable.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: You remind me in your writing a little bit of Stephen Pressfield.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if anybody has pointed that out to you.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's very complimentary.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I assume you've read, you know, The War of Art, some have these other stuff.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: It really rem I hadn't thought about it that until just now.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to I was trying to think, what are some of the books that have sort of that same rhythm and style and that vibe?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, it really does.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's probably why I love it so much.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am heroes.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I am working on a second book on um creativity for the second half of life.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it and I'm calling it tentatively take up space.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because um I was I was struck with how art helps us take up more space in in all in all sorts of ways, and we should, we should take up more space.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh right now I have a survey out.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll send you the link to the survey, but I have a survey about art and art practices for people, and I'm um I'm collating all my research right now for it.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll be probably 2026.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nice, I love it.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, Catherine.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: This has been uh a total pleasure having this conversation.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: I love the work you're doing and uh appreciate you making time to be a guest today.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Where can people find out more about your writing and your services and all the cool things that you're doing?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because I I practice what I preach, I have a newsletter and I have a website.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: So two things I do.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can go to my website, which is Katherine C-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, hyphen Bram Camp, B-R-A-M-K-A-M-P at com.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it has a hyphen is because I did not renew my uh my registration for my website early enough, and I got sold out from underneath me.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: So Catherine Bramcamp.com.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And on there, you'll see you can sign up for the newsletter, you'll see what I'm doing with the put the poetry festival, you'll see um, you know, I'll post ours, our conversation will be posted on there.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all sorts of uh spaces to go and things to look at.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks again.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: This has been an absolute blast, and I'm looking forward to our next conversation.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to come back.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've been lovely.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, thanks again as always for joining me for another episode of The Profitable Rider.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate you taking time to listen, and I'm looking forward to the next episode, which features a conversation with Trenton Bennett and Lynn Smargus on audiobook narration.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if you've ever considered having your audiobook narrated, or if you've thought about doing it yourself, you want to make sure and tune in for that conversation.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'll see you then, and as always, I'm looking forward to it.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Before we go, I want to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
• 51:39
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• 51:44
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• 51:54
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• 52:06
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• 52:12
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• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.