First Cup of Coffee – August 26, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

More on critique groups and workshops, how to tell if crit is toxic and what to do about it, critique during the drafting stage vs during revision, and my extended analogy of shaken baby syndrome and how it applies to early drafting.




Transcript
00:03.15
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.70
jeffekennedy
It’s actually my second cup of coffee I have had a morning people. Ah I will tell you that today is just say it with me Friday woo which is good and bad I can’t believe it’s already friday. August Twenty sixth and if you’re on video. You’ll see that I’m recording inside I recorded one podcast already outside in the grape arbor and it was a really good podcast I mean I I feel like I can say that now. Because um, well I feel like I can say it because ah it’s gone. It’s lost forever I kept getting these weird alerts as I was talking and they were annoying.

01:09.73
jeffekennedy
So so this morning. Ah yeah I don’t know why I kept gaining these alerts they were annoying me apparently the alerts meant that I all know that my part of the podcast wasn’t recording and. Since I’m the only part of the podcast I don’t know it’s I mentioned yesterday that Zencastr totally changed their thing while I was gone and now it’s messed up charming. So I’m re-recording. Here it is 10 in the morning normally I like to have my podcast totally done uploaded before 9 and have an hour of writing done by now and here I am recording my podcast I was trying all the recover backup things on it and had spent like an hour and finally I thought well. Better to just rerecord so the lost podcast ah I felt like I said some really good stuff all right anyway, I’m trying to let that go move on with my life I am going down to. Ah, Bubonicon this afternoon going to Albuquerque so I’m on the timeline and so so I’m basically screwed I’m also really fussing with this camera that is the exciting news that.

02:43.70
jeffekennedy
My aunt for my birthday gave me this New Webcam and so I only use it when I’m inside I tried using it outside yesterday and spent way too much time getting that to work. Um, technology here. So this is on my monitor now. So. So. It’s a lot better and it’s pretty isn’t that if you’re on video. It’s pretty so anyway, um, I wanted to address some things. Hopefully I’ll talk about them. Well so add ons to yesterday I appreciated the many comments I got. There were some wonderful insights and glad that my rambling made some sense so continuations from yesterday I realized that I’d never explicitly answered. Um. Or finished a thought I suppose I should say on toxic crit because I do get asked that a lot when I’m mentoring or doing author coaching and it it’s hard to know when critique is. Harsh versus when it’s toxic. So and and the answer is probably not a perfect one because the answer is is that you just have to know you have to sense it and I will explain so.

04:20.10
jeffekennedy
The thing to keep in mind is that when people give critiques they are not always um, they don’t always have your best interests at heart. Ah, people are jealous. People are competitive. People also have lots of their own shit going on in their heads that lead them to ah vent that shit in um, ways that are not great for you. Some people don’t have that going on but you don’t really know. So with a critique. Ah the rule of thumb but still applies for this that you give it 24 hours or 48 hours or a week ah to to sit and to let your own emotions attach detach. From the thing once your emotions have detached then you can come back and look at it and you can see are these my feelings or are they coming from somewhere else because you are always always always going to have feelings. Nope I’m gonna sneeze hold on. You’re always going to have your own feelings. About critique and that’s just that’s way it goes. It’s natural. Um, we all secretly hope that somebody will tell us that what we’ve written is perfect and transcendent and if you’ve asked someone to give critique. They’re always going to find something to tell you about it.

05:51.37
jeffekennedy
And sometimes it’s painful to hear and that’s just natural. That’s part of the process. But sometimes what they are telling you is not well meant they don’t have your best interests at heart. Um, their own poison has come out. And leaked onto the page or into their words and and it is quite literally toxic to your creativity. So that’s the thing to keep in mind um, give that waiting time and then if. After the waiting time you still feel. Ah, okay, so now I’m paying attention to these alerts that are popping up and it’s telling me it’s having problems saving the local backup which is new and irritating. And it’s entirely possible I’ll lose this podcast too. We um 1 thing about this though is once I stop it I cannot come back and um restart it. So I’m just gonna keep talking and. We’ll see what happens so um, okay, so keep in mind that as a creative and we know that you’re creative or you would not be listening to this particular podcast I know a lot of readers listen to this too for insights into the process. But.

07:26.55
jeffekennedy
If You’re a writer if you’re a creative you are you have intuition you have emotions and feelings. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to write the things you write. So You have to learn to trust those feelings and you have to learn to divide out your own feelings. Of you know things like um, chemical imbalances anxiety emotions that are coming from other places like dealing with family drama or things like that from what you are intuiting.

08:03.44
jeffekennedy
That’s coming from the person giving you the critique. So Not always always easy, but this is part of being a human being right? So we have to find ways to separate our real emotional responses. From those that are coming from other sources. So You know like feeling fear and anxiety about May may not mean that you need to fix a situation. It may mean that you have a chemical imbalance that needs Addressing. Or it may mean that you are anxious about this other situation and it’s bleeding over into this thing right? That’s part of being human so you separate these things you learn to divide it out So That’s part of what the waiting period does is that lets you separate your feelings. Just receiving critique in general from your feelings about that specific Critique. So Then what you do is after that waiting period You know you clear your mind and wait till you’re in a calm space and then you take a look at whatever notes you might have on it. And this is what I did I was in a cri group I’d been unhappy for a number of months I was never thrilled with the critique I was getting but I thought well you know I’m trying to move up to a new level this I’m trying to learn a new thing working with different people.

09:33.99
jeffekennedy
So I was really giving it the old college Try. So I come back from a particularly disheartening session I’d been working up a new book that I was going to go on submission with with my agent and I’d come away feeling really disheartened. From this crit group Session. So This is another sign. Um, ideally you should come away from crit sessions feeling excited and feeling like you know what? you’re gonna work on that is like oh okay I have insight I have inspiration I have ideas I’m gonna. Go forward with this if you come away feeling crushed. That’s a clue that’s a clue that that something’s gone Wrong. So Then what I did was I let that week go by I looked again at the manuscript. Some people are printed it out and made notes. And I looked at my own notes that I had taken as they were talking and as soon as I looked at the notes particularly from a certain person I just felt bad I felt that toxicity again. So That’s how I knew and I took those pages and I. Burned them which made me feel much better and sometimes that’s what you need to do as it seems dramatic but you have to clear that shit out of your life and out of your creative process. Ah, and I also burned my own notes on it and separated myself you know and then I went on.

11:10.14
jeffekennedy
To sell that particular book in a 3 book deal. So you know I feel like I I trusted my own intuition and I trusted what I was trying to do so That’s that that’s how you know if crit is toxic. Um. And in the end it comes down to if you feel like it’s toxic if you feel like it’s not benefiting you then that is the truth. Um, the only way that this can turn out badly if you don’t take people’s crit is you run the risk of of not becoming better. You run the risk of becoming someone like and this usually happens to very advanced authors who begin to believe that they are the best thing ever. You know like um, you know seeing an interview with Anne Rice once where she you know said well believe me, no one edits me and she was hugely successful I mean she was making tons of money. But arguably her books needed to be edited at that point in time and you know maybe she didn’t feel that way I mean obviously she didn’t feel that way. Maybe she was happy with the level of success that she had you know who am I to say she should have had those books edited. That’s that’s the only risk you run. You know, otherwise it’s if you decide that you’re not going to take critique from someone. You don’t have to trust yourself, it’s it’s your book. It’s your creative process. The other caveat I would throw in there is people who.

12:45.91
jeffekennedy
Ah self-published books that aren’t ready to be self-published. Um, you know if you don’t listen to the feedback you’re getting you run the risk of putting out a book. That’s not ready, but you have to sort those things out for yourself. Um. You are the one who will care most about your work always always ever. So another point that someone made and I’ve forgotten your name so apologies. But someone commented that it makes a big difference if it’s drafting versus revision and this is absolutely true. And one of the things that prompted yesterday’s podcast S.L. Huang’s essay on Tor dot com about writing workshops particularly science fiction and fantasy writing workshops. A lot of times what they’re doing is they are working at a drafting level and bringing those ideas to the group and workshopping them and yes critique at that level is very very different than if you are doing critique of a fully. Complete work that you are now at the revising process for some people that pressure of the critique workshop works really well yesterday I referenced Mary Robinette Kowal.

14:13.47
jeffekennedy
I happen to know that her process is very much crowdsourced. She works with a group of people who read as she writes and she retools as she goes. Um Andy Weir wrote the martian that way too. Some people love that collaborative process. And Mary Robinette comes out of a theater background and so she’s very used to a collaborative process and that really works well for her. Ah and she had commented that you’ll like after. Ah, Clarion I don’t know if it was clarion. But after a workshop like that that she had not written for a couple of years and it was because she was absorbing um to me that’s I don’t know I think that’s a sign that your creative process got a little crushed but you know I can’t speak to. You know she’s very happy with her results and she’s doing well so you know own your process right? It’s different for everyone. The thing is for many of us including yours truly the drafting process is a very fragile place to be and it is easily damaged. So if you are doing a workshop like clarion or Taos toolbox or something else where you are drafting and you are involving people in the process very early on debt can be can be difficult and note that.

15:40.57
jeffekennedy
With that kind of intensive workshopping. You are also not getting that 24 hours 48 hours one week of buffer to come back and evaluate instead you’re coming back day after day after day and getting crit from those same people. So the toxicity can build up. Um, and. So my favorite analogy for this which is content warning here I call it shaken baby syndrome. So if you don’t want to go with that analogy if that’s upsetting for you tap out now. But I find it a really useful metaphor because. When you have a new draft when you have a new story. It is like an infant. It’s um, brand new to the world. It is fragile. It’s also very easy to love your new baby.

16:34.22
jeffekennedy
And it’s It’s a wonderful stage of the process because you have this infant you can hold all of it in your Arms. You can hold it close and cradle it and it needs you and and you need it and then there’s this pure. Imperfect love between you and the new Baby. The new baby idea. But the new baby is also helpless. It is not able to feed itself. Its Bones aren’t formed yet. It can’t walk. It can’t grasp things on its own. Um, even it’s It’s a little skull. The bones aren’t hardened yet to protect its tiny Brain. Ah. It’s a vulnerable little baby and it needs lots of nurturing and this is what we do with the new story ideas we cradle it and we hold it and we feed it and we we daydream with it it naps and we nap a little bit with it and it’s.. It’s a very important part of that initial idea ah later as that story grows up and develops legs and is able to go out and like do things on its own. Ah it’s tougher. Right? Your your children grow up so you want to think in terms of who do you trust with your infant baby Idea. So if you take that infant and you hand it to someone who is the equivalent of a college.

18:08.42
jeffekennedy
Admissions person who job it is to decide whether or not that baby is ready for college and you hand them this little infant they’re going to take that child and they’re gonna hold it up and they’re gonna shake it. You know, but bla. But that’s where shake and baby comes in. Ah I know it’s gross, but it scrambles the idea right? And also they start demanding all sorts of questions right? They they want to know they ask this baby. You know what about this, you know and how do you know about? What do you know about Calculus and you know like what sort of public service have you taught. And of course it’s an infant. It can’t answer. It’s not ready yet and when they hand the idea back to you and they say well this isn’t any good. It’s not ready for college. It’s you know tap talk can’t walk I mean I were dribbled. Ah, it’s not good enough. Well of course it’s not good enough. It’s not ready for college yet. It’s not ready to put through that level of examination and when you get this baby back. It might be irreparably damaged and what you do then? So what you want to do with your infant baby ideas is you want to think in terms of. Who do you trust to hold your baby. Ah, you want someone who loves you and by extension loves your idea you want someone that you can trust to take it and nurture it. You want the fairy godmother for your infant idea right.

19:42.57
jeffekennedy
You want the fairy godmother who will take it and give it magic who will give it ideas and say ah I think this child will be a genius I think that this child is going to grow up to bring love and light to the world and. Let me give it my blessings let me give it what it needs to grow up. These are the people that you want to share your brand new ideas with and if you don’t do that You run the risk right? so. This is my extended analogy On. Um you know who do you involve in your critique process at what point you know later after your baby has grown up and it’s a teenager and it has become insolent and difficult to deal with that’s when you send it off. For the college admissions interviews and when it comes Back. You’re like okay so you’ve got to go back to summer school or you know you need to improve your ah physical conditioning. Whatever let me let me help you with this so that eventually your child your book Your story. Can graduate from college and go into the world and deal with the slings and arrows arrows of professional life. So on that note coming to try recover what I can of my morning try to get something done before I head down to Bubonicon If you’re going to be there say hello.

21:15.75
jeffekennedy
And otherwise I will talk to you all on Monday you all take care bye-bye.

First Cup of Coffee – August 25, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

My thoughts on writing workshops, critique groups, taking critique, and other musing spurred by S.L. Huang’s excellent essay on Tor.com. Also a bit about the era of the Facebook birthday and monetizing relationships.




Transcript
00:01.71
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:13.45
jeffekennedy
Fabulous today is Thursday August Twenty fifth and I’m back home and another year older ah wiser hard to say. After a certain point. Do you continue to grow wiser? I don’t know ah during my brief very brief right? Podcast hiatus ah Zencaster changed their thing and now my image is reversed. I don’t know if it’ll be reversed for you all on video. It’s a little disconcerting. It’s just that the flowers are on different sides of me than they used to be um I was trying to figure out if I can change it but um, who knows.

01:04.99
jeffekennedy
So I had a lovely birthday time spent well with family mixture of business and Pleasure. We got um birthday stuff done and also took care of like financial things and stuff like that. So It was good. It was good trip. And I am home. Something’s rustling on the grape leaves.

01:32.88
jeffekennedy
Ah, bird. Um, yeah, so I’ll be here today and tomorrow and then tomorrow I go down to Albuquerque to Bubonicon if you are local to New Mexico which I know most most of you are not It’s a good convention. Sort of our local sff convention and I am going to be doing many many things I will be on a bunch of stuff I was cki I was talking about this before I left. But um, you know it used to be that I would post mice. Appearances and schedule at conferences online and now I’ve kind of it’s like well why because the people online who aren’t there can’t go see the things and the people who are going to the thing will see it when they’re there. So. I see other authors showing this on social media and I know I used to do it. But it’s um, it’s a puzzler I just keep getting around not to posting my stuff and maybe that’s an excuse. So um. And then after that I will be doing podcasts on Monday Tuesday and then Wednesday I fly to Chicago for worldcon – ChiCon – in Chicago did I mention Chicago at which I’m also doing many things I should.

03:03.57
jeffekennedy
Probably post my schedule for that just because worldcon’s so big. But anyway, um, yeah, so little behind on the book stuff not horribly actually I’m I’m on track I’m not where I want to be but. On track still to release September Twenty Ninth nice to see all those preorders coming in. Thank you. SHADOW WIZARD, Jadren and Selly. ah so let’s see so I have. Things to talk about and it’s one of those things where I make notes I want to talk about this when I come back. But then ah you know after the fact I’m not nearly so fired up about it. Um, but so 1 thing about birthdays in the modern era. Is the Facebook birthday right? So it’s a funny thing because this is really throwing me off that my image was reversed I really just shouldn’t look at myself I did get a new webcam. Ah, for my birthday from my wonderful aunt and I started to try to set it up but I can’t if I have the laptop open it defaults to my laptop camera instead of the one on the tripod and I’m sure I can change that somewhere.

04:35.35
jeffekennedy
And my settings Zencaster settings by can’t figure it out. Ah and I thought well I could just like use the webcam and not look at myself which might be a plus. So I’d stop obsessing and but then I wouldn’t be able to see that the image was right. So I may save the webcam for indoors. That’s all, um, probably never mind but that’s that was sort of my process. This morning is figuring out how I’m gonna handle all that. So anyway, Facebook birthdays. Um, and you know I should have my cane out so I could shake it you know because back before Facebook it wasn’t a thing right? You know you had keep track of people’s birthdays and like I don’t know send cards through the mail via pony express um, but now. And it was fun at first with Facebook because it would remind you of people’s birthdays and you’d be like oh cool tell people happy birthday and then the social media marketers got involved right? and so they tell people things like um, you know every. Time you post to somebody’s timeline is an opportunity to advertise your business and ah, it’s like who do I want to say this that sorts of profanities are welling up.

06:06.17
jeffekennedy
You know it it really cancels out the ah you know purported good wishes if somebody is using it as an opportunity to advertise their business so there is this one gal. Who I went to high school with and I don’t even think we were friends in high school which is the other phenomenon about Facebook right? is that there’s all these people that you are friends with on Facebook that you are never friends with in real life. So this girl is a real estate agent and she posts to my timeline with this square ad that has like a picture of her and a picture of her. You know, sister agent at at the business and. You know it’s like the realty company and and they say wishing you a happy birthday and it’s basically a fucking ad for their real estate company on my timeline dressed up as happy birthday wishes and so I deleted it and and you know what. I deleted that in the morning because I was online for my birthday which I’m not always, but you know hanging out my folks’ house because it was a Monday ah, my mom and I you know had ah to meet with her financial advisor via Zoom so we were online a lot.

07:35.25
jeffekennedy
And so I was just keeping up with the Facebook messages this year because I do appreciate all the the nice birthdays from the people who are just trying to advertise their business. So so. I deleted this fairly early in the morning because she posted it right off. Do you know what later that day like actually let me take it back Tuesday morning Tuesday morning I so was catch you know there all the people are like oh sorry I miss to birthday yesterday perfectly. Nice she posted that fucking thing again. Like the evening before and it’s I don’t know if she thought that she you know she went to check to see if it was on my timeline and she was like oh um, maybe it didn’t post or something but I deleted it a second time and then I went and looked at our friendship and our entire. Friendship and I’m putting air quotes around this for you not on video consisted of her posting her fucking real estate ads on my birthday and did I I didn’t unfriend her because we have other like high school friends in common. But yeah.

08:56.10
jeffekennedy
So You know and other people there. There’s only a few people who do this but you know if you’re gonna listen to the marketers think about what you’re doing to your human relationships. Ah actually. Do. We even have a human relationship I don’t I barely remember the scale I should go look her up in my yearbook because I don’t think we were like even I don’t think we ever had a relationship I should unfriend. Her shouldn’t I ah.

09:30.23
jeffekennedy
So I wanted to mention that um the you know monetizing every relationship right? Yeah, um, the other thing I wanted to talk about which I’ll probably put in the show notes billings. And will probably be the thing that most of you are actually here for and like sat through 10 minutes of my blathering to hear about but um, esel ho did an interesting essay on tor.com about clear own workshops and. Ah, science fiction and fantasy writing workshops and writing workshops in general and I wanted to talk about that a little little bit because there’s been a lot of people tweeting about it giving their experiences. Um, there was a lot of discussion of the Milford method and it. This was a really well done essay and it elicited a lot of ah good conversation and you know it’s writing workshops are fraught anyway and i. Hold on him. Um, okay so I I went to check. It’s S.L. Huang which I’m glad I checked ah because she is pretty emphatic about don’t pronounce it to rhyme with bang rhymes with wrong. So SL Huang she does not give um pronouns which is what I was looking for.

10:58.99
jeffekennedy
And ah, but she presents as female. So I’m gonna go with she/her apologies if I get that wrong anyway, um so she talks about the the background of. Science fiction and fantasy workshops and the Milford method and basically the milford method excuse me mosquitoes ah boils down to that people give critique and the author listens and gets an opportunity to say something at the end. And 1 of the criticisms of this technique that Huang brings up is that it’s um, it silences the author and that it can be a really brutal critique method and also how there were.

11:54.41
jeffekennedy
There’s sort of a dearth of other ways to teach and I’m getting a link to the essay because she does a great job of breaking it down much better than my brief summary broken summary here. Ah but 1 thing I did want to say is that. There is a reason for the author to listen without speaking um and I totally get the how it’s problematic I understand how what makes it difficult but something that happens a lot when you give author’s critique. A so. I want to say not even newbie authors I was starting to say that but um, authors even very experienced authors will do. This is that their first instinct is to begin to argue with you and it stops them from hearing what you’re trying to say or they try to explain. Um, and this is something that happens a lot. You know if I’m teaching writing workshops and so forth I’ll ask someone a question about their story I’ll say well you know think about why did the prince want to sacrifice himself and. Their first instinct will be to say oh well see the thing is is that the princess and and I have to say no no, no, don’t explain it to me because I don’t need to know explain it to the reader. What I’m saying is explain it in the work and so i.

13:23.35
jeffekennedy
So I think that there’s a lot of value in learning to hear critique of your work and absorb it without having to have an immediate response and something we talk about a whole lot in the industry is like when you get your. Edit letter back or what have you that you take 24 hours or more to absorb it and assimilate because our first reactions tend to be emotional and that’s um, you know which is usually you know like how dare you say my baby is ugly.

14:01.18
jeffekennedy
And believe me, we all go through this so it’s hard to hear criticism of your work and but so so so absorbing it in silence is a really good discipline to build and I am not. From a marginalized group. You know cis-het white girl here. So I I don’t know how it feels when um, it feels as if you’re being silenced so I realize that’s a fine line there but I did want to mention that about The. The benefits of simply listening um and you don’t have to you don’t have to yeah what are the words I want words what are words? Um, you don’t you don’t have to do what they say and I realize that this becomes an issue for people in marginalized groups too because. There’s that power imbalance and it’s very hard I think for all creators to learn that difference between hearing the critique and making the decision of what to do about it. But it’s good to hear it. It’s good to do your best to Listen. And take it in and then decide later whether or not, you’re gonna listen so all of that said my opinion on writing workshops I have done a few mostly ah through the University where I was at when I was working and.

15:39.89
jeffekennedy
Feel like I’m not going to have time to explain all this I may have to go along so okay, quick quick intro to to Jeffe’s history I was going to be a research scientist I was doing my PhD um I decided to cut bait get my masters because I didn’t actually want to be a research scientist and I decided that i. Wanted to be a writer. Um, it was big pivot I was 23 22 when this happened and so I did that I got my masters in neurophysiology I started taking I got a job as an editor writer to start building my writing chops. And I started taking night classes with the creative writing department and learning from these visiting writers. Usually it would be like these 5 nights a week seven to 10 pm for one week. There were other ones. But. I would do that sometimes they were semester long. But so I started learning directly from writers and it was actually an english department and then later they developed a creative writing program and I was able to do some great things I was awarded a. Fellowship to the Ucross foundation and went and did a two week retreat and that was amazing but I did not get a formal education and at one point the university where I was at they.

17:12.29
jeffekennedy
Did develop a creative writing program and they started a creative writing MFA and one of my professors suggested that I be in the first class and get an MFA now. At this point I had already been published I had already published. Um.

17:30.88
jeffekennedy
My essay collection was a university press and I published lots and lots of essays short stories and I thought oh cool. Yeah maybe I should get an MFA and so I looked into it and it was going to cost me like $40000 and and that was you know going to be right there in my hometown. I had a full time career job I had stepchildren I had a lot of stuff going on in my life and it was kind of as much as I could do to get the writing in and you know and she said well this would be a big boost for you if you have the Mfa and I was thinking. Well how why does it make a difference. Um, and I ultimately did not do it because I thought I already have 1 master’s degree and I don’t want to teach so why do I need an MFA when I’m already a published author and isn’t that my cred. Well. You know and it’s interesting because here I am now I am president of the science fiction and fantasy writers association and I have not done those um cred workshops I came up partly through romance because romance is what. Published my funky crossover of epic fantasy romance first. So I never went to Clarion I never went to Taos toolbox I didn’t go to ah Iowa writing circle or any of these things and I’ve been part of.

19:06.60
jeffekennedy
These courses where we had writing workshops where we workshopped work I’ve been part of several different critique groups and what I say it makes a difference. Yeah, everything is helpful. But. When people talk about and this is something that as heil huang mentions in her essay is that there is this and I had not heard of it before but it didn’t surprise me. That there’s there’s this rather famous rebound that after you do Clarion and workshop a lot of people don’t write for a year or 2 years and and Mary Robinette Kowal who you know is a friend and I think she’s very smart and I I adore her. But she did a Twitter thread saying well that’s because you’re absorbing everything you learned and it just takes time to assimilate that and and that was her experience and I believe that that’s how she felt but I also think that. People not writing for a couple of years after our workshop is an indication that something got broken and I don’t think necessarily in a positive way I quit one critique group because the critique felt so toxic to me and.

20:31.88
jeffekennedy
And when I give authors advice on this because I do do author coaching um I have a lot of conversation with authors and this is something that comes up a lot is they say well. How do I know this is looping back right. How do I know when to listen to the critique or when is it toxic and it’s hard. It’s really hard to know and the best answer I have is that you learn from experience. You have to you know you know, sit on it and then see if you agree with it. If um, if you’re hearing the same thing over and over that’s an indication that it’s something to pay attention to doesn’t mean you have to do it. Ah, especially if you’re a different kind of writer if you come from a different culture. A non-western non-white. And know non heteronormative culture. There’s gonna be differences for me. There were a lot of differences because I was writing this crossover I was writing this epic fantasy with romance in it and I would get people wanting me to take 1 side or the other out of it. Um. Men male fantasy writers science fiction writers that critique group I was in um, they would have to keep telling me that they were not my reader and and and they would kind of clear their throats self importantly, well I am not your reader but you know and they would acknowledge I was a great writer.

22:07.37
jeffekennedy
Great. Well, they would say I was a good writer. You know that it was a good story and they’d say but people have these very long exchanges is that typical for romance you know? and so all these little barbs right? They lodge into you and they can interfere with your creative process and 1 thing I talk about a whole lot is. Learning how to kick the other voices out of the room when you’re actually drafting and so I know this is a muddle I probably should have made this a much more um plant podcast. But so it goes maybe I’ll talk about this more tomorrow but it’s bothered me for a very long time. That um, that especially the science fiction and fantasy community seems to be very consumed with this cred about whether or not you have done these writing workshops. Ah when I was early on the board of SFWA and I was at. My first Nebula conference I think I was one of the other board members introduced me to someone who was working with Clarion and I don’t remember if it was east or west and I don’t remember who it was but we were doing cocktail party conversation and at this point I had probably published I don’t know. Ten fifteen books and but I wasn’t really well known in the science fiction fantasy community because a lot of those were on the romance side of publishing and she I said to her. Well you know I always thought it would be very fun to do something like Clarion and she said oh well, you know.

23:42.73
jeffekennedy
It’s never too late and and then she wandered off and my friend, the other Board member looked at me and he said she doesn’t really know who you are and I was like well you know and that’s all right, but there is this incestuous. And this is something that’s been talked about in other circles like I started out as a creative nonfiction writer and you know I would do like the literary festivals and all this kind of thing and I knew a lot of people who had come out of like Iowa writing circle. And it’s this deal where you go to Iowa writing circle there’s that faculty. Um, you have your fellow students that become your cohort and then you move up into the world of like choosing fellowships and editing and so forth. And they would choose other people from Iowa writing circle and so it becomes this loop where a certain kind of writing that is produced by a certain kind of writing workshop becomes established as this is good writing this is how we should be doing it. And then you have um, it perpetuates it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle and I think that that’s what happens in the science fiction and fantasy community too that the people who go to these workshops are taught this is how you write a correct story.

25:12.11
jeffekennedy
And then as they move into the gatekeeper positions. They reinforce that and say oh well, this is how you write a story and this is good kind and this is not a good kind because this would never fly in clarion workshop. Or for example, so as I promised I have gone on long. All of this has to be taken with a grain of salt because basically there are these self-reinforcing communities that are vetting each other and it there’s tremendous pressure I think um. And I I think I started to say this before and didn’t quite finish the thought but sometimes when I’m author coaching people will ask me should I do should I do Taos Toolbox should I do one of these other things and and I will say I don’t think you need it to learn how to write. Um, but it is good for the credit. It gets you into the community and which I feel like is that a good thing and I say this as someone who does not have the card right? so. On that thought I am going to go do my thing but thank you for sticking with me and my rambles this morning. Maybe I’ll be able to speak more more coherently about it tomorrow. Ah yeah, so um, hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and I will talk to you tomorrow.

26:46.83
jeffekennedy
You all take care bye-bye.

Preventing Burnout with Non-Monetized Creativity

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

If you missed it, SHADOW WIZARD is now available for preorder! It releases September 29, 2022. This is Book One in my new trilogy, Renegades of Magic, and continues the story begun in the Bonds of Magic trilogy. Preorder links below!

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven involves our non-writing hobbies.
In various discussions around burn-out and sustainably productive writing habits, I’ve discovered that many professional authors (as in, getting paid to do it) have another creative outlet that is non-monetized. Ted Kooser, a U.S. Poet Laureate (1004-1006), told me that he painted as a hobby. His paintings were apparently glorious and much-sought, but he’d made the decision to only give them away. It was important to him to have a creative outlet that wasn’t connected to money. This was a startling thought to me at the time, and one I’ve come back to often.
Other authors I’ve talked with in various scenarios have also discovered that approach: that having a non-monetized creative outlet not only refills the well, but prevents burnout (or allows a creator to recover from it).
What happens to many of us – and I’m speaking of authors, but I imagine it happens with all creatives – is that we begin with writing as the hobby. It’s the passion, the special something that we do because we LOVE it. Eventually, with persistence, hard work, and luck, we make that hobby into the profession. Then it’s no longer the alternative to the day job and other responsibilities. It’s become work.
Which, let me be clear, is good and natural. I’m a big believer in treating writing like my job. That’s how I support myself and my family.
Still, to manage the creative self, I’ve found I need other outlets to refill the well and take the place of that other, special, and relaxing Thing. Keeping it non-monetized is the challenge. Especially since the pandemic began, I think we’ve all become adept at casting about for side-gigs. In fact, the gig-culture was going strong before that. It’s tempting to take that successful hobby – I imagine Ted Kooser’s friends admiring a painting, offering money for it, and him turning it down with a slight smile and shake of his head – and begin to dream of taking that art viral and making an avalanche of comforting money from it.
I sometimes think there’s a certain magic in refusing that temptation, in enjoying creativity for its own sake.
And magic is precious.

First Cup of Coffee – August 19, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

Musings on the amount of romance in fantasy romance and romantic fantasy – and how I seem to want more lush romance feels than many books in the genre deliver. Also squees on reading a Lisa Kleypas historical.




Transcript
00:00.90
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I am here with my first cup of coffee.

00:12.88
jeffekennedy
Excellent.

00:18.71
jeffekennedy
Ah, today is say it with me Friday! August 19 beginning of a long weekend for me flying to Tucson tonight celebrate birthdays with the family.

00:38.44
jeffekennedy
Ought to be fun. Um, writer coffee yesterday was a lot of fun. Ah, it turns out that one of my writer coffee peeps the fabulous J Barton Mitchell – Jack – um, who’s got the wonderful podcast. Should pimp his podcast hang on yeah that said it’s called Derelict um, during the second season of Derelict I interviewed him on here a while back. Um, and it’s doing amazing. He was telling us yesterday that they just sold the french. Translation rights for the podcast. So go Jack so anyway, it turns out that Jack’s birthday is on Sunday the twenty first as is the fabulous Darynda Jones she is on Sunday and then I’m on Monday so we’re our little cluster of ah. Leo writer babies. Although I am on the cusp Leo Virgo so I have been described as a meticulous volcano and I mentioned that when. Jack was thinking are you on the cusp of… and I said yes I’m a meticulous volcano and they were both like that’s actually tracks like thanks guys.

02:04.90
jeffekennedy
I guess there are worse things right? Grapes grapes are falling my grapevine kind of came unraveled too. That’s why it’s sort of dangling in screen if you’re on video I need to wind it up again. But it’s not going to happen till I get back. We should harvest grapes too. But I eat them occasionally. They’re quite delicious. Sweet so sweet. So anyway, writer coffee was lovely. We had a great conversation. Jim Sorenson had just gotten back from a Transformers conference. In England where he was a headliner and so he was telling us about that and so he was pretty high on that It’s always fun when you get to be treated like ah a fancy person I did come out here early this morning and like the mosquito candle. But it’s. Cooler today. In fact, I was wondering excuse my hand you all pause. Yeah, it’s only ° we had kind of um, cold air come in last night so there’s a definite definite autumnal feel this morning. Um, oh. Um, might sneeze there. We go ah longtime listeners at least from last year may remember the debate about autumnal.

03:34.67
jeffekennedy
And a tu no feel to the air. Ah so yeah, it’s um, cooler and so there are not nearly so many mosquitoes this morning. In fact, I haven’t seen any even though I came out and lit the candle early to try to create a. Dispersing my asthma cause it was very funny yesterday if you’re on video you saw me constantly batting them away and Youtube when I upload the video they pick 3 Stills to be like the cover image and I can choose between those 3 but. Otherwise I can upload an unrelated image. But if I want an image of me sitting here yapping then it has to be 1 of the 3 that they pick and they tend to pick things that are movement. They they like things that are bigger. Movements. So I have to remember to like not. Mess with my hair because otherwise that are all 3 b me raking my hair back from my forehead which my characters do all the time for a reason people because it’s clearly one of my personal ticks. But yesterday’s were all me. Waving mosquitoes away. Um sorry to pick the least absurdly waving of mosquitoes image. Yeah, so it goes right? Ah so yeah, let’s see what else i.

05:02.64
jeffekennedy
Did get my 2000 words yesterday I’m at something like 62000 on the book I’m enjoying writing this book. That’s always nice and but it took me a little while since I was at writer coffee for a couple of hours and. Then I um I reader did not go to yoga I know I ended up canceling I just got hit with the don’t want us. Um I have to get back in that habit. But it’s so much a thing that by. Yoga class the one that I like to go to on Thursday afternoons is at 4 and by the time it starts rolling around to three o’clock and I have to cancel an hour ahead. So I have to make a decision by like around two forty five and at that point I’m just feeling like all I want to do. Is not have some fun until the sun goes down on Santa Monica Boulevard because that’s all the way over in California but what I really want to do is like sit with my book. Um and relax and so that’s what I ended up doing ah. Bad yoga person but I it was a nice evening and I and I hit tired yesterday afternoon. That’s the other thing is like by Thursday afternoon I’m hitting tired so my other options are to go um in the morning.

06:33.95
jeffekennedy
Um, there are some like 10 am classes I could go to which means I would have to like interrupt the writing for something other than writer coffee. But maybe I’ll do that I don’t know.

06:52.16
jeffekennedy
Ah, what was me I know I’m such a a ritualized person here’s my that’s the meticulous part of meticulous volcano. Ah you know I Just don’t like my schedule to be interrupted and now that that’s no longer part of my schedule.

07:10.67
jeffekennedy
Yeah, So anyway, um, the other thing I’ve been doing interestingly enough I I find it interesting. Do you guys? Do you all ever worry about this like I read this thing a long time ago that people who. Think that they are interesting conversationalists um are not whereas people who think that they are not interesting conversationists actually are most of the time I think I’m not that interesting, but every time I say that I. That something is interesting then I then I worry it’s like oh is it actually not but it’s a way to really freak yourself out. There’s hummingbird behind me oh over here. She’s getting the ah.

08:08.30
jeffekennedy
Get that naturally made nectar. So Oh and now have I forgotten the thing that’s it. Oh okay, so it’s probably not interesting but I’m going to tell you anyway. So after several reads that. Ah, ones that I enjoyed for the most part one? Um, ah I read book one and really loved book one and went on to work book 2 and ah I I hated book 2 Um. The characters seem to have like the original. The main characters from the first book. The POV characters ah seem to have like totally changed into different people and doing things that didn’t feel like they were part of their character motivations and the. People who had taken over the pov I didn’t care about them and and I got part way into it and I thought it was feeling like a slog you know and and I read it for pleasure I don’t read when I’m not having fun and so I went and looked at the reviews just to see. Like if it was going to get better if it was just me and there were a lot of reviews saying exactly the way I felt about it and and then complaining about that. The ending was so disappointing and I thought okay I’m bailing So I bailed on that book and the first book.

09:41.75
jeffekennedy
Part of the recent was disappointing was I had liked a whole lot of stuff about this first book. But then it had not really paid off on the romance in the way that I want um and I know that I’m probably different this way because I did come up out of romance. But 1 thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of fantasy romance. Romantic fantasy um YA fantasy even when there’s romance in it. It tends to be pretty romance lite and I want to spell that l I t e ah. It is um, does it dig into the romance feels and I think that maybe a lot of writers writing fantasy hesitate to dig deep into the the really lush parts of romance. There’s sex sometimes. These books did not have sex but I thought that book 2 would then like take me further into that romantic arc and give me the feels both physical and emotional and so it was feeling very um.

10:55.48
jeffekennedy
Emotionless interrupt us as it were that I had not gotten the the full I don’t know I didn’t get my climax people I did not get my romance climax and so I was in Las Vegas hanging out at the cabana with Megan and wanting something to read I picked up another one that was in my tbr I was very good I cleared out my tbr and read that book because it did give me some nice sexy thrills. But again. Not the full out romance and there are more books in that series and I was not feeling compelled to go on. Yeah so I thought well what I need to do is I need to read ah a romance romance capital r and so I had had Lisa Kleypas on my Kindle for a long time in my tbr. So I am being dutiful clearing that out and she um it was called Then came you and I had read the second book in this It’s just a 2 book series the gamblers so I had read the second one with Derek Craven which is called well let’s find out – Dreaming of You I love – I mean how much you guys love that I can.

12:28.80
jeffekennedy
Googled the character name I googled Derek Craven and it came right up as dreaming of you Lisa Kleypas um my agent and I were arguing about how to pronounce her name because when I had lunch with Sara at Apollycon.

12:45.21
jeffekennedy
Sarah said I think she referred to us Lisa Clypus and I said is that how you say her name I mean it wasn’t really an argument and she said well I think it is and I said I’ve always said clypus. It could be that I think that’s how the argument went because I have it my head that’s claypus and she said well I guess I don’t know. But but so correct me if I’m wrong. We could look I’m doing a lot of pausing and looking today. So I was right? It’s CLAYpuss It’s funny when I googled her one of the things that im automatically filled in I’m always entertained by those things was um, what happened to Lisa Kleypas?

13:23.38
jeffekennedy
I believe she’s still publishing books. So anyway, for whatever reason I don’t remember why it was like in fall of twenty twenty I had read dreaming of you really liked it and then I had bought book one then came you because those characters appear in the second book and I thought oh. Like to read that one and then I never did so I just read it. Um, finished it last night and now I’m doing a reread of dreaming of you and it ah it gave me all those romantic feels that I was dying for It was great and then I was just really noticing. What an excellent author Lisa Kleypas is I mean she’s just such a polished author and I really don’t read a lot of historical romance anymore I think I got glutted on it. Um regency england.

14:22.11
jeffekennedy
Yeah, but wow she is just um, she gave me exactly the ride I wanted she it was delightful. Absolutely delightful. So I all know. Will I go on a Lisa Kleypas binge? hard to say but I I wish that I could have more fantasy romance that has more dense romance in it like this. So as a result. Well I think dark wizard. Was this way I think all 3 bonds of magic books are a whole lot about Nic and Gabriel’s relationship tell me if you disagree but ah shadow wizard. There’s a lot of Jadren and Selly and.

15:18.25
jeffekennedy
I think um, some of that lushness and passion from Lisa Kleypas are leaking into it and I feel like this can only be a good thing. So um. Probably I will not do podcasts on Monday and Tuesday ah maybe I will but whenever I say maybe I will it turns into no ah so probably a little bit more vacation. Um, and then. Otherwise I’ll have I’ll be here Wednesday Thursday Friday next week probably just blogging on Wednesday Bubonicon the following weekend if you’re local to New Mexico which I know most of you are not and then the following weekend labor day weekend. How is it labor day weekend already or will be in Chicago for WorldCon. Doing a bunch of programming. Um, so I should probably post my schedule at some point I always wonder about that you know like when you post your conference schedule I see people putting on social media. But it’s like um, does anyone really care because the people who are going to the conference. Are going to look up the program right? and do people who are not going to the conference who would see it on social media and not in the conference program or are all like okay so why post it the social media I don’t know but I am giving a workshop.

16:49.79
jeffekennedy
Worldcon if you are going. Um I’m teaching ah world building from a character driven perspective so that should be fun and participating in several panels doing a reading and a assigning so I might like pimp the reading. Just so that more than 2 people show up. It’s always the danger with readings at big conferences like that you know if you’re up against someone else like at Bubonicon they do these things that are like 50 minutes with which is essentially reading but you could also like answer questions and stuff. But I’m up against um, 50 minutes with Walter John Williams and then also ah a panel with during the jones and Connie Willis and some others talking about humor. So it’s like um.

17:47.53
jeffekennedy
Just keep saying that for the 1 or 2 people that come to my 50 minutes with I’m just gonna say how about we go over to the humor panel. We’ll have more fun. We’ll see what happens. so um so yeah busy day for me today. So I’m going to go get to it. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend I hope you get to have some fun. Um, let me know those of you who read? Romantic fantasy fantasy romance. Are there ones that have really blushed dense romance in them or. Maybe it’s just not something that most people in their genre. Want now. Um, ones I haven’t read. Yeah I know you don’t necessarily know who they are but um, yeah, all right? You all have wonderful weekend. And I will talk to you later take care bye-bye.

First Cup of Coffee – August 18, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

More on time management and my delightful discovery on managing my To-Do List with less – even no! – mental and emotional anguish. Also a bit on finding errors in books as young reader and what I learned from them.




Transcript
00:02.62
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.70
jeffekennedy
Heaven.

00:21.36
jeffekennedy
Um, today is Thursday August eighteenth um closing in on the end of August it’s a lovely rainy ish morning. We got some rainy rainy in the night. So. It’s a little. Damp and cool out here this morning I was going to come out and light the mosquito candle to sort of fume me gate before I came out here but I forgot so I see them hovering about wonder if it would help to light it now. Or shall we just stick it out as what comes and lands on me I suppose I better light it I’ll be right back all right? Probably a good thing I did that because as soon as I came out here about 5 of them swarmed my head. And 1 already bit my ankle. So I knew they were thick this morning because they were gathering on my bathroom screen as I was getting ready because ah mosquitoes are attracted to light I don’t know if you all knew that but mosquitoes follow light and they will come in towards the cities and stuff. Um, and they will light candles wet. So one of the wicks just went out. They’ll ah gather on the screen outside the window. Don’t go into the light Carol Anne

01:54.31
jeffekennedy
Well 1 wick is going anyway. So here we are then um, let’s see so I’ve Writer Coffee today. We’ll be heading for that.

02:11.60
jeffekennedy
And lots of stuff to do lots of stuff to do both today and tomorrow busy days tomorrow evening flying to Tucson oh my allergies are going too.

02:28.18
jeffekennedy
Paused just in time to spare you the explosive sneeze. Ah so um, so yeah, yesterday was good day I got a lot done I got everything done on my to do list.

02:45.34
jeffekennedy
So I mentioned on Tuesday that um, there are so many mosquitoes hovering around here I mentioned on Tuesday that ah that my friend Megan had been talking to me about a new way of doing to do lists.

03:02.98
jeffekennedy
So For those of you who have listened to me for a long Time. You know that I am a hater of Mosquitoes actually do Mosquitoes are like the only living creature I will gleefully kill trying to light this other. Wake again.

03:26.82
jeffekennedy
I think it’s not going to happen now at lights and goes out. Oh well. Um to do lists so those of you who know me well know I love my spreadsheets and I I do still love my spreadsheets. And in fact, one of the things Megan was talking about was like that this guy whose name I forget but I linked to in the last podcast and I’ll link to again recommends like a physical to do list so you could cross things off I get just as much joy from deleting and taking it off so I have a to do list. That’s um, a series of running columns that with dates on it. Um, my current to do list. Well I could tell you because I’ve got it up. It’s one of the first things I open in the morning go away ski to.

04:23.98
jeffekennedy
Okay, there sorry folks, not wanting to show me well this doesn’t seem right? Oh there we go. Okay, that was it was being funny. There’s something about this touch screen the way it does things. It like splits stuff out in a way that I don’t love. So ah, yeah, it mine goes out through I think it’s set for light end of the year we don’t need to spend a bunch of time looking at this. I think I have it going out to like January. Yeah December Twenty third oh no past that why is this doing this It’s been so weird all right now we’ve spent so much time on this that I need to look wonder if this is like being out on the internet. I don’t love that Microsoft office makes you be online I’ve got it scrolling out for like through March April ah, ah, okay, it doesn’t matter ah easily through April um.

05:41.25
jeffekennedy
And I have certain things that I put on it every day. Um that I haven’t um, sort of scrolled out um in an order to try to get some balance to my days where you you all know I’m a fan of working incrementally. Ah, so I work I try to move things forward a little bit every day so like I work on finances every day I would try to do like half an hour on that I try to spend like an hour on Sifwa and then stop it doesn’t always work out that way. But. You know so I have it divided out into things like um like the podcast is on there or the blog. Um business ah household things like that or if I’m teaching a class I need to remember to like go in and deal with. The class that day so ah mosquitoes mosquitoes. So um, it’s I’m always.

06:51.18
jeffekennedy
You know I do think that everything is an editorative process. So I’m always refining how I’m doing things and with the to-do list I mentioned this on Tuesday that you know there are those things that just slide down that I always move. From one day to the next as I don’t get to them and the thing that Megan said to me that was such a revelation was to keep an ongoing list but move it off of that daily list so that you don’t have this feeling of failure when. You move those things to the next day and the next day and the next which is really what I was doing and I was ending up with like especially under business or something like that I would have like 20 things and I knew I wasn’t going to get to all of them. In one day I knew that wasn’t even possible. But I knew that I would be able to um, maybe get to them. You know I always had this idea. Well you know like if I have time. This is why I’m gonna get to them and I had them arranged in order of priority. Well that meant the ones at the bottom of the list were just. Like some of them had been moving. You know from day to day to day since the beginning of the year easily possibly before and it did have more of a mental and emotional impact on me than I realized because.

08:25.24
jeffekennedy
Taking those things off of my list created this immense sense of lightness and relief. So now I have my ongoing list that’s on another worksheet and I have to figure out um a method or a schedule to. Go to that ongoing list and bring the things over to my current list. But so I’ve been putting since since I returned so just um, well really tuesday and yesterday but still I put. On my list for that day. Only the things that I thought I could get done that day and needed to get done that day and it and I did I got them all done and it was wonderful. It felt great. So. I’m going to try to keep doing that so I have quite a bit of um Erin stuff and so forth to do today and tomorrow because as I said we’re flying to Tucson tomorrow night. So I have things to do to get ready for that. Um, birthdays my aunt’s birthday. My stepdad’s birthday. Ah so and writer coffee I mentioned that yoga I’m going to try to go to inperson yoga this afternoon I’m committed to go.

09:59.29
jeffekennedy
Um, we will see tomorrow if I make it but I really really want to go in pro person yoga today. So I’ve kind of got my schedule figured out for that. So ah, there’s like I don’t there’s so many mosquitoes around I just can’t even.

10:18.42
jeffekennedy
They must have really burgeoned in the night. Ah so let’s see what else? Yeah I mean this just really has made a difference and I think that um what I need to do is like.

10:36.81
jeffekennedy
On the weekend or on Friday go through my ongoing list and put things on the list for the following week because one of the goals is to try to not move things from one day to the next to try to have it be only on that day and then ah. This one just dive-bombed me there.

11:01.98
jeffekennedy
You know have only on that day. What you think you can get done I have considered not having lists at all. Um, but too many things drop through the cracks if I do that? Yeah so I think. This will work I’m excited for this? Um I’m excited to see how it works on a weekend when I’m not traveling as I am for the next three weekends in a row. But after that if I have only a couple things on the weekend that I really need to get done. Then I will um yeah I’ll see I’ll see how that works and maybe that’ll help free up my weekend somewhat I oh I was I just about say oh you may have noticed when I mentioned my to do list I don’t have writing on there. Um. There are certain things and maybe this is telling that I do every day that are not on the list exercising getting my words in I think because those are givens those are just part of my routine. They’re part of what I do first thing in the morning I don’t have other things on there like eating something so tickling my face now there was a time in my life when I had myself so scheduled that I did have on there.

12:33.39
jeffekennedy
Like eating and sleeping grooming when I was really trying to get maximalia fishing efficient at my time but um, no now I only have the things that I want to try to move forward every day.

12:53.69
jeffekennedy
So um, so yeah, I’m really excited about how that’s working. It’s amazing to clear out the list for the day and then I delete that column at the end of the day when I’m done and shut down the computer then I’ve done for the day if it’s great.

13:11.20
jeffekennedy
Um, so I found one of the things that was on my list yesterday was to pick up my office which really needed to happen because it drives me crazy when my office is all messed up and I did get that done and I found. A note from a while back on something I had meant to mention and that was um and I can’t remember what made me think of it originally, but it was a. An interesting insight I was thinking about errors in books inevitably There are some and I was just thinking about when I was younger particularly when I was a very young reader and really starting to pick out and glom books on my own. And I remember in particular um, reading him McCaffrey’s dragons of pern books and finding mistakes I remember finding a continuity mistake and I nearly wrote to her about it. And now I’m glad I didn’t because it’s like now I know that authors hear about their continuity mistakes all the time and but I was so surprised that there was this mistake like where she um called a character 1 thing in 1 book and then something else in the next book.

14:45.73
jeffekennedy
Um, and then the other thing that was so interesting to me is like when they would do that teaser chapter at the end of the book and when I would get the actual book. Some of the words were changed. It wasn’t the same and.

15:02.56
jeffekennedy
And I was astounded by that and and I was young at this point. Um, probably I don’t know 1112? um and really starting to maybe I was learning at school some but also just starting to really analyze stuff with a critical eye. Really. Thinking about the text I was reading and putting it in context of the world and what those character those those mistakes revealed to me was this epiphany now I understand scrambled eggs I suddenly realized. That authors are human beings and I realize that this sounds kind of silly right? but you know of course authors are human beings. But that was I’ve realized now that many people never do quite realize that um you know that whole Kresley Cole thing. When I talked about you know someone dealing with health and family issues and how hard it it is to be creative dead and it’s like my most listen to podcast listen to podcast ever because um. Somebody like shared it to a bunch of Kresley Cole fans who were frustrated. She hadn’t come out with the next book which I believe she’s come out with since but several people commented to me. That’s how I figured it out like where were all these listens coming from and they said oh you know that they’d never really thought of it that way and and I understand because.

16:35.67
jeffekennedy
When you love books when you discover books they are these magical things and realizing that somebody created them and that that person is a human being who has health issues and who you know may be unhappy. You know that they’re not like. Some angel who just emanates books discovering that Anne McCaffrey my idol had made mistakes gave me great insight seeing how she changed those. Teaser chapters into the final version of the book gave me insight too on how a person might change things and she didn’t always change things the way I liked them? um. I did have some of that syndrome where we liked the first wave that we see things and tend to wet ourselves to that. Um, but I don’t know she also smoothed it in a way that um.

17:45.55
jeffekennedy
That’s hard to explain but it gave me lots of insight into our process and I was fascinated by that so I had wanted to mention that. And I don’t think I have a whole lot else to say today. Um yeah, all of my news happened on Tuesday yesterday was good day I am past 60000 words on shadow wizard. So that’s coming along well excited for that. Thank you for all the pre-orders on that one I hope that you all love this book and ah I think on that note I’m just gonna go get to work getting hour done before I go to ride coffee and I will talk to you? All you all take care. Bye bye.

Fighting the Good Fight for the Metaphor of It All

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

The Covenant is complete! Book 3 in A Covenant of Thorns, ROGUE’S PARADISE, is now out in the wild, walking its wild ways. Thanks to all for supporting this re-release of my very first dark fantasy romance trilogy. It’s beyond wonderful to see these books finding a new audience after all these years.

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re talking about copyeditors and the arguments we have with them. We all have grammatical hills we’ll die on – wisely or not – and we want to know what yours is! On what point will you refuse to give way, regardless of how the copyeditor might argue?

(I feel I should note at this point that the author/editor/copyeditor relationship is a symbiotic one. Even in traditional publishing – all rumor to the contrary of authors being “forced” to do x, y, z – seldom will anyone INSIST on a change. Almost always the author has final say, because it is their book, and they also bear final responsibility. It’s in the contract. If an author commits slander or other blunders, the ultimate responsibility – financial, legal, and moral – rests with them.)

I, like most authors, have a love/hate relationship with copyeditors. On the one hand, they catch potentially horrifying errors. In fact, in the book above, the copyeditor corrected a character “peeing at her face” to “peering at her face” – something my editor and I had both missed and were hysterically relieved to have fixed.

We love them. We need them. As with all love/hate relationships, copyeditors drive us crazy.

I won’t fight about commas, as a rule. I really even don’t care about the Oxford comma. I know people like to make jokes showing how important that Oxford comma is, but in most cases the context makes it clear. I don’t get why copyeditors hate m-dashes so much, but I’ll concede in many cases. I personally find semi-colons archaic and not all that useful, but whatever.

You know what gets me, what I’ll really fight for?

Metaphorical language.

That’s what kills me (yes, LITERALLY KILLS ME) about many copyeditors is that they can be so freaking literal. Some examples.

“His eyes can’t really crawl over her. Imagine eyeballs rolling over her. Gross.”

“Can a cloud really look sad?”

“I don’t think this is a word.”

I could go on. The thing is, as writers, we’re often expanding the use of language. Dictionary definitions often include citations of first usage of a “new” word or expression. That’s because language is our medium and we are the ones shaping it. Copyeditors are on the side of enforcing the status quo. So a writer ends up walking the line between bending to the regulatory insistence of correctness as the rules currently stand and being the iconoclast who breaks those rules to open up new worlds.

Guess which side I’m on?

Yeah, copyeditors hate me right back.

But, I believe this push-pull is a part of our jobs, on both sides. We all want to produce the best book possible. We all love language and what it can do. I will say, however, to all the writers out there: believe in yourself and defend your words, because you are the fount of change.

First Cup of Coffee – August 16, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

ROGUE’S PARADISE, Book 3 in the Covenant of Thorns re-release, is out today! Also, ORIA’S GAMBIT, book 2 in the Sorcerous Moons series is out on Scribd audio! Plus insights on managing To-Do lists and my Vegas vacay.




Transcript
00:06.35
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee home. Delicious today is tuesday. August Sixteenth why am I having trouble focusing on that. Yes August Sixteen ha and I’m back went to Las Vegas for the weekend tra la tra lay as one does it was super fun. We went on Saturday morning picked up my friend Megan our friend Megan and went to drove down to Albuquerque there was a little bit of concern with whether or not our flight would go. We actually did a backup flight just in case. But then we made it. Got to Las Vegas um I think I’d mentioned on the planning that we’ve gotten free rooms at the venetian from David’s gambling last spring his. Ah. Big party so they gave us two free nights and we got these extremely cheap tickets on spirit airlines which I’d never flown before and the airplane turned out not to be made of balsa wood um I would fly spirit again I was um. Actually considering how much and I feel bad I have tremendous loyalty for southwest airlines I’ve flown them forever. Ah, but both southwest and american have gotten kind of shoddy and the spirit jets were very new. Very nice. Yes, you have to pay for every little thing they really tried to nickel and dime you. But if you don’t go in for that. It’s um, you know it’s really quite inexpensive. They charge for food and drink on the airplane. But. You know it’s it’s not that different. You know? Ah, ah, if you want wine or anything alcoholic. You have to pay for it on any airline and you know for your free seltzer coke or really bad coffee I had the worst coffee. Coming back on Delta and I really like delta otherwise so I didn’t complain about this but something had gone wrong. It was like brown water. There was like no coffee in the coffee and I didn’t complain but it was like seriously.

02:53.37
jeffekennedy
So yes I would have had to pay $4 on spirit for coffee which I did not do because I thought I don’t want to pay $4 for crappy coffee and you have to pay to check your bags which you have to do on everybody but southwest um, the huge difference is is you have to pay that carry on a bag. You can have a personal item which is like a small item that what did they say 18 by 14 by 8 which they were not enforcing at least on the way from Albuquerque to Las Vegas there were kids with. Great big backpacks as their personal items that clearly didn’t count unless I’d paid to check to carry them on so people get mad that they have to pay pay to carry on a bag but I’ll tell you what the boarding and de cleaning was so much faster because of it and. There was a time when I was a real road warrior and traveled so much for the day job that I had said that if I were ever in charge of the world that people would not be allowed to carry on luggage because people spend so much time fucking around with that carry on luggage trying to get a fit and they overhead been. And worried about there. They’re going to have space for it. Is it wheels in or wheels out and ah ah and then trying to get it down again. You know and the people who aren’t strong enough to lift it down which you know I I understand but why do you have to fucking carry on your bags. Just check them. So making people to pay to carry on their bags turns out to be a pretty great incentive. It’s like well if you have to pay anyway, you might as well check it. Their whole model is based on saving gas so they check baggage. Um, excuse me checked baggage weight is um, max weight is £40 not £50 so it was pretty funny in Las Vegas coming home. There were people did a fairly sophisticated system. Not so much in Albuquerque not sophisticated system in Albuquerque that’s all right. Ah, but in Las Vegas where which might be their mothership. They had these um where you did the bag drop they had these horizontal scales so you did the kiosk so print your tag put it on there. Do the bag drop. Put your suitcase on this um scale that is also a conveyor belt and it scooted it back and forth and then it read the id and confirmed the id electronically which was kind of cool and also did the weight and.

05:34.50
jeffekennedy
As we were watching as we’re waiting for our turn. There were many people there um like taking things out of their bags and some of them looking very sad and we laughed because on the way there from Albuquerque. Ah, we saw a pair of ripped up jeans in the garbage can like right next to they just had the regular scales right next to the ticket counter and I was like yeah somebody decided they didn’t care enough about these jeans to to keep them was kind of funny. They should put like a. Ah, used clothing bin there. so so yeah it was funny to watch the people having fits trying to take stuff out of their their bags I don’t maybe funny is wrong I didn’t mean to laugh at their misery but it was it was very very clear. You know that your bag couldn’t be over 40 pounds and I had been. Exceptionally and careful to you know, make sure that we didn’t exceed that and we were fine and even though I couldn’t weigh on the way back. So I was slightly nervous on the way there we were like 39.4 pounds and David said well we you know don’t have anything more going back than we did going there maybe less. We should be fine and I was like yes, but you got that t-shirt and my dress had gotten wet at water ads weight I was like we don’t have much margin but I took a couple things that put them in my. Personal item and we were fine. So so it takes more jiggering. Ah, they really do annoy you to death to upgrade seats. They want you to pay for like the big seat in the front. Um and they keep sending you like text some email saying. Better, get your seat. We can’t guarantee. You’ll sit together and David and I were assigned seats together I just went with the phrase I’m I’m like if we can’t sit together for an hour-long flight. We’ll probably live um and it worked out just great. Um, would totally totally fly spirit again. It worked out. Well so um, so yeah, we got there. Um Charlie met us at the airport he was flying in from work Charlie and Megan went to a different hotel. They did not have a great experience. Um, they picked out this hotel I think because. American Express had recommended it and american express ended up making it making it up to them. They stayed because they said their room was fabulous, but the rest of the hotel sucked. So they’re like we’ll just like hold our nose and walk through the hotel on our way.

08:19.65
jeffekennedy
But the Venetian was amazing. Oh yes, and as I said we’ve got the free rooms and I did get reeled in when we checked in they said well if you want to upgrade and they had sent me an emails. You know one did I want to upgrade to a view room for like. $56 a night I’m like now I don’t care about a few enough. Well when we checked in the gal was like well we could she said there are no rooms available which I don’t know if it’s a trick or not probably wasn’t because we were there a little early. Um. And we could have had them hold our bags but she said but we do have rooms available if you want to upgrade and I was like ah and she said well let me show you and she she was very good I mean I almost did it partly because she was so good. She had her tablet and she said for a hundred and twenty dollars a night you could upgrade to this. She did not say it this way but fucking amazing sweet. You guys you all? Um, it’s a view of the pool and the strip and it had a living area and the. Bedroom was off to the side and it had a walk-in closet and an amazing bathroom with a sunken bathtub and so we just like you know $120 a night. How often do we get a chance to stay in a really nice suite like that so we did it and it was it was lovely. We really enjoyed that and as David said we have paid $120 a night to stay in some really shitty places so it was um, it was well worth it. We went down to the pool that afternoon um had a snack and a froze that was excellent. And we um and that I hung out by the pool for a while then we met Charlie and Megan for dinner at bouchon at the venetian which was a french bistro that I had wanted to go when we were there before and we could get in partly because of pandemic hours. Everything was so much more open now. Everything felt like it was totally back. It was interesting, almost nobody wearing masks. Um, so we had wonderful dinner at Bouchon which Charlie picked up the tab. He has just the I I tried to stop it and he was like no no because it was. It. It was my almost birthday so it was um because my birthday is well a week from yesterday. So next monday and I had put it down as a birthday at Bouchon just because it would be fun and they brought us free desserts. We had a creme brulee and lemon tart and.

11:05.00
jeffekennedy
Charlie Bought us two bottles of rose because the first thing we did when we sat down they handed us like the you know the wine list and then the special that was summer of Rose which gets me and Megan where we live and so we ended up having 2 bottles of rose which reader we did not need that second bottle. And then we went to see Celeste barber um who I’m you know, just loved from Instagram australian comedian she put on a very tight show. We laughed all the way through it. It was great. um it was um yeah it was absolutely wonderful. So we all felt a little rough the next morning except for Davis who doesn’t treatak anymore because of the parkinson’s he is like I can’t decide if I’m sad that I can’t drink anymore i’m really glad that I’m not not as rough as you all are it’s like yeah um, so. but but I rallied and Megan rallied and she had gone ahead and gotten a kabana with the american express we’re sorry money at virgin hotel she did research on the different pools so I met her over there and we had ah a wonderful day of just. Hanging out at the pool in the cabana having drinks and it was um, it was delightful and then that evening yesterday evening. No Sunday evening I was gonna say go to be that right? No Sunday evening. It was um. They decided they were not Charlie actually never made it out of the hotel room Sunday he was going to meet us over at the pool and made several efforts and just couldn’t do it. He was definitely overserved I think they had also pregamed before they met us. They’d had several cocktails. So it was great party and Megan and I said as we were hanging out by the cabana that we wouldn’t change the thing because it was just one of those really fabulous evenings. There are times when you regret we didn’t need the second bottle of wine and yet it was so fun. So wonderful. Amazing food. Ah so with oysters on half show. They were so wonderful that they’re like Charlie’s favorite thing. He always orders them. So um. Yeah, they did not make it to dinner Sunday night Megan Texted and said yeah, we’re not leaving this hotel room tonight I said no problem because it’s not like we don’t see them here and so David and I went down and went to ah Matteos at the venetian this italian restaurant and.

13:51.64
jeffekennedy
Ah, we had the but probably the best pasta we’ve ever had in our whole lives. It was incredible. Pasta um, you know the the handmade fresh pasta and perfectly balanced sauces and we had a. Chocolate souffle for dessert where we had to wait for it. But then it came out warm with the creme Anglais and a pistachio gelato and yeah, it was delightful. So it was kind of like um, kind of a birthday celebration have a birthday weekend and good partying. Whirlwind. We got it very early Monday morning and flew home we were back home by um, eleven thirty in the morning. So and I got some words yesterday I did not get my full two k but I got some words done and um. Yeah, it was good. So now I need to buckle down and get more work done this week ah exciting news which I should have let off with but then I forgot ah is that rogues paradise. Is out today. So that completes the release the rerelease of the trilogy. Ah I’m really happy in that I had for rogue’s pawn um a certain number of preorders that was. Quite low but I didn’t expect it to be high. Um, you know I thought well it’s going to be just a few right and I had this exact same number of preorders on book 2 on rogue’s possession which I actually think is good because that means an equivalent number of readers. Ah, if not the exact same readers committed to those first two books ah and for book 3 for rogues paradise I have doubled those pre-orders. It’s still not a phenomenal number. But what do you expect for a re-release right? so. So at least that’s what it was as of yesterday evening when I shut down so very excited for rogues paradise to release today. The trilogy is now all out there wide and so forth also in a coincidence. Ah. Book 2 of sorcerous moons on audio at scribd release today. So Oria’s gambit is out today on scribd I think they’re staggering those releases like every two weeks or so so I’ll link to both of those things.

16:39.60
jeffekennedy
If you have been listening to sorcerous moons though you can continue on with book 2 and I’m I’m still working on getting those books out wide but I will get them out wide. Ah. So so those are the big things. Um, it’s it’s interesting because ah, Megan and I had a great conversation on the ride down Albuquerque airport on Saturday David volunteered to get in the back. So he could doze he knew he was going to be pretty sleepy and so Megan and I could talk which we did nonstop the whole way and that was great but she was talking about I can’t remember who she said she was listening to I should ask her so I can um, link to it but we were talking about. To do list. She was saying that she had taken Instagram off of her phone that was kind of how it got started ah making choices for happiness which you all know if you’re a longtime listener I talk about a great deal on here so I was immediately interested and she was talking about the things that slide down your to do list and how. You move them from your to do list from one day to the next which I was like oh my god ah I really hate that I do that and I was telling her that in a recent SFWA meeting somebody had said that they had read possibly in the same place who knows. That you’re not supposed to re-jigger your to-do list that you’re not supposed to rearrange it during the day from today today and we all kind of groaned because we all do that? Um, so 1 thing that Megan said that this person suggested. Is that you can have your ongoing list of things that need to get done but you move them off of the dates you move them like onto another list entirely that you then reference and only put on each day. What you absolutely. Plan and need to get done and and my big problem is is that I would put this whole raft of things on there of like in case I get to it in case I have time which never happened then I should know better because I’m a big believer in the oh if I happen to find time. I’ll do this thing that that never happens especially with writing right? You know I never find time to write. No, you have to make time to write you have to make time to get things done on your to do list. So one thing I did when I got home. Ah, which was possibly a bit of.

19:20.55
jeffekennedy
Writing procrastination but I was also excited about this idea was I rejiggered my to do list for hopefully the final time and I took all of these things that are like pending projects and moved them to another list entirely and put only on that day. What I needed to get done that day and. Reader I got everything done yesterday that I had on that list and it was it was like oh angel singing the sun broke through the clouds here. We go the sun if you’re on video ah some broke through the grape leaves. Um, it was an immense relief. So I’m very excited about this if you’re on video. You’ll also see it’s a little bit of a breezy working here a little cool and breezy. Um, but not much rain yet. They Las Vegas people said that it had been the ah coolest August. That they remembered several people said that um so monsoons in the southwest. It’s been a thing there I scooted out of the sun briefly just to say goodbye. Ah, because the the sun ah did indeed break through the clouds. I hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday and I will talk to you all on Thursday you all take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – August 12, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

On writing the thing you believe in, how inspiration and survivorship bias play into the tales we share about doing this, along with thoughts on the Women Who Rock documentary (excellent!) and taking control of your own career.




Transcript
00:01.75
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.75
jeffekennedy
Delicious. Ah today is sit it with me Friday Woo Woo woo August Twelfth Eight Twelve Twenty Twenty Two so end of another week. Hello mosquito. Ha so here. We are I’ve I’ve had a good week. Um I am um within striking distance of oh I didn’t open it yet. Of my 10,000 words for the week which makes me happy because I’m happy. Um, yeah and I met a little shy of 54,000 words on the book. 8085 this week. So ah I have no wood to knock on does a great vine count? Um I think I should hit 10,000 for the week which is good because I’m traveling the next four weekends in a row. Which hopefully will not disrupt my productivity but we’ll see we’ll see she’ll be in good shape. Um I have committed to the release date did the cover reveal. For shadow wizard yesterday woo. So I’m putting it on the show notes today. It will be everywhere now I was experimenting with the Nine Square grid on Instagram and it looks really cool now that it’s all assembled. I did the gradual release like little bits at a time on Instagram and I think I don’t think that did anything ah very few likes throughout the day. Lots of likes overnight once the whole thing was assembled. So yeah. towhee agrees. Ah, you know, maybe you know like the bits and pieces are just not that interesting besides which Instagram only wants reals these days. So ah. I’m not sure I would do it that same way again. But I do like how the cover looks on the Nine Square grid it means that I have to be really careful. What I post to Instagram now because if I do one, it’ll like shift it and break it up so I have to do like three or nothing so that it stays.

03:04.68
jeffekennedy
Ah, the travails. But yeah, ah it was fun to see people immediately start pre-ordering. Thank you! Ah excited for you all to read this book. It’s all good and tomorrow morning we are. Flying to Las Vegas Nevada not driving an hour north to Las Vegas New Mexico and um we’re going to go see Celeste Barber very excited and going with good friends Megan and Charlie so it should be. Ah, good party. We should have a great time low party weekend so there will not be a podcast on Monday morning. Sorry mom because we’ll be flying back that morning I suppose I could do like a super sleepy. From the Las Vegas airport podcast but let’s face it. We know I’m not going to so the big challenge for me will be to see if I can get 2000 words on that Monday that’s my. Personal challenge I hope that I can I might try on the airplane to at least get it started maybe at the airport to sort of get it rolling I’m definitely noticing a pattern lately. You know I get most of my words in that third hour some days it’s pretty even the 3 hours but especially this week like my first hour will be pretty crappy and then the second hour a little better and then I’ll get like 1200 words in the third hour so so it goes but I’m I’m happy with the results of going for 2000 words a day instead of 3,000 words a day I am out I kicked my legs up and sort of hit the under circle in the table. Ouch who? ah. When I was doing 3,000 words a day I would definitely notice the mental drain at the end of the day and I would or at the end of writing and I wouldn’t have bandwidth for much else. So 2000 words a day gives me reasonable bandwidth for.

05:34.85
jeffekennedy
Dealing with business dealing with ah SFWA stuff. We did our business meeting yesterday and it was I think it went well seemed to go well, it was funny because we’re doing it on Zoom and so the board is on chat with each other reminding each other of things and so forth and. Somebody pointed out that we have the eternal ah ah difference of whether people say sifwa or sefwa I tended to be more of a sefwa person until someone commented on it I said I thought that’s what it was supposed to be but we can’t agree and I said well at least it’s not an argument like Gif versus Gif which of course then immediately started. The I cannot believe that there are people out there who want to pronounce it Gif and director at large Monica Valentinelli said. Well did you know that the creator came out and said it’s supposed to be pronounced chiff and I said yes, but he’s wrong which she was like well what do you mean? I’m like he’s just wrong. It’s it’s not it’s graphics interchange format. You don’t suddenly change the graph part to jiff. Very rarely is a leading g pronounced with a ju sound instead of a good sound so and besides Jif is already a peanut butter but executive director Kate Baker says that she is a jif kind of girl. I just can’t even so I was thinking about something ah amazingly enough I’ve just finished reading a book by Brigid Kemmerer. Think she says Brigid with a hard g we’re going to go with that since theme of this episode and she could be bridgegitte. But I think it’s Brigid Kemmerer. Ah, and I read her book a curse so dark and lonely which is ah why a fantasy romance kind. There’s not a lot of romance and it’s the one that I alluded to yesterday when I was saying that you don’t have to have hot sex. Um, in fact, there’s no sex on or off page in this book. Um, the closest it gets is a kiss and ah. Yeah, so which normally is kind of a deal breaker for me twilight was an exception because there was so much sexual tension there while it was perfectly chased and I really enjoyed that about it. Um, this one.

08:22.63
jeffekennedy
I just really enjoyed the book I thought it was um, a really interesting take on beauty and the beast and I totally enjoyed the story. So and I read it because ah Brigand was at Apollycon and a few tables down for me. And she was a ticketed author because she had so many people wanting to get their books signed. Ah so she had pretty much you know nonstop line and I didn’t get to meet her that was one thing. Several people asked me about Apollycon. If. We um, you know like if I talked to such and so were meant so such and so on I was like you know we didn’t really have opportunities to mingle. Ah, when the authors were all present in a place we were doing the signings and you. Really couldn’t leave your table for long because there were so many people wanting to come which was great. Ah, and then there weren’t any events that were just for the authors which I am going to suggest that they add I hope that they will. Yeah I was just thinking that David asked for our feedback for but they may not want our feedback I might just um, have to message. So. Ah I also think that they’re not getting some of my emails because I send from that http://jeffiekennedy.com email which tends to go to spam. It’s one of the things about having your own domain. That’s a spammo spmoific. So I was just thinking about I should give them my super secret email address. For people I actually want to hear from anyway. Ah so yeah, I was you know like oh I’ve never heard of Brigid Kemmerer and Jennifer Estep next to me said because we would chat during our lulls our rare lulls. She said how can you have not heard of her she was like Kensington at the same time we were and I was like oh know and she said well that she’d really like this book a curse so dark and lonely and it it was great. It was really good. So um, and I’m now reading the sequel a heart so fierce and broken. Interested to see how that goes there was a love triangle in the first book and it’s kind of being carried into the next book and I’m I’m actually good with this one I don’t usually like love triangles. But I like this one anyway in the acknowledgements Brigid says. Ah.

11:01.88
jeffekennedy
That she wrote this book because her husband said to her. It was a real dark point in her life. She’d been depressed and her husband asked her when was the last time that she wrote something um that was just for her that she enjoyed and. And she and you know that she wasn’t under contract to write and and she realized it been a long time so she wrote this book just for her and then it’s really has been the thing that launched her this has made her famous. Which great for her and it’s interesting because of course Apollycon is belongs to Jennifer L Armentrout oh here comes Isabelle affectionately known as JLA which is much easier and. She did this you know fantasy romance series recently? Um, which I always forget the name because now there’s so many Knockoffs but you know heart of blood and ash or whatever it is um, you all know right vampires and werewolves ah that traditional publishing wouldn’t take then. Said that they didn’t see at a point to it and now she’s done it with um the girls who do 1001 dark nights. So it’s sort of like a little startup press. Ah, it’s like one step different from self-publishing which is interesting. You know that we’ve got all these sort of. Phases of you know it’s no longer just traditional publishing or vanity press. There’s all of these different um levels of publishing self publishing and assisted publishing. Um, so um.

12:57.93
jeffekennedy
Jennifer has spoken a number of times about how she really wanted to write this series and traditional publishing didn’t want it and she wanted to write it anyway. So she did and how much it meant her and now it’s been phenomenally successful. So. And these are interesting stories to tell ourselves and it’s funny I’d already written down a note to talk about this when David told me a story just as I was making my coffee to come out here. He said that um this gal in a. Group that he follows that like does is into online gambling stuff and he said how that she woke up from a dream that she won a jackpot of $1000000 and so she got up and she went and played $40 on 1 of the online slots games. And so so there’s a correlation here right? We we love to tell these stories. Ah, you know she woke up from the dream that she won the jackpot she went and played $40 and she won the jackpot. Um. Brigid and JLA ah wrote the book of their heart. They wrote wrote the thing that they really wanted to write there was Isabella in the background rooting around oh and actually peeing sorry but she loves a little al fresco. Opportunity I’m glad she is at least discreetly shrouded by the vegetation Isabel fell. there’s ah there’s a lot of um, gritty reality here at first cup of coffee. So and and I feel like she’s ruined my my carefully assembled story right? Oh now she’s okay hold on it turned out. She was prepping her spot and so I spared you all the actual display. You’re welcome at least if you’re on video. So the thing is these are all examples of survivorship bias because we never tell the reverse story. Um, we do not tell the story. If the woman woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that she won a jackpot went and played her $40 and lost it all. She does not get online and told this story because it’s a non story right? same is true for writing that book.

15:44.57
jeffekennedy
That we long to write. That’s the book of our heart or that you know everybody says oh we don’t know what we’re going to do with it. We write that book. We love that book. We decide to self-publish it and it goes nowhere. It’s not a story. The exception being. The gal that I talked about yesterday who shared online how her self-publishing experience did not go well that she spent yeah $10000 and made about $750 and how that is. Ah, thing that happens so at that point it becomes a story but it’s not the story. We want to hear right? We love a story like Brigid Kemmerer or jla where they persevered wrote the thing that they wanted to write that. Well. Brigid soldiers to traditional publishing so that’s a different tale right? But you know and then it does really well and we love that we love that vindication. The triumph of the thing that no one wanted and then it does really really well and ah, it’s It’s a wonderful kind of story it and it inspires us and it keeps us going which is something that we need and do not get me wrong because I love hearing Jennifer talk about that story I’ve heard her give the speech a couple of different times. And it is it came for me at a time when I really needed to hear it. Um I don’t know why I’m a little horse this morning but a horse is a horse of course of course. Ah, um, yeah. The first time I heard it came at a time when I needed to hear that and and it helped me put dark wizard out there which definitely was a story for me that way where it was slightly different for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it before. Dark wizard was a story that I had been mulling for a very long time. Um I mostly just hadn’t gotten around to writing it. However, because I was busy with other things and I also wasn’t sure how I was going to execute it when I told my agent about the idea she loved it. Ah, when I showed her initial pages. She loved it and then when I finished writing the book. She no longer loved it and she did not want to take it out on submission because she said she didn’t know any editor that would want to buy it.

18:27.73
jeffekennedy
And but the difference for me. There was is I had lots of other people who did love it everybody else who read it frickin love this book and including people you know who will tell me the truth. So. And then it did very well when I self-published it and it helped to hear Jennifer’s story and then I heard it again me because I asked her to give the same talk to my local Rw a chapter and and I enjoyed hearing it again then because it does. Help to hear these stories of people persevering of writing the thing that they want to write. It’s a difficult business if you’re not writing the thing you want to write. It’s perilously close to not being worth it. But. There are lots and lots of times that we write the thing we want to write and it does not do phenomenally well and that doesn’t make it any less worth it because we still have to write the thing we want to write that’s. Part of being creative. Um, and I’m getting low on time but I still want to touch on this. We watch this four part documentary on Amazon prime called women who rock highly Highly. Recommend. This documentary It’s incredibly well done. It really traces the history of women and rock as built starting from you know like Gospel and the girl bands of the 50 s and sixty s all the way up to present. And by the time they get to ah more recent times. There’s just way too many to touch on but they have interviews with lots of women some are throughout the whole thing like Nancy Wilson from heart Pat Benatar and they talk about how difficult it. Difficult it was in the beginning and there’s this. It’s wonderfully put together because there’s this chain of people reflecting on their influences so you have the people coming up and talking about listening to Nancy and Anne Wilson or listening to Pat Benatar and practicing the chords listening to those women and being inspired by them and then the older women talking about seeing the younger ones coming up and it’s wonderful with the connectedness and the women helping women and talking about how difficult it was in the industry show crow is in it.

21:15.19
jeffekennedy
Bunch of people are in Shania Twain Chakka Khan ah, other ones I was not familiar with Mavis just Mavis I can’t think of what her last name is from the old Gospel days. Um, and one theme that emerges. And David and I – I think I’ve mentioned before that watching stories about musicians is a great Venn diagram will overlap for both of us because he loves music and musicians and I love the creative aspects so we love it when we can find shows like this but I was pointing out to him and he was agreeing because I’m right. Over and over they would mention having to take control of their own careers having to that you can’t rely on anyone else to do this thing for you that you have to take control of your own career and make it be the thing you want. And I think that’s very true of all creative enterprises that as I often say nobody will ever love your book as much as you do and it’s um I think it’s probably true of of all creative enterprises that. You are the one who will care about it most and if you don’t care about it then it’s not worth it. So on that note I will leave you looking forward to seeing Celeste Barber Standup act tomorrow night and I will talk to you all on. Tuesday you all take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – August 11, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast

Thoughts on author events and how much heavy lifting is placed on them to bring a readership – and financial support! – to the event. Also, on self-publishing, common mistakes, and how things can go wrong.




Transcript
00:01.83
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious today is Thursday August eleventh and beautiful morning here in Santa Fe sunny sunny morning I’m also running a bit behind so it’s sunnier as than usual, we went for a walk this morning I also set up the cover reveal for shadow wizard. Yes, so this will be a book one. And renegades of magic and it’s um, Jadren and Selly’s story for those of you who have not been following along I didn’t light the mosquito candle this morning. So um, I’m doing the cover reveal on Instagram bit by bit. In fact, that reminds me I should have done another one but I haven’t yet I’ll do it as soon as the podcast is done. So um. So I had to get that all set up this morning. Got the preorders set up last night. It’ll be out september Twenty Ninth um fingers crossed I’m I’m past 50000 words on it I think it’s it’s going all right. Not sure how it’s going to end where it’s going to end. But um, that’s typical for me, right? All part of the I think it’s funny when authors say that that’s part of the fun for them that they ah the gardeners of the pantsersers. The ones who don’t pre-plot. Ah, say that the fund goes out of it for them if they do that and I’m like I don’t know I don’t know if it’s if I would call it fun but it’s it’s how it works for me sometimes as those of you who are a long time podcast listeners will know. It’s decidedly unfun for me now. So um, a few different things to talk about today I even have notes. So.

02:29.46
jeffekennedy
I’m trying to decide if I could talk about this one thing. Ah I’m kind of sorry I’m waffling let me pause all right I figured out a way I can talk about it. Ah recently I was asked to be. Part of a thing I mean that’s great. That’s I appreciate being asked to be part of things but then it came out ah I was asked I was actually not asked. This was part of the problem I was given instructions on how to share it on social media. And I was told that I must share it on social media in order to bring my platform bring my readers to this thing which I find very interesting and it’s not the first time this has happened and I may have talked about this before but. There are any number of events who ah I don’t want to say demand but they they sometimes they demand they ask an author to participate and then. Expect that the author will bring their readership with them to support the event which is if it’s like for charity or something like that understandable um, you know like that pixel project that was raising money to end violence against women. Yeah, sure I’m going to ask my readers to come and be part of that but there are other events where they’re totally depending on the authors to bring their readership in order to float their event. And this is partly what was amazing about Apollycon was Apollycon ah invited us to participate and they brought the readers I recently heard of another convention I think I talked about this but I’ll I’ll revisit it because I still find it so shocking. Another convention that has for a long time been famous for ah Nick and diming authors and demanding demanding. You know say more money and this particular story. It actually counts as a demand where an author who attended this paid. Upfront and it was a considerable amount that you had to pay up front to attend this convention. Um far more than the readers or attendees have to pay and then there’s all sorts of opportunities for sponsorships that cost more and more and more money and this author was pulled aside.

05:17.72
jeffekennedy
During the convention and told that she had not brought enough readers to the convention that her platform wasn’t big enough and therefore she needed to cough up a thousand dollars to sponsor something at the conference right? then and there and this author was devastated I mean. There are so many levels of awful and wrong about this this particular convention I’m not surprised that they did it I absolutely believe it happened the sources are impeccable. They might try to claim that there was a misunderstanding but the author in question was devastated. Ah, nobody first of all, nobody wants to hear that they’re supposed to cough up a thousand dollars especially if you’re a newer author and you can’t afford it ah and nobody wants to hear that that somebody thinks that you have like got. Shitty ability to bring readers to something.

06:21.16
jeffekennedy
Ah, so so it’s a thing um that this whole oh well, you need to bring your readership and in this particular case. Ah they were very specific supplied social media examples. And usually the right way to do this the right way to do this is people say um, hey here’s some graphics to share with love if you would share this on your social media boom they might give you some suggested stuff but you know you’re not required to do it. Um. Being told that I must do something that the event won’t be successful unless I do this thing is ah it gives me pause because as an author, especially if this is not a charitable event. Why am I doing this if. They don’t have the umph to bring their own readership to it. Ah you know I understand it’s hard. But yeah it um it it. It really bothered me it. It annoys me and. I talked to David about it and he said well you know can you imagine if somebody asked well he always uses big examples. He has an exalted idea of who I am but he’s like can you imagine if they asked Billy Givens to come play and then told him that oh but he needed to. Tweet certain things to make sure that enough people showed up for the event. Ah yeah, there’s just ways to do things and ways not to and um, you know one thing about social media and I know I say this often. Is even if you decide to schedule things or if you have people help you with it. Social media is about connecting personally right, it’s about doing things the way you do them. Ah and so you don’t I don’t do my social media like somebody else tells me to do it. Let’s let’s just say that’s a hard stop so that was something that was on my mind. Um, and then there’s been discussion. Um on Twitter and it’s interesting because I don’t follow enough on Twitter to. Always know the origins of things and I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of tracing back. So I’m not sure where all the conversation about gatekeepers has come from I know some of the things that I’ve been talking about in the last week about how much money authors do and don’t make on tread publishing so there was a.

09:11.70
jeffekennedy
Tweet thread from someone who said, um, talked about self-publishing and I will link to her Twitter thread. Ah, she’s gotten a lot of quote tweets and retweets and likes on it. Not an astonishing amount. But. Ah, she talked about her experience with self-publishing. Um, she said for her, it cost a lot and she earn very little and and I I think it’s great that she shared this. Um i’m. I’m glad that she ah you know gave the actual numbers and she says that the books were classified as new adult fantasy which is not really a thing in traditional publishing and they probably didn’t hit the right market in indie either because they weren’t sexy enough. Um, so I would kind of lie and then she goes on from there and she talks about how much money she spent. Um, she spent $5000 on the first book in its first six months which is a lot a lot to spend on a book when you’re. Ah, newbie self-publisher and I touched on this earlier this week where I mentioned that um if you don’t have a platform already. It’s hard to get started in self- publishing and and she did end up selling like the mythical. You know, average of one hundred and only to friends and family. But I think there are a lot of reasons for this and $5K is putting a whole lot of that money upfront into that first book without having the second one ready. Ah. And then the way that it sounded let’s see I won’t go into her whole thing. But.

11:17.90
jeffekennedy
Yeah, it took a long time for the second book to come out. She really invested a lot in trying to get that first book to happen which is just not how it works for self- publishing. Ah. She said when the second book launched she sold like 100 copies on the first day ultimately like one hundred and twenty nine copies of the first book and 112 of the second before she pulled them from the market and it’s not clear to me why she decided to pull them from the market. Ah. Once you have once you’ve invested once you have put them up. It doesn’t cost you anything to keep them up so it’s not clear to me why she decided to pull them. Ah, she does say at the end that you know her conclusion is um. There’s no easy way to publish. There’s no get rich quick path in this industry so that’s what she wants to warn people of and and that’s absolutely right? It’s a good take home message. She also says um, there are ways not to make the mistakes that she did. Ah, to make self-publishing a business and to succeed at it and I just wanted to talk a little bit about what I saw her doing she says um, $10000 she spent um, 2.5 years on these books. Selling two hundred and forty one copies of her books and netting something like $750 the transcript’s going to hate these numbers. It always hates numbers. Um, but 1 of the first things I notice I mean there are a number of things that didn’t go well. Ah especially if you are doing a series if you have both books ready. Maybe she didn’t but it’s really worthwhile to have that second book ready so that the people who do want to read can read right away once you have a readership they’ll wait if they’re still getting to know you they won’t wait. Especially if they’re not sure if you’ll finish the series and it’s a real thing if you’re an unknown quantity if there’s a you know destroy needs to be resolved with finishing the series or finishing the second or the you know second and third books. Ah, people want to know that it’s there before they commit because they’ve been burned before. Thank you George RR Martin um, the other thing that.

13:52.45
jeffekennedy
Is a real red flag at the beginning is when she said that it was new adult fantasy which isn’t really a thing in traditional publishing and I’ve mentioned this before self publishing is great for grabbing niche markets that. Traditional publishing won’t touch. This is so true it’s true for my books it’s true for a lot of fantasy romance. It’s true for a lot of science fiction fantasy and romance crossover. There’s not a great place for it on the bookshelf at the bookstores the brick and mortar stores. Because those are 2 different bookshelves right? So they don’t know which one to put it on if and as soon as they have to make a decision. They feel like it’s gonna be bad. They’re not happy if it’s young adult yeah, something just hit my face I don’t even know what that was ah. Felt like it was flung but there’s a little bit of a breeze. So maybe that was just liberated by the breeze a young adult has now become its own category and when people rant as I’ve seen various editors and agents do that young adult doesn’t count as a genre. Because you have all sorts of genres within young adult. Well, it’s true except that there are young adult shelves in the bookstore and once it’s a shelf then they know where to put it and it has a market in the brick and mortar stores. The online stores. Often reflect the brick and mortar stores they have more shelves and can put things in multiple places but still, there’s there’s some some correlation between the 2 so all of this is a long way of saying that if you want to publish your book that you love which. You know, bless you? Of course you do and you know do it? Definitely do it but know that if it’s a book. That’s not really a thing in traditional publishing. It’s going to make it harder for you to sell as a self-p publisher especially if you don’t already have a readership. Right? It’s um, it’s just it’s and and especially if you’re you know, not already a savvy marketer which not many of us are especially when we start right? So you, you’re stacking the odds against yourself. Why this gal pulled them from the market I don’t know and I almost want to ask her and I could follow the Twitter thread if any of you have the leisure follow the Twitter thread and see if somebody asks her or ask her yourselves. Ah there there isn’t a good reason to pull it.

16:41.44
jeffekennedy
And maybe she had one but otherwise the money is spent leave them up and maybe they will gradually gain a readership part of the problem with you know, spending money on advertising is. If. You advertise something. That’s not really a thing. How do you advertise it? What I’ve got and now it’s itchy on my face where that thing hit me wherever it was. You know if how are you going to advertise it if you don’t really know what it is and you’re. Not able to tell the readers what it is new adult fantasy um with and you know it’s that’s an a frequent I don’t want to say excuse but I hear authors say a lot like oh well, it didn’t do well because it didn’t have enough sex in it because. I didn’t want to I don’t know there. There’s always a little and I don’t know that she means this at all. She may not but there’s always a little bit of a sense of you know I wanted to maintain my standards and not put sex in that and therefore um because I didn’t kowtow to the. Ah. Sex loving masses. It didn’t do well maybe that’s not what she means by that. But there are plenty of books that do not have hot sex on them that do very well I’m reading one right now I’m waiting to see if there ends up being a sex scene in it. I’ve read a couple recently that um you know, slow burn romances don’t have any sex in the first book at all, you know, maybe there’s a promise of it later we we kind of know by authors. That’s part of having the reputation having the readership. But no, you don’t have to have it in there. Um. Yeah I’m I’m sorry that this went badly for her but she also spent 2.5 years on this. Um, that’s a long time to spend getting two books out in self-publishishing. It’s just it’s way too long and I know that not everybody has luxury of. Ah, time to spend on it and not everybody writes fast, but it’s just something to keep in mind. There were a lot of things stacked against her on this and you know it would be great if somebody would step in and help her out and say you know let’s put those books back up and let’s see if we can get them to go somewhere. The other thing is is if you are are a new author and you have not yet published anything. It’s hard to know if your books are good. Um, or you know good. You guys know that you all know that I don’t like the use of the word.

19:30.55
jeffekennedy
Good but you don’t know if the books will really grab people if you haven’t established a readership yet and it could be that those books should be trunk books I don’t know I haven’t read them. Not all books are gonna do well that’s just life. Um. There’s books of mind that you know, but the second novel I ever wrote I still love that novel. But if I’m gonna put it out there I’m gonna have to rewrite it because I I know a lot of the things that are wrong with it now and those are just things you learn with time. So. Just wanted to to talk about that. It’s it’s an unfortunate piece of self-p publishing that many many authors get into it because they decide to self-publish the book that they couldn’t sell the trat and. Certainly I’ve done that but I know at this point why it didn’t sell the tread. Ah you’ll have to know is it. Did it come close like was it really because they didn’t know what shelf to put it on. Or was it because everyone was like you know this book isn’t done cooking yet. It’s hard to listen to that feedback I saw meme the other day of somebody like showing like an author getting their ah feet criticism and like cutting up their heart on a plate and I it’s like well that’s probably. Probably you should um, have a little bit more objectivity than that. It’s not your heart. They’re cutting up. They’re talking about something you produced. But yeah, you got you got to listen to what kind of feedback are you getting on the book. Why why does traditional publishing not want it. And it’s not always because they’re messed up in the head which is tends to be the kool-aid on that note I am going to go get to work and write the book that I just put up the pre-order for ah, watch for the cover reveal. Taking shape today I think it’s kind of be kind of cool and preorder link in the show notes and I will talk to you all tomorrow you all take care bye bye.

The Drive to Develop a Writing Practice

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Look for the cover reveal for SHADOW WIZARD, book one in Renegades of Magic, the new trilogy continuing the Bonds of Magic epic tale! I’m getting the preorders set up today and plan to do the cover reveal on Instagram tomorrow, August 11, 2022. Members of my private Facebook group, Jeffe’s Closet, may get a sneak peek 😉

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re asking: how has your writing practice changed over time?

It’s interesting because the topic-suggester framed it as “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – my college French demanded I get the saying correct – which is a French saying that acknowledges that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, that surface details may alter over time, but the essence of the thing, the recognizable cycle of events, is fundamentally inalterable. Often it’s applied to history. So this suggests that our writing practice may change over time, but it also stays the same. Is this this case?

I’m saying no, at least for me. My writing practice has changed considerably since my newbie days. I was reflecting recently that, as a teen and young woman, I didn’t really know how to apply myself to improving at a task. This largely came from the fact that, in school all the way through high school, I could get by without really trying. I had a good auditory and visual memory, and I tested well, so I didn’t need to work hard to get A’s. (Except in math, which I thought I wasn’t good at, even though they put me in accelerated math classes. Turns out I likely wasn’t good at it because I didn’t like math, so I didn’t listen in class. Oops.) In college and grad school, a number of professors began riding me to apply myself, to study and do the practice problems. I kind of tried to – especially when I had to retake Immunology for my biology major and really didn’t want to have to retake second semester of organic chemistry – but there was a major problem: I didn’t know how to study.

I remember thinking I needed to learn how to study, but I was mostly flailing about. It was only when I had novel deadlines to meet that I got very good at refining my ability to work in concentrated ways, incrementally, day after day. I don’t often think of messages I’d like to give to my younger self, but I now wish I could advise that college student, that graduate student, to develop the habit of working for a couple of hours every morning. This is my best brain time. If I had done that in school, if I had spent just that much time working practice problems and reviewing the material, I likely would have done much better.

Of course, then I might have ended up as a research scientist after all, when I’m so happy as a novelist. Maybe it took working on something I truly cared about to inspire me to develop the practice to do it. Que sera, sera!