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Episode 311: Jane Friedman
250 Plays3 years ago
Jane Friedman returns! We talk about her smattering of webinars, building author platform, and finding ways to "surprise" your readers.
Support: patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Writing Support and Magazine Submissions
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, hey, CNFers, if you're looking to get into shape, someone to hold you accountable, you hire a personal trader. Right, Joel? Likewise, if you're writing me the spotter, consider letting me help you out. If you're working on a book, an essay, a query, or a book proposal, and you're ready to level up, email me at Brendan at BrendanOmera.com, hey, and we'll start a dialogue. I'd be honored to help you get where you want to go.
00:00:28
Speaker
Call for submissions for issue four of the magazine. Audio magazine. That's right. Codes. Codes to live by. Mantras. Mantras. Personal beliefs. Rules. Oppressive or liberating. I love people who are so principled. They live by a code. Captain Fantastic. Great movie. Power to the people. Stick it to the man. And even the Mandalorian. This is the way.
00:00:52
Speaker
Give me your best 2000 word or fewer essays about codes. Email creative nonfiction podcast at gmail.com with code in the subject line. Simultaneous submissions are fine, I get it. But if you have your piece accepted by another publication or are holding out for a more prestigious publication, let me know ASAP so I don't read and edit any unnecessary essays because I do give notes to rejected essays too, what a guy.
00:01:19
Speaker
Deadline is October 31st. This is the way.
Derek Sivers' Experience Insights
00:01:24
Speaker
There's a person popular in the entrepreneurial community. His name is Derek Sivers. Oh, I love him. Yeah, he's wonderful. I never forget hearing him speak and saying, people just want to be surprised and delighted. If you can introduce a little bit of surprise or delight, that's all. And it doesn't take much.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Overview
00:01:48
Speaker
Oh, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. It's not an award-nominated podcast. I'm Brendan Romero. How's it going? Jane Friedman's on the show. You know Jane Friedman. She's a publishing maven. She's probably done more for writing education than just about anyone on the internet. She pretty much has a school.
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, like the School of Chocolate? Love that show. But Chef Amari? My god, what a wizard. Anyway, Jane's webinars and online classes foster so much skill and community. I recently took one of her webinars in association with Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Yeah, those guys. We like kids and cousins.
00:02:30
Speaker
It was about book proposals, but for this podcast, I know we're a nonfiction crew, and I know I probably should have spoken to Jean about the book proposals thing. My bad. We talked about Better Call Saul. I'm sorry, CNFers. I'm sorry.
Jane Friedman's Offerings
00:02:46
Speaker
talk a lot about online education, newsletters, building off their platform, the perils of putting too much attention on social media, and simply doing work. Work that builds platforms. Work is what builds platforms. She's at Jane Friedman on Twitter. You can go to her website to see a smattering of
00:03:09
Speaker
Unbelievable offerings, really. So incredible. Great price, too. I mean, you're gonna pay something, but you're gonna get more than you pay for. And it's great stuff. JaneFreedman.com, I can't recommend them enough.
Supporting the CNF Podcast
00:03:25
Speaker
I wanna remind you, though, keep the conversation going on Twitter, at CNFpod and at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. You can also support the podcast by becoming a paid member at patreon.com slash CNFpod.
00:03:38
Speaker
As I say, this show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Members get transcripts, chances to ask questions to future guests, special pods in the work. Also, I put out my query tracker spreadsheet, which was really popular among the patrons, as well as most recently a notebook indexing system, also a Google Sheet that I share with patrons.
00:04:02
Speaker
But if you don't have the scratch to support the show, I understand. Free ways to support the show, you can leave a kind review or rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Written reviews for our little podcast that could go so far, man, toward validating this show for the way we're seeing effort. We got a new one. This one from ABT, 41253.
00:04:27
Speaker
titled A Fascinating Peek into an Editor's Toolbox. As a writer, I was fascinated to learn about the inner workings of an editor's mind. It ranged from the abstract to the very concrete and always helpful.
00:04:42
Speaker
Like every episode there was laughter and lightness and I came away inspired and educated. Thank you. And I will say thank you. Great stuff. Hey, and if you're out there and you're feeling shy, by all means, it's okay. Fight that shyness, man. Leave a review. I will give you the maddest of props. Mad props. Right here. I'll share it with the CNFing audience.
00:05:06
Speaker
You deserve that.
Listener Engagement and Reviews
00:05:08
Speaker
And it means the world. Validates the enterprise, as I already said. Alright, one last thing. Be sure you're heading over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm CNF and monthly newsletter, book recommendations, book raffles.
00:05:27
Speaker
Most often a link to a CNF in Happy Hour. Didn't do one in April. Might do one in May. We'll see. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell you can't beat it. Alright, well enough is enough.
Interview with Jane Friedman Begins
00:05:42
Speaker
It's time to welcome Jane back to the show. Back from episode 102 to now 311. Wow. This is what we do CNFers.
00:06:04
Speaker
Something that's a little, maybe even just tangential or maybe not even related to writing or publishing is, you know, what do you find yourself doing to unplug from, you know, being submerged in publishing and writing
Writing Tension and TV Parallels
00:06:18
Speaker
all the time? What are those things that you turn to to unplug?
00:06:22
Speaker
This is going to reveal some maybe embarrassing habits. I would say the number one thing I do to unplug isn't actually unplugging. I play an app-based game called Carcassonne. It's actually, it came about as a board game first, but the app is beautiful. It's so well done. And so you can play a game of Carcassonne in probably less than 10 minutes.
00:06:47
Speaker
Okay. That's a really great stress relief. Then other than that, the evenings, late evenings are for watching an episode of some show that has been preferably going on for many seasons. Right now,
00:07:06
Speaker
My husband and I are rewatching, actually, Better Call Saul because we've forgotten most of it. And I believe the last season is dropping or has dropped in any event. Those two things together.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'm watching Better Call Saul the season five that just dropped on Netflix now. They're airing the last season now, so it's like I have to try to figure out a way to keep any of those spoilers going until it comes back to Netflix in like a year.
00:07:39
Speaker
But if the show is yeah, I'm I think I'm four episodes in to season five and It is It's great because I had recently spoken with a Leah Flickinger who's an editor for like Runner's World magazine and popular mechanics and she and I got to talking about tension and how often in nonfiction pieces and certainly pitches
00:08:03
Speaker
Tension is often lacking and it's sometimes hard to come by because you can't manufacture it. So you have to try to seek it out in the reporting, which can be really hard. And as I'm watching Better Call Saul, even the most seemingly mundane scene is loaded with tension. And it's like such a lesson, right?
00:08:24
Speaker
It's a brilliantly written show. And of course, the acting Bob Odenkirk is phenomenal. I mean, that character is, I mean, I think it's, in my mind, it's surpassed Breaking Bad. And you wouldn't even have to watch that series necessarily to get a lot out of Better Call Saul, although it helps.
00:08:42
Speaker
It just goes to show what can be accomplished when you drill into character and then I don't know how it is that they pull off the thing, but you always just find yourself just unsettled. You're like, are they gonna make the right decision or the wrong decision? Are they usually gonna make the wrong decision?
00:08:59
Speaker
Are they going to make the choice that is for the betterment of their own? I don't know the people around them But they seem to be pulled in the gravity of their past decisions is just too much to surpass and then you're just and You're waiting for that release and sometimes that releases comedy and other times it can be some some action in that But he just never known it's just like I'm like how are they doing this? It is an incredible Masterclass and in making you want to keep watching and keep reading if you're a writer
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, the the moral gray areas in that show are are so masterful. I think that's part of what makes it so compelling Yeah, like the so much especially with like, you know, Kim and Jimmy so much can be unsaid like they have a lot of dialogue less scenes and it's just their faces and it's incredible like it's just an incredible testament to their skill in chemistry to convey so much without saying anything and
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the fifth season is like, but you know, I've always been just stunned at how, how weighty that relationship is yet. You have almost none of the backstory of like how it started and was built. They just, you know, they just like, you have to infer constantly what must have passed between these two people, but I think it's perfect.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, and when I was talking to Matt Bell, whose recent book, Refused to be Done, just came out. It's a really great book on writing. And he talks about how a lot of stories and books can be weighed down in backstory. And that's especially true in non-fiction, because you do a lot of reporting. You're like, I got to throw on all this cool stuff I found out about the characters' childhood. And it's only like the most germane nuggets that are worth keeping.
00:10:48
Speaker
But you make a great point about Better Call Saul. It's just like you know there's something there, but they don't weigh down the narrative with excessive backstory filling in every hole of their history. You just know there's something there and we just feel it. Yeah, absolutely.
Jane's Online Courses Journey
00:11:03
Speaker
Now, what's been great about the last few years, kind of like charting what you've been up to, you've really leaned into the webinar and online classes thing, I think more in the last few years. So what was the genesis of that even before COVID?
00:11:24
Speaker
Well, it goes all the way back to Writers Digest when I was the publisher. And we had an online education arm that was primarily long-term, like eight week, 12 week, like even 16 week classes, which carried a pretty high price point. You know, we're talking hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand dollars. And so that excludes a lot of people from the education.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so we launched a webinar series at Writers Digest. We had no idea what would happen. It was just one of those ideas that came up during a corporate innovation summit. Most of the ideas that come out of those are not practical or they're done for the benefit of executives. But this actually was a great idea because it was a lower price point. It was quick hits.
00:12:17
Speaker
And originally, the staff did them. We didn't have our authors or columnists doing them. And it quickly just became a really brilliant way to tackle single issues, like single problems that people have, giving them that little secret or nudge or inspiration they need to get over the next hump.
00:12:40
Speaker
So that debuted, I think, in 2008 or 2009. And then when I left Writers Digest in 2010, I continued teaching. Webinar is in that period. For those who may remember, it was considered a really kind of stodgy corporate, not terribly exciting format. This was long before Zoom. There were only one or two tools available. GoToWebinar, I think, was the one.
00:13:09
Speaker
We were using. I remember that. There's nobody on webcam. Some people dialed in by phone, so it was like a teleseminar for a lot of people. But it was successful despite some of these drawbacks. So anyway, through the 2010s, I kept teaching for Writers Digest. I started doing more with other organizations. And then in 2019, serendipitously,
00:13:35
Speaker
because the pandemic was the perfect time to be in this. And so we were getting things established before that hit. My husband, who used to work at the same company, he lost his job because the company went bankrupt. And then with his help, I was finally able to launch my own program of classes. I wouldn't be able to do it alone because the customer service burden is pretty significant. But yeah, it's been
00:14:05
Speaker
so well received from the start. And my goal is not so dissimilar from the Writers Digest days where I'm trying to provide affordable education on demand for people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it.
00:14:20
Speaker
And I like particularly how, when I was just reading up about more of the ethos behind what you were doing, and usually the price point by and large is right around $25, and there's this, it is more affordable, but it doesn't feel like we're giving this thing away for free only for someone to upsell you with like, I don't know, just fill in the blank. And it's just like, this is it, there's no other ulterior motive other than,
00:14:47
Speaker
You're going to pay for this, you're going to get more than you pay for, and you're going to be able to run with it for as long as you want because you get the materials and stuff. Right. That's the hope. We try to provide a lot of value for people. Personally, I learned so much from the interactions during the class because now the webinar tools are so much better.
00:15:08
Speaker
than they were 10 years ago. And there's lots of good active chat conversations and the questions coming in. It's really, for anyone in the writing and publishing community, it gets your finger on the pulse of what people care about, what the challenges are right now, which are of course always shifting. The pandemic changes what people are concerned about. You can see new trends coming and going based on webinar chats. So I really enjoy it.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, and what's I think important to underscore too is, and this goes for I think a lot of writers who want to make a living writing is that they tend to just kind of haphazardly go about cobbling together things and I'm guilty of this too, even to this very day of not really setting up a plan or a business plan of sorts. So when you were starting, you know, really doubling down on this type of webinar content, what was the
00:16:02
Speaker
the infrastructure that you had in place and the plan you had in place before you really started to execute it on MAS? Well, fortunately, I've had a website for many years now. A lot of it is just about making sure I have sufficient visitors and visibility on the website through blog content and through other resources. And people see the classes if they end up on my website.
00:16:30
Speaker
And then people register and pay through the website. And then I've already had a lot of experience with Zoom prior to the pandemic. So I already understood how to integrate all of the administrative pieces on the website with Zoom. It's really, frankly, not that complicated, but people can be intimidated by some of the moving pieces or just having a website can be intimidating for folks. But I've been really, I've been gratified to see that
00:17:00
Speaker
It may seem strange to welcome competitors, but I think we all offer something different. But Creative Nonfiction Magazine has gotten into the webinar space in a pretty serious way since the pandemic. And I've seen other writing organizations really get in and do unique and wonderful things. And I think all of this, I think, has been good for the community.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, as things bifurcate like that, you have to sort of figure out what it is that makes you stand out, but also drill down on what Seth Godin might call the smallest viable audience.
00:17:39
Speaker
You just like, you know, it's antithetical to think that in order to go big you really have to go small and narrow. So in a sense like you're kind of on the leading edge of it, but how have you, you know, cultivated that sense of going narrow to grow big?
00:17:56
Speaker
I mean, my original niche was business, so the business of writing and publishing. And a lot of my email newsletter lists are built from people interested in that information. And I should also mention, as far as my business planning and strategy, a lot of it is email driven and I have ways to reach people that aren't dependent on social media, which helps tremendously.
00:18:23
Speaker
So that helps with registrations and marketing.
Memoir Writing and Fiction Techniques
00:18:28
Speaker
But to your question of the niche, fortunately, I know what I'm good at, which is the business practicalities. I'm not so hot on craft and technique. I don't produce much creative work on my own that's outside of industry facing material, like personal essays or novels or poetry.
00:18:47
Speaker
So I have guests who do that and I have so many connections from my time at Writers Digest to bringing guests. So, you know, I started off with the people I really knew, knew well, I knew their topics reasonably well. And then I started with business topics and then started getting more into the craft and technique topics by bringing in the people that I knew and trusted.
00:19:11
Speaker
What do you find that most people want to learn about? And this could just be basically what's your most popular offering? The memoir classes are probably the most popular by far. Now that might be influenced somewhat just by the instructors that I'm working with who are really well known in that community.
00:19:33
Speaker
Even when I offer classes from novelists, things that are really obviously about fiction, the memoirists still show up because they're just hoping for that light switch moment. Because there is obviously a lot of crossover in craft and technique between creative nonfiction and fiction writing. It's always this funny balance when you get all of the memoirists infiltrating every class and asking the questions, how does this apply to me?
00:20:05
Speaker
It's like, okay, it's like I actually started putting notes in the class descriptions. Memorists are welcome, but we will be focused on fiction. I should kind of know too, but I think I would send this to you because I just...
00:20:22
Speaker
People are just so enamored with memoir and writing memoir and hoping to catch gold and strike lightning and write the next wild or fill in the blank, the Liars Club. What do you think the lure is for memoir that is enduring to this very day?
00:20:42
Speaker
I mean, I can only speak to what I've seen since I've entered the business, which is you have these memoirs that really strike a chord for people. Like it's maybe going all the way back to Angela's Ashes by Frank McCord. And then, of course, you've got Eat, Pray, Love, and Wild. And now you've got, is it Glennon Doyle?
00:21:06
Speaker
And so you have these just larger than life people who sometimes start off doing things in what looks like a very accessible way, like on a blog or in the newsletter. And people think, yeah, that's exactly what I want to do. I can't remember what blog Glennon Doyle had, but I think that's where her background was as far as building her platform and then going on to writing and publishing those books.
00:21:32
Speaker
So you just have these people who serve as role models and are very inspiring. And they often encourage people, you know, your story is important, you deserve to be heard. And everyone, I think that's absolutely true. The issue that comes into play is that not every story is going to attract a commercial publisher's interest for lots of different reasons. But usually, you know, they want to see platform, they want to see a certain amount of sales. But I think that
00:22:03
Speaker
The other issue is perhaps generational in that you've got the baby boomers who now perhaps have the time inclination and they're reflecting on what the bulk of their lives have meant and they want to write and tell those stories.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of platform, it's one of those things where, to me, I think you'd agree, the best possible platform is a solid email list.
Email Marketing Strategies
00:22:31
Speaker
It's permission-driven. It's algorithmically agnostic. It doesn't rely on anyone else changing a line of code. And again, permission is the biggest thing.
00:22:44
Speaker
It's one of those things, it's the best time to have planted trees 20 years ago, the next best time is now or today. So when it comes to email newsletter and email platform, what are some good ideas that people can glom onto and start that, what is really a slow process, but a good process of building that degree of platform?
00:23:09
Speaker
I think the number one thing to come into it with is a commitment to actually doing it on a schedule. Yeah. And I speak from personal experience, not just as someone who's like, I don't know, a marketer on the hill, like looking down.
00:23:26
Speaker
It's like I was inconsistent for five or six years with my own list and, you know, I didn't particularly value it, thus the people receiving my messages didn't particularly value what I was sending. What a revelation, you know?
00:23:41
Speaker
It wasn't until I decided I want this to be meaningful for not just me, but for the people who are receiving it. I don't want them to mistake it as spam or something that I hastily, you know, sent off. Now, that said, I think a lot of people make too much of the writing burden involved in an email newsletter. People, you know, get twisted in knots about, what do I say? What do I put in it? And it doesn't have to be, like,
00:24:10
Speaker
something highly original and, you know, award-winning, it can simply be like a consumption list. And by that I mean, you know, what have you enjoyed lately? Kind of like the first question you might have, you started with about what are you using to de-stress or, you know, unplug.
00:24:29
Speaker
talk about the things that bring you joy in your life or the books you've read, the TV you've watched and just it only takes a couple sentences and then like four or five little things that you've enjoyed and you have a newsletter. It doesn't have to be anything more elegant than that.
00:24:49
Speaker
So short, no one also will complain that your newsletter was too short. So, you know, 300 words max, you can even I've seen people get away with two sentence email newsletters, and it's fine. I think it's just you have to have the commitment. And then you have to think about
00:25:07
Speaker
what you can sustain and so that you're not feeling like, oh my God, the newsletter's coming up again in another two weeks and I don't know what I'm gonna write about. You just have to figure out what's some method of identifying what your content will be before you sit down to write. I keep like a running list of like interesting things I ran across so that when I do sit down to write, I've got like a little, basically a cheat sheet of what the newsletter should include.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, I do that too. In my bullet journal, I have a whole collection of like for that month's newsletter, whatever, and I just do it monthly. It's the first of the month. And yeah, so I just have a collection of stuff, whether it be, you know, cool articles I run across, you know, some book recommendations, because that's part of it.
00:25:51
Speaker
And it's just like, okay, make a little list. And that way, when it comes time to put it together, which I do about a day or two ahead of the, when I send it out, I'm not panicking and scrambling and everything. And mine is just an up, I call it like a up to 11 newsletter, kind of piggybacking on spinal tap. And it's just like 11 cool things.
00:26:11
Speaker
that I come across. And I've just, over the years, too, I've just really honed, I'm like, how can I make this valuable for the person opening the newsletter and not be self-gratifying, not be spammy, and all that. These are cool things that I think you'll really like. And I think that's important, too, because a lot of people might be like, all right, people want to just know what's going on in my life and what's all well and good, but people are getting bombarded with emails, so it's like, how can you make it valuable for them?
00:26:38
Speaker
Yes. There's a person popular in the entrepreneurial community, his name's Derek Sivers. Oh, I love him. Yeah, he's wonderful. I never forget hearing him speak and saying, people just want to be surprised and delighted. If you can introduce a little bit of surprise or delight, that's all and it doesn't take much.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, and another thing too is what annoys me is that, because I'm in touch with a lot of authors obviously for this show, and invariably every now and again I just randomly, I get their newsletter.
00:27:22
Speaker
I didn't sign up for this. I admire your work. I didn't know you had a newsletter just because I just didn't know. But all of a sudden, I'm starting to get their thing. And I know what a gut punch it is to get unsubscribes. And so I'm like, well, I'm not going to unsubscribe. But I'm also kind of pissed you put me on your newsletter list without telling me. I'm like, that's a big no-no.
00:27:46
Speaker
It is, and it happens all the time, which makes people who send them or starting to send them, they think that makes it okay. I actually have an email filter set up for when that happens to me, and you're exactly right. I don't want to unsubscribe because I feel like this is going to be insulting. I put them on a filter that just puts it straight into the trash.
00:28:11
Speaker
I feel like I don't even have to think about it. That's a good idea. Regarding newsletters too, what might you suggest to somebody out there who's looking to maybe hone a point of view that is in service of an audience, that isn't self-gratifying?
Social Media Personal Branding
00:28:28
Speaker
I think that gets to the point of what you were saying and what Derek's ever said about being surprised and delighted. I mean, there's trial and error involved too, but what might you suggest to someone looking to hone that point of view?
00:28:40
Speaker
I think it helps to observe yourself in social settings. I think writers are really great at this, by the way, because we tend to have a lot of anxiety in social situations or are already studying group dynamics. And just think about how does your POV differ from other people in the room or what are the things that
00:29:02
Speaker
with the privacy of your closest friend, you get angry about it and you go on the real vent or the rage, which you would never actually put online. And just think about what defines the things that really drive you in those conversations, the emotional drive. How can you tap into that?
00:29:22
Speaker
for your newsletter. Now I'm not saying you should go rage in your newsletter or anything like that. I'm just looking for where the fire is coming from because you want that sort of fire in, you know, if you want to attract readers or keep them with you. Straight information works up to a point that there's
00:29:45
Speaker
the greatest newsletters have some sort of personal connection there and a point of view that people come to you looking for that angle. They're newsletter writers. Something will happen in the news.
00:29:59
Speaker
It could be the literary community, it could be politics, doesn't really matter. And I know that a newsletter writer is doing their job when I think about, I can't wait till that person addresses this issue when they send out their next issue. Because it helps me figure out how I think about something to know how they're thinking about it. So that's what I would be considering if you're kind of at sea in terms of your POV.
00:30:28
Speaker
What are some of your favorite newsletters out there that you really look forward to?
00:30:33
Speaker
Oh gosh. I mean, a lot of them are business oriented. I don't know that they would be particularly exciting for a majority of your listeners, but someone I've been reading for decades now is Michael Cader in Publishers Lunch. So this is an industry newsletter about publishing. What's so interesting about his newsletter is that it is more or less information and reporting.
00:30:59
Speaker
But you love it when he allows his own POV to slip in with a zinger, which happens when there's a hot button issue or some sort of development. Once you've been reading him for a while, you can see through his selection of quotes and his one or two sentences, they speak volumes about his attitude towards the current situation or problem or news item.
00:31:29
Speaker
Let's see. I'm thinking through the many sub stacks that I subscribe to. There's an agent sub stack, agents and books by Kate McKean that I think would be of interest to people listening. She has such a strong voice. I admire her voice in the newsletter. I often wish that I could be
00:31:55
Speaker
like her in terms of voice, but it's not like I can't emulate you can't emulate someone else right you can maybe mimic and figure out your way through but she's just I don't know there's something about her that.
00:32:08
Speaker
There are lots of exclamation points and a little bit of stream of consciousness at times. And you just feel like you're getting a real authentic take on something from someone in the business. She doesn't hold back. And it's also true of Anna Sproul, Latimer, another agent. I think her newsletter is called Glow in the Dark, although that's
00:32:33
Speaker
Both of these have free versions and paid versions or you get cut off at a certain point in the reading. But yeah, both of those have very strong voices that if people want to see what we mean by voice, read those two in particular.
00:32:50
Speaker
And what struck me a few weeks ago, I think you had paired with Ashley Renard to do kind of a social media Instagram kind of class. And I have her book behind me. I need to read it, because she's supposed to be on the show. I met her at Hippo Camp the summer of 2021. And I know she's big, big, big on Instagram and swears by it.
00:33:18
Speaker
And I noticed at HippoCam too, a lot of people were really flocking to that, to learn about that, which is all well and good. And I think it's a good skill to have, but what I was thinking too is a lot of people's energies, in my opinion here, were kind of misdirected.
00:33:37
Speaker
I think it's good to learn the certain skills of certain social media platforms, but to win at social media at the expense of learning craft. Learning how to broadcast a message when you don't have anything to say is antithetical to even building a platform. Because if you get good at Instagram, you have nothing to say. It's like you're just telling people you have nothing to say. And so it's like you gotta, I think you gotta build a better foundation before you can then leverage those things. That can of course change at a moment's tweak of code.
00:34:06
Speaker
So how do you wrestle with the social media aspect of it, making sure that you're good enough, that you have work good enough worth promoting and leveraging through social media?
00:34:21
Speaker
I think there are ... I'll go to the extremes here and ignore nuance for a moment. There's one extreme where people have written or published little or nothing. They want to publish a book of some kind usually. Usually the book isn't finished or maybe it's on submission. In any event, they're
00:34:43
Speaker
Let's say they have no platform, but they hear that you need to be active on social media. And as you say, but they haven't clarified a message. They're not necessarily known for any work.
00:34:53
Speaker
They go to Instagram. It could be something else. And they start posting videos maybe about their submission process or their writing or something random. And that's the sort of activity where I think, yeah, I mean, you're probably not hurting yourself, but what could you be doing with that time? So it's exactly the problem you've identified if you really have no message. The other extreme is
00:35:24
Speaker
which is the better position to be in, but I don't think many people have this aptitude, which is being able to use social media as basically a writing and publishing platform that's of value and of platform building potential and gathers you an audience. Now, I think Ashley Renard is an interesting example
Digital Audience Building
00:35:47
Speaker
of this. She did have a message.
00:35:49
Speaker
That message was really strong and clear through, I believe, both Instagram and TikTok.
00:35:56
Speaker
And it helps that she was focused on teaching people something or helping them learn something. In this case, it was about keeping monogamy hot, I think was her main focus for her social media building prior to her memoir coming out, which ties into that issue. The memoir is called Swing, so that gives you an idea of the premise. So I think she's an example of someone who's able to use social
00:36:25
Speaker
as a dynamic publishing tool that builds an audience before the book comes out. It's just that so few writers in my experience are able to make, able to bridge that or make that leap because they see it as like this marketing tool or is selling out or they're not comfortable with whatever the social media platform demands of them like being on camera and being
00:36:48
Speaker
or using video editing tools. I mean, when I started using Twitter myself, I approached it as a really interesting publishing tool and I didn't have any, and I did have information to share.
00:37:04
Speaker
It made me visible to the greater publishing community, which was super helpful for my career. Again, I'm describing two extremes. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but usually if I'm teaching on social media, like a webinar or a class, I try to help people see the potential and using it to publish
00:37:27
Speaker
bits of work early to, in Austin Kleon's words, show your work. He has a whole book about it and the value of that. Rather than seeing what you put on social as somehow like lesser than or this, every time something becomes the burden or something you have to do, it kind of spoils the endeavor. So that's what I'm trying to avoid for folks, taking away the obligation and bringing back the fun and feeling of play.
00:37:57
Speaker
Which can, I admit, be hard in a toxic social media environment. Oh, for sure. Well, I know I was guilty of this and definitely fell into the trap of it. I had joined Twitter in 2009 and I don't have a Titanic falling by any stretch.
Podcasting for Engagement
00:38:16
Speaker
Falling. It sounds gross to even say that.
00:38:18
Speaker
And it's – I remember just getting into, I don't know, little – trying to hack my way to a platform. And I think that's the problem a lot of people face. It wasn't until I just almost issued it all together and started doing things like the podcast, which is more in direct service of people.
00:38:39
Speaker
Then it just it feels like the that platform sort of it manages itself in a way that doesn't feel as icky but it but there's a vision and Sort of a goal behind it instead of just like well I need to I need to grow this odd I need to grow my Twitter following so I'm attractive to agents and it's just like it got me wasting a lot of time doing that instead of focusing on the work and right I feel like I wasted my 30s doing that and
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah, you can chase your own tail. I even have close colleagues who chase their own tail in this way, and I try to hint that they're doing that, but it doesn't work because there's just this pressure. People feel like they're not doing what they need to do, but it definitely comes back to the work. You've got to be producing work. People want to follow you because of the work.
00:39:32
Speaker
So the work can come out in many different ways. And the work itself can be social media posts, not that I recommend that. But you've got to be producing work. That's number one. Yeah.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I've been experimenting this year in particular, and it's not gonna be like a one-year experiment. It's gonna be like several, because there's only so many places of prominence you can publish. But my main goal is to try to get published in as many semi-visible to highly visible things. And then in my tagline, it's gonna be primarily
00:40:08
Speaker
go to my website, sign up for my monthly newsletter, and that's how I'm starting to gauge it, is like, okay, I want to try to do an end-around around social media. And then, as a result, I'm sure that that number is going to grow, and then I can kind of pop things over there and make people
00:40:29
Speaker
serve that audience. But the best, more savory way is to, like you just said, do work. You know, have a body of work. And then that snowballs itself, because if you're in Writer's Digest or Brevity or on your blog, and then you're like, oh, this person is, they're not just trying to, they're trying to do work of service to the community and they're
Enduring Value of Content
00:40:51
Speaker
you know, with a body of work, you can show you have skill and stuff to offer and then your platform will build. But I think a lot of people just find the, and I can say this because I'm guilty of it, was the Pez dispenser nature of, and the slot machine nature of social media. It feels like work, but it isn't. Whereas you should be putting your efforts into actual work, like you said.
00:41:14
Speaker
I have one short, inspiring story, I hope. This is my husband, who has a monthly podcast, although it's on hiatus right now because of the move. And he has a very small devoted audience, but because he now has, I think he's been doing it for about two years now. Every new episode he puts out,
00:41:39
Speaker
is meaningful, even if it has a small audience at first, because it's just that things have a long life on the internet. There are always new people finding the old stuff that he did. And he's written some posts at his site that are complimentary to his podcast. One of them was written back in 2015.
00:42:00
Speaker
I actually helped him with the titling of it and like, you know, just from an SEO perspective, search engine optimization, I wanted to make sure it had the best possible foundation. And he knew exactly, you know, where to share it like on Facebook or whatever so that the right people would see it. And that post still brings him
00:42:19
Speaker
like 500 visits a day to his website, despite being seven years old. And he spent hours on that post. Like he was painstaking. He's a slow writer anyway, but he just wanted it to be perfect. And he was rewarded. He's still rewarded today. So I do. I know that it sometimes is a little bit naive to say quality will win out. Quality will win out if you have
00:42:45
Speaker
also paid attention to the environment in which you're putting the content into. So, you know, making sure that it's headlined appropriately, sharing it in the right places. But spending the time on the work will reward you in the end. I have to believe that as an optimist. What's the subject matter of this piece in his podcast?
00:43:06
Speaker
His podcast is discovering new music. And then the post was about his very weird little method of identifying a song if Shazam or, you know, a similar app can't identify it. What do you do? Like something you recorded back in the 1980s on a cassette. That sort of thing, which I realize I'm probably speaking to a small
00:43:33
Speaker
Small group of people at this point. What are cassettes? Yeah, no, that's cool. The thing is those nichey little things like that are the, I don't know, sometimes it's antithetical to think we already kind of talked about it, but yeah, a lot of people I think they want to be, I want to appeal to the greatest possible audience, and it's like when you appeal to all that, you're appealing to nobody. It's like find, I use this example all the time, it's just,
00:44:01
Speaker
you know just you don't talk about you know weightlifting you talk about you know vegan bodybuilders and now you're getting really narrow but through that there is a community there and then some often from that once you go that small it does start to sort of balloon out from there to some more evergreen
00:44:19
Speaker
areas and audiences that are a little beyond but you can't go, you can't just haphazardly cast it out into the world and then hope to get an audience that way. It's like the way you get big is by going so small and then from there well at least it'll spread horizontally. Yes, I couldn't agree more.
Post-Apocalyptic Library Recommendations
00:44:41
Speaker
Now, as I had primed the pump, I hadn't asked this question in a long time of people of like the bookshelf for the end of the world. I've called it the bookshelf for the apocalypse or library for the end of the world. You know, these kind of three to five books that you can't live without or you know, if you're in a post-apocalyptic zombie landscape, it's like, you know, I'm still in my backpack. I'm going to pack these books because I need that kind of nourishment. So what are some of those titles for you, Jane?
00:45:12
Speaker
Well, there's basically anything by Alan DeBotten is something that I would put in that bag. It's really hard for me to choose from any specific title, but the ones that are most lodged in my memory that I keep recommending are his first novel, which is called On Love, which
00:45:35
Speaker
has this wonderful term or concept in it called romantic terrorism, which I highly recommend. For those who don't know him, he's more well known in the UK, but he writes both novels and nonfiction, mostly nonfiction, and he runs something called The School of Life.
00:45:53
Speaker
one of his most popular articles, I think was published by the New York Times about why you will marry the wrong person. So that kind of gives you a flavor of what he's like, very realist, but trying to help you lead a better life by recognizing that you will likely be disappointed in your endeavors, whether that's marriage, work.
00:46:12
Speaker
or something else. There's a real stoicism about him that I just love. He's just real. He's not trying to sugarcoat anything, but there's still some hope there. He's one of those writers where if you
00:46:29
Speaker
You read even just a couple sentences of what he's written. You're like, he's finally expressed what's been in my heart that I couldn't put into words. He's just wonderful. I can't say enough wonderful things about him. Nice. And of course, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always like to ask guests for recommendations for the listeners out there.
00:46:50
Speaker
I have to I have to now preface that poor Gloria Lou I had her on like like I'm asking for a you know recommendation and she what she started by recommending something to me I was like oh I'm sorry I mean like for the listeners like that would be such a
00:47:06
Speaker
Like, what a dick move to end my own show by inviting you on it. Like, hey, I need a recommendation of some kind. And it was like, I realized that I wasn't, I totally wasn't prefacing the question properly and she caught it and I was like, ah, damn. But yes, for the listeners, like I always say, it could be a pair of socks, a brand of coffee or an app on your phone. So, yeah, so Jane, for you, what would you recommend for the listeners?
Convenience of Meal Kits
00:47:31
Speaker
Well, this is probably going to be very revealing, but a Blue Apron meal kit subscription has been like, that has maybe improved my quality of life more than just about anything else in the last few years, especially during the pandemic. It could be very uncomfortable to go grocery shopping. Yeah.
00:47:56
Speaker
So for those who don't know what Blue Apron is or what meal kit services is, you essentially select the meals that you want to cook that week, and then they ship you the ingredients. It's for two people or four people, depending. And then it eliminates the question of what's for dinner.
00:48:15
Speaker
It was an Obama who always already had his suits picked out for him or something, so he didn't have to decide what to wear in the morning, and it just took away that extra calculation. That's what blue apron is for me. I don't have to think about what I'm cooking for dinner. It is so freeing.
00:48:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Last week, when I was talking to Leah Flickinger, she was... Hello Fresh was her thing. It's the same thing. It's like it takes the decision fatigue out of the way. I think Steve Jobs, that's why he wore black turtleneck and jeans. I don't have to think about it. It's just I'm wearing this. I can put a decision, a chiclet somewhere else like that. But yeah, anything that... I know my wife and I, every week,
00:49:00
Speaker
Uh, you know, we, we kind of like Fred over the grocery list and it's just like, what are we going to make this week? All right. Can we get two or three days out of that? And it's, but so I can totally see the value of just like, yep, I'm going to, we're just going to check a few boxes here and there you go. Yep. Yeah. I hope if they ever go out of business, God help me. I guess there's a low fresh and there's others. So I'll keep going to the next one.
00:49:23
Speaker
Sweet. And do you have anything you're excited about coming up in the next few months? I know these podcasts are more evergreen, but there are topical things worth mentioning. So do you have anything coming up you want to kind of promote?
00:49:36
Speaker
Well, 2022 is the year I go back to in-person speaking in full force. So I've got a whole bunch of events coming up that I'm very excited about being back in the room with writers. I'll be at Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs at the end of the month at the Writers Digest annual conference in New York City, Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, the Women's Fiction Association in Alexandria, and there's a whole list of my site. But yeah, that's what I'm really looking forward to.
00:50:05
Speaker
Awesome. Well, Jane, as always, what a pleasure to talk to you and just kind of just talk about what it is to be in this morass. So thanks for the time and coming on in short notice and talking shop. This was a lot of fun. My pleasure. Thank you, Brendan.
00:50:24
Speaker
Did we do it again? Did it happen again? We made it. We got to the end. Thanks to Jane. She came on the show at the last minute. It's amazing. It's great. Love talking to her.
00:50:36
Speaker
We don't talk enough, if you ask my opinion. This is my show, so my opinion matters. Yeah. Of late, I've had a real hard time pinning guests down. Like, I read their books and they've expressed interest in coming on the show, or if not interest, they have at least softly committed. And then they ghost. So what I've done is I've quote-unquote wasted a week of my time reading a book for a guest who won't be on the show.
00:51:05
Speaker
It takes me a week to read a book. I'm human, okay? It's endlessly frustrating for your humble podcast host, so we'll see what happens. We'll see what's in store. That's tension, baby. Subscribe to the show so you don't even have to think about it. We're everywhere seeing efforts, and if you have a moment, leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify.
00:51:28
Speaker
I enrolled in this advert cast thing through Libsyn, my podcast host, where brands can pitch to be on the podcast or they can just say like, oh, we're just going to buy ads on there for a few bucks. So I got a ping from of all things, Athletic Greens. It's weird. I'm surprised they reached out. It's obviously I'm not like an athletic. This isn't a performance based podcast, athletic performance based podcast.
00:51:55
Speaker
I've heard of them. They used to be on Tim Ferriss' podcast all the time. I'm thinking of accepting the ad read so I can make a little scratch, but it might disrupt the usual flow of things. But if nobody uses the promo code, that means that they're like, ah, this show's not worth it, and they're going to bail. Also, I might still take it, but the ad-free version of the show
00:52:19
Speaker
up on the patreon page so if you don't want ads if it becomes a more of a regular thing you can always consider joining that group of rogues and weirdos am i right guys and there you'll have it no no ads at all just an mp3 file with me and the guest and your usual weird rumblings and ranthings
00:52:43
Speaker
So even if you're a $2 patron ad free, $24 a year and you're helping the podcast for the price of a cliff bar, you can really help out this show. I mean, you do it by listening and downloading. That's a way of purchasing. That's a way of enrolling.
00:53:01
Speaker
But if you want to put eight quarters of the CNF into the CNF pod collection plate, you'll get massive shout outs. The most massive. So that's going to be it. That's it for now. All right. So party on CNFers. And if you can't do interviews. See ya.