Latest / No Mess, No Magic / The Truth About Author Platforms and Writing in the Margins
Transcript
- speaker-0: This computer. Hello and welcome to the No Mess No Magic Podcast with Monica Hay, a podcast for writers. Today we have a little bit of a different text setup because Riverside, who I use for the pod, was not playing nice. So we're on YouTube. We're on Zoom. Hopefully it'll be, yeah, it'll probably be about the same for you guys who are listening. ⁓ we have Hannah Cal Callan. speaker-1: Callan. speaker-0: Callan, I feel like I every time somebody explains how to like say their name, I mess it up. Even like my memory, my memory isn't the best. We have Hannah here, which I'm stoked about. I met Hannah on the interwebs, as it often goes. Welcome Hannah. Very excited to have you. speaker-1: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. It's so fun. I got your message and I was like, ⁓ my gosh, Monica wants to talk to me? Like I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity. I'm so honored. speaker-0: Whenever people say that, I always I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity when I talk to people who like have a following and stuff on socials. So there you go. The feeling is mutual. So okay, so Hannah is a Jack of many creative trades. She spent ten years working as a graphic designer, ran her own wedding photography business, and received her bachelor's degree in English sorry, editing and publishing. Now she's an agented author with her first novel out on submission to publishers and a language nerd with linguistics research. Up for publication with Cambridge University Press. Above all, she believes stories to be the one of the most powerful tools that we have for passing on the things we've learned and for building stronger communities. I love that. I love that. ⁓ I love that you're also a a linguistics person. I'm not as much, but I love when people are, because I'm like, this is so cool. So we were talking about like what topic. And I feel like this is gonna go everywhere for anybody listening. So just like don't expect like specifics. We the original topic was like let's to talk about writing in the margins because Hannah's a mom and you have a very busy life. And so you're kind of building your business as an author and you know, marketing everything on the in the margins of your life. But I feel like we're gonna just talk about all sorts of shit. speaker-1: ⁓ for sure, for sure. Like nothing is off limits. speaker-0: Nothing is off limits. Exactly. So my my first question for you is actually about your social media. I'm sorry, d I had to go there. speaker-1: Go for it. I did all the brain prep work with the questions you sent me, so now like my brain is an open book. speaker-0: it. So for those of you who don't know, Hannah has a really good social media and your Instagram presence is chef's kiss if I say so myself. thank you. And so I I really want to talk about and I know that some people who are like listening are just like rolling their eyes when I talk about social media. And it's not I would I obviously say this with like everybody has a different path toward marketing themselves. But for sure. ⁓ What do you think some misconceptions that writer are like what are misconceptions that writers have about platform building? Out of curiosity. speaker-1: Yeah, for sure. ⁓ this is a great question to start on. branding and platform is such a weird topic for authors to approach and especially anyone who is inherently creative, because creativity is everything opposite of business, right? Creativity is everything unexpected. It comes from inspiration that we find when we are not tied down to certain ⁓ like timelines when we're not tied down to The same in and out, but we're exposing ourselves constantly to sources of new inspiration. Yeah. And it's really hard to narrow that inspiration down into like a box that you can then present on social media. Yeah. And especially where, you know, writers of past generations have always been expected to do some kind of outreach, whether that was blog tours or newspaper columnists or press releases, whatever it was. But social media narrows it down to the daily, if not hourly. Yeah. And now the modern author kind of has to balance the daily presence of building an audience with the daily work of going back to that creative and going back to that person who started it with this passion in the first place, both for audience and selling and building any kind of business model or sales funnel or like mailing. list wasn't a question. Yeah. And so I think a lot of the misconceptions are that because social media is so powerful, we need to be on it all the time. Yeah. When I think that can kind of kill our creativity quite a bit. Yeah. And limit us or really simplify us into all of a sudden we find that we're all creating the same thing because we're all on the same algorithm. Right. ⁓ I also think that we feel this pressure to go viral because anyone can go viral at any time. ⁓ when really going viral can also be very damaging because it exposes you to a wider audience than your target readership. Right. Anyway, like there's just there's so many things that we have to consider when we're talking about social media and authors being ⁓ on social media and protecting our creativity because that comes first. The reason that we're there. speaker-0: That comes first. speaker-1: Yeah. That's the whole reason we do anything else. But Right. Anyway, I don't know. What are what are kinda I would love to hear like your thoughts on it too. speaker-0: Well, I have okay, I I I'm a big follower of Amy McKinney who's ⁓ inspired to write on Instagram, who is my cult leader. ⁓ love that I love her and something I really like that she talks about and it's has changed my kind of my relationship with social media. I used to have a very negative relationship with it. Not necessarily that I thought it was like the worst place ever, but I used to just be like, you know, I don't want to have to continue this all the time. But I think my relationship with it changed when I started a business. And so, you know, when people come to me and they're like, ⁓ you have to have this like platform in order to sell a book and like you have to do this and do that. And there's a lot of I think frustration that writers and authors and artists in general have over like the the choices that publishers make. And I I get it. Like I understand that it's frustrating. But at the same time, I think that writers are like dreaming of a world that never existed, which is what Amy talks about. Yeah. And it's this idea of like we've never had to like like we didn't have to market ourselves in the past. I'm like, bitch, yes you did. speaker-1: Yes we did. Yes you did. speaker-0: You s you still had to do these things. Sure, it would it look different. Like marketing forty, fifty years ago looks different than it does today, for sure. Yeah. But you and if anything, social media has actually leveled the playing field, in my humble opinion. It makes it so that people can build their own space. You know, made it so that you can like do what you want without having to rely on a gatekeeper. And I think that's a very powerful thing that we didn't have fifty years ago. Right. Like you had to have a gatekeeper say yes or no to you back then. speaker-1: Absolutely. And there you didn't have any power over that decision. Nope. Except to like just write the best book you possibly could. And even then, that's only one piece of it. Yep. ⁓ I I was listening to a podcast. I think it was the Plot Twist podcast with it's hosted by Victoria Aviard and Somain Chainani. And they had Veronica Roth on, and she was talking about how she also was someone who does not like to be on social media or she didn't. ⁓ and then someone told her that. She doesn't have to, but someone is going to create a conversation about her, her books and her presence, her beliefs. And if you want to be the first voice in talking about yourself and representing yourself in your work, having some kind of a presence on social media can also allow you to control your own narrative about yourself. Maybe not to the extent where other people are talking about it, but just having like a home base where everybody's online. I'm chronically online all the time. And if I hear rumors about one person or another, more often than not, I'm stalking them on social media. And if they have an established presence, I can more accurately balance how I interpret what they are saying directly compared to all of these rumors and hearsay. Yeah. And where I think like we always have the chance of being canceled, you know. Yeah. I think everybody's gonna probably be cancelled if you're trying to be vulnerable and expose yourself on social media and trying to build a following at some point. But at the same time I think there's a lot of power just like you're saying, like the ownership of your own audience I think is so, so valuable. And you don't have to wait for a newspaper columnist to interview you and then write up their interpretation of you in their own words. For that to come out and then disappear and that's all the public sees. Yep. ⁓ I do think it's a super powerful tool and just being able to represent ourselves the way that we really want to. Yeah. ⁓ I think it's a really big privilege actually. I agree. Really, really cool. Yeah. speaker-0: I completely agree. I think it's funny, I wrote last year, ⁓ god, maybe like j November or December. I I had I'd had a few drinks, ⁓ and I was like scrolling at two AM and I saw this like stupid I I saw this like stupid take. ⁓ I'm a big ro romanticy person. Obviously like I think that people should read what they love and they should like you know, what do whatever they want to read. Like I'm not saying everybody has to go read romanticy, but I love romanticity. So I was I was scrolling Substack and saw this like really dumb take and I like won't go into ton of detail but it put me like so full of rage that I straight up rage wrote like a response piece to this. It took me about three weeks to revise it to the point where I liked it. Yeah. To be fair, it was still like a rant. Like I ranted on this Substack. And I I didn't have to be like, ⁓ I want to like have a gatekeeper choose me. I could just post it on my own fucking Substack. I could like, this is what I think. Totally good. And I I think I had like three hundred, two hundred likes on it. I had so many reposts. Like it didn't go viral, but it had some kind of movement. Yeah. And I was like, This was great. Like this is all I really wanted. I just wanted to like rant about this thing and like share it online. And it didn't have to be this crazy thing. But I can do that because of what we have at our fingertips. speaker-1: Exactly. Exactly. I just I love it it levels the playing field in that it gives almost equal weight to all of our words. Obviously like algorithm is gonna play a part in it. ⁓ but I think it is the closest we've ever been to finding like just reach and and almost unlimited speech online. Yeah. ⁓ reaching the widest possible audience. Like that's just amazing. I also always love a good spicy Seb Stack and I can tell When the author's like been up late and they're just like, I had to get this off my chest. Those are my favorite. I stay up late binging those. speaker-0: I know, I love it. ⁓ Yeah, I think I think it's really for the for those who are listening who are like rolling their eyes, I'm gonna say something will make me very unpopular. But I'm gonna say anyway. As somebody who has a business, like I often have people say things like, ⁓ like publishers just want someone with a platform. And I'm like, Yeah, because they know they're gonna sell books. Like speaker-1: Exactly. speaker-0: Like it's not that I obviously I understand that like everybody should have the chance to get published, no matter what kind of platform they have. I think it should come down to like the quality of the art and all these different things. But publishers have to make money in order to to actually keep the lights on. And I don't think people realize how low the profit margins are in publishing. They're like abysmal. And so when they can see in a quick sale. What are they gonna do? They're gonna be like, Well shit, we better just publish this so that we can get some money in the door so we can publish the other books that might not bring us the same kind of money. speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it is such an interesting argument. ⁓ because I started my writing account three years ago. ⁓ and I built it up from zero and we started and I remember posting when I would reach like two hundred fifty followers, I'll do a giveaway. Five hundred followers, I'll do a giveaway. And I remember just being so invested in building that community from the beginning. And yet this year when I signed with my agent and now just barely surpassing the ten K milestone and that's still relatively small for online social media accounts. But as soon as I did that, people started like the late bloomers would arrive to my channel. They would find my social media presence and they would call me one of the unicorn authors who got the exception. and when I posted sharing my query letter on my Substack, they talked about how like, well, probably a part of it is because of your platform. And I think what people don't realize is Publishers are not just looking for a massive following on social media. Right. Because numbers don't directly translate to book sales. No. What they are looking for is a warm audience and book audiences are typically purchase ready. These are people who like to collect books. Like I have ⁓ plenty at my house. I'm always buying books. And so this is an audience that's not just there for entertainment, but they are warmer toward the purchase. That's not how I typically think of it, but that is how a publisher and especially a sales team thinks of it. And there we've seen the the uptick in the trend of publishers who are acquiring self published books. Yeah. Because those successful self published books also have those sales numbers. And so it's not so much just having a following. I've seen a few influencers who have a following that has nothing to do with books and they get a book deal. And I honestly I think that is just as much a risk as it is signing an author who has no audience because you don't know how warm that audience is or whether they're thinking about actually buying a book. Right. Most of these are I think the true unicorns are the ones who have content that has nothing to do with books. Yeah. And they're getting signed anyway. And that's I don't know. It's just a really interesting topic to me. I know some people might think it's boring and if I could choose not to be on social media, I would choose not to be here. ⁓ I love you guys. Like it is so fun to talk to people, but I am deeply introverted and I love writing first and foremost. Fair. And if I could choose, I would spend all of my time just writing. Yeah. ⁓ so I I really do think like platform is important but not the way most people think. It's more about speaker-0: Great. speaker-1: who you're reaching and what you are producing as your content to support this goal. Yeah. speaker-0: It's funny, I used to say that I would love to leave social media, but I don't know. I I have a love hate relationship with it. The thing is, like after because I ⁓ for anybody who's listening probably knows this, but I left America. I always call it America for some reason. I left the US for the Netherlands. ⁓ and I have to say, like, social media has made that that process a lot easier because I can keep in touch with my friends. And actually like see their lives a little bit. Like it makes me miss them, but I still can be around in their world somehow, like even if it's on the internet. And some people might think that's shallow. But I'm just grateful that I get to to see witness them. ⁓ because you know, 50 years ago, it's like you move to a new country and you're like, bye, see you and like who knows? Like you write letters, sure, but like those can be pricey. Like my mom, when she she like lived in many, many countries because she was an army brat. Or I guess military, but I don't think it was army. But, you know, like she would talk, she talks about like the olden days when like you'd have to like do an expensive phone call to like call mom and like all these different things in order to connect with your family. And we have a lot of privileges where we don't have to do that. Like we have you know, obviously there's there's pros and cons of like we scroll too much probably and all these different things, but for sure. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, I have I I get like very un frustrated with people who are just like so anti social media all the time and they're like, Get off your Instagram, throw it away like and I'm like, you know that you don't have to like do black and white thinking here. Right. speaker-1: I especially love when it's those people that are getting on the comments of like every reel as they're doom scrolling, they're like, Get off Instagram. Get off Instagram and I'm like What are you doing? speaker-0: You're on Instagram. Yes. speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: So I'm really curious. You do a very beautiful job with your platform. And I'm curious how you started it. And yeah. I you also post a lot of reels. I admit I am like a baby and I'm scared to post videos because I just can't be bothered. but like you do it really well. So I'm curious what did you have to like get through any like fear or anything like that when you started? speaker-1: Absolutely. ⁓ just because like I am so introverted, I do not like the sound of my voice. I do not like staring at myself. I know so I took this ⁓ public speaking class in college because I was so scared of it. And some of the homework exercises involved like going home and recording an audio like voice clip and listening back to hear your filler words and your your stumbling and like just your little tells in your vocals and then practice and do that a couple times until you were speaking better, just more eloquently. And I hated it. And then we had to do it with video and you let you like mute the video and you would just watch your body language. And you would just have to watch and see like all the little twitches of your face and how many times you like touched your nose or moved your hair. I hated all of it. So trying to build a social media platform, especially where social media is typically so front facing, was incredibly difficult. And I had to keep going back and like going over those principles that we talked about and just figuring out how I could show up in a way that was somewhat comfortable for me. Yeah. And I started with Reels. I I launched an ⁓ what I consider like the golden age of social media, which was like twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. Yeah. Where there was a lot of variety and creativity, but we didn't yet have all of these like gurus and marketing people just like selling stuff all the time. It was so fun to try creating. And you could do like the little trending like lip sync audios. They were more popular. Remember those? And so that's kind of how I started. Yeah. I actually really liked it. So my first like and they're still on my page, like if you scroll all the way to the bottom. You can see my first ones that have just like really bad filters and I'm so awkward in them. And I started with just like lip syncing to these trending audios and pretty badly. but it was just like I accepted this this reality that if I was going to grow my skills in trying to create video content, which has never been a strength of mine, then I needed to just grow in public and be okay with being uncomfortable for a little while and I told myself that it's fine because I didn't have an audience really. I just had like 100 little people that were my closest little buddies and they found my Instagram and cheered me on. They were like, you can do this. And they were so committed. And so I felt like I could practice building this little like video content and trying my hand at it. And they were so encouraging. A lot of it was just the writing community being who they are. 98% of the time where they show up for the authors and the people who are trying to be creative and to grow their skills. And there was a lot of humbling that went on when I was like, wow, I'm really, really bad at this. I'm really bad at this, but that's okay. And over time I was able to move from the lip syncing to like tiny little collages with a voiceover that was my voice. And then eventually worked my way up to just talking to the camera. ⁓ but still I'm not the best like improv speaker. ⁓ it's so much better if I have thoughts prepared. Sam. And so yeah, if I just if I just sit there and I'm like, okay, I gotta create a reel today, and I sit down and I'm like, Ugh, and it takes me like four or five takes more before I have something that's workable. Yeah. And when I actually just sit down and I f again, creative versus business, putting away the business side. It's not about the content. It's not about the hook. First I need to get down my message. Like what do I want to share about today? What is something that I have genuinely been struggling with as a creative? And how can I share that through my words in a way that will help other people feel seen? Yeah. Once I got to that point, it was a little bit easier. And then I can go through and I'm like, Okay, I have the gist of my message. What hook can help me reach more people in a way that's not misleading? And then yeah, from there I finally caved and I downloaded Cap Cut and I learned how to edit very basic ⁓ my gosh, it's so bad. Monica, you don't understand. I'm so bad at video editing. I why? but that's just like it's so it's dynamic design and intentional dynamic visuals are another dimension. speaker-0: It's annoying. speaker-1: Yeah. They telling that you have to consider. And it's just very overwhelming because it's all happening simultaneously. So I'm still at the point where like the most I do is talking to the camera straight on and ⁓ just trying to find that messaging from the creative, not the business person. Yeah. And those are where I find that I feel most comfortable. I love that. And then I edit off and then I'll post them and I run away because then now I kind of have a more a slightly bigger audience and so now the pressure is a little bit bigger. but it's still a lot of fun. I do like being creative and sharing my my authentic yeah thoughts with my audience because I think we connect really well. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, I love it. It's funny, I like I like never do video content because I discovered that carousels do well and I was like, great, I'll just do that. speaker-1: I love carousels. I love carousels. They're my favorite. speaker-0: love them. I'll probably eventually do more video at some point, but right now I'm like it's it's speaker-1: Funny your carousels too, because they're always super high value. You do a great job. And I just love your your photos from around Amsterdam. I love I love the Netherlands. My husband and I were there in twenty twenty three and I didn't want to leave. It was like the cutest place I'd ever seen. And so every time I see your carousels with the little with the canals and the little houses, they're just so cute. I love it. speaker-0: I know. It's ironic because I sh it obviously in the business world they're like, ⁓ post things that like resonate with your audience like vert like you know, in a in a visual way. And so mm, whenever I see people posting, it's usually about like books and journals and I'm like, Here's a picture of Amsterdam because my my desk isn't like all that aesthetic to be honest. I'm like there's nothing like there's nothing you're gonna take a picture of here. It's not aesthetic. Like it looks aesthetic behind me because this is like what I've had to do for my own business. But like my desk is like boring. speaker-1: Yeah, mine is so boring. I have like a cork board with like real actual life notes on it. It's not like the cute little sayings of like the first draft is meant to be messy, like whatever. It's just like call the dentist for your third crown next week. And I'm just like, that's not aesthetic speaker-0: I'm like, you guys don't wanna see my desk and like my pill bottles. I mean, I saw like a drug addict, but it's my it's my ADHD meds, but like it's just it's just not aesthetic. Like I'll take a picture of it. speaker-1: You could paint them and just make them like a special decor piece or something. Like just make it a moment. 'Cause that's what we're doing these days. Everyone's embracing their authentic selves. Yeah. speaker-0: I love it. ⁓ I'm looking at Del John delay this part 'cause I'm like, what else have I not talked about? It's so funny that you mentioned that it's taken you almost almost since what, twenty twenty two, you said? You started at twenty twenty two? speaker-1: Yeah, so like th well, twenty three, beginning of twenty three is when I actually like went all in. So it's like been about three, three and a half years. Yeah. It's speaker-0: Way longer for me. It took me forever to get to ten K. And now I'm at like, I don't know, ten point eight or something and I'm like, this is a miracle. speaker-1: I made a confetti popper. This is amazing. speaker-0: 'Cause it took me like many, many, many years to reach that. And there were definitely times where I like ghosted my audience and like didn't do anything for months. speaker-1: For sure. ⁓ my gosh, same. All of twenty twenty four when I was like pregnant, brain fog, like maternity leave, I was just gone. I think it posted like three things that whole year. And the the real one stuck with me and that was really nice of them. Yeah. speaker-0: That's another thing to mention on about social media and like platforms is people are like, ⁓ if I like ghost my audience for a little while it's like it's all for nothing and I'm like, I ghost my audience for like months and I still like am able to to grow right now. speaker-1: So well and again that's I think that's another difference between like finding a viral based audience and finding a converted audience because a real a real converted audience isn't an audience at all. It's a community and it's people who are interested in your work, your perspective, and they won't care if they don't see you for like six months, if you have to go off and like do some mental health or move somewhere or change jobs, whatever it is. Because like they've got plenty of content that they can consume in the meantime and no one can replace you. Exactly. And there's just like this deeper connection. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: It's like Adele when she like fucks off from for years and then comes back with a banger album like speaker-1: Yeah. I will always listen to anything that woman puts out. She is a creative genius. Yes. I love her. speaker-0: Yes. I love it. Okay. ⁓ my god, so funny. Okay, let's talk about I have maybe like a question that I don't know why I came up with this question for you, but like when I was writing this at eleven PM at night for the questions, I was like, This sounds like a good question. So you're a mom, you have a very busy life and you're also writing and you have to write like in the in between, like you mentioned. And you I think you posted about this maybe maybe a month ago or something like that. maybe it's more often than that, but you're talking about like just the overwhelm that you experience. And I'm very curious how how can how can writers work with fragmented creativity? Because a lot of people that I work with say that like, ⁓ I need many hours. I need like so much time to sink in deep work. And obviously we all want that, but a lot of times that's not really possible on a day to day basis. So I'm curious how you manage it. speaker-1: Yeah, it's absolut it's actually really interesting. So I saw a a research article the other day. People are doing research on creative flow and flow state. And it said that for every interruption for a creative, it takes an average of like twenty five minutes or so for them to return to that creative state and to get back to that mental space where for us as writers, I think it's like the words are flowing. You have finally found like enough time. Where you're sitting down, you're getting in the focus, you are in another world, you're somewhere else. And you're following your characters and you're you're writing, writing, writing, you're imagining all these things, connecting these dots in your brain, like I imagine a little thought bubble, it's just all up here. And then like my husband will come in and ask me a question. Poof, it's all gone. And it'll take me an average of twenty-five minutes to get back to where that was, and there's no promise of whether whether that'll all come back the way it was before. Maybe it'll be better, maybe I'll miss things that I had before. And the luxury of having a spare hour or two spare hours to just lose yourself is harder and harder to find whether you have kids or whether you're working full time or whether you're running multiple businesses. Just this idea of fragmented time and trying to fit things in in as short as like five minutes or ten minutes. ⁓ it can be so hard. I think it is made harder. In my opinion, I think it's exacerbated when we place ourselves against these expectations that we have to do writing every single day, just like social media. Yeah. Where we're like, we have to write every single day. And not only that, but I have to write five hundred words a day, eight hundred words a day, a thousand words a day. ⁓ and that goal, if it's not synthesized, I guess, or aligned and taken into consideration with the rest of your commitments. Yeah. Then that goal just becomes a source of guilt and like self shame because you're like, Okay, I'm exhausted, I'm spent, there's no way I can reach this arbitrary goal of five hundred words. Right. And the way that I've kind of figured out how to use fragmented time, especially where now my toddler is like a tornado. He's just always needs something. He could wake up from his nap at any moment, you know, it's very unpredictable. My schedule is just very unpredictable. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: I work with very simple and low stakes goals that are way, way easier than I feel like they should be. So for for an example, I moved from daily word count goals to weekly because I know like if it's been a day, I don't wanna write. But in in a span of seven days, there's a higher likelihood that I will find at least two evenings where my husband will take the kid. And I can go to the coffee shop and live my little writer fantasy for a few hours and I can get more words down. I can go into that creative flow state. But the rest of the time is fragmented. And where I still want to feel like I'm making progress, I will carry around a little notebook and I will be kind of like telling stories to my toddler. ⁓ as I'm working through a scene or we'll listen to a podcast together. Most recently we've been listening to your podcast in preparation for this one, which is so fun. And I just I work it in around my schedule without setting that really high expectation. Yeah. That I see others set that just doesn't work for me. Right. And I think that's the biggest, most important thing about being a creative and trying to work with limited pockets of time. is you have to understand what you're capable of and also what you're limited by so that you can set a realistic goal that is both a challenge and a relief, you know. Yeah. Something that you can achieve on your worst day. Yes. ⁓ up until that point, I was trying to write and I was so focused on how many words behind I was and how how bad my streak, my writing streak was. And that was all that took up my attention and it was so frustrating. And then I wasn't creative. I wasn't like I got stuck on chapters for weeks at a time. But being able to move to the head space where you're like, any progress is good progress. I'm gonna take these five minutes and I'm gonna think about like one character flaw and three different ways that could appear in my setting. Like little things like that, just little pieces. And then you're collecting these little like Easter eggs, you're putting them in your basket. And then when I go to sit down and actually write, even if I haven't been writing for a couple days, I have still been doing the brainstorming and the development work that prepares me to have a really productive session. And then I get to see all of those pieces from those fragments connect, connect, connect. And then I feel like I'm making progress. And it is slower. I have friends who can write a whole book in two months. And it takes me six to eight because I can only do max like 3,000 words a week. Yeah. But I take what I can get and I recognize that I'm still making progress towards this dream. And I've just I've made my peace with that and I also recognize that my schedule will continue to change and someday I will have more time to write again. Probably when I'm old and retired, but you know, it'll get there eventually. speaker-0: Yeah, it's funny 'cause my my limit is also about t I it's usually between two to three K in a week. And you know, like I've you know, when I was a social worker when I was working full time, that was like it was like usually two thousand words a week is what I could manage. ⁓ and like, you know, a lot of writers I think don't understand that that adds up really quickly and you can still make a lot of progress in those times. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: What really what matters is that you're actually showing up for yourself. And showing up for yourself doesn't always have to just be work out, right? It can be so many different things. speaker-1: Yeah. So many things. Yeah. I love that. And especially like social work is heavy work. Like you like you carry a lot with you. And I think like this goes for whether you're working in creative departments or and you're making a thousand creative decisions a day. It it accounts for, you know, essential workers and hospitals, social workers, like whatever your job detail might be. It's not just a job. It's not just like mindless work and then you come home and you get to do all of your creative stuff. Yeah. You have to account for the decision fatigue and the how the rest of your life how you carry that with you. Yep. Because that does affect that affects it too. And it's it makes it harder for sure. To show up some days. At least from from my experience. ⁓ it has made it harder to be creative some days when I'm like, ugh, I I just wanna sleep. speaker-0: Yes. It's funny 'cause ⁓ I I've I've I've heard the studies about flow and interruptions and I don't experience it that way. Maybe it's 'cause I'm ADHD. but when I'm interrupted, I can easily get back into into my flow. So I don't know power. I don't know why. I think it's like 'cause I was at a ro a writing that's so funny. I was like a c at a writing retreat a couple of weeks ago and you know, there'd be times when like speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: the flow is interrupted and like I would just go back to it and it was fine. I will say, like I do think we need more study on just like what flow looks like in 2026. And I don't know if there's a lot of studies on, you know, ADHD brains with flow, autistic brains with flow, things like that. Because everybody I think works differently. Because my husband, for example, like he's he finds it hard to get back into flow when I've interrupted speaker-1: Yep. speaker-0: And I'm like, sorry. ⁓ but for me it's not as as much of a problem. I don't know. I'm like it's it's very interesting. I'm curious if anybody's wanted wants to tell us in the comments, whether or not it's on Spotify or YouTube, if it takes you a minute to get back into flow or not. Cause I think everybody's different here. ⁓ I actually have a lot of opinions about like Deep Work, that book by Cal Newport. And like I thought when I read when I read it I'd be like, ⁓ my god, this is like changing my life. And I'm like, Okay, so Just have a partner to do all the work for you. Got it. speaker-1: Cool. I have a partner. Someone else, yeah. speaker-0: Do like the tab work and like Yes. Have somebody else do the cooking and like phone calls and emails. speaker-1: Cool. Why didn't we think of this sooner? Like just outsource every human need and so you can just do all the things you like and none of the things you don't like. Like Exactly. It's it's not that hard. speaker-0: Yeah. And like I respect Cal Newport and his work. I just I do think there are like legitimate criticisms around like what people can actually do. I remember like when I read it I was thinking, hmm, like 'cause he says something about like wanting to not be on top of his email. And I'm like, if I wasn't on top of my email, my business would speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be there are some like nobody likes administrative tasks. ⁓ I think specifically go to school for it. But it's absolutely necessary. Yeah. That is that is the eighty percent. That's all of the structure that goes on behind the scenes so that you can actually do what you like twenty percent of the time. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. You're completely correct. It's yeah. So okay, I'm curious how you've stayed connected with your creativity and overwhelming seasons. Because you mentioned that that you had some overwhelming seasons recently. And I'm very curious and you maybe you didn't stay connected with it. That's like very normal as well. but I'm curious what that looked like for you. speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ well seasons of overwhelm I think happen when I have too many promises that I'm trying to keep all at the same time. Whether it's a promise to an employer that I'm gonna show up for work, whether it's a promise to my family, my husband and my son that I'm gonna show up and help care for our house and like make food and stuff, you know. and if I've all so promise to myself that I'm going to be creative before in the middle or after all of that. That's my time is lim speaker-0: Can you hear me? speaker-1: I don't remember where I learned it, but I was in college. Yes, sorry. speaker-0: Give it one second to re to catch up. I think you're still frozen, so maybe turn off your camera and turn it back on. speaker-1: Okay, let's see. speaker-0: With Riverside this happens as well, but usually it doesn't matter too much. But I think with Zoom it does matter. Okay. Yeah, you're back. So you learned a trick. speaker-1: I did learn a trick. So ⁓ I was really struggling with mental health in college. ⁓ and it was getting in the way of assignments that were due like every week. And so I was I I just found myself being really stressed about the future. Like I'm not gonna pass XYZ test at the end of the month, which means that I'm not gonna pass this class at the end of the semester, which means I'm not gonna graduate, I'm not gonna get a like the dooms the doom. thinking, the spiral just was would go on and on and on. And that overwhelm just had no no end. And so a little I cannot for the life of me remember where I learned it. Maybe it was inatomic habits or something like that. I was trying to read and just find something that could help me deal with this overwhelm of never ending proportions. And somewhere I saw this idea of just focusing on the twenty four hours. And what's within your control in twenty four hours and asking yourself the question like, What can I do today, right now, that would really, really help the tomorrow version of me? And it's it's it l really limits you because there's only so much work that you can do in twenty four hours. You can't write a whole book in twenty four hours. ⁓ except now under special circumstances. and you can't, you know You can't raise tons of money in twenty four hours. You can't like there are limitations realistically for the average person. And so when I moved from this endless spiral into asking myself the tiniest question, what can I do right now that will make tomorrow me really happy or at least a little more comfortable? Then I was like, Well, I can go and like do my dishes really quick. Yeah. And then my dishes are done. That's really easy. Like it takes me 20 minutes. And then at least like tomorrow, if the world is falling apart, at least my dishes are clean, you know? And if they're pulling my body from the rubble, at least my dishes will be so clean that I'll be like, dang, she cleaned her dishes right before everything, like broke ⁓ ⁓ that was my thought. And ⁓ now I'm in these ⁓ seasons of overwhelm I think are just typical. Yeah. ⁓ ⁓ We as people live in a cyclical life cycle. ⁓ that was so redundant. ⁓ You're good. But I I take the twenty four hours. I'll start over with that thought. ⁓ how do I wanna say it? Just the twenty four hours can feel a lot less overwhelming than trying to handle and approach something that you know is going to take months or years. Right. Especially in the case of writing and creativity. These are projects that take a really long time. Yeah. And focusing on the twenty four hours and just just telling myself that I can live as a creative for twenty four hours. I can get up and do my morning brainstorming. I can go fulfill my other promises, fulfill my other commitments, then I can come back. And at the end of the day, if I have a little bit of time as a creative person, I would want to offload everything I have learned and just absorbed throughout the day in a creative way. And it doesn't matter how many words I write, as long as I'm writing, because that's what writers do. Yeah. And being able to think about it in twenty four hours allows me to just focus on the little pieces. Yeah. And That was something that really just helped me a lot, especially when like I didn't know how to be a mom. I didn't want to leave my corporate job. I didn't want to have all these big life changes because I had just learned how to be confident in where I was. And a big change meant that my confidence and my identity was shaken and changed. But I had always been a writer. And the writer at the end of the day, at the end of the week, still wants to write words. Yeah. So if nothing else. those little twenty four hour challenges of writing today because tomorrow me will be happier. Yeah. Gradually add up. And then that turns into a book. Even if it takes five years, ten years. It's it can take a long time. But ⁓ that just that was a huge anchor for me. ⁓ in moments that were really overwhelming. And you know, and they'll keep coming back. Like we'll just we'll keep finding moments where, all of our commitments are clashing and ⁓ it's just you have to find grace and reconciliation and patience with with all of it because we're just people. We're not machines. And that's what makes the work so good. speaker-0: Exactly. I love ⁓ I love the idea of breaking it into twenty four hours. I don't think I've ever read that before anywhere. I read Atomic Habits, but maybe I'm forgetting that it was in there. speaker-1: Okay, maybe it was somewhere else. I don't know. speaker-0: Yeah, I think something when you were mentioning like creative projects can take time, I have or I've discovered a hack because of an author I was following. ⁓ it's funny, I never used to write short stories until this year. And like I was like, I'm gonna try to write a short story because this author was telling me like even if you don't think you're gonna like it. ⁓ it can feel really nice to be able to finish something very quickly and I was like, Okay, fine, I'll try it. It was amazing. It took me like a month to like write a short story and to be done with it. I like, ⁓ it's done. Great. And it's such a book where you're just like, ⁓ my god, it's taking so long and like it can just feel like endless, but with a short story you're like, I did it, it's done, okay, bye. speaker-1: fun Let it be known. I accomplished something. Bye. Yeah. That's so fun. I love that. There really is something about like whether it's milestones for your longer project or completing smaller projects with a narrower scope that allows to just that little that little dopamine hit like reminds you like dang, I can do that. Like I'm capable of creating something that I'm proud of. Yeah. Yeah. That reminders So nice. And I love short stories. speaker-0: Yeah, I just bought a book of romantic short stories at Waterstones the other day. I was like, I'm very excited for this. Yeah. I know. I love it too. We have one at Amsterdam. I hate to brag. speaker-1: Rude. Share. And I'm just moved to Europe. Okay. I'm I'm putting in my papers today. ⁓ my gosh. Yeah. I feel like all I have so many author friends who are writing short stories right now, winning like little contests with ⁓ or getting them in these really cool anthologies. And I'm like, maybe I should like maybe I should write one. Like that's what the cool kids are doing. speaker-0: It's really fun. Yeah. I didn't think I would like it. And for some people who are listening, they might be like, ⁓ but like I don't like to read short stories or like, ⁓ but all my ideas get too big. Or like there's so many different reasons people might not want to write a short story. And I had the same concerns. I was like, ⁓ it's gonna like distract me from my from my my real book. But it doesn't distract me, it just feeds into it. It just feeds my creativity. It's fresh. speaker-1: Fresh. ⁓ there's something so nice about just stepping away and it I feel like it gives you better perspective too. Like taking a break from one project you are so immersed in and just like you know way too much, way more than you n probably need to know to write the book, and you just can't like clear the fog, being able to step away and do like a little mini project. Like I like to paint, and so I'll go away and I'll just like paint a different world or a scene or a character, and then I'll come back and like okay. Okay, I'm I'm r like refreshed and now I can come back and try again. I love that. Yeah. speaker-0: I love it. ⁓ let me how many minutes do I have left until my okay I have till six my time. So we have like twenty more minutes. So perfect. ⁓ let me see what else I wanted to ask. speaker-1: No. speaker-0: Is it okay, John, if you want me to leave this part? I think I asked you in here but you didn't let me know specifically. ⁓ you had all the agent offers and I was really curious about agent referrals. So let me ask is it okay if I ask you that on podcast? speaker-1: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. speaker-0: So this is another question I wanted to ask because I've seen your Substack and you mentioned getting multiple agent offers and you also mentioned getting agent referrals. So would you tell the audience what that is, like an agent referral? speaker-1: Yeah, for sure. so they were that metric was agent referrals and like Instagram requests. So in the modern day, writers are pitching themselves and their books as part of the query process on social media. ⁓ it's becoming more common. And so I put together a few social media posts that were pitching myself, my project, those kinds of things. And I had some literary agents either drop in the comments of those posts or send me private DMs and ask to see the query in their inbox. ⁓ I queried a total of I think it was exactly 50 agents. And I think twelve of those were from agents who requested it directly as a result of those social media posts and that promotion. speaker-0: Nice. Was this Instagram or was it multiple other channels? speaker-1: It was Instagram. Exclusively Instagram. ⁓ and so I would send them a cold query or I it's it's so much more cloudy and vague trying to pitch yourself on social media because ⁓ if you do get a request and an an a literary agent expresses interest in wanting to see the book, you have to first make sure that they are a legitimate literary agent because you don't wanna get scammed. And then you have to verify what the extent of their request is, whether they're requesting just a query or a partial or a full. And then if they're not open to queries publicly, then you need to risk like obtain that contact information in order to connect with them. So that was the gist of I had 12 requests that came in that way. ⁓ and of those, I think they were ninety percent like just cold queries. So they were just they wanted to see the query package. And so that's I got their information. ⁓ I verified them and then I sent over my query package. I think two or three were full requests that went zero to a hundred. So that was really cool. ⁓ and then I had one special circumstance that I got a private referral for an agent. And this was an agent that has been on my list for probably like five or six years. ⁓ this agent represents some of my all-time favorite books and authors in the genre that I write in. And I if I had to pick like a handful of dream agents, they would be among them. Yeah. And so I had been keeping an eye on their query tracker page, their query management page, and their website for Probably three years just waiting to see if at any point they opened up to queries and they never did. Then when I jumped into the query trenches, this was my second time querying, and I got a lot of requests really fast, which was very unexpected. And all of a sudden, I was faced with this decision of how many queries am I going to send before I start doing calls with agents. And Am I going, are there any that I would go out on a limb and try to connect with in an atypical way? Yeah. And the all these answers were just that I was going to query only the agents that I genuinely thought I wanted to connect with. ⁓ and then there was one agent, this one agent that I had been watching for several years and I asked several of my writing friends, I was like, Okay, I kinda wanna take this shot in the dark and see if they would be interested in looking at my work. I also have to recognize that literary agents are very busy. If they don't open a queries, it's because they don't have time for new clients. Yeah. ⁓ but I did ask my writing friends for advice and they said, Well, if you ask, the worst they can say is no. If you don't ask, you will never know. And so I decided to take the risk and I emailed just the info like email address of the one literary agency and I asked them if I could get a private query referral, that it was a special circumstance. It was the only one I did this for. And they read just my one line pitch that I included and the assistant. forward the forwarded my query package on to the agent. And the agent read my query package. She also requested sample pages for my next project. And so I was like, ⁓ my gosh. And I was freaking out. And I like scrambled to like put everything together and like make it as good as I could. But again, these sample pages were like first draft material. So I was like Yeah. Okay, here we go. And I sent it. And She ended up rejecting me, ⁓ just because well, I don't know if this was the entirety of the reason, but she said that she didn't connect with my current project that I was querying. Got it. But she really loved the opening pages for my next book and if I was ever in the market for an agent again that she would want to look at more of my work and I was like over the moon. Like even that was just a huge honor to connect with an industry professional. Yeah. ⁓ I would not recommend doing that for every single agent on your list because I don't think that it's typically respectful of their time. And so I made sure to only email the assistant and like I didn't want to go directly to the agent first. Yeah. Just so that there was plenty of opportunity for an early filter out if like for sure. If that was misplaced. Yeah. But that was the one private referral. that I got and I'm very glad that I did it, even though it ended up in a rejection, because like I don't know, it showed me that sometimes it's okay to ask. Yeah. As long as you do it from the right place and with the right intention. Yeah. And ⁓ respecting them as people, of course. And so it was honestly a really cool experience. ⁓ definitely kind of a fangirl moment for me. And so I was just really appreciative that she took the time and that they were willing to consider my request. Yeah. ⁓ but yeah, that was the only special circumstance. Otherwise, it was requests through social media. Yeah. And then the rest were called queries. And I ended up signing with another dream agent. And his was a result of a cold query from Query Tracker. Nice. So several people have asked me if I knew somebody who knew somebody, or if like someone gave me a special referral and it wasn't the case. It was just right out of my inbox into his and he signed and it was just amazing and it's a dream come true and it's it's been only good things ever since. But yeah. Yeah. It was a really cool experience. speaker-0: Well, it shows that like cold queries are still getting people agents, right? Like I think people just assume like, ⁓ I there's the only way I can get an agent is through blank and that's really not the case. Like you can still make a splash, you know in any in many circumstances. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel like if you if you just prepare properly and your work is also ready to move on to that next step. Like sometimes it's just a matter of craft. Yes. Continuing to work on your skills. Yeah. That was definitely the case for me. I queried in twenty three and it was bad. Like I just needed to go write more. And I went and I wrote more and I came back and it was better. ⁓ speaker-0: I love it. speaker-1: But yeah, if you if you prepare yourself appropriately, I still fully believe that it's possible to get an agent the traditional way. speaker-0: That's so interesting that you had pitched yourself. I think I remember seeing those posts. This was a long t it's a while ago now that I think I saw those. And yeah, it's really cool that you have people in your comments and DMs like letting you know. I I didn't even think that like that was a common thing to do on Instagram. It speaker-1: It's it's becoming increasingly popular, but it also like you just have to be so careful with Yeah, you do because you're also exposing yourself like with every little piece of detail of story that you share online, you're also exposing your early creative ideas and intellectual property to people who might abuse it. Yeah, you're also exposing yourself to potential scams. And so you have to be very careful about the way you go about it. But it was really cool. And the fact that there are literary agents online who are just willing to like reach out to authors in that way, like it makes your day every time. You're just like, ⁓ my gosh, like y you wanna talk to me? Okay, cool. Sounds good. speaker-0: How did you f how did you make sure that they were legit when you got the messages? What would you speaker-1: So yeah. ⁓ so the first thing is I would look at the contact information they gave me. and I think a dead giveaway is if it's a Gmail account, like an email, Gmail account, ⁓ that could be anybody. You wanna make sure that the the domain matches. And then if you're still feeling unsure, like that's the first thing. I would also look them up on publishers marketplace, ⁓ as well as query manager, query tracker. and manuscript wish list. Yeah. Manuscript wish list usually has the contact information for the agents as well. So just extra cross re cross referencing to make sure to make sure to make sure that they're real. And then if you're still feeling a little iffy about it, you can actually email the agencies directly and say, Hey, I've been reached out to by XYZ agent. Kind of do like a reverse and just triple check and make sure like that it all matches up. But yeah. Luckily everybody who came into my comments was real and they were really kind and they're very excited about it. So that was ⁓ I was very grateful for that. Yeah. speaker-0: I love it. ⁓ okay, where can people find you, Hannah, if people wanna like follow you and your journey and everything like that? speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I'm on Instagram, YouTube and Substack. I'm also trying to cross post my videos back onto TikTok, even though I'm so bad at videos. and then I just recently put together my little author website. So all of my accounts are under Hannah Callan Writes And then my website is just Hannah Callan.com. speaker-0: Love it. Love it. Love it. I have not looked at TikTok in so long. I'm too old. I'm too old, man. I'm gonna be thirty-five in a few. speaker-1: ⁓ my gosh, that is not old Monica. You're in your prime. You are radiant. It's speaker-0: Too old for TikTok, I'll just be real. Like I'm like mm, these little babies. speaker-1: I'm twenty six and I feel like I'm too old for TikTok. I get on there like my husband and I were on there last night and we're just like, What is this? What is this algorithm? What is this what is going on? Like I think we last like thirty seconds. I'm like, Never mind, never mind. speaker-0: Yeah, my husband and I both have tried to scroll and we're like, Mm, this isn't working. It's a f it is a different world. speaker-1: ⁓ my god. This is a different world. Yep. But yeah. Anyway, thank you so much for having me, Monica. This was genuinely a pleasure. I love Yeah, thank you so much. speaker-0: Awesome. Thank you for hanging out with us. And thank you guys for listening. I'll see you in the next episode. speaker-1: Bye guys.