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Bad Writers - Ep. 1
17 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to the Bad Writers podcast with Mari Dietz and Rae Ryan. We’re two writers talking about the ups and downs of self-publishing. Amidst the deluge of voices telling us what we should do to find success, we all fall short because the bar is too dang high. Feeling like a failure is the inevitable and unfortunate side effect.
In this first episode, we talk about our journey through traditional publishing to end up at self-publishing, our self-publishing origin story, if you will.
Go to the No Margins website to download our free character sheet: https://www.nomarginsagency.com/
Check out Mari's urban fantasy and dragon fantasy books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08KGPVWZF
Rae Ryan's website and blog: https://www.raeryanwrites.com/
Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Bad Writers Podcast, the candid chronicle of two authors navigating the perplexing world of self-publishing. Tune in to laugh, empathize, and find solidarity. Because why be good when you can be bad?
00:00:20
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Bad Writers Podcast. um My name is Ray Ryan. I also go by Katie. Ray Ryan is my pen name. And I'm Mari Dietz. No pen name. No pen name. ah yeah The thing about having the first name Katie is that it makes it pretty impossible to use that as a writer name and ever be found on the internet. Ever. So, hence the pen name Ray Ryan. But this is our little get to know us about us first episode of the podcast for bad writers.
Podcast Goals and Writing Challenges
00:00:52
Speaker
but We came up with the name bad writers because
00:00:56
Speaker
In the industry today, in the writing industry, there is everyone telling you what you should be doing and how you should be writing and what their magic tricks are.
00:01:07
Speaker
And most of the time we do not do them. And so, hence being bad writers. And so often podcasts about writing by industry professionals, which is super cool, but they sometimes can make us feel really bad at what we do. And sometimes their advice on like trying to get an agent is to jump back 30 years in time, hand write a letter and mail it to somebody. And I'm like, well, that's not,
00:01:36
Speaker
That's cool for you. But as someone trying to break into writing and into self-publishing, not super relevant. So we're here not as professionals to talk about writing as people trying to make it work, trying to make it a professional career. We're in the middle of it. So you don't feel so alone. And also try to hit on free resources because, again, everyone wants to sell you something We obviously want to sell you something, but mostly we just want to help people self-publish, especially marginalized and underserved people that struggle to get into the publishing industry in general. So did I miss anything, Mari, about what we're doing here? No, I think that's good. Okay. Mari is a teacher and I have a full-time job, which is another part of this is we are busy and lots of people are busy and also trying to make a
00:02:34
Speaker
you know, aside business writing or even just find time to write. Um, so yeah, we're working professionals. So as you know, schedules might be weird sometimes, depending on what we have going on. Cause like being a teacher is so easy and takes like no time and you have so much free time. So no problem. Tell them what
Balancing Professions and Writing
00:02:56
Speaker
you teach. Yeah. It's, uh,
00:02:58
Speaker
I teach English, um don't judge how I talk please, and I also teach creative writing and this year I'm going to have the joy of teaching during my plan period so I won't have any time to grade so that'll eat up a little bit my free time and you know and and with the teacher it comes with a lot of extra work and I know people are like well you get the summers off that's yeah that's and doesn't mean we don't have stuff we have to do during the summer so it's it's a bit of a struggle I mean though the one benefit I can say I don't have to struggle with is I don't have kids so i don't have to worry about
00:03:43
Speaker
taking care of them during the summer. But yeah, yeah, teaching takes a lot of time and mental energy. And you have four dogs. So let's not forget. You don't have kids. Yeah, we all have.
00:03:58
Speaker
with the human variety who've all had health issues this summer. So they've been a joy. They're all old, old geriatric dogs. But yeah, Katie, you also work full time too, though. So I do I work full time and I have a small business. So we're is like when it's there, I have to do it, which can be very time consuming and sometimes it's slower. I also don't have children. I call myself childless by choice, not trying to have kids, don't want kids, not like childless because I don't want to be. It's a different kind of thing. And I have one dog who's very sweet. She's a little pit bull mix. She's got the like baby landed seal look going on, always with the sad eyes like, oh, mother, please give me more.
Writing Projects and Genre Exploration
00:04:45
Speaker
She recently got stoned. That was our drama. We thought she'd had a seizure. it Turns out she must have eaten a gummy or something from somewhere. So she was apparently having a fun time while the rest of us were not. So yeah. Love love my dog. But you know.
00:05:04
Speaker
She's a little stoner. And yeah, so I work full time and I write, well, the book that I've just finished is a science fiction. I call it a queer science fiction. It's like if Firefly met Becky Chambers. So it's space opera, a lot of found family stuff. It's one of those everyone is queer universes. So you just get to exist as being a queer person versus it being like a big part of the plot.
00:05:32
Speaker
like a little love story in there but it's mostly about friendship and you know trying to trying to make it when you've got very little to go on so that's my little that's what I'm doing now but then I also really want to write and I'm starting to write a ah cozy not cozy what am I talking about it's a small town romance series again everybody's gay because that's what I write basically just relying through all my stuff is everybody's gay so yeah that is going to be my next right writing thing and I want to build it around one town. It has like many different romances, like like like lots of small town romances. And yeah, Mari, what do you write? Tell them.
00:06:16
Speaker
um i I couldn't decide what to write, so my first trilogy that I published kind of became a genre a mash of urban fantasy. I often compare it to Attack on Titan meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's like a walled city with magic, not in our world though. So I was like, it's not an urban fantasy, really. But it was definitely a tester of, you know, what to do and what not to do. I learned a lot while writing those three books. And then the last book I published was just a straight up
00:06:53
Speaker
fantasy academy and I found I really enjoyed writing about school and you'd think I'd want to get away with it but I found I like reading about learning about magic you know it's it's with dragons and I've always had a love for telepathic dragons ever since I read Annie McCaffrey's work and so I've always wanted to have some sort of telepathic dragons in my writing and so that was the first book of that and that's the only book out and I would eventually love to write uh some paranormal romance ah with plus size characters. That's on my bucket list to write. I'm kind of in the middle of deciding what to do with my life with that. Yeah. We didn't say the names of our books.
00:07:38
Speaker
yeah Find his cosmic castaways and galactic strays. It hasn't been published yet. I'm hoping to publish in October. Yeah, my my trilogy is the first one's Reaper's Order and then the first book of my other fantasy series, which I have right here.
00:07:57
Speaker
is Torment. It just so happened to be right next to me. And that is my Dragons of Tenhua series with the Dragon Academy. So if
No Margins Agency and Self-Publishing
00:08:08
Speaker
you like Academy, if you like Dragons, if you like Fourth Wing but you don't like too much romance, it's kind of along the same lines. Light on the romance, heavy on the drama and death. Nice. Exactly what I want. More drama and death.
00:08:23
Speaker
Just seems more realistic anyways. yeah And then together with a a friend of ours, Bishop, we have a ah small company called No Margins Agency. And our thing with that is we take photos of marginalized or underrepresented people because it is so very difficult to find good photos for both marketing and book covers.
00:08:44
Speaker
That's kind of the main thing, but then we're also adding in this kind of stuff, podcasts and some free resources. There's a free notion sheet that we have. It's a character sheet that I put together. I use it for my characters and it's really easy to copy and just make one after another. It's super helpful for things like I got editor notes back on my last manuscript and they were like, is her hair brown or blue? Because it's both in this book. And I was like, right, I should have just written it down the first time I mentioned her hair color.
00:09:20
Speaker
Cool, cool. So it's it's something that you can fill out to kind of flush out your characters, but also to have reminders of like, what do they look like? And, you know, for me, when I write characters kind of come together as I'm writing. And so, you know, they're not set in stone when I start. um So it's really nice to have something to go back to. And it's very visual. I'm a very visual person. So I have photos on there, like characters that what they could actually look like. So we we want to do more of these things because we're really here to serve marginalized and underrepresented people. And so often everyone's trying to sell you something. Most of this stuff is going to be free. The photos are the only thing that we are charging for. But all this advice and community is supposed to be available for everyone because we know how hard it is. We've been, I mean, Mari and I, how long have we been writing buddies? I can't even remember.
00:10:17
Speaker
before COVID. Yes. Right. It's been, oh yeah, definitely. It was way before. I've been trying to figure out what year because I was trying to pitch my book for four years and I met you the first year I was trying and then I decided to just go indie and that's been like five years.
00:10:43
Speaker
so we've been writing together in a writing group. We met we met at a a writing conference and we were... We'd signed up for it. I um don't even know how we ended up there, but the majority of the people who were present were like older and writing memoirs. ah Those of us who were a bit younger were like, I don't know if we're in the right place. That's how Mari and we had to attracted to each other. We're just like, Hey, what's up? What are you doing? Tell me about yourself. as We started the writing group and we'd been on this like journey together in which we both were interested in traditional publishing.
00:11:24
Speaker
And it over the course of many years decided that that was not for us. And we're just going to talk a little bit about our own experiences with why we decided to move to self-publishing.
00:11:37
Speaker
and then maybe some of the pros and cons about that. A lot of this is going to be about self-publishing because that's what we're doing and we're hoping that you'll go on this sort of journey with us so you can see what we're doing, where we're at, and then in real time see the struggles that we're having and we can all sort of learn together and just feel a little less alone because so often we're listening to people talking about their great success.
00:12:01
Speaker
and then the rest of us you don't hear from and that can be very alienating. So for me Mari decided to self-publish before I got there so it was it was easier for me because she'd done a bunch of it before me but I had written two books and I had pitched them to everyone who would take science fiction and gotten roundly rejected and the last book that I wrote I finished right before COVID and it's a sci-fi, it's a like pure space opera and I had been asking around and like I was on Twitter at the time which I'm not now because that is a
00:12:46
Speaker
terrible place to be but I was following all these agents because when you're trying to get agented you need to know everybody you need to be like understand what people are talking about who's what agents are doing and all the agents in publishing houses were like we're still accepting manuscripts send us your stuff you know publishing is still moving forward in 2020 and I was like all right you only get one chance with each editor to or sorry each agent to submit a book and if they say no you cannot go back so I was like all right this is my one chance so I sent it out to all the agents and again didn't you know I got like a little bit of interest but not much and then at the
00:13:30
Speaker
at the beginning I think of 2021 people do the like looking back at 2020 and I just saw agent after agent say oh if you got me to answer anything from you this year it must have been incredible because I didn't sign anybody or you know I saw another one that was like I love going to conferences it's a really fun time but I don't ever sign people there at a conference And I just became more and more disillusioned because like we go and spend money at conferences for the chance to pitch agents. And the assumption is that because you spend the time and money to pay for the conference that you're going to get like a leg up. You're going to have a better opportunity of getting an agent. And all I heard over and over again is that people don't sign.
00:14:18
Speaker
like rarely signed somebody at a conference. So I'd spent, I'd gone to many conferences spending thousands of dollars by the time it was said and done only to learn that like it's a fun vacation for many of these agents. They get to they get to network with other agents, they get to network with editors and that's what they really do when they're there. And they're, I've gotten brushed off a lot by agents because like it's kind of like having celebrity status. Everyone wants to give you the manuscript and you're like, I don't want that. I'm not here for this.
00:14:48
Speaker
So yeah, they're really just networking for themselves at these places. And I was like, we pay money for this. And, you know, Mari has her own story about, about that. It was really awful. And so eventually I was like, I want more control over this process. I don't want to like, I don't want all these things. The more I learned about traditional publishing and how it works. and I was like, this is really unappealing to me.
00:15:14
Speaker
And I don't need to be a New York Times bestseller. That's not really what I want. I want to be a full-time writer. So for me, it's about the business of writing and how I can become a full-time writer. And it doesn't mean I have to have my books at Barnes and Nobles, which you can still do.
00:15:31
Speaker
and like have it be a top whatever New York Times or publishing weekly, whatever, doesn't need to be that for me to be financially successful and be able to make it as a full-time writer. Haven't done it yet, but that was the thought process and why I moved to self-publishing. What about you, Mary? Um, I think my in writing, like I've always loved to write and wanted to tell stories. And I also had a little bit of, I don't know if it's disillusionment about what I wanted from traditional publishing. I liked the idea of it. And there's things that I know I can still do as any author. Like I wanted it going to conventions and being around other authors. That's like what I really wanted and to meet fans.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I thought traditional publishing was the best way. And I found out like, you know, I went to, you know, conference school superstars. I didn't know anything about publishing. So it actually helped me understand like pitching the agents and doing all those things and like, oh, I have to go to conferences to find these agents. And so that's what I started doing. That's where I first met Katie. And ah i I slowly realized that yes, it's it's more a matter of luck and maybe dating-esque type situations. And I'm just like, maybe I just make a terrible first impression. Maybe they don't want what I'm writing. And also there was a lack of transparency from the agents that I really wish was there at the beginning. And honestly, part of it's my fault because the very first person I talked to actually was, I felt very genuine. And she's like, you know, you're not going to be able to pitch your urban fantasy.
00:17:21
Speaker
but I bet you could make a lot of money as an indie author. And I was just like, oh, I don't know how to do that. So I just kept pitching. And like, she was very open
Agent Pitching Experiences and Networking
00:17:30
Speaker
to me. Like they weren't going to buy my urban fantasy. And I appreciate that now, but it's like why it'd take me four years to learn the lesson. And then there was lots of things where you research the agent, pick the agent, and they say they want certain things, but when you go pitch them, they're like, well, I don't want that. And that was also very discouraging. And, uh,
00:17:48
Speaker
and one person said he was looking for all types of novels, all types of fantasy, and I said I was how to read fantasy. He's like, well, what's that? I was like, Oh, well, okay. that and Yeah. And I think one of the nails in the coffin, I was on a, I went to a panel and they're all agents talking about the things they picked up and the things they're looking for. And that the moment I decided not to seek out agents anymore where one agent was telling the story about why she picked this, asked this author to submit because he sent a headshot and he was handsome. And so she asked him for his manuscript. He just sent a picture of himself. And I'm like, I don't want to play those games, you know, and I'm not saying all agents are like this.
00:18:37
Speaker
It was just after four years of pitching to agents. And again, I had, you know, they were always, you know, I've had polite experiences and I got, you know, kicked out of the room experiences. But at that moment I was like, this isn't a game to me, you know? And so I'm like, I'm done. Because if it depends on, you're gonna pick someone based on a headshot to submit to, like ask for their work, or it's based on luck,
00:19:05
Speaker
you know, or some other type of connection. I just, I don't trust myself a block. I and don't trust my social skills enough either. i Maybe I'm pleasant once you get to know me, but I don't think maybe I give a good first impression. So I was like, maybe it's better if I just do it by myself. And plus with traditional polishing, it just became this whole thing of them trying to get you in a contract that was very unbeneficial to the authors, like taking all the rights to all your things and giving you less and less. And and then you see all these mid-level authors who are having to lead traditional publishing because of how they're being mistreated and they're making a lot more money because they do have a name for themselves, but they're making more money as an indie because they can take them more of the pay and then they don't have to deal with the publisher taking their money and
00:20:00
Speaker
basically ignoring them because they're Middle East authors. You know, they're just paying attention to the big guys ignoring the Middle East. And if you're on the bottom, good luck. And so I was like, well, if it's based on luck and fate or whatever, and a dose of hard work, then I might as well just bet on myself. And that's why I decided to go into you and do it very not successfully so far.
00:20:28
Speaker
That's why we're here. At least whatever money I earn, it's my money and I still have all the rights to all my... I probably can't swear, all my stuff. I think talking about agents is helpful because you know, depending on where you're at, dear listener, coming to this podcast, you maybe are where we're at, or you're maybe sooner in this process in dealing with agents. I want to say that like, it's not agents fault, like it's not, they're in a precarious situation themselves. Many people who are agents, that is not their only job. It doesn't pay particularly well. You start with nothing and you have to build up a list. And as your list gets more popular than
00:21:09
Speaker
you can sign on more agents and you can get but your own better deal you know so agents are like work really hard for very little especially early on and they need people to submit. They don't have a job if people are not submitting. However, they know what they're looking for and they will tell people to submit stuff that maybe they're not really interested in because they don't want to discourage people and make them stop because they do need people to submit but they get hundreds depending on how big they are they get hundreds a month
00:21:45
Speaker
And sometimes they have someone else looking through them and sometimes they look through themselves. And you send a very brief email that has like basically the back cover copy on there describing yeah who you are, basics of the book.
00:21:58
Speaker
and then like a little bit about yourself and you send it to them that's the that's it that's your one shot that you shot to somebody and hopefully you caught them at the right time in the right mood looking for the right thing because yeah what you'll see with like what was oh yeah it's like a lottery you just have to get like really lucky because on top of that People will say, well, find agents by looking for an agent who sells what you're writing. Now, agent in order to stay, you know, to have a constant source of income, they will diversify their list. So they'll usually be like, oh, I do YA, but I do like romance and I do sci-fi and I do fantasy. And I do, you know, they'll like, they pick multiple genres in which hypothetically the author is not overlapping with themselves.
00:22:46
Speaker
so they will kind of pick different genres. And if they're repping your genre, they might already have someone in that spot. So yeah, they rep someone who does like queer sci-fi, but they've already filled that quota. So that becomes more awkward. They're looking, they might have certain kinds of asks, but at the same time, just because they're repping something you do does not mean they have an open spot for what you do. And for sci-fi,
00:23:13
Speaker
Like I would look and be like, okay, you know, there's a ah great website called query tracker. It's fantastic to use. And it would, you know, you can pull up everyone who reps sci-fi and then you start looking and and people will say kind of like what they what they like. So they'll be like, for me, I kept seeing people say I rep sci-fi like station 11. Station 11 is like a post-apocalyptic near future on earth situation. Nothing like a space opera. There's no earth in my space opera anymore. So you have to dig deeper and then you come to realize that people who actually rep like hard sci-fi or traditional sci-fi and like the off earth experience is is is much smaller. It's a much smaller pool.
00:23:59
Speaker
of people so that's something that it's good to know and understand that as as much as there might be a hundreds of people there's probably only gonna be so many that specifically rep what you do unless you do something that's more general like just y YA super general lots of people cover it lots of agents like YA agents are readers and they have to read your book so many times they have to love it or else they're gonna bang their head against a wall so they have to love what you're writing Lots of agents like YA. We end up with a lot of YA for that reason. Do you have any thoughts on this, Marie? Well, and like earlier I said, it's like dating.
00:24:38
Speaker
you actually have a better chance of getting the agent by connecting with them at the bar than by pitching to them. And again, like, uh, you know, like a lot of the stories I hear of people who get an agent is like, well, oh, we bonded because we both were sick at the conference and like, Oh, we liked the same things. and It was a lot. And again, like I very rarely hear stories about them accepting something from a pitch.
00:25:05
Speaker
And if they do, it's usually because the person has connected to them previously and knows them a little bit more. Like again, the one agent I mentioned who gave me the bicycle, Andy, like whenever I pitched something to her, she would they would take it and look at it and actually would give me a nice personal rejection. But also I knew that person too. is It's more about, it's always gonna be about networking.
00:25:31
Speaker
And it's always going to be a little awkward because if you're an introvert, which most writers are, some are extroverts, um you're going to have to try to get to know this person really quickly and connect. Because again, if you work with this person, you want to like them and they want to like you. And there has to be some sort of connection because you want this person to work for you and you want to work for them. And so there has to be a connection. And if you don't have that, it's hard to get one.
00:26:01
Speaker
it's It is really just like dating, unfortunately. Sounds blind dating. Worse than Tinder. Like I said, like if you meet the same agent in multiple conferences, you probably have a higher shot with that agent, honestly. But it's multiple conferences. It's not just one. Right. But please, please contradict and tell me your stories of meeting someone one time and getting signed. Because yes I love that. That's awesome.
00:26:26
Speaker
for Tell us your story. If you have a better story, please tell us. because aren't experiencerian And if you're an extrovert, it doesn't count. good just We love you because we need you because you're the only reason that conferences that we don't just sit around reading books and not talking to each other. I always think conferences are really funny because A, a bunch of us are like introverted, but we paid money to be there. And the moment that we're like, okay,
00:26:56
Speaker
we we got let's let's go i paid money i'm ready and it's so funny and so awkward because it's like we're all like that and there'll be a little group of people talking and then you're just like and then i'm going to get into the group hello and and you're just like i and stand there you just stand there and try to like interject and like pretend that you know how to be extroverted, but I think because everyone knows how weird it is and that we're all weird, that we're like, okay, that's a normal amount of strange. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's- We do okay. We do okay. We do okay. We're all weird together. We're weird together. It's
Importance of Writing Communities
00:27:37
Speaker
so true. But you know, it's the one place where someone might ask you about your book and actually care about
00:27:44
Speaker
how interested you are and like all the work and effort you've put into it. And I'd say that, you know, as much as we tended to go for networking with agents and editors, we really networked with each other as writers. And that was the yeah the biggest benefit. And that's the thing that I find hard because not everyone can do that. A, you might not live in a place where there are conferences, you know, conferences are in big cities.
00:28:09
Speaker
And some of them are just there to make money. I was doing one for a while. I was all online, but you're basically paying for pitches. And I was like, this person is making money by charging us to pitch to these people. you know like It's sort of figuring out what is just there to like make money for the organizer and what is like an established conference that has you know is there to help you either with craft or with business and I think for Mari and I I don't speak for you but a lot of times now we go just to meet other writers we maybe don't even go to some of the talks and things like that because we've kind of heard it all before and we also want to make connections with other people and they're definitely ones that are like
00:28:59
Speaker
you know, things we go and talk to go to that we learn a lot about. But some of them, it just makes more sense to sit and talk to a writer and connect with them because that's what you hear about places you should go and sites that you should check out and like free resources and just things that are going on within the industry. So I feel like conferences are still worth it for that reason. If you're there to network and you kind of meet your people,
00:29:26
Speaker
But again, it can be hard. There are online ones. It's so, it's so hard. Like going to an online conference and like leading your video on when all I want to do is be like, no, no face, no face. I don't know what to do with my face. Like it's, I kind of got to be there in person. I mean, I guess my recommendation for this is like, we but essentially picked one that we go to and that's the one that we go to. We don't go to other ones. We just like once a year, we go to the ones where our people are and we, you know,
00:29:56
Speaker
That's our one time where we really get to meet a bunch of people who are into the same things we're into. and
Future Projects and Editing Challenges
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I think if they're if you're considering it and you want to network, find a good conference, find other writers beforehand and ask them and see who's going to be there. And then it might be worth it to go and you can also like split hotel costs and things like that and rental cars and all of that. The one that we go to is called Superstars. It's in Colorado Springs, which which is a drive for both of us.
00:30:27
Speaker
but but worth it because we've met a lot of really great people there and it's more about the business of of writing which is kind of what we're doing and just to you know the about us portion of this is that we're in the process of trying to become you know independent writers and full-time writers and we're in the thick of it so we're going to talk a bit about what what are we working on now and what are our goals for the near future so within the next week or within like the next year depending on what we're working on so i'm just gonna talk a little bit about where i'm at with my book and what i intend to do for the next week
00:31:09
Speaker
So the book that I finished, The Cosmic Castaways and Galactic Strays, I just got the edits back from the line editor. I previously sent it to a developmental editor, which is something you can and don't you you don't have to get a developmental editor. That's what beta readers are also great for. I found it very difficult to find beta readers for a queer sci-fi. So I put the money in for the... devil bitoo but
00:31:41
Speaker
but bo the developmental editor. And he was great. It was very helpful. I'm not the best at plotting. I get really, I make everything complicated when it doesn't need to be complicated. I make it complicated. And so it had been through a developmental editor. Now it went through the line edits. First comments off the top, Mari. It was great. I used the word looking a lot apparently. That wasn't one that I was aware of that I was using. So I got to go back and I just looked. I was gazing. We're gazing. I'm like, let's find other words. Oh yeah, that's another one too. Gazed. We can gaze at it. I'm just past tense. So I was like, okay. And then there.
00:32:29
Speaker
the other note which I was like yeah that makes sense was that the timeline was all messed up and she was like look at like when you say something happens for how long it happens and how long they're waiting I'm like that makes sense because I changed all of the events at one point and like moved around tractors and so now the timing is all off I should just not have any time. Just no time. it's like Things happened and then other things happened after that with no time. This cycle, next cycle, today, tomorrow, yesterday? No, it's all in a void. So yeah, those were the major overall feedback about like some of the problems with it was definitely timeline stuff. And then she was like, read it again and see what your timing is like. I'm like, you want me to read my book?
00:33:21
Speaker
again, but it's so many times. many times. I'm so tired. At least it's been a while since I've read it. So I'll like make all her changes for grammatical stuff and then I'll read it again and then format it. um So I need to this next week, my intention is to do all the edits that the editor sent me to do and make any major changes and start reading it again.
00:33:54
Speaker
Meh, and then it will need to go for this final like copy edit to make sure there's no major issues That the first edit that was made was I for some reason got rid of the R in world So it was just world I was like, how did I misspell the word world? Feels like that was an accidental backspace at some point and then the other thing I've been doing is as I'm getting ready to publish is trying to put together, is trying to do social media, do social media so that I'm not just like publishing a book and then opening an account and being like, hey guys, you should read my book. So I have my Instagram set up, I have my TikTok. I am currently staying in my parents' basement because we're redoing our bathroom and it's been super hard for me to keep up with the TikTok content.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's just something about not being in your space and like having to set stuff up when your parents are like hard walking on the floor upstairs and just in general feeling out of out of sorts. I've read a bunch of books that I can talk about on my TikTok but I just haven't really done it so I need to get back to doing that. My goal is to keep try to keep up with the social media stuff. It's unrealistic for me to do it daily That'll get, we'll talk about how I'm a bad writer at the end and that's one of the reasons not doing what they say I should do. I'm just trying to do it whenever something strikes me and I think about it, put a video, put up a little something on Instagram and TikTok just to be present and look like a real person when I try to go out and tell people that they should read my book. So that sets my goals for this next week. What about you Mari?
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah,
Motivation and Writing Expectations
00:35:43
Speaker
i I haven't written in a long time. I recently published a book that I actually wrote back in 2020 during NaNoWriMo. And that was one book that I was also trying to get traditionally published but I decided not to do that anymore and so i've I've been having problems just having motivation to write so I've been trying to feel motivated to write and the hardest thing is you keep telling yourself if you love something you make time for it but also sometimes you just don't have the mental capacity to do anything after the day is over. And that's been the hardest thing. And that's one of the hardest things about being a teacher and a writer is I don't have any mental energy to create anything because I'm done after the day. And this summer has also had its multiple struggles where I've just, I just couldn't sit and stare at my computer because then I'd be thinking about all the terrible things in life. So, um you know, my journey will be more of trying to
00:36:51
Speaker
find the motivation and give back to writing. And, you know, I always hope that it happens soon. I always hope to give back to it because I always remember that I am happiest when I am writing despite my inability for marketing and all those other things. I do just want to write. And it's hard to sometimes remember that. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm trying to work on ongoing.
00:37:21
Speaker
It's very real, you know, I think we both are people that struggle with, you know, a certain level of mental illness and like depression and things like that and it can be hard to cut yourself a break because we're our own like worst enemy with that. We always hold ourselves to a higher standard and then like the activation energy becomes that much more to start because the thing that people always say and this is our bad writer segment why we're bad how we're not doing and when I say bad writers we're talking about how we're not doing what people say we should do and the way that like it causes a lot of guilt it's hard to write when you feel guilty that you're not doing it right you're not doing it the way other people say you should you've taken all the classes and like you know
00:38:11
Speaker
then you feel like you're bad, you'rere like you're not any good, like you're a bad writer because you aren't as successful as this other person who's showing themselves off to be successful, whether they are or not is kind of irrelevant. All that matters is how it makes you feel and it makes us feel that we aren't very good at this and that can make it even harder to just sit down and write, which is the thing we truly love to do.
00:38:33
Speaker
So I think you know the whole point behind Bad Writer is to try to just like accept that like we are not gonna be able to mimic someone else's success in exactly the way that they have done it because they are a different person and different things work for different people. And, you know, technically this week I'm a bad writer because I didn't post on Instagram or TikTok at all, let alone every day because that's what they say we should do. I'm never going to post every day. So that makes me a bad writer.
00:39:11
Speaker
bad writer this week because I still can't decide which thing I'm more excited about book two or the paranormal romance I want to write and because again you're supposed to just pick one thing and stick to it and you know it's not that I don't agree with it I agree with it but I I'm trying to find something that I can finish and it's it's nothing I want to do everything and also nothing so yeah Yeah it's also the one that you have the like interest in keeping going too because you're not loving the story. This book too has 10,000 words done and the romance has 7,000 words done so. So they're kind of in the same area. Oh they're neck and neck.
00:40:03
Speaker
Well, thanks for
Listener Participation and Conclusion
00:40:04
Speaker
joining us on our first podcast. We did our best. but Let us know your experiences because we would like to eventually share some of your fun stories that you can laugh about later, like, you know, maybe pitching your stuff or, you know, things that you did that you messed up on. And again, just as ah and then we can, you know, share them here and you can include your name or not if you want to.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's just kind of a fun thing. And you know, tell us why you're a bad writer as well. Yeah, tell us why you're a bad writer. Join