HOW TO QUIET THE NASTY VOICE IN YOUR HEAD
A while back, the perfect metaphor for how the critic works hit me
It was during an IG Live: its long list of reasons why you won't ever be able to finish your book, write something meaningful, and on and on is just like a cover band's set list.
Think of the band that plays at weddings.
There's a list of songs they know people expect. They will get the result they want from playing these familiar songs: dancing.
Your critic is exactly the same. If you think about it, the lines it hits you with right when you're getting into flow are not new to you. You've heard them before, am I right?
Most of my students and clients can provide a list of judgements their critic has with very little effort.
Any of these top 10 hits sound familiar?
This isn't any good
You're terrible at this
What a waste of time
How can you be so selfish when the world is a mess
The critic trots these out as soon as you're getting decent work done, because it knows how to get the result it wants from you:
Stop writing — it’s too scary.
This is how it makes you dance. But what if we turned the tables?
Flipping the script on the critic.
The method I use, which has the benefit of being simultaneously effective and hilarious, is this:
Take what your critic is saying to you and sing it along with one of these catchy, suitable-for-wedding-reception hits.
Full disclosure: I may have gotten a little carried away compiling these, but it was really fun to make.
Just try to feel bad about "writing total shit" when you sing that along to Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way."
You are writing totalllllll shit!
Sing it with me. Louder!
Same with Waste of time, waste of time, ha! ha! ha! ha! Waste of tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime to "Stayin' Alive." It's perfection. Apply the Bee Gees, and the criticism becomes meaningless. Do you feel the critic getting nervous?
The effect of this is the miracle of any earworm song: encasing that nasty statement from the critic in hilarity. Very much like the boggart that was negated by the ridiculous.
It's really hard to feel bad about wasting time when you're dancing along with John Travolta, right?
Make that critic dance, and shimmy free of its control. It's easier than you think.
Now, let’s get back to writing!
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BUDGETING FOR YOUR WRITING LIFE
Essential questions to ask so you can build a thriving life as a writer. Do you need a full-time day job? What’s your ultimate goal for writing? Clarify it all here.
How much income do I need as a writer?
This is a whopper of a question, but it’s a smart one to ask as you build your writing life.
Here are the essential questions to consider when budgeting for a thriving writing life:
Where do I live (and what is the cost of living there)?
What are my basic monthly expenses?
Do I have debt to account for?
What do I have in savings?
How much money do I need to feel secure and comfortable?
What is my ultimate goal?
Rent. Ouch!
Where do I live (and what does that cost?)
I can speak from experience here. Before Berlin, I lived in incredibly expensive cities.
I was in California for 20 years. First San Francisco and then in LA.
Maintaining the standard of living there was brutal, but the community was amazing and I made so many wonderful connections.
I took wonderful writing workshops. I was meeting amazing writers all the time. A lot of the early success of The Secret Library Podcast was due to being able to go to a bookstore event, meet an incredible author, buy their book, talk to them and invite them on the show.
But Los Angeles was a mixed bag because the cost was excruciating.
Are the benefits of your location worth the cost?
This can go both ways - if you live in a remote area and have very low overhead, the ‘cost’ can show up as increased difficult to find community or attend events.
What is most important for you?
What are my basic monthly expenses?
Categories to consider:
Housing
Utilities
Food
Healthcare and wellness
Transportation
Taxes
Loan or debt payments
Know the totals or averages for each of these categories
This can be a scary thing to add up. However, I can say that every time I’ve done this exercise it’s ended up being less grim than I expected, even when I had significant debt to deal with.
You may have additional categories to these. If so, add them. I see these as the basics, but we have others in our list, such as:
Entertainment
Travel
Education / Training
Once you know your numbers, you can make more empowered choices.
A word about debt
A lesson I learned from Bari Tessler that was hugely helpful: debt is easier to pay off when you see it as a celebration of something you chose to spend on.
Rather than thinking of paying off a credit card balance as a yucky task, if you used the card to go on a much-needed vacation, Bari suggests calling these payments something like “my Italian adventure.”
Even if you have to call the payments “my rebellious 20s” or “Finding my personal style” due to spending choices we might not make now, we can acknowledge that we learned from the experience.
The big bonus is: the debt tends to get paid of faster when we don’t resent it.
Total it up, give it a fun name in your budget, and keep moving ahead.
What about savings?
Saving can be just as loaded as debt. After all, when we’re building a writing life we often don’t have a lot of extra to work with.
However, I’ve found that automating my savings has been a huge help. I use N26 Bank for my business, and whenever money comes into it that’s over 50 Euro, it gets sorted into a tax account and a savings account. I get to define the percentage and it happens without me having to think about it.
If you never saw it, you won’t miss money as much
It can be a small percentage, like 5% to start, but as you see this increase, it will help.
As a creative, I often had to take jobs that were a bad fit because I needed the income. Learning to save became easier when I realized an important secret:
A healthy savings account gives you a superpower: the ability to say no.
Once I had a month, and then a few months’ worth of expenses saved, I didn’t have to accept any job that came my way. I could wait for the right fit, and eventually I could go full-time working for myself.
It can feel dry and restrictive to save and not have access to all your income right away, but I promise that the opposite is true: the more savings you have, the freer you are.
It’s ok to go slow. Some banks even have an app that will round any purchase up to the nearest dollar/pound/euro etc and put that amount in savings. It’s a few cents at a time, but that can get your started without serious deprivation.
How much do I need to feel safe and comfortable?
This is a crucial piece of information, as it’s so personal. Some people are ok with a bank account that’s close to empty. Others go into a panic and can’t focus on anything until that’s remedied.
You know who you are, so plan accordingly.
Those who need a solid buffer will likely do better with a day job that covers everything. Those who are ok with uncertainly could potentially work part time and tolerate the stress of getting creative to cover the gap.
What it boils down to is this question:
What do you need control over more: your income or your time?
High-paying jobs expect a lot of your time, as a rule, while lower hourly or salaried part-time work is more flexible. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it’s helpful to know if you’ll feel more secure with a higher salary and are ok with less control over your schedule.
If you suffocate with others dictating your time, the higher salary isn’t going to be worth it, unless it’s to fulfill a goal you value just as much.
What’s my ultimate goal?
This is the most essential question of all.
Once you’ve reflected on all these points, it’s time to look at the big picture.
What do you want your writing life to look like over the next few years?
Do you want to be a full-time writer, or are you happy writing as a second stream of income or even as a hobby?
Knowing the end goal can help you plan more effectively now. If you want to write full-time, then taking a high-paid job for a defined period to pay off debt and build up adequate savings to feel secure is an effective plan.
If, however, you see writing as a secondary income stream as your goal, and primarily a source of fun, it’s more important to have work that will be tolerable long-term and cover as much of your expenses as possible.
With these thoughts in mind, re-visit the questions above.
Once I knew I wanted to write and teach writing as my primary income, it was clear we needed to leave LA and find a place that was less expensive. Berlin fit all of our needs and has lowered overhead without sacrificing the cultural hub that we had in LA.
Go slowly with these questions. Let them percolate.
Let’s keep this conversation going!
*Once again, I recommend Bari Tessler’s The Art of Money. Both the book and workbook are excellent resources as you work through these questions.
We’ll continue this conversation in the next post.
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HOW TO SUPPORT YOURSELF AS A WRITER
What day job would suit you best as a writer?
How can you take care of yourself and still have enough energy to write? Here are all the day jobs I tried and how you can pick one that works for you.
THIS POST WAS ALSO RECORDED FOR THE SECRET LIBRARY PODCAST
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What drove me to quit my career to become a writer:
My grandmother died.
I sat at her bedside, remembering both my grandmother’s lives and all the choices that they wanted to make that weren't available to them.
My father's mother desperately wanted to study physics. She was certainly smart enough.
In high school she sat down in the classroom and the teacher looked up at his new student.
“I don't teach girls. Get out.”
And she had to leave. She spent her whole life reasonably angry about not having access to the experiences that she wanted. This was just one example.
I realized that if I wanted to be a writer, but didn’t risk becoming one, I wasn't honoring the options available to me.
I wasn’t honoring what my grandmothers missed based on when they were born.
My grandmother, also an artist long after being rejected in the physics classroom
I decided I was just going to become a writer (as if I knew what that meant)
There were a number of issues I had to address.
At 25, I knew I needed to make income and deal with debt.
I had to find a job and clarify how much control of my time I was going to have.
Having studied psychology, I was concerned about the stress of potentially working long hours before finally being able to write.
The issue with working as a psychotherapist was that the job was emotionally demanding enough that I had no energy left to write.
How to make money without giving away all my energy?
Let's just get into the money, shall we?
I've tried pretty much every day job that's available and I think it boils down to:
What fits
What your priorities are for your circumstances
I didn't want to make book sales my primary income
That was never my goal. I didn't want to be independently publishing a book a month and building up a library of income generating writing.
I knew it wouldn't work for me to come up with a new idea and churn it out that quickly. I wanted to take time and linger with books and go really deep with them.
Let’s look at everything I tried.
All the day jobs I’ve had since 25:
Knitting shop
Bookshop
Marketing manager/ director for several companies
Project Manager
Editor
Writing Team Manager
Proofreader at an Ad Agency
Exec Assistant
Teacher (of knitting, English as a second language, and writing)
All of these jobs involved me working for someone else, as a consultant or employee.
For a long time, I believed working for others was the only way to make my life work.
My first business died a very dramatic death in 2008.
I had a small client list. I didn't have a podcast. It wasn't really enough to cover everything. And when the clients went away, all of my savings went away too.
For the next ten years, I felt nothing but terror at the thought of being the one in charge. Of not having any sort of company or support outside of myself to rely on.
Self-employment or Employee: which is right for you as a writer?
Questions to ask:
How much money do you need to make?
What is your risk tolerance?
What’s the priority: money or time?
A few guidelines here:
Be honest with yourself about how much money you need to feel safe and comfortable. If part of nurturing yourself creatively is eating out regularly, budget for it.
You won’t thrive as a writer if you box yourself into a stifling life.
In addition, there’s no right answer here. Many people thrive in a day job and learn a lot from that work to fuel their writing, and feel more creative when the stress of earning money from self-employment is lifted.
Others are the opposite.
And to make things even more complicated, this can change through your life.
When I was in my 30s, after I lost my business, the idea of starting another one was too much and I needed time as an employee.
Now, in my 40s, I am thriving working for myself developing courses and working with clients.
Be honest with yourself and you’ll build the writing life that is best suited for you.
In the meantime, make an honest list of your expenses and what you need to warn to feel safe and start brainstorming what work could bring that in.
*A great resource is Bari Tessler’s material on The Art of Money. Both the book and workbook are wonderful companions to this part of the process.
We’ll continue this conversation in the next post.
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HOW TO BUILD A WRITING LIFE
What is the goal you have for your writing?
Goal can be kind of an icky word. It feels really hustle culture and feels like an energy of grinding something out.
So I don't want to introduce that question in that sort of spirit.
Think about when you were little and what you wanted from writing.
THIS POST WAS ALSO RECORDED FOR THE SECRET LIBRARY PODCAST
Prefer to listen? Click here.
What is the goal you have for your writing?
Goal can be kind of an icky word. It feels really hustle culture and feels like an energy of grinding something out.
So I don't want to introduce that question in that sort of spirit.
Think about when you were little and what you wanted from writing.
What did you imagine?
What did you hope?
What was your big dream?
That's what I mean by the goal for your writing.
Maybe “what is the dream for your writing?” is a better question.
I encourage you to journal about it, if possible, soon after reading this blog post, because we're going to come back to that question in a later post in this series.
Once we've considered a lot of the themes that we'll explore together, that answer will feel even better, like you are easing into a direction that feels really good. At least that's my hope.
Here’s the story of how I built my cobbled-together writing life
And I don't want you to have the impression that this is some quick fix checklist.
You're not necessarily going to get there in two months, or even two years. That’s ok.
This is a series of wrong turns, mistakes, occasionally getting it right, stories of being too scared to take the step that I wanted to, and the consequences of ultimately making those choices.
This process has taken, and it makes me a little ill to say it, 20 years.
So not ready, while thinking I absolutely was ready, to be a “proper” writer.
It began when I was 25.
I had finished my master's degree in psychology. I was about to be a registered intern to become a psychotherapist. Yes, that young creature above had been seeing clients for over a year.
While I had loved studying and while I loved working with people in certain capacities, I realized that this was not the direction I ultimately wanted to take.
The reason I didn't want to be a psychotherapist was because I wanted to be a writer.
And I realized that I had been building this process. I had been taking all the steps that I had taken because I was fascinated by people and how they worked.
But what I really wanted to do was write about them. At 25, I left my perfectly good job determined to figure out how I could become a writer.
We’ll continue this story in a series of posts. Stay tuned for part 2.
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THE MIDYEAR UPDATE ON MY MYSTERY NOVEL
My current writing set-up, described below
THIS POST WAS ALSO RECORDED FOR THE OH! MURDER PODCAST
Prefer to listen? Click here.
It’s been a while since I shared an update on my writing process on the podcast, so in this episode I discuss:
The current status of the novel draft
My new goals for the next couple of months
How I’m staying accountable to these goals
What’s coming up next with Oh! Murder and other events I’m offering.
It has been quite a while, hasn’t it?
I thought this was the best way to update you on everything that's been going on and where the blog and the podcast are going next. Whenever we get to the second half of the year, I'm realizing that I like to take time to check in and that it isn't just a New Year's thing for me anymore.
Over the past few years, obviously tons of things have changed.
things have gone in different directions, and a whole year feels like a much longer time not to check in with progress and goals and how I'm feeling.
This is my “Second Half of 2023” Check-in
It's a time for me to think about:
My writing
What I've done so far
What I'm happy with
What I'm not happy with
What I want to do next.
I invite you to do the same at this point in the year, if that feels right.
You can take the questions I'm asking as inspiration or jumping off point, but as always, shift it around and make it your own.
You may laugh.
I certainly am laughing, but originally I was in conversation over email with a friend's agent who had some interest in the story I'm working on, back in November or December and…
I said, “Oh yeah, I think I can have something to you by the end of February.”
And here we are at the beginning of July. And the book is not finished. However, it is much further along than it was.
And while I would like to be the sort of person who could bang it out in a couple of months, I'm realizing that I'm not that person and that the process I've been undergoing is the one I enjoy.
I'm okay with how it's gone.
But I did have to deal with the critic giving me a hard time
That's just something we all have to struggle with. The critic is always going to have a problem with something, so I'm just going move on knowing that that's life.
With that in mind, here's where the novel is now:
I have typed up everything that I've written on it so far.
I wrote a proto draft, and this seems to be the way this book is happening, as in small, incremental drafts, like building up the layers of a pearl
Each time I go back through the circumference or the size of the story is larger, but it requires what came before to build the next layer
I had been writing something every day in March, at least a few pages by hand, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I had about 150 handwritten page, and the past couple of weeks I typed them up. It actually went actually faster than I thought because…
I left the house.
Being in the house is way too distracting. The desk that I have is very connected with work: this podcast, other podcasts, clients and students etc.
It wasn't enough of a separation to work on the novel at that desk. I've been going to various cafes and that was a really great way to change scene.
I switched to using my iPad with a keyboard attached instead of my computer that I use for work, and that was really great as a separation as well.
[See this set-up pictured at the top of this post]
I got that all typed up and that draft, I had about 25,000 words. I thought it would be more, but I'm okay with that. I finished July 1st.
Next steps:
Now I'm reading it through and making notes.
I had that dread before starting. I finished the type up and exported a copy on Thursday planning to start reading on Friday.
There’s always this. dicking around that happens. I didn't want to sit down and read the thing. I wondered,
“Oh God, is this going to be any good? Is this gonna be a disaster?” Etc. etc.
I'm sure you're familiar with this kind of thought process. When I sat down on Friday, it took me ages to read the first 12 pages. I couldn't settle.
I was seeing all of these things I wanted to change, but I was also seeing opportunities for scenes I wanted to include.
That felt good, but I only got about 12 pages read with notes on Friday.
When I came back today, I set the somewhat ambitious goal of 20 pages. The current draft is about 77 pages, and I want to read it through by the end of this week. So I figured, okay, if I get to 20 or 25 pages, I'm almost halfway, so that's not bad.
It was actually much easier this time.
I felt like I was moving along. There were moments that I really liked. I saw things I could change and add, but I felt pleased with the book as it was looking, so that was great.
This week’s plan:
Read the rest of this draft
Make notes on things to change and add
Make a new proto outline plan
Then I’ll do another coating on the pearl. Expand the story by adding to current scenes as well as adding extra ones that continue the story or deepen the existing plot and character.
I'm hoping this next pass will get it to about 40,000.
My current goal is to finish the draft (what I had hoped to do in February)by the end of August.
I'm saying that here to have some accountability. I encourage you to hold me to it.
My recent kick in the pants moment
Katherine May, who wrote Enchantment and Wintering, who has been on the SLP podcast, runs day long retreats in the UK.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to one and to spend a day resting and stepping away from obligations and work. That was such an incredible relief.
I realized on that trip how much I was pushing myself, how much I was expecting of myself, and how truly tired I was from generating content for so many sources.
When I got home at the end of May, I had to accept the fact that the terrible insomnia I get during Berlin summers had wiped me out. [I took June off from Substack as a result]
Taking June off really helped. But I also ended up taking a break from the novel, which felt less good.
Katherine also does Q+As Crowdcasts for her Substack. She chose my question for the last session and I got to chat with her.
It was: “If I get to talk about writing all the time as part of my job and I love my job, how do I stay connected to my own writing and how do I prioritize it?
She responded in the kindest way, I’m paraphrasing here:
Maybe it's up to you to decide right now if your writing is your work at the moment, or if it is a hobby for now.
It could have gone either way. I could have had a reaction like, “Oh, what a relief. I don't have to pressure myself so much.”
But instead, my reaction was like a kick in the gut and the thought was,
“This is my work. This is 100% my work.”
Part of the reason that I created the business that I have was so I could focus on my own writing. So to not do it and have it relegated to a hobby, even though I do love my work and the business felt like, a big change of direction that I didn't wanna make.
I was so used to writing being shoved into the corners for so many years, while I did some other job. So I had to have an honest conversation with myself and say,
“Hey, look.We've succeeded. You can spend more time on this. Stop habitually putting writing at the bottom of the list. It's not helping you. It's not helping the book, and it's leading to feeling really frustrated.”
That is what started me going out to cafes, leaving the house, working on the book every weekday.
So if you are at a point where the amount of time that you're writing feels like there's a disconnect between your goal and what you want writing to be; if you're writing all the time and you feel resentful and want to spending more time with friends and family, or you just feel exhausted.
It isn't just that there's gonna be this sudden awareness, “Oh, I need to give more time to my writing.” That's just the one that I had.
You might be in a place where the you of five or 10 years ago madea decision about what your writing life would look like, and you're still following that plan.
Have you checked in with yourself and asked, does this still work?
Does this still fit? And there can be many, many options in between.
We're at the midpoint in this year, I recommend that you check-in and ask yourself:
Is the way I'm engaging with writing satisfying?
Does it match to the way I want my writing to feel?
That's something I think I'm gonna be doing far more regularly into the future. I was living the writing life that me of 5-7 years ago believed was possible.
I wasn't allowing my writing self to take up any more space with it, even though that was the whole point.
It's like my unconscious had taken the wheel.
Recommendations that Can Help:
Having an accountability check-in group
In my writing community, the Manageable yet Meaningful Writing Lab, we have an ongoing group chat, so anybody can go in and say, “Hey, I'm gonna write right now. I'm gonna try to do X, Y, and Z.”
I've been taking advantage of that feature more and been posting for everybody.
Earlier I was self conscious about sharing too much of my process as the group leader, to be honest. But I've decided that's ridiculous. It was just the critic shutting me down.
I'm now being really transparent about my writing plans on there daily, and then following up with whether or not I did it.
Using social media as accountability
I'm also posting pictures of my writing spots to Instagram and sharing what I'm working on as another accountability tool.
I've made it public there that I want to get a solid draft done by the end of August.
Coming Soon:
I am planning to release a training on Creating Killer Characters.
Mystery as a genre is uniquely skilled in creating really engaging characters.
Whether you write standalones or series, they're often completely new casts of characters that need to be created for each installment.
Just because you have the same main character or a few regular characters doesn't mean that all the characters are the same.Otherwise, over the course of a series, they'd all die.
We need to generate new casts quite frequently. There's a lot to learn from how characters are created for mystery.
If you haven’t yet joined Footnotes, that’s the best place to get the details on that workshop.
More soon, and in the meantime, you enjoy reading and writing mystery.
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