Episode 15: What if I don't write to market?

Episode Description:

In this thought-provoking episode of What If? For Authors, Claire Taylor explores the question, What if I don't write to market? Claire deconstructs the notion of market trends, breaking down how many assumptions about what sells are actually based on correlations rather than causations. She also addresses the fears and misconceptions many authors have about the necessity of writing to market for financial success.

Key Takeaways:

• Defining "Writing to Market": Claire explores what writing to market actually means, challenging the idea that there is one clear definition of "the market" for any genre. She explains how commonalities between bestselling books don’t necessarily define the market, and that following trends doesn’t guarantee success.

• Correlation vs. Causation: Claire discusses the importance of understanding the difference between correlation and causation when it comes to identifying what makes a book successful. Authors often mistake trends as being the cause of success when they might simply be coincidental.

• Meeting Reader Expectations: While writing to market isn’t a guarantee of sales, meeting reader expectations in your genre is crucial. Claire talks about the importance of understanding the psychological appeal of tropes and delivering on the promises that your genre sets up for readers.

• Flexibility and Creativity: Writing to market doesn’t mean you have to abandon your creative impulses. Claire encourages authors to find a balance between writing the stories they want to write and making them marketable. Sometimes adding a few familiar genre markers can help orient readers without compromising your unique vision.

• Sitting with Uncertainty: Claire acknowledges that some books and series may not take off, despite an author's best efforts. She encourages listeners to accept the uncertainty of the publishing industry and to keep creating in a way that aligns with their true vision.

Why Listen? If you’ve ever wondered whether writing to market is the key to success, this episode will provide clarity and challenge some of the common assumptions in the industry. Claire offers a nuanced perspective on the balance between creative integrity and marketability, helping authors navigate the complex world of genre trends and reader expectations.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or topic you’d like Claire to explore? Send an email to contact@ffs.media.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain. Okay.

So today's topic feels long overdue. We're only at episode 15, but it always already, it feels overdue. So, , I would guess that's because it's one of the most frequently discussed topics in the industry. Today we're talking about writing to market. That's right. Today's question we're going to explore is, what if I don't write to market? Oh God, I have so much to say on this topic. So, so much. I'm really going to have to narrow it down. So I don't spend all day talking your ear off about this.

So I may not hit all of the points that I want to hit, but I'm going to go straight for the [00:01:00] heart of it. I think let's, let's get into asking the questions that not a lot of people are actually asking about this whole right to market thing. So if you're like, what if I don't write to market? What if I don't know what that means?

Oh my gosh. Will I ever have a career? I mean, spoiler alert. The answer is yes. That's fine. Right. That's kind of the point of this show. Um, but let's start with, , what the hell it even means to write to market. There are all kinds of misconceptions about what writing to market means, and we each bring a lot of connotation to the word market.

So it might be useful to look closer at what we're bringing to the conversation that doesn't necessarily exist in it organically. I want to be clear. First of all, Nobody really knows what the market is. Okay. There's never a clear definition. Just books that are selling? Like, what does that even mean? So let's take, for example, the genre of cozy mysteries and let's, , just absolutely tear this apart.

Okay. [00:02:00] So in the most general sense, cozy mysteries are clean mysteries with a sleuth solving some sort of crime. In the most general sense, you may look at what's selling and contemporary cozy mysteries and see that. Most of the books on the bestseller list have these things in common, female sleuths, small towns.

Maybe they're set in England. Does that mean that I've just defined the market? I don't think so. So commonalities between best selling books doesn't mean that the books with those commonalities will become best selling. Or that a book even needs to have those commonalities to be a best selling cozy mystery.

Classic red herring. That being said, if a reader loves cozy mysteries and has started to associate certain elements of them, then With books they enjoy reading, then the presence of those elements may subconsciously draw this particular reader in. And [00:03:00] yet, if you're an indie author, the market you want to look at is the indie market.

And if you're a trad published author, then you want to look at what's selling for trad publishers because that's probably what they'll pick up. And those two categories are almost always different. So let's go even more granular. We're going to deconstruct even more. Let's go even more granular here.

Not just cozy mysteries, but let's look at paranormal cozy mysteries. A sub genre of cozy mystery. So you've probably heard that witches Sell more books than psychics. And this is if you've done any, any research on what is selling in paranormal cozy mystery, which many, many people have, because the word really got around a few years ago that like, Oh, you can just publish one of these and make bank, um, which is not true.

You have to do other things and you may still not , make bank. But, , if you have done the research, you probably have heard that witches sell more books than psychics as you know, main characters. Does that mean That writing to market in a paranormal cozy space means [00:04:00] writing witches and not psychics?

I think that's the question to ask. We're trained to believe so, right? But what if you write psychics and make them a kind of witch? Ooh, now we're getting into some gray area. And that's what I did with my paranormal cozy, uh, series. And that series sells better than a lot of what you would call witch cozies.

And it's a psychic. I actually now have three series under that pen name that have psychic witches, sneaky sneaky, um, as the main characters. So what does that even mean? That it seems like that shouldn't be right. If we follow the logic of writing to market means writing main characters that are witches.

And if you don't write to market, you won't make money. I can tell you this series has. Done well. Okay, so meanwhile, there's also a historical cozy subgenre too. Historical when? The 1920s? The 1980s? Yeah, sorry, that's historical, y'all. [00:05:00] The 1860s? And historical where? The U. S., England, India. So you may look and see some commonalities around the bestsellers of female sleuths in the U.

S. in the 1920s, right? Maybe that's , what a lot of the top sellers in historical cozy have in common. But does that mean that you have to check those boxes to be writing to the market of historical cozies? I don't know. I don't know. And if paranormal cozies sell more on the whole than contemporary or historical cozies, let's just say, uh, does that mean that if you want to write to market in cozy mystery, you must write paranormal cozies about a female witch sleuth?

Okay. You get where I'm going. Am I destabilizing your ideas about what the market even means enough here? Can I, can I give it a rest? Actually, no, I can't. Let's keep going. So, all of that being said, I'm not saying that you should throw out the idea. Some tropes [00:06:00] and characters may help you sell books more easily than others in general.

For instance, I've only seen authors struggle to sell paranormal cozies that star mermaids. Right? So that doesn't mean that there will never be a breakout success with a mermaid sleuth. It just means that there's some appeal about mermaids isn't catching the subconscious attention of readers when they look for their next book.

At least not right now. I don't know what it is. Do we not like fins? Do we not like water? Is it just not something that we think about? Are a lot of people scared of swimming? I don't know. I don't know what it is. Is it just that it's not a witch? And people are looking for witches, and psychics, and witches.

To be honest though, we're only ever one major box office hit away from all the books that are a little like that box office hit suddenly selling. Right? It's only going to take one Mermaid sleuth hitting the box office and doing well [00:07:00] before all of the cozy authors who have written mermaids are going to be like, cha ching.

Um, so I mean, think about what Harry Potter and the Magicians did for the Magic Academy genre. Or what Fifty Shades did for the Grumpy Boss subgenre and like the alpha holes and that sort of thing. It sort of opened the public's mind to the fact that this thing exists and they kind of like it. So then they're going to go look for more.

So what we're really doing when we browse bestsellers in a genre we want to write in, and we find the commonalities between those books that are bestselling, what we're doing is to gather up a whole lot of correlations and hope that a few of them turn out to also be causations. Sometimes they do, most of the times they don't.

It's very uncomfortable for some people to hear what I just said. Writing to market often looks like a bad idea. Gathering up as many correlations as possible and just hoping to [00:08:00] God or whoever, the universe, Flying Spaghetti Monster, that a few of them are causations for the success of those books. So the main reason I see that authors and people subconsciously jump from correlations to causations without the logic actually following, um, and we know those two things aren't the same thing, right?

It's because assuming it's a causation creates a sense of control for us. When things are simply correlations, we don't feel the same power rush of thinking, then if I just do X, I can expect Y to happen. That same power rush, which is what we get when we believe we're working with a causation.

We don't get that with correlations. So we will very subtly assume or function upon the belief that the are causations because it gives us more sense of power over the world. So [00:09:00] this is why authors can write a book perfectly quote unquote to market and it doesn't sell. The things you thought were causations were actually just correlations that you were picking up on.

So maybe the top selling books all have three main features in common. But those are just correlations. And the reason why those particular books are selling us that they're published by Penguin Random House, and they have a massive marketing budget behind them, right? Maybe that's the actual causation.

Penguin maybe just happens to like to publish books with those three main features in them. And that got you thinking that the three main features were the reason for the rankings and not all that big publisher money. Are those books profitable just because they're bestsellers? We don't know.

Okay, I know I'm really taking away some people's toys with that deconstruction, but let's look at how the confusion between correlation and causation leads to some ideas about writing to market that aren't necessarily true. [00:10:00] So you may think if I write to market, I can't write what I want to write. You may think if I write to market, I'll make more money.

You may think the only way to make money is to write to market. You may say the reason I'm not making money is because I'm not writing to market. And you may say writing to market means blending in with every other book in the genre. So false down the list. If you've been feeling that resistance to writing to market or writing to market, And if you're not writing to it, then there you go.

Okay. Now there is something to be said for meeting reader expectations. Not many authors are particularly talented at sussing out what those expectations really are deep down though. And even fewer are aware that they're missing the target completely. Take for example, grumpy sunshine romances. So trope where one partner, usually the man in hetero [00:11:00] couples, is.

Grumpy. Then he meets the ray of sunshine, usually the woman in hetero couples. Okay. So let's say an author recognizes that there's a so called market for this term. , Grumpy Sunshine, meaning a lot of readers seem interested in books that have this as the central trope. As I mentioned before, it could be a matter of maybe one author who's very popular, writes a lot of these and is skewing the market because her readers would read anything she wrote.

But let's just say that Grumpy Sunshine is something a lot of readers are proven to be clamoring for. That doesn't mean that this author, this hypothetical author, really understands who Why? What is the psychology behind this appeal? If you jump into a space like this and you don't understand the underlying psychological appeal of the trope or the subgenre, it's entirely possible to write a grumpy sunshine pairing that does not, in fact, Satisfy the reader's desire.

So what is it that has these readers by the throat [00:12:00] metaphorically? I have to specify that with romance. Uh, what like, is it watching the grumpy man slowly start to soften? Is that the appeal? Is it the friction between the man and the sunshiny woman? Do readers like it when she annoys him? Do they like it when he falls for her instantly and is fighting it?

Is it both? What is at the heart of this? And of course you knew this was coming. Uh, what Enneagram types are they actually hungry to see in this dynamic? Is there a preference? Do they like more of the grumpy type 8 who is kind of a bully when he's grumpy? Or more of the one who has high standards for everyone and is grumpy because he's taken on too much responsibility for everyone?

Or maybe a grumpy 5 who thinks everyone is acting irrationally and just wants to be kind of left alone to do what he needs to do. Which flavor of appeal is there? And are we looking at a sunshiny Enneagram 7 who just wants to have [00:13:00] fun, or a 2 who always wants to care and nurture those around her? Or maybe even a 3 who can, you know, Never be held down and feels like there's always a good path forward.

I belabored this point to show you that you can quote, unquote, write to market and still fail to meet the reader expectations. And also like readers are notoriously bad at explaining the appeal of the thing to them. They have no reason to know the language to describe the appeal. They just know what they like, and that's fine.

That's their job to just know what they like. However, if you market something as a rom com, um, And the couple doesn't end up together at the end. You're really steppin in it. And if you write a cozy mystery and forget to add in a mystery, or fail to solve the mystery by the end of it, which I have seen happen, you're also steppin in it.

So there are some bendable rules, but pretty firm rules for each genre insofar as what makes it [00:14:00] that genre, and not some other genre. So undermine these rules. At your own risk. This is really where I start to put my foot down with authors I work with on story. If you want a lot of readers mad at you, like if you have an expensive and time consuming punishment kink, then by all means, write a romance without a happily ever after or a happily for now ending.

Go for it. If that's a story you absolutely must write though, a lot of romance, but they don't end up together, they decide it's better not to, uh, then maybe Maybe don't market it as romance. Unless you have that punishment kink, then go for it. But instead consider whether it would maybe fit into literary fiction or women's fiction instead.

And I'm not telling you to write a different story. I'm telling you once the story is written, Decide the best way to convey it to the readers so that you are meeting their expectations, so that what they expect to find when they [00:15:00] open the cover and look at that first page is what they get. So if you have a story that comes to you and doesn't quite fit into any of the genres you know about, that's okay.

No need to panic here. So there might be an established genre for it that you just don't know about yet. Or maybe you can create your own. So paranormal women's fiction authors did this very intentionally through a group effort, right? And then there's romanticy as a recently sort of branded genre that's entered the parlance.

Everyone knows romanticy now. Well, readers of romanticy know romanticy. Um, and who knew fairy smut would be this big 10 years ago, right? So new genres do occasionally occur. And sometimes if you really want to put the effort into it, you can, you can make it happen. So you can write the story how it wants to be written.

But you're gonna want to be extra savvy when it comes to marketing, if you just write the story exactly as it comes out, right? And you don't, you just let it flow and you don't think about any of these [00:16:00] marketing concerns. When it comes to marketing, you're going to have to be extra savvy.

So don't market your book as something it's not, and if you find that you can't put words to what it is that you wrote, not even like a clear genre mashup comparison, then you're just going to learn real quick why people say stick to a genre, right? You're going to learn the lesson.

They're trying to save you the frustration of trying to explain your book a million times over without having a clear shared definition to start with.

So there is the option. A little bit of compromise to be had here that will save you the frustration in the long run of trying to explain what your book is. Cause you have to explain it to people before they even will consider buying it. So you could draft the book the way you want to draft it, then try to describe it.

Try to describe it as if you're telling the person who's meant to read it, okay? If you can't really describe it or if that description goes on and on and on, then [00:17:00] maybe it's time. To add some more familiar genre markers that won't affect the underlying message and feeling of the story, but will make your life easier by helping convey to the right readers what they can expect between the covers.

And yes, this is a recommendation that I usually find myself making to type fours, the individualists. If you're a type four, I urge you to remember that the most creative people are those who can be creative within some constraints. That takes the most creativity. Now, if you're someone who's here just to make as much money as you can with each book, I want to warn you that you may run out of steam soon.

And that's because some books will never hit. They won't. Can you take that? Can you sit with not knowing why, instead of assigning made up reasons that lead you down the wrong path? So some books, some series, simply will not take off like others, and that goes back to the correlation [00:18:00] causation trap. What you thought was causation was actually correlation, and then sometimes there's just no clear explanation.

For why it didn't hit, why it didn't take off. There are usually too many factors at play in publishing to isolate a single one with any sort of warranted confidence.

So, if you're wondering, what if I don't write to market, and this is causing you some level of anxiety, some level of angst, actually, I heard it pronounced angst recently, and it sounds, that sounds nice in Germanic, angst, , whatever. I'm from Texas, angst, it's angst, ain't it? Anyway, I don't know how I got here.

If you're wondering, what if I don't write to market, my answer is this. What market? What market? What is your definition of a market based on? How can you be sure you're not mistaking correlation with causation when you are defining that market? So [00:19:00] writing to quote unquote market is also no guarantee of money anyway.

As long as you can clearly explain what your book delivers to the audience who will enjoy it, you're on a pretty smart path. So just keep doing that. And if you find that your book is too hard to explain to people through, like, the visual image of a cover or a short headline and sales page, then it might be time to get some help on those things, including possibly tweaking the book itself to hit more familiar, Character plot theme and genre signposts for readers so that they have something to hold on to as they dive into your unique story.

Just a little bit of familiarity can go a long way towards orienting the reader and letting them know what they're in for. So writing to market, whatever that means, doesn't guarantee sales. And writing what you want to write doesn't doom your career. So you might as well start by writing something true and build and adjust from [00:20:00] there, right? That's what revisions are for. That's what beta reads and editor feedback are for. Then do that over and over and over again. Until someday you have a catalog that you're really proud to call your own.

So that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. Um, I do offer story consulting services for authors. I don't talk about it much, uh, because I'm doing all this other career stuff, but if there's one thing I'm really good at in this life. It's that. It's the story consulting. Um, I was an editor for years.

I studied this stuff in college and I just kind of have a knack for assessing where things are falling apart in your plot and character development. So anyway, I call it the story alignment and if you want to read about it, You can go to storyalignment.com and read more or schedule some time with me. I would love to chat more about your story and help you kind of figure out what is the market, where am I trying to hit market, where, [00:21:00] what's causation correlation?

You know, I can help you guess on that. And then really, like, what genre is my story? What is this missing that readers will expect from a story that I market this way? All of those things we can talk about in a story alignment. So. I hope you'll come see me. Anyway, I'm Claire Taylor, and this has been another episode of the What If For Authors podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Episode 14: What if I hate writing emails?

Episode Description:

In this episode of What If? For Authors, Claire Taylor dives into a topic that many authors struggle with: email. Claire explores the underlying reasons why authors might feel dread about managing email lists and responding to reader messages, and she offers practical advice to make the process less stressful. Whether it's removing the "shoulds" around email, creating a schedule that works for your energy, or hiring an assistant to handle the influx of messages, Claire encourages listeners to find their own path to a healthier email relationship.

Key Takeaways:

• Removing the "Shoulds": Many authors feel weighed down by preconceived notions of how often they "should" email their readers. Claire emphasizes that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach and that it’s okay to do what works for you.

• Email as a Creative Outlet: Claire encourages authors to see email as just another form of writing, which can be fun and creative when the content feels right. There are no rules—whether it’s memes, stories, or personal anecdotes, email can reflect who you are as an author.

• Boundaries with Reader Emails: Responding to every reader email isn’t necessary, and it’s important to set boundaries that protect your time and energy. Claire explores how different Enneagram types might feel pressure to respond and offers advice on how to manage that.

• Consider Outsourcing: If email truly feels overwhelming, outsourcing to a virtual assistant can be a great option. Claire shares her own experience of hiring help to handle emotionally taxing emails and encourages others to do the same if needed.

• Email Lists as a Foundation: Building an email list is still one of the wisest things authors can do for long-term success, providing a direct line to readers that isn’t dependent on social media algorithms or platforms.

Why Listen? If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by managing your email list or responding to readers, this episode is for you. Claire offers both practical advice and mindset shifts to help you develop a healthier, more sustainable relationship with email. Whether you need to set new boundaries, rethink your email strategy, or hire help, this episode provides actionable steps to make email a tool that works for you, not against you.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or topic you’d like Claire to explore? Send an email to contact@ffs.media. Claire is always open to hearing from her listeners and offering support.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain.

I've been thinking lately about how the popularity of the Enneagram has been increasing in the author world, and I love that. It's becoming a language that we all use together. But as with any language, it can be used to support and encourage or to cut down and diminish. I think people mostly mean well when they're using it.

Ah, but it can still come off as diminishing someone sometimes. So, just a reminder today, that we probably don't want to taint a person's experience with this tool by using it To excuse our maladaptive behavior. Like I probably don't want to be going around saying as a one, I see everything that's wrong with you and here's the list or whatever.

[00:01:00] That would sort of be weaponizing it. We probably don't want to roll our eyes at someone and say, Ugh, you're such a four. You know, that sort of thing. I have no problem with laughing together when our type becomes super apparent. That's one of the gifts of this work. You get to see how silly some of the patterns we develop are.

But laughing together on a foundation of mutual respect and trust is different from using someone's type as a diss, right? Okay. So that's just my little, little PSA today. I don't know. I felt compelled to speak on it. So we all need reminders and I'm not excluding myself from that, especially when we're dealing with an industry that conducts most of its networking online.

I see some lovely people say some pretty horrible things on social media. I noticed the impulse in myself too. And I've certainly said things over the years on social media that I didn't really think through. We all do, but the great thing is that we can do better as we gain more [00:02:00] awareness. So that's pretty cool.

Okay. So today's episode asks a very important question. What if I hate writing emails? Girl, same. Okay. So I don't hate it, but it does become overwhelming for me and it's absolutely not my favorite thing to write emails. I know a lot of authors feel conflicted about what to do if they dread everything related to their inbox.

Can they still have a successful author career? Do they have to build an email list of readers if they really, really, really don't want to? When are they supposed to respond to those draining reader emails that, you know,

The email relationships we create as authors are so weird and not normal. Um, for instance, I had to tell one of my fiction lists about my dog's death, which means that they got [00:03:00] one email in their inbox about something sad. And I kept it to the facts too. She was here. It's time to say goodbye. Now I'm behind on the timeline I told you about for this book.

So they got one email in their inbox with this news, and I certainly didn't include a picture of her. I wasn't trying to make anyone sad. What did I get back? I got like dozens and dozens of email replies from readers who not only told me about their dog's passing, but sent a picture of the dog who had passed.

Oh, so it was coming from a good and pure place from them. I absolutely believe that. And I don't begrudge anyone wanting to share, right? I get that. But who boy, oh boy, that was a lot. It was too much actually for me at the time. I probably should have known better. Either way, that's not a normal dynamic that we encounter outside of public life.

Um, being a public figure, that's what you are when you're an [00:04:00] author. So I, like, I could totally sit with a friend and tell them about losing my dog. And then they tell me about losing their dog. And I would have plenty of compassion to be present in that conversation with them, right? But imagine you tell a group of people your story and then they line up in each one.

Tells you theirs over and over and over again. Jesus. Yeah. The dynamic of our relationships with readers is fuckin bonkers from the start. It's just a weird framing, so we might as well acknowledge that. And I get a person's objections to participating in this dynamic. That being said, do I think that building an email list is one of the wisest things an author can do for their career?

Yes, absolutely. I've never heard of a situation where I was like, you know what, the wisest thing you can do here is not start an email list. Definitely don't do that. The reason I say this isn't because an email list will necessarily be the key to you releasing [00:05:00] each book onto the bestseller list. The reason I say this is because having direct access to your readers turns down the volume on a bunch of other anxieties you may encounter.

Remember the episode on what if your account is banned? If you have your reader emails, this becomes much less catastrophic. How many times have the, you know, the goddamn social media algorithms changed in the last 10 years?

Oh, no one is seeing your posts anymore, unless you pay. Well, guess where you don't have to pay to play your email list. Seriously, those emails are the foundation upon which authors can build some psychological security. And we all need a little bit of that to be able to keep making, you know, wise decisions for our business.

That's why I don't give anyone an out on this. You are almost guaranteed to live in an elevated state of stress if access to your readers depends solely on the whims of big tech companies. Also, use this as your [00:06:00] reminder to go and download the CSV files of your email lists.

Download those, you know, just in case MailerLite or ActiveCampaign or whoever else you use has a catastrophic failure or is hacked or whatever other weird thing you can think up. Download those spreadsheets. And then, you know, maybe set a calendar reminder to do that regularly every month. If you aren't picking up on it, the answer to what if I hate email isn't going to be, that's fine, don't have a list, delete your email account.

Instead, I'm going to hopefully change the way you feel about email so that you can make the most of this exceptional tool that builds the solid foundation of a sustainable.

So our hatred for email usually breaks down into two kinds, hatred of maintaining an email list and hatred of responding to emails. Let's look at the email list first. More than likely, you've pulled in some shoulds [00:07:00] around this activity that don't align with your energy. I hear this a lot. How often should I email my list?

Once a week? Once every two weeks? Once a month? I can tell you absolutely there is no should around this. You get to decide. You don't even have to email them on a schedule. If you email your readers out of obligation without much to say or offer, then they might say yes. Stop opening your emails. So allowing a sense of obligation to determine this isn't necessarily the wisest or most strategic approach.

Now, I will say that if you go a year without emailing your lists and then you email them about a new book, you might be disappointed by how few people click the link and buy, but that's more matter of setting your expectations appropriately or not having expectations at all. Then it is a real problem.

Speaking from experience, I have four main email lists that I keep active, active ish. One is for FFS Media, [00:08:00] where I have a bunch of authors subscribed. You might be one of them. Another is for my paranormal cozy mysteries. Another is for my humor and satire. And the last one is for my crime fiction. I've tried all kinds of approaches for my email strategy and I think I've made literally every quote unquote mistake people warn about over the years.

And here's my takeaway from all that. It's fine. It's all an experiment anyway. There aren't hard and fast rules for anything related to email lists because each person's relationship with their readers will be different. An email is simply a relationship tool. I found that my cozy readers like the relationship I build with them on a weekly basis through email.

They respond well to it. I get sales each time I send an email because I have links to my books in the footer of the email. But if I miss a week, I don't see any negative consequences, except, you know, maybe a few sales that might have happened, but we'll never know what could have [00:09:00] been. And that's okay.

With my FFS media list, I try to send once a week. But if I really have nothing of interest for people, I'm not going to waste anyone's time. It's important for me to establish the trust with those folks that if I email them, there's something inside that email that they will want to either read or sign up for.

So some weeks I have no idea what I'm going to send. And then I come up with something awesome out of nowhere. And then some weeks I have no idea what I'm going to send. And I don't come up with anything. So I skip that week. I haven't seen any negative effects of this approach. And It just works really well with my energy levels.

Now, my humor list gets an email almost never at this point. And I'll be honest, I do lament that reality somewhat. But at the same time, I haven't felt especially funny lately. And my sci fi comedy series that I'm kind of in the middle of, it isn't selling like I hoped, no matter what I throw at [00:10:00] it. So my attention has shifted away from that pen name.

Until I have something else to write and publish for them. I don't think anyone on that list really minds, I mean, sure, they would take more emails from me, but what usually happens is I pop up every few months, like, Hey guys, wanna hear a batshit insane story that'll make you laugh? And of course they do.

So, in my mind, I perceive that all is forgiven when I do that. I actually have the closest relationships with my humor readers. Some of them have been emailing with me for years. So this approach is clearly working for them enough, and it's working for me and where my attention is flowing right now. So that's important to remember.

You only have a limited amount of attention factor that into your email strategy, rather than building some. You know, ideal schedule for an ideal form of you that has never existed or, you know, maybe existed when you were in your 20s and had the energy of a horny rabbit in spring. We want to be real with our energy and what we have to give.

We don't need to be [00:11:00] planning anything for some ideal version of ourselves. Okay, so lastly, my crime fiction list is getting super neglected lately, and that's because the books I have out didn't perform like I'd hoped and I was Getting a much better ROI on advertising other series. So I love writing crime fiction and I'll keep writing it at some point, but probably not until 2025.

So I'll probably just see if I can resurrect that existing list when the time comes. It'll work a little bit. I'm sure that's not worth forcing out emails to those folks. And I have no book news to speak of though. It's not worth it to me, at least. So that's my rationale with my lists. You can see that I don't take any standard approach here.

I treat each list the way that works for me and that my list seems to appreciate. So to some extent you can train your readers. On what to expect from you. I think sometimes authors forget that. They forget who's in charge. It's your list. You don't have to run it like a [00:12:00] tyrant, but you also don't have to provide it like free services to the people who subscribe, right?

You don't have to be their pro bono therapist or their individual customer service when they don't know how to click a link and you don't have to work on any one person's schedule. Right. Now, will people ask you to do all these things and more? Of course. And I'll talk a little bit more about that when I go into how to deal with emails from readers.

But what about what we put in our email newsletters? What are the shoulds we've picked up there? Again, there really are no hard shoulds on this. You can literally do whatever you want with your email list. Like you're a writer, get creative, be weird, be, be creative, be real, be whatever you want to be. They signed up to hear from you.

There are kind of no rules here. I mean, maybe don't give out like your home address, but that seems more like common sense than a rule. So there seems to be this idea that You, the author, have to share about [00:13:00] yourself in your emails to your readers. And that is not correct. If you feel comfortable sharing from the heart, great.

That can create a strong emotional connection with folks and engender lots of loyalty from readers. But if you're an Enneagram five, don't worry, you don't have to share about your feelings or personal life.

You can still maintain boundaries between you and your readers. So here's my suggestion. Share about your interests. Share about things you learned. Share your research that you've been doing for your work in progress. Or even share snippets of your work or short stories. Thanks. So these are going to be more comfortable things for a five to share who likes to have some separation from the energy suck that relationships with strangers can be.

I will repeat, you can share whatever feels nice to you with your readers. Memes that made you laugh, Wikipedia articles you browsed, pictures you've taken, reviews of books you really enjoyed reading, [00:14:00] on and on and on. There is no format you must follow to any of this. You don't even have to follow the same format, email after email.

Mix it up. Make the rules. And then at the bottom of your email, just below the signature, you can remind them that you have books they can buy. Include a picture of the covers in a link. They'll click it. So it really can be this simple, and you don't have to email regularly. You can tell people who sign up, I send emails when I have something to share.

You know, just communicate how things are going to be run around these parts, and people will adjust. Or, they won't adjust, and they'll show themselves out. And that's okay too. So much of the dislike I hear about email lists from authors is self imposed. You hate forcing yourself to think of things to send out.

Okay, then don't force yourself. You're a writer. You'll have ideas pop up. You'll run sales now and again, and you'll want to tell people about it. You'll have new releases to email to them. [00:15:00] Add in a little flair if you have the energy for it and don't add anything if you're tired. I've sent out emails that are little more than just, Hey, the new book is here.

Click this link to buy it. And people bought it. I've also sent out emails that have the link to my new book and a little behind the scenes story about the creation of the book. People enjoyed that too. I have seen no noticeable difference in sales, depending on my approach there.

So if you don't like dealing with your email list. It's time to open up your skull and rustle around in there for whatever shoulds are making that process unpleasant. And then, you know, just get those out of there. Toss them out. Not only will you feel better, but as your resistance to the idea of email goes down, your ideas for what to send will increase.

Also, if you find that you prefer to have a schedule for your emails, Then create a damn schedule. If it works for you, then do it. If it doesn't work for you, [00:16:00] then don't do it. . That's my point. Okay, so let's talk about the second grievance. A lot of authors have about email, and that's responding to reader emails.

If you want your business to continue functioning, there are some emails that must be responded to, you know, feedback for cover designers, questions from clients about how to pay you and so forth. This doesn't mean that you have to be the one to answer with these emails though. Not all the time. If you really, really feel dread when you open your inbox, it might be worth your time to pay a virtual assistant.

One with a trustworthy reputation. Cause you're letting them in your inbox. Yes. To answer those emails for you as much as possible. Some of them you have to answer and that's life, right? We can't make our career completely without pain points. I have tried, trust me, but we can narrow the pain points down to a manageable amount so that they don't outweigh the parts of the job that give us a lot of energy.

So you can have someone else respond to your emails and clear out the clutter in your [00:17:00] inbox. So I had to do that when I got those dozens of dead pet emails. I just couldn't do it. There was no amount of forcing myself that would have worked. Because it was too much pain for me while I was also grieving my own pet loss.

So I paid my wonderful virtual assistant, Emily. Hi, Emily. She edits these episodes. I paid Emily to respond on my behalf, and I'm sure it wasn't easy for her either. But my hope was that it didn't feel as personal. So maybe it was slightly easier. Also getting paid for it might've made things better. Uh, whereas I would not have been getting paid to respond to those emails.

I would have been losing money and been completely drained. So you can bring someone on to handle your emails. And a lot of authors are long overdue for this, frankly. But here's another option. You can, hear me out, not respond to emails from readers. Seriously. Most of the emails you receive aren't urgent.

[00:18:00] Would the reader like a response? Sure. But are they entitled to one? Not at all. That is important to remember. Let's look at why each type might be afraid to not reply to the garden variety reader emails. Okay, so let's do this. 1. The reformers may feel a sense of personal obligation to respond to every reader email and may be afraid that if they don't, the reader will start criticizing them publicly.

2. The helpers 3s may be afraid that if they don't respond, the reader will be mad at them and stop loving them, and that's really painful for a 2 to think about. 3s, the achievers, may be afraid that if they don't respond to some of these emails, it'll make them look bad and the person will go out after their reputation.

And possibly even turn other people against them. Fours, the individualists may feel like not responding will make them seem aloof or like a sellout rather than an authentic down to earth, uh, artist or in person. Fives, [00:19:00] the investigators usually really, really don't feel like responding, uh, but they feel a sense of unmet reciprocation and that feeling of unmet reciprocation can be a drain on their energy.

Six is the loyalists may worry that if they don't respond, they'll lose all the support of their readers. And they won't have a safety net of fans anymore. 7s, the enthusiasts, may be afraid that they will lose their status as fun and friendly with the reader if they don't respond. And they're usually not as upset about the distraction of emails as other types, maybe.

8s, the challengers, and I really had to stretch for this one, but they may feel like the reader email is a demand on their time that they didn't ask for. In other words, the reader is trying to control them with the expectation of a response. That may feel like a challenge to the challenger and they may respond, but not necessarily in the most friendly way.

So this would be kind of a worst case scenario for [00:20:00] eights who are fed up with all this reader email. And then nines, the peacemakers. may fear that not responding will create conflict with that reader that they may have to deal with later. So does your type's fear resonate at all? I don't know, just noticing the fear at work is a great first step to recognizing that it's probably not as scary as we originally felt it might be.

to simply not respond to emails from readers that we just don't feel compelled to respond to. But it also makes sense of why some of us get so anxious about leaving emails unresponded to. So one easy thing you can do is to let your readers know that you do read almost all of your emails, but you can't possibly respond to them all and Write your books.

So you're choosing the books. That way, they feel heard, but they also understand that if you don't write back, it's not personal. And then if you do feel compelled to write back, they'll feel extra special. [00:21:00] I've never seen this approach not work. Sure, you might have a super entitled reader every now and then, but you can let them show themselves out.

It's really a gift, I promise. You're gonna encounter some Really, the only way I can describe it is unhinged people when you choose this career, right? There's no amount of caution you can take that would allow you to avoid encountering those people. The wisest approach is usually to not respond and let them move on.

Save the email if it's harassment. You need that evidence and a lot of the women listening probably already have a folder on their computer desktop for screenshots of online harassment and general creepiness, but keep those receipts. Weirdos who feel entitled to your attention are also one of those pain points of this job that you can't really get around, but you can certainly roast them privately with your trusted friends.

And I find that I feel a lot better after a session like that. I could tell you some stories about what men have offered, uh, in my [00:22:00] inbox, not even like spam, like an actual human being. So, yes, uh, some of the threats, some of the offers, um, to help me reproduce, all kinds of interesting things. So, it happens, yeah.

Your inbox doesn't have to be a huge source of stress for you though. If you don't feel comfortable deleting emails you don't plan on responding to, you can just like create a folder for them. Emails I haven't read and won't read, right? Name it something like that.

Uh, and just chuck those emails over there and get them out of sight. Clean the place up. Tidy up. So I'll be honest with all my pen names and author services that I provide and authors emailing me out of the blue and project based emails from cover designers, so forth. I basically take a triage approach to my inbox.

Emails that my career depends on get answered first, then the ones that could be beneficial to answer in a timely manner, those get answered, then the ones that are done out of the goodness of my heart [00:23:00] get a response, and then I delete the ones that are just obnoxious. So sorry to say it, but yeah, sometimes this includes emails from people I've never had a conversation with who are like, how do I publish a book?

If my response would essentially be, let me Google that for you. I don't respond for the sake of my own sanity. And you know what? It feels like a little treat to myself. Do people sometimes get weird and aggressive when I don't give them the attention they ask for from me for free? Sure, that's life. Some people are not super healthy.

And I've just kind of decided at this point that I'm not going to twist myself into a pretzel or waste my own time as a result of their unhealthiness. You're actually free to do the same. It's, it's wonderful. Highly recommend. So as your audience grows, the demands on your time and energy in your inbox will grow as well.

It's really important that we make some rules for ourselves on what we will and won't spend time on. Your rules will not be someone else's rules. But I hope that [00:24:00] each of us can stop pretending that we can do it all and accept that there are going to be trade offs that we make. Time and attention spent on emails is time and attention not spent on other things, period.

Do you want to spend your time apologizing to a reader who you owe nothing to just to make sure you don't run afoul of their sense of entitlement?

Or do you want to use those minutes of your precious life to, I don't know, prepare a healthy meal? Do you want to show a reader how to click a link that you sent, or do you want to take a break from the computer and go pet your cat? So really, where are your boundaries here? What is the line that you won't cross with your time and energy in your inbox?

The sooner you get those sorted out, the less stress you'll feel around email, I promise. So to answer the question of what if I hate writing emails, I'll say that you likely don't hate emails. You just hate the shoulds you've picked up about the process. So root out those shoulds, get creative, look at your fear about not [00:25:00] responding to readers head on, and then set some rules for yourself around email that feel right and kind of nice to you.

Sending emails is just writing. It's just writing. You're a writer. So writing is presumably an enjoyable activity if the content is right. If it's not fun, that's because your idea of what the content should be Is too narrow, broaden it to fit who you are, and then only respond to the emails you want to respond to and the ones that move your business along.

And if even that feels like too much, consider hiring an assistant to help out for a couple of hours a week. All right. I think that's enough for this episode. Don't you? Let's stop talking about email and go move on with our lives. All right. So thank you for listening. If you want to reach out, you can, of course, email me at contact at FFS dot media.

And if your email is compelling enough and doesn't make me want to go, let me Google that for you. I'll reply at my earliest [00:26:00] convenience. The world didn't end when I set that boundary. Anyway, I'm Claire Taylor and thanks for listening to another episode of the What If For Authors podcast.

Episode 13: What if my books take off?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor explores the often-overlooked question: "What if my books do take off?" While many authors dream of their books hitting the big time, the reality of success can be disorienting, triggering, and even stressful. Claire delves into the psychological and emotional challenges that can arise when your books suddenly gain widespread attention and offers practical advice for managing the experience. Whether your books have already taken off or you’re still waiting for that moment, this episode provides valuable insights on how to prepare for success and stay grounded amidst the whirlwind.

Key Takeaways:

• The Double-Edged Sword of Success: Understanding that while having your books take off can be exciting, it can also bring unexpected challenges and stress.

• Core Fears Triggered by Success: How different Enneagram types might react to sudden success, from the fear of being seen to feeling trapped or overwhelmed.

• Maintaining Self-Worth Independently of Sales: The importance of not tying your self-worth to fluctuating book sales and strategies for staying grounded and self-assured.

• Balancing Creative Desires and Financial Success: Tips for authors who may feel trapped in writing what sells rather than what they love, and how to navigate that tension.

• Practical Preparation: Advice on setting the table for success before it happens and how to manage the realities if it’s already occurred.

Why Listen? If you’ve ever wondered what life would be like if your books became bestsellers, or if you’re already dealing with the pressures of a successful series, this episode will help you navigate the emotional and psychological terrain of author success. Claire provides actionable strategies to ensure that your well-being and creative fulfillment stay intact, even as your books soar.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or topic you’d like Claire to explore? Send an email to contact@ffs.media. Claire is always open to hearing from her listeners and offering support.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor, and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain.

Also, you have five days from the release date of this episode to sign up for the last session of the Liberated Writer five week course of 2024. TBD on when in 2025 I'll run another session, so if you want to start planting and watering the seeds of success, Now's the best time to start. This deep work is great for taking care of your career and taking it to the next level and really making each project that you work on feel more satisfying, but it's also going to make the rest of this year much more manageable.

If you're, you know, not as easily triggered by, say, world [00:01:00] events. So registration closes this Friday, August 19th. And there are payment options available if anyone's interested in that. And I know that makes it sound like it's some super expensive course, but it's really not. So, especially with all the face time you get with me during it.

I just want to do what I can to make sure that folks who need it can access it, hence the payment option. Anyway, go to LiberatedWriter. com to read more and register before that closes on the 19th.

Let's jump right into today's topic. It's going to be an unusual one because it's not actually a question I hear often.

But it's a question we could all benefit from asking ourselves.

In the last episode, we asked the question of, what if my books never take off? So I thought it only appropriate to, Then in this episode, we ask the opposite question. What if my books take off? Like I said, authors don't usually ask this question with anything [00:02:00] resembling anxiety. It's more like a whisper or even silent hope inside of us early on in our career.

Or, you know, later on in our career if our books haven't taken off yet.

But I've worked with enough authors at this point who had this dream come true, their books took off, to know that dream is the right word here because the experience can be disorienting, unsettling, and even nightmarish. I don't know about y'all, but my brain almost never sees fit to give me nice, unstressful dreams.

Or if it does, I'd never remember them. Last night, for instance, I was in a competitive scavenger hunt and only learned towards the end of the time that there was actually a set list of items we were supposed to be looking for. I had just been scavenging everywhere, looking for something that looked like it belonged to the scavenger hunt.

Like, is this anything? Is this anything? I'll write it down. And then I found out everyone was working from a list that I didn't have. And only a couple of the things that I'd found so [00:03:00] far appeared on the list. Uh, go ahead and analyze that anyway. So I'm going to give you this anxiety. If you haven't already experienced your books taking off, and if you have experienced it already, I'm about to give voice to the thing that you probably don't want to talk about because no one wants to hear us complain about things when our books are selling really well, right?

No one wants to hear that complaint. So I had a series takeoff back in 2018 and I was surprised by how fast that happened. I definitely was not prepared for the sales. One of the things that happens is you go from having only a few eyes on your books to having a lot of eyes on your books. This means you suddenly get an influx of reader emails, mostly positive, but some not so positive and others just plain weird.

Any sudden life change can be psychologically disruptive, but there's something about it being the thing you dreamed up that will take a special kind of adjustment.

Suddenly having a bunch more eyes on your [00:04:00] books can really trigger your core fear, especially if you're say a nine, the peacemaker or a five, the investigator. Nines aren't usually comfortable being seen, though they do tend to crave being seen. That goes back to their core fear of being separated or cut off.

They hide parts of themselves that feel divisive or controversial to protect against conflict. Fives don't necessarily want to be seen, but the experience of being seen is necessary to a five self fives are afraid of being incompetent or incapable. I hear them phrase it as I don't want to look stupid.

Essentially knowledge and intelligence are big for this type and they want to make sure they have enough resources for themselves. So the sudden attention can feel like a demand on the five's time and energy. Also known as resources. When this happens, fives may feel themselves tugged between their desire to withdraw into their castle and slam the gates and the very human compulsion for reciprocation [00:05:00] to the people who are giving them that attention so that they don't owe anyone anything.

That push and pull alone can feel incredibly draining to a five.

Ones, the reformers, may also feel uncomfortable if their books take off. Those little mistakes that they didn't think much about seem much, much larger when it's getting that much new attention. And suddenly their books are facing a degree of criticism that they didn't before. The one's core fear is being bad, wrong, or corrupt. And so they're incredibly sensitive to criticism as a result.

When the one starts to take criticism of their books as a criticism of their goodness or integrity, then they're all exposed nerves all the time. A once book taking off is essentially predictive of an increase in their patterns around perfectionism over revising and so on as a result of that core fear being triggered.

The one may start working extra hard to make sure all of their books [00:06:00] are above reproach in the hopes that they can avoid criticism, but we can't, none of us can avoid criticism. Some people just like to criticize.

Now, Sixes, the Loyalists, may also feel unsettled and even unsafe if their books take off. It can feel to the Six, and they may not be entirely wrong, that they've just put a target on their back. The Six wants the security that an influx of cash can bring, but they might not have considered the cost to their sense of safety.

This can trigger the core fear of being unsupported that they have, which looks a lot like I'm all on my own and I don't know that anyone will come to defend me when I need it. That's a scary thought to a six and it can lead to a lot of behavioral patterns around testing relationships to see which ones are safe and which ones may harbor potential betrayal.

The other types may also have their core fear poked at when their books take off, but I would say that those types I just talked about are probably the ones most affected by the [00:07:00] sudden change. Actually, it can be a pretty freaky thing for Sevens, too. They're the enthusiasts. If a series takes off, it can make them feel trapped in that series.

Which is a surefire way for them to want to write any series but that one. They may start really struggling to focus on the next book in a highly successful series as a result. No one feels the golden handcuffs of success quite so acutely as a seven. People may call them ungrateful or more likely the seven will call themselves ungrateful, but this is a core fear territory, so it really has nothing to do with being grateful if you're feeling restless.

Feeling trapped in deprivation, in this case the deprivation of writing whatever they feel like writing in that moment. is going to trigger the seven's core fear. So yeah, this success can also terrify a seven.

Anyway, having your books take off isn't happily ever after by any means. It can also make a two let off on their [00:08:00] boundaries because they feel like they owe it to the readers to give more of themselves. It can accelerate the workaholism of a three who thinks if they work twice as hard, they'll make twice as much money.

It can put a four into a funk if they equate the success with being inauthentic enough for, you know, the masses to take their work and understand it. And it can make an eight feel like their readers are trying to control what they write next, which can activate some defiant patterns. It's not all sunshines and rainbows, this dream coming true of your books taking off.

So let's talk about a few things you can do before your books take off to help you set the table for success, and then what you can do if your books have already taken off and you're in a spot you didn't foresee and want to get out of. If your books haven't taken off yet, it's important to remember that you will not suddenly feel the way you expect yourself to feel when your dream comes true.

You may get like a pop from it and the sales, you know, as they increase day by day, they'll [00:09:00] definitely be some excitement there for sure. But when we see a sales chart trending upward, some unflattering patterns can emerge inside of us. We can start to feel greedy. We want the trend to continue indefinitely.

And when it flattens or starts to dip, we can panic. But think about that. Do you expect that curve to go up forever? That's kind of unrealistic. So we can get addicted to success and positive external feedback very easily because we think what's the harm in feeling good about ourselves and our business.

The harm is that you don't only get to become dependent on the positives. You also become tethered to the negatives. What lifted you up will someday drag you down. So be careful about giving control of your mood and self image to anything external. Even if it currently means that external thing is making you feel like hot shit.

That's a trap. And when sales start trending [00:10:00] down, you'll feel not great. And then you might come see me, which is fine. And what I'm here for, but I'm just going to tell you the same thing. You have to reconnect with your innate and infinite worth internally, instead of hinging it on something external.

Otherwise you'll be on this self worth rollercoaster your whole life. Even when you want to get off,

here's a practice you can take with you. If you find yourself checking your sales stats more than three times a day, Something curious is going on and you might want to get curious about it. Looking at the stats doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't make you more money. It doesn't make you less money.

It doesn't do anything. So if you're going back again and again, it's giving you a hit of something fleeting. And it's a sure sign that you're attaching your mood and sense of self to numbers. Numbers that fluctuate. Don't do that. It doesn't improve your wellbeing. So consider [00:11:00] making it off limits to yourself or use the impulse to check your sales dashboard or your rank multiple times a day as an indicator that it's time for you to close your eyes.

And remember that sales are no reflection of who you are. And if you feel bad about yourself, deep down, no amount of sales will change that. And if you feel good about yourself, deep down, no amount of sales or lack of sales needs to influence that. Use the impulse to check those stats as your cue to do that connection work with yourself.

And then you'll be on your way to feeling grounded in a sense of genuine wellbeing, no matter what happens. So, doesn't that sound like a much better option?

The second half of this what if is for those folks who have had a book or series take off and now feel like they're being forced down a path that they don't enjoy. I see this happen when the, say, 3's desire to hit as much success as possible supersedes all other values, including valuing their creative desires.[00:12:00]

It's not only threes, the achievers that find themselves in this position, but I do see it a lot with threes. So the desire to have worth and value and the fear of lacking it is this jet fuel for threes to home in on an opportunity and go full force into it.

They aren't always successful in this, by the way, there's an idea that threes always end up making a lot of money and being very successful. And that idea exists because it's the only one that threes allow themselves to perpetuate. Okay. Okay. Threes feel most comfortable showing their successes, and they either hide away their perceived failures, or if that's not an option, if failures are out there for everyone to see, they'll spin the failure into something motivational, as like a step along the way to their success.

So being a three or not being a three isn't actually a sign of potential success in this industry, but it does mean that someone is likely to be perceived as a success in this industry. And I'm not saying that to diminish the hard [00:13:00] work of the threes, but I'm saying that for everyone who's not a three, who says, man, I wish I was just a three so that I could make money.

You can make money, some money, decent money, right? Whatever type you are. Um, and just being a three alone isn't enough to guarantee, you know, six, seven figure, uh, income. So I just wanted to dispel that a little bit and kind of show why. That perception is there anyway, threes are the most likely type to prioritize earning potential above other considerations, and therefore they do up the odds of a book taking off.

And you might be thinking, I wish I was a three, but hold on because I've worked with my fair share of threes who have a six or seven figure yearly revenue rank high on the chart. So that root release and. Don't make much profit. Revenue and profit are not the same thing. But to be quite honest, some of these threes do make a lot of profit, but they're [00:14:00] writing in a genre they hate because their desires didn't get to make much of an appearance in the strategy process.

Now the type three author has a situation where they want to keep making good money, but they also hate what they write. Whoops. Right? I think we can all empathize with the situation. The books that took off were ones that maybe the three didn't care about, in other words. Maybe they think the books are fine, right?

That's fine. I don't dislike these books. Uh, but it's hard to stay interested in a series that you just think is fine when you're ten books in or whatever. Fine can stop being enough. And now what? Now their living expenses might have grown to fit the income.

And so they won't be able to afford their current lifestyle, or so the fear goes, if they start choosing to write books they care more about. Of course, this doesn't only happen to threes. I've seen it happen to eights, fives, twos, sixes. It can happen to anyone who gets too laser focused on making decisions around [00:15:00] what will sell at the cost of their own personal creative preferences.

The problem is that you might be right about what sells. And then suddenly it's selling. And if you didn't incorporate what you want to write into that, that's just going to be a tough situation. As much as we may want to be able to just say, fuck it, let's go for broke from time to time and write whatever fits this so called formula for success at the time, maybe a hot sub genre with the hot tropes and so forth, we must remember that the outcome of pushing our personal creative desires aside is that we either put a lot of time into books that don't ever take off, because remember that luck is a necessary component here, Or we put a lot of effort into building a catalog that makes us enough money that it may not feel responsible or even feasible to start writing what we would rather be writing.

I can speak from experience here that it feels much more fulfilling when we write books we care about [00:16:00] that sell solidly over time than when we write books we only kind of care about and those sell solidly over time. And it can happen. I've seen it. You can write what you want to write and have it sell.

You can also steer an existing series towards more of what you like to write a few books in, and most readers will follow along for the writing. It's a risk that you'll lose a few readers, sure, but it might be worth the risk if the other option is that you start to really hate what your career has become, or you start to feel contempt for your readers for liking something you hate writing.

So if you're asking the question, what if my books take off, which again, you probably aren't worrying about too frequently. My answer is that books taking off will not solve all of your problems. It might not even solve your financial problems. And in fact, it could stir up some anxieties that have been lying dormant near your core fear for a long time.

What you can do, [00:17:00] however, to avoid this becoming a problem is to be mindful of where you're giving yourself a pass to attach how you feel about yourself. To your book sales when those sales are good. I'm not saying you shouldn't celebrate successes. And in fact, feeling gratitude for the money coming in is fantastic.

What I'm saying is be careful of what other hidden meanings you're letting increased book sales carry with that, that comment specifically on your character. Remember that a superiority complex is just an inferiority complex with slightly better situational factors. If the way you feel about yourself is fluctuating with your sales, that is a warning sign.

You don't get to feel good from those external factors without eventually feeling bad from those external factors. And if your books have already taken off but you want to write something else, yeah, that's, that's going to be a moment for courage.

Might have to consider cutting back [00:18:00] on your living and business expenses to give yourself the financial wiggle room to value what you want to write in this one life you have, you might need to make a slight pivot, but you don't actually know that it won't work out for you financially as well.

Maybe the quoi of your creative impulses is exactly what readers have been waiting for to go absolutely bonkers over your books. You don't know. You may think you know, but you'll never know until you try. Until you run the experiment. And maybe, just maybe, there's something more important than making the most possible money anyway.

Are you brave enough to bring that part of yourself to your readers? That's the question.

That's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you feel compelled to reach out, you can send me an email at contact at FFS. media or scope out me and my services at FFS. [00:19:00] media. I'm Claire Taylor, and this has been another episode of the What If for Authors podcast.

Episode 12: What if my books never take off?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor addresses a common anxiety among authors: "What if my books never take off?" Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram Certified Coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the balance between preparation and luck in achieving success, the importance of feedback, and how to find deeper purpose and enjoyment in writing regardless of external success. This episode offers a compassionate and realistic approach to managing expectations and sustaining an author career over the long term.

Key Takeaways:

• Preparation vs. Luck: Understanding the role of luck in author success and how to stay in the game long enough for luck to find you.

• Feedback and Improvement: The importance of seeking and accepting feedback to improve your books without taking it as a personal indictment.

• Dealing with Uncertainty: How to tolerate the uncertainty of whether your books will take off and finding ways to balance the pain of uncertainty with the joy of writing.

• Purpose and Enjoyment: Connecting to a deeper reason for writing that provides immediate fulfillment and sustains you through the ups and downs of an author career.

• Self-Compassion: Practicing kindness and compassion towards yourself and deconstructing the lies that link your self-worth to external success.

Why Listen? If you find yourself questioning whether your books will ever take off or struggling with the uncertainty and pressure of author life, this episode offers valuable insights and strategies to help you stay motivated and find deeper meaning in your writing journey. Claire's empathetic guidance will help you navigate the challenges and uncertainties of being an author with resilience and hope.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor, and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for Authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs.media/sustain.

Just as a reminder for anyone who is interested but hasn't yet gotten around to signing up, registration for the last session of the Liberated Writer five week course available this year closes on August 19th. So if you've given up on searching for that silver bullet and are ready to do the deep work that actually sustains author careers for the long run, then this is your chance ahead of the, I don't know, chaos of the rest of the year to get started.

So the course runs for five weeks, but it's really kind of a launch period for the long term for you and your career. So just like success doesn't happen overnight, [00:01:00] neither do the underlying patterns of your author career change overnight. So if you're hoping for something better in 2025, which, who wouldn't, right?

Now's the time to start planting and watering those seeds. Now. Or August, I guess. Uh, so the course runs from August 26th through September 26th, and it includes an IEQ 9 Enneagram type assessment and three hours of group calls with me each week to really dig in and get to know other authors who can support you moving forward.

So if you are interested, go to LiberatedWriter. com to August 19th.

If you're listening to this on the Monday when it releases, I hope you had a solid weekend.

I hope you did some things that made you feel rested and sturdy coming into the work week. Whether that was sleeping a lot, knocking out your home to do list, spending time with friends, or whatever else. I had a [00:02:00] good weekend. I've been in a big fiction reading slump lately. And by lately, I mean the last year and a half or so.

I've only found a few fiction books that could hold my attention and not immediately irritate me. So that's what the slump feels like. And I, I think that that says more about me than the state of fiction, by the way. But it has been starting to feel pretty worrisome. Like, I'm a fiction writer, for fuck's sake.

I should be reading fiction, right?

I've kept myself from losing sleep over this concern by reminding myself that it's not like I never have read fiction before. Who knows how many thousands of fiction books I've read in my lifetime. But I also think it had something to do with the stakes. So, for me, like, fiction didn't feel real enough, essentially, for what I've been feeling the last year and a half or so.

I could read, watch, and listen to true crime just fine, for instance, but when I switched to crime [00:03:00] fiction, it just felt goofy and unimportant. Meanwhile, I was still writing crime fiction during this time. I don't know. Anyway, I talked to a couple of author friends about it, and while they tried to be conciliatory, it definitely came off as, yeah, that's weird and a problem.

At least that's how their reactions filtered through to me. But then I talked to John, and he was like, It's not like you don't know story, Claire. Right. That. I mentioned my fiction slump to a couple other non author friends, and they sort of gave me a, huh. And that was that. I think it goes to show how important it is to have friends who don't share some of the same shoulds as you.

My author friends have internalized a lot of the same shoulds around reading and writing as I have. So they pretty much reflected back to me my anxiety about it. Meanwhile, my non author friends tend to be like, I usually only read one fiction book a year, if that. Right? The perspective is so, so important.

The [00:04:00] world will not end if I don't read fiction. And what's the real problem? I was still able to write a bunch of fiction during my reading drought. I certainly wasn't out of ideas. I haven't heard anyone complaining about how my narrative structure, writing style is slipping. So maybe it just wasn't a problem after all.

Maybe it was all in my head, so to speak. I always figured I'd get back into reading fiction. And this week, Great news. It was the week that it happened. John and I went to a local bookstore that was offering 20 percent off for a bottle of wine when you bought a book. Yes. Incentive. It worked. It was his birthday.

So we went there before dinner. I had the hardest time picking out a book, but I ended up picking, , none of this is true by Lisa Jewel because it seemed just twisted enough to keep my attention. But then like we settled in to start reading and I was really struggling to focus and I started having this anxiety of like, oh no, this is happening again.

I'm still not through my reading slump. And [00:05:00] then John, who apparently listens to me a lot more than I thought he did, suggested that I set a 15 minute timer to read without stopping. Which is for sure advice I've given him before. Um, but I did it. And suddenly I was in. Oh, the relief. The book was so dark and creepy.

I loved every page of it. And I finished it yesterday, which made the weekend feel like a success for me. And now I'm, like, through that, you know, initial block and I'm into a stack of horror novels written by women for, uh, research on a novel I'll be working on in the fall. All this to say that sometimes we get anxiety as authors that we can know isn't useful or based on anything particularly sound, but it still comes in.

Not to sound overly confident, but I know how to write a fiction novel. And yet, even I get in my head about it sometimes. But so much of life works in cycles, and I'm taking my returned ability to focus on reading fiction as [00:06:00] a sign that some of the ongoing stress in my life that was making it hard for me to get into something fictional is sort of being integrated into my world.

So I don't need the, you know, raw realness to hold my attention like I did before. So that's really, really lovely. What a relief, right? I get to return to the peaceful life of reading horror. I'm quite excited. Anyway. In today's episode, we're going to ask the question that I hear from authors a lot, which is, What if my books never take off?

There is so much to deconstruct in this single question, so let's jump right into it. Part of author success requires preparation, and part of it requires luck. That's really important to remember for the sake of the discussion. Let's pretend that 50 percent of it is preparation and 50 percent of it is luck.

It may be more 80, 20, one way or the other. [00:07:00] Nobody really knows, right? But you, we do know that it's not all preparation and it's not all luck. So it's a mix of both. And I think that just for the sake of this discussion, let's just say it's 50 50. So that means that no matter how much and how well you prepare for success in writing your books, you can only get to, you know, roughly 50 percent of the way to your book taking off.

Then it's about sitting around and waiting until luck strikes, some of this is creating opportunities for luck, but still, you just have to wait. And sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes luck strikes, sometimes it doesn't. The longer you can stay in the game. The greater your odds of luck striking though, which is why I encourage sustainability practices.

Authors will sometimes forget that 50 percent of it is luck, and they'll burn themselves out by thinking the faster I write 20 books, the sooner I'll be rich and famous. Or any number of books we might pull. That one just popped into my [00:08:00] head for some reason. So we burn ourselves out in some race to a finish line that isn't actually a finish line.

And then, you know what? We're done. Nothing happens. There's no ribbon to run through, no friends and family draping medals around our neck. If you give up here, then the luck hasn't had a chance to find you. And now it won't. I want to point out that a bias belief that's perpetuated in this industry that can convince us that it's actually a hundred percent hard work and dedication, , that creates success and no luck is required. That belief is what is espoused by people who have hit it big.

It's really unflattering to the ego to admit that your success is. That's a result in part, sometimes in great part to luck, lucky timing, the right person happening to see your book, having a catalog already created in a genre that just suddenly takes off that sort of thing. The ego really wants to take credit for the success.

So that the person [00:09:00] can feel a little pop of being worthy, special, or just generally better than. It's not super socially acceptable to say those things aloud. Well, I'm famous, so I'm better than you. Or I'm selling all these books, so I'm clearly a worthier person than you. So instead, the successful folks will sometimes take on the role of Inspirational speaker.

This looks like, if I did it, so can you. This is a really sneaky way of denying that luck is involved. And it's a way of sort of reinforcing the ego. It was all hard work. So if they worked hard, so can you. Implied here is that if you don't have success, you're lazy, untalented, so forth. If you ever see me at an author event where someone says this on stage and my eye starts twitching noticeably, this is why.

That person is perpetuating a lie in a very sneaky way using false humility. But make no mistake, it is still an ego driven claim. But [00:10:00] it's, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. People who have success claiming they did it through hard work and know how, and that anyone who is as smart and dedicated as they are can make it happen.

So That's not true. All right. It's not. If it were true, there would be a hell of a lot more wildly successful authors because I see how savvy and hardworking most authors are. So if that were the formula, we would have a whole lot more people being bestsellers. It's counterproductive to see that your books haven't taken off yet and assume that it's because of some personal character defect of yours.

It's not. Frankly, I've seen people who make it big and sell a lot who have some of the Smallest amount of character I've ever encountered. So yeah, there's my type's judgment coming through, but I'm not taking it back. I mean it. I can't tell you the number of established men, for instance, in this industry who are where they are not because of their own hard work, but because of luck.

[00:11:00] Plus, the hard work of a bunch of underpaid and overworked women who have been raised to believe that their labor Isn't as valuable as every, you know, precious male geniuses. Barf. Okay, so if you let the fact that your books haven't taken off be a reflection of your character, which many of us do, then you're taking yourself out at the ankles.

Now, that's not to say that there isn't something you can do to make your books more desirable to the right readers, because there usually is, but the quality of your books isn't a reflection of your character in any way. That may sound obvious to some of you, but not to all of you. And it's important to ask yourself if you've subconsciously been functioning this way.

If you have, looking honestly and clearly at the quality of your books, your blurb, your cover, and so forth, might be too emotionally painful for you to do. If you've linked character to the quality of your books, you will not be able to [00:12:00] look at your books through clear eyes, and you will not be able to give them the best chance they have.

So then feedback of your covers look amateurish from someone about the cover you designed yourself may feel like someone saying you are sloppy or you are a failure when in fact you are none of those things, but the cover simply looks like an amateur made it, which is. True. It's just truth. If you're not a professional cover designer, then you are an amateur.

So, see how something as benign as over attribution of book sales to a person's character can quickly stifle your ability to give your books the best shot they have of taking off? If you're thinking that what I'm describing here is a stretch and that nobody does this, think again. I see it all the time.

I've even felt it at points?

So maybe your covers aren't the sore spot, right? What about your opening chapter? What about your skills [00:13:00] writing compelling dialogue? What about your book's ending? Would someone offering feedback on those hurt a little bit more than feedback on the cover? Would it strike more deeply at your idea of who you are as a writer?

So noticing these touchy spots allows us to untangle ourselves from them, decide that we want to give our books the best shot at success that we can, and listen to the advice from experienced and studied authors and editors, rather than getting defensive.

You certainly don't have to take all the advice you're given, but you lower your odds of your books taking off when you have areas of your books where you can't even hear the advice to begin with. So if your books haven't taken off yet, this is an area where you have some control. Go ask for feedback from people who already know and like your work, and who you feel don't actively hate you.

If you know someone who does covers, ask them if they have five minutes to offer feedback on yours, maybe. [00:14:00] If you know someone who's great at blurbs, ask if you can send them yours, already have something written, and maybe just get some notes. If these folks are close friends, they'll probably do it in a heartbeat and ask for nothing in return.

I do this for my close friends all the time. Personally, I like when my skills can support the people that I love. But if this person is not a close friend, And they maybe do this thing that you're asking them to do for a living, you'll want to pay them. And even if they're your close friend and offer to do it for free, there's no harm in sending them a gift card or even just a thank you note in the mail.

The point is though, start asking for feedback and start asking it. And I'm going to be talking about how to get feedback from specific people. What I see a lot is someone will drop a picture of their cover or their blurb into a, say, Facebook group of 20, 000 people, or even just a Facebook group of 500 people.

And they get so much feedback that they don't actually know where to begin. And some of the people giving feedback. Some of the [00:15:00] people giving feedback should not be giving feedback, and some of the people giving feedback are kind of assholes. And so this really will put your defenses up right away and make it hard for you to sort through the feedback and do so without your defenses getting in the way of you hearing the valid points.

So when I say ask for feedback, don't mean these big groups. That can be so counterproductive. Go ask an individual, or if you have a small group of maybe six people that you talk with regularly who are authors, maybe go ask for some feedback there.

Again, even if your books are incredible with nearly flawless packaging, that's not enough on its own for your books to take off. Luck is still in play.

Another point here is that books don't all take off at once generally. Some series just kind of never pick up steam. The series could be your favorite of yours. It could be your diehard fan's [00:16:00] favorites. And yet, it never really reaches that critical mass to make a chart on whatever chart you care about, right?

So let me be clear. Nobody knows why this happens. Nobody knows why one series will take off and another series that seems bad. It's almost guaranteed to take off, just doesn't. Now people have theories, and I'm as happy as an ex gal to guess about what's going on. But it's all just a guessing game. No one will ever know with certainty.

This is why it's sometimes the best thing for your odds and for your mental and emotional to Move on to writing the next book. If you try to reach a conclusion on why a book or series isn't selling no matter what you do, you may keep searching so long that you eventually settle on the problem being, surprise, a character defect in yourself. They must not like me or whatever it is.

It's not that [00:17:00] it's not that the skill of shrugging, having a good chuckle at the mystery of the universe we all live in and moving on is an invaluable author skill.

So far, I've told you that sometimes what needs to happen is that you level up your books. And sometimes what needs to happen is nothing because it's a mystery that will never be solved or luck hasn't hit yet. So how do you know which one is at play? So you can either let it go. Or take a little more time updating your books.

How do you know if it's worth your time and energy to pay for a new cover? Or to update book one of your series to make the, you know, starting tighter and more appealing to readers? How do you know when you've done all you can on a book and it's time to let it go and just write the next? This is the uncertainty that all authors will sit in.

And there is no definite answer to it. The more you [00:18:00] practice sitting in this particular form of uncertainty, the more sustainable you become as an author. The authors who simply cannot tolerate that there is no definite answer to the question of is it the book or is it luck, are the ones that become obsessive, fixated, envious, and entitled.

This unanswerable question will drive some authors mad. And you can see it almost anywhere you look in the author community. People would rather draw a conclusion that makes them feel like shit about themselves, than sit in the uncertainty. So this often looks like someone posting somewhere, I'm just a terrible writer and no one wants my book so I'm gonna give up.

There is certainty in giving up. You know your books will never take off if you do that. Every day authors choose this certainty. over the uncomfortable and painful uncertainty [00:19:00] of whether or not the books will take off. That's what giving up is. It's choosing certainty because the uncertainty has become too painful.

So the real question we need to examine is how long can you tolerate the uncertainty? Can you tolerate it the rest of your life? If so, then you're in the best position for that luck to come along. Maybe not anytime soon, but maybe eventually. If you can stand the pain of hoping. How do we withstand the pain of hoping, the pain of waiting, the pain of uncertainty, the best way I've found.

is creating a counterbalance to the pain. You need to make the pain worth it. And you can't make that contingent on whether the book takes off or not. There has to be something more, something in your control. This is where purpose often comes in. Why do you write? What does it do for [00:20:00] you every time you sit down and sink into the story?

How does it help you? How is it a defiant act of self love and how does it help others? Who might be waiting for your book to come along without even realizing it? How might your story provide comfort, courage, compassion, or even hope for a reader? If you knew that each book would save a single person's life, would it be worth the effort to write?

I think so. That's just me. I mean, what nobler cause is there? But also, I think about the book I just finished reading. It didn't give me hope, it was dark, it was twisted, but it gave me something incredibly valuable nonetheless. It gave me relief from my anxiety about being in a fiction slump.

It gave me ideas for books I'd like to write someday. It gave me motivation to get through errands quicker yesterday so I could sit and read. Those are all [00:21:00] things that make life easier and more enjoyable for me. I'm so grateful. to Lisa Jewell for putting in the time and love and pain to write that book so that I could experience this fiction renaissance in my life.

The point is that if the only thing keeping you writing every day, or the only thing you're aware of as the thing keeping you writing every day, is the promise of your book taking off, then you're going to run out of steam. You will.

You want to find an immediate payoff, like purpose or enjoyment, then Or improved mental health for many of us, that will counteract the pain you're feeling of sitting in the uncertainty I've described, of not knowing when the book will take off, or if it's a matter of luck, or something about the book that you have control over.

All of that uncertainty needs to be counterbalanced. The pain of uncertainty can become insurmountable. extreme. So you need to find something outweighs it. And if you already know what that is, if that's a sense of purpose that you're [00:22:00] already aware of, strengthen your connection to that. Remind yourself daily of it and lean into the feelings of that sense of purpose.

Focus your attention on it and give it purposeful attention.

And if you start to notice that you are having thoughts about giving up, Guess what those thoughts are a convenient clue that the uncertainty is getting to be too much for you. It's just the uncertainty is too much. That's why I think of giving up. So consider taking a break for a bit when that happens, and then reconnect to whatever is the counterbalance to that.

Whatever is the payoff day by day for the process of writing. Maybe imagine the people who will benefit from your book. Something like that. Also, remember you can still have a strong and fruitful author career over the long term without a single book ever making the New York Times [00:23:00] bestseller list or anything like that.

Which also brings me to this point. What does it even mean for a book to take off? Right? What do we even mean? Hit number one in the Amazon store, make a bestseller list, win a prestigious award. How many copies sold exactly constitutes taking off? So I ask these questions to direct our attention to the question of why we feel the need for a book to take off.

Is it recognition we're after? Money? A promise of relief from the grind? Generally, the answer is that we think we'll finally be allowed to feel about ourselves some way when that day comes. I'll finally feel like I'm a real writer, or I'll finally feel like I'm successful. Or I'll finally be allowed to take a vacation without feeling like a slacker. So again, we are attaching our character to this result.

Now I've seen people hit [00:24:00] this sort of nebulous level of success where the book hits the bestseller list. They're selling more copies out of, you know, just boom, it takes off. , and they don't suddenly feel different about themselves. They try, sure. They may get a pop of it and they're trying to hold onto that, but it doesn't last.

Yeah. And that's because our relationship to ourselves is one that is cultivated with kind and loving thoughts, feelings, and actions over time, day by day, watering those seeds day by day, and pulling the weeds so they don't overtake it. That is how we start to feel differently about ourselves. And those practices are things you can start practicing right now, regardless of how your books are doing.

And I recommend you do. So, if you practice those things, like speaking to yourself with kindness and compassion, and really coaxing parts of yourself that once felt like they had to hide, coaxing them to the forefront, you'll be [00:25:00] enjoying yourself so much that you'll lose track of time. The uncertainty of whether your books will hit, you'll If you're not, it won't feel so big and scary because it won't mean that much to you either way.

You'll stop attaching how you feel about yourself to your success in that way. So if a book takes off, fabulous. What a great week you'll have. And if it doesn't, well you can still wake up each day and ask, Do I want to work on a new project today or do I want to get some feedback on an old one and see if I could update it?

You can just do it. Ask that, depending on how you feel each day.

I should say that yes, having a book or series take off is often a nice little treat for our finances. Um, it may be like a, you know, drink of water after we've been wandering in the desert. So I'm not going to deny that it is financially beneficial, right? But it's also not a guarantee of future success in our industry.

So you hit it once with one book or one series. Great. You may never hit it again like that. [00:26:00] Do you really want your life and the way you feel about yourself to be contingent on something so fickle? It sounds like a great way to stay in a constant state of anxiety and low self esteem, frankly. So if you've never had a book or series take off, or you had it happen once and then you haven't had it happen again since, I hope you'll practice being okay if it never happens again.

This looks like connecting to a deeper reason to write that can be satisfied or nearly satisfied each time you sit down and write. And also bringing your awareness to the discomfort of uncertainty that we must necessarily sit in as authors. Be mindful of the pain associated with that and check in with yourself to see when it's getting to be too much or you need to take a break or add in something to counterbalance it.

And then you'll have a pretty good answer for, what if my books never take off? You can still love writing, change the lives of readers, and keep creating regardless. Just because your [00:27:00] book or books haven't taken off yet doesn't mean that they never will. So ask for feedback, accept the sound advice without getting defensive, and continue bravely for as long as you can, keeping an eye out for luck so you don't miss it if it comes your way.

That's all you can do. And, it can be enough, but it will also be painful at times. Lean into the pain and look at it. Deconstruct it. It won't kill you. But until you look at it directly, which many authors don't, ever do, and until you call bullshit on some of its lies, it'll haunt you. It may even overwhelm you.

The only thing that can stop you from writing is you. And if you stop writing and stop marketing, your books don't stand a chance of hitting it. That's the only certainty you can have here. So is it worth it? Is it worth just giving up so that you can have [00:28:00] some certainty there? Or would you like to keep building muscles that allow you to stay in that uncertainty?

Because uncertainty is the place where hope lives.

That's it for this episode. Thanks for joining me as we unpack this anxiety today. If something in this resonated for you, feel free to drop me a line at contact@ffs.media. I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of What If for Authors.

Episode 11: What if it's election season?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing atmosphere of election season and how it affects authors. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram Certified Coach and her own journey as a writer, Claire explores strategies to remain creative and hopeful during such a stressful time. This episode offers a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your nervous system, staying grounded, and continuing your writing journey amidst political chaos.

Key Takeaways:

• Managing Election Anxiety: Understand the impact of the election season on your mental health and how to stay grounded.

• Nervous System Regulation: Learn practical techniques for regulating your nervous system and maintaining focus on your writing.

• Enneagram Insights: Use the Enneagram to identify and manage your emotional patterns and fears during stressful times.

• Impact of Stories: Recognize the power of storytelling in shaping minds and promoting compassion and understanding.

• Actionable Steps: Tips for creating a calming practice, staying informed without being overwhelmed, and staying connected to your writing purpose.

Why Listen? If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the current political climate and its potential impact on your creativity, this episode provides valuable insights and techniques to help you stay focused and resilient. Claire's empathetic guidance will help you navigate the turbulence of election season while continuing to write meaningful stories.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

!Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of what if for authors, I'm so glad you're here. My name is Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, sustain your author career by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain. As I'm recording this episode, 2024.

Technically, I don't believe this is considered to be part of the election season in the U S. But it sure feels like it already. Election season runs for way too long now and it sort of wears us down. So that come election day, we just want it to be over. Well, too bad folks. It won't be over after election day this year.

Have you seen who's running? Remember the last presidential election? Right. So this election shows all signs of being as big of a stressor on our bodies, minds, and hearts as the last one. That's why this episode is going to be all about asking the [00:01:00] question, what if it's election season? We ask it so that we can answer the question, figure out how to continue to be creative and hopeful authors and make it through to the other side, regardless of the outcome.

I'll be honest, I'm already finding myself dysregulated on a regular basis, thinking about the election and what's at stake in it. I'm going to do my best. not actually get political in this episode, but there's a part of me that wants to get very, very political because that part of me doesn't see this as a matter of slight policy disagreements, but rather will we have democracy when 2025 rolls around or not?

I don't think anyone's going to have a hard time guessing which candidate I will definitely not be voting for. So. I won't spill it out, but suffice to say I have a very bad feeling about this. It's causing me a lot of anxiety because I worry about the health and safety of not just myself, but of a lot of people I care about and how that'll be [00:02:00] negatively impacted by one or multiple of the possible outcomes.

If you're listening to this from outside the US, maybe that helps you understand some of the stakes Americans feel about this and the complete sense of impending doom. Some people seem to think this is a fun game called Tear It Down, and they seem to have lost sight of how many actual lives, both inside the U.

S. and outside of it, would be lost as a result of that impulse, frankly. So, the impulse seems very reactive to me and not accompanied by much discernment to speak of.

I say all this to let you know that This what if has been one I'm actively having to manage while balancing my own authorly responsibilities. There's a real strangeness to writing a scene where my sweet little sleuth is enjoying a harvest feast with friends. And then I close the document and catch a new snippet where one of the presidential candidates is saying something brashly dehumanizing about [00:03:00] an entire group of people.

And then I remember that a lot of people are down with that. They may vote for him. It's, it's hard for my heart to stay connected to the relevance and impact of my fiction when the real world seems to be using my heart as a punching bag. And for me, as an Enneagram type one, when I pop my head into the world of politics, which is the world of humanity, since politics is simply the rules we set for ourselves.

And, you know, rules that affect all of us, though not always equally. When I pop my head into that world, all I see is a mess. It's a horrifying mess. I see people foaming at the mouth for violence, people begging to be seen as humans while being completely ignored. And some of the pettiest bickering among grown ass adults who are supposed to be taking care of those things.

So my attention as a one naturally flows towards what I perceive to be wrong or broken, and I am perceiving the fuck out of American [00:04:00] politics is brokenness right now.

Does that mean that I think the wisest solution is to tear it all to the ground? No, because I'm not a three year old and politics isn't a block tower. I get the impulse, but it comes from desperation, not discernment. And I really, really hope more people start to see that. Anyway, I've been considering what I'm going to do in the heat of election season for a while.

I wouldn't be surprised if the industry is already starting to see a dip in sales overall in the U S market as a result of the anxiety that I'm describing here, books can be a great world to slip into to take a break, but books Past a certain threshold of nervous system arousal, people struggle to focus on anything that isn't addressing what our bodies are telling us is a threat.

We start to enter a state of collective hypo or hyper arousal, and that's going to impact people's reading habits, y'all. I've been hearing people talk about how it'll start in September and [00:05:00] October and run through the election. But I think that's a vast underestimation. I suspect it's already starting.

So if you see your sales going down right now, but Nothing about your business marketing has changed. I would say that's probably what's going on. And I don't believe it's going to carry on until the election and then slowly go back to normal. That's mostly because, like I said, I don't think the election will be anything close to resolved by the morning of November 6th.

And then assuming the person who wins decides to play dictator, uh, which one of the candidates has literally said he would, And I'm inclined to believe him. Uh, I don't really know when the collective hypo and hyper arousal will end. And I'm saying that knowing that it's going to freak you out. Yes, I know it will, but I don't think covering our eyes to this possibility will allow us to make better business decisions here.

And I see a lot of authors covering their eyes lately.

So the idea that the one who wants to be a dictator will win is just one outcome, right? [00:06:00] Another possibility is that the guy who doesn't show interest in being a full fledged dictator, maybe he wins. In which case we have some pretty solid past data that indicates that will probably not be the end of the election discussion, probably that will be contested and dragged out until at least January again.

I don't think we'll have a repeat of what happened in the last election. Instead, I think we'll be picking up where we left off and building from there and the intensity of the election results denial.

I won't even speculate on what that would look like because frankly, I'm still traumatized from the images of the first time. So there are a couple of options laid out, and I'm sure there are others I haven't thought much about because there always are, but those two seem to me to be the most likely ones.

I don't know. Maybe you disagree with me on that. Fine. If your brain is able to concoct a rosy outcome, please let me know what your secret is. I'm sure your heart rate right now is higher than when you started listening to this [00:07:00] episode. And sometimes looking at reality will do that. But you do still have a lot of control over how you feel throughout this process.

Unfortunately, this discussion is going to be one of those where we talk about systems that are broken and how it falls to individuals, uh, who are suffering as a result. It's not fair that each of us have to carry this anxiety individually and address it individually, just because we live in all these broken systems of politics, ideology, and so on.

It shouldn't fall to the individual, but at this point it kind of does. It's like how you see those news articles constantly talking about how Gen Z's mental health issues are because of their phone addictions, blaming the individual for their mental health struggle, rather than talking about the world Gen Z is inheriting.

Where the climate is rapidly changing, the adults in charge handled a pandemic about as poorly as humanly possible. Many groups of people are getting their [00:08:00] human rights rolled back and so forth. But sure, it's the screen time, not, you know, any of the things happening in the world that they're learning about through that screen.

So that's what I mean by saying, I hate to put the responsibility on the individual here when the problems are created by the systems we live in. But that seems to be the reality right now. And I think it can actually be an empowering thought if we let it, you don't have to wait until other people start acting right before you can care for your heart, mind, and body the way it deserves to be cared for.

There are going to be some authors whose careers do not last through this election season, but there will be plenty of authors whose careers do last. There are a lot of factors here, like whether the person is good at compartmentalizing the politics when it's time to write. There How much money you have socked away for your business when the biggest dip in sales happens.

And, you know, whether you're in the U. S. or not. I don't get the sense that folks outside of the U. S. have all that much less [00:09:00] dread about our election than we do, considering how the U. S. has its hands in every corner of global politics. But it will certainly feel less immediate and less personal for folks who are living outside of the U.

S.

So that may impact a person's ability to focus on their writing. Um, we don't have control over a lot of the factors that will determine whether our author career still stands come 2025. So there's no point in focusing on those things that we can't control. Instead, I think there's going to be one factor that really determines this above all else.

And that's the individual's ability to regulate their nervous system. I feel. Like, I've been shouting this from the rooftop since the start of the year, and only a few authors are actually understanding how crucial this is. Nervous system regulation is something that must be cultivated through lots of intentional practice.

It won't show up for you in October out of [00:10:00] nowhere. You know how the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now? Practicing mindfulness for regulation is like that. It grows slowly, like a tree. Start today, if you didn't start 20 years ago. We can become dysregulated many times a day, especially when we don't have control over which people we encounter, or if we check the news a lot.

The 24 Hour News Station's goal is to get you dysregulated and in a state of fear, and then keep you there, because it'll keep you locked into their channel and forget about everything else. Essentially what's happening is they're triggering your core fear so that they can hijack your perceptual filter.

The concept of a perceptual filter is that it determines what information is relevant to you and what information is not. It filters out all the irrelevant information so your conscious mind doesn't have to juggle it along with everything else. What is deemed most relevant is whatever relates back to the fear that's been triggered, which is usually our core fear that defines our Enneagram type.[00:11:00]

So once a news station activates that fear and you enter into a state of dysregulation, your brain is going to really home in on the TV or phone or wherever you're watching it to keep watching, because that's where the perceived threat seems to be coming from. And you're hoping to get information that will prepare you against it.

So you are hooked in., My recommendation is don't watch 24 hour news stations, any of them. This will not help you maintain your nervous system regulation through the election season. For the sake of transparency, I should point out that I've done the exact same thing in this episode. I've hijacked your attention with fear, but I promise I'm going to release you by the end with some helpful hints that will hopefully bring you back into a regulated state and with at least one new tool to get you back there.

Anytime you notice that you're not there and are ready to return. The tricky thing is that it's not always easy to notice when we're dysregulated. That's because when we are, our self awareness [00:12:00] tends to be very low. We're unable to observe our patterns because we're totally engrossed in them. Add into that the fact that what many of us consider healthy patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior Are not actually healthy.

A lot of people value self righteous behavior, for instance, because they've seen it modeled in authority figures from a young age, but self righteousness shows a lack of self awareness. Righteousness is healthy though. There's a thin line between those two things. And on one side is our ego. That's the self righteousness side.

And on the other side is selfless love, which is righteousness side. So the Enneagram is a map that helps us sort out when we're in a fear response and how far into it we are. That's why it's such a useful tool. The concept of levels of development for each type breaks down how deep we are into fear and how out of touch with our essence or the truth of our type we've become.

So if you want to learn to stay more connected to yourself, less [00:13:00] at the mercy of whoever hijacks your attention with fear tactics, and you want to recognize more quickly when you're in hypo or hyper arousal, I haven't found a better map and troubleshooting guide for that than the Enneagram. And then what do you do?

You've realized that you're in a state you don't want to be in, and what's the next step? There are a couple of things. First, you might look toward what's called the vice or passion of your Enneagram type. Same thing, two different words, vice passion. These are emotional patterns that are the biggest stumbling block we face.

And so anytime we're struggling, we're afraid we can pretty reliably look to our vice acting up as the culprit there. Focusing your attention and curiosity on that vice, asking it why it's there and what you can do to lessen its grip on you is a great start. So let's look very quickly at the vices of each type, according to the integrative Enneagram.

And I'm not going to go super in depth on these, but this can be a starting point if you want to do [00:14:00] some research and learn more. So type one's vice is anger. You can look for everywhere. Anger is appearing as disdain, contempt, resentment, rage, any of other of its many forms and ask yourself how you got there.

Type twos vice is pride. Look for where you're denying your own needs and projecting them onto others to feel like you don't need help, but everyone else does type threes. Vice is deceit. So look for where you're projecting a false image of yourself to the world and how it might be reinforcing your own self deceit about who you are.

Type fours vice is envy. So look for where you're comparing yourself to others to confirm that they have something you don't and notice any sense of entitlement to what they have that you're sitting with. Type fives vice is avarice. So look for all the ways you're trying to hold on tight to your resources so that you don't have to be dependent on anyone else ever.[00:15:00]

And notice where your sense of scarcity is starting to run the show. Type six is vice is doubt. So look for all the places you're acquiring a guarantee where you could never have one and how that's causing you to doubt yourself and those around you so that you can never feel settled or safe. Type seven spice is gluttony.

So look for where your fear of deprivation is causing you to take an overly hedonistic approach of more, more, more. Eight's vice is lust. So this is not necessarily a sexual thing, but look for where your feelings of powerlessness are causing you to adopt a conquering approach to life and sending you to all or nothing extremes.

Type nine's vice is self forgetting. So look for where your fear of conflict is causing you to forfeit your agency and allow others to make decisions for you and determine the path your life takes. If all you did was take a hard look at your vice, you'd be in a pretty good place for deconstructing the emotional patterns that are [00:16:00] sending you into a dysregulated state.

Most frequently.

But that doesn't necessarily help you regulate in the moment. So for that, I would guide you toward a few practices that can ground you back in your body. Now, these practices need to actually be practiced prior to game time. So when you're feeling calm and self aware, that's when you lay the groundwork.

The repetition of these is what strengthens your neural pathways around wellbeing so that you can travel them more easily when you need to later on.

The number of practices that fall under this category are pretty much endless. So here's what I like to do. Doesn't necessarily mean that it will be the one that you really like, but you can try it on for size. I closed my eyes. I imagine myself floating in the spaciousness of my body. I place one hand on my chest and one on my belly, and then I breathe deeply through my nose into my belly to the count of four.

I hold the in breath for four seconds and [00:17:00] then I exhale through my nose to the count of eight. I do that a few times and then I move on to the next step, which is to feel my palms pressing against the sturdiness of my body. And I tell myself, I am here, I am whole, I am home. You can say it aloud, or you can repeat it in your head.

I usually say it quietly to myself as I continue to breathe into my belly. I am here, not floating in that war zone or reliving a traumatic event from earlier in my life. I am here right now, right here. I am whole. There's nothing missing from me and nothing about me that needs to hide. I am complete and solid.

I have autonomy over my being. I am whole. I am home. The world around me can change, but until the day I die, my body is my home. And therefore I can always return home. All I need to do is to [00:18:00] recognize my desire to return home. And then I go there. My body becomes my shelter from all storms and it's there for me always.

I am home. Now the here whole home combo is one I put together specifically for my needs. And after reading a shit ton of books about this and learning from some great teachers, your combo may not be here whole home, but it's not a bad starting point. Over time, you'll figure out what you need more and then you can change it up.

It works like absolute magic for me. Did a bunch of men in Texas who couldn't point to a uterus on a diagram, if it were labeled, pass yet another law that limits my ability to get healthcare. I might someday need to survive. Okay. Take a few deep breaths. I am here. I am whole. I am home now. Does that fix the external issue?

No, but now at least I can function within the show a little bit better. At least enough to be in the mindset to write some satire about [00:19:00] these bozos that may later help someone laugh so they don't cry. Laughter is great for the nervous system and its regulation, by the way. So laughter. Also crying.

Definitely start addressing any blocks you have right now about crying because it's a wonderful tool to have at your disposal when you're under constant stress. Deconstruct whatever voices taught you early in life that crying was somehow bad or weak or whatever. It's just fine. And there sure is a lot that we could cry about.

So if you want to cry, but you don't, that's bad for you. Don't do it. Just cry. It's great. Anyway, I practice my regulation tools when I'm on walks out in nature. The environment and activity allow me to feel calm. And that's when I practice grounding myself in my body. A lot of the practices I've developed myself are, to be fair, results of reading the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. His life's work was to revolutionize Buddhist teachings of mindfulness so that they could [00:20:00] spread far and wide beyond the monasteries and create real change in the lives of everyday people.

He was a proponent of the idea that other religions and cultural practices should just be layered on top of these mindfulness teachings and that there wasn't really a contradiction there. In that way, his mindfulness teachings are sort of like the Enneagram, which can be layered on any religious beliefs because it's passed through all of them and it's development.

It's almost like a secular wisdom tool and you see the wisdom of Christian teachings, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism in there, along with the knowledge of a lot of different indigenous cultures. Some people take issue with the idea that there are any sort of central threads of wisdom between these major religions.

And those people are usually not willing to listen to anything I have to say anyway, so that's fine. But I think the commonalities are beautiful and it gives me hope that there is some underlying map of the path forward for the human race [00:21:00] and for our planet as a whole. Just because my little ant brain can't see the path forward doesn't mean there isn't one.

But it takes each of us learning to keep ourselves in a mindful place when shit goes south for any sort of collective awakening to happen. So that's something that you and I can work on. That we have control over. We may not be able to fix the systems, but we don't have to do that on our own. One person alone.

Can't it takes the collective deciding it needs to change and agreeing on how to change it. So our role is to make the change inside of us and help others do the same if they choose to. And it's a scary idea for me that that's all I can realistically do. I have to accept that I'm just a small piece of this puzzle.

But I'm still an important piece and so are you. And as writers, the work we do for ourselves, it shows through in our books and it can transform the hearts and minds of so many people. [00:22:00] I don't know a single person whose view has been radically changed by something other than a story. Stories have the ability to change the world.

And so I think we have a huge responsibility as writers. To be conscious of the stories we're telling and how they are shaping the world around us.

I don't know what will happen this election season, but I do know that no matter what, we're going to need a lot of stories that spread compassion and understanding for our fellow humans. Now, maybe that takes the form of romance or thriller or horror, but when we transform ourselves, we transform our stories and those stories transform our readers.

The impact of our own mindfulness and compassion practices as authors has an exponential impact on the world in that way. So if you start to wonder why you even bother writing when the world seems like it's going mad. There you go. There's the reason. [00:23:00] Because stories are the only thing that has ever changed someone's mind.

You are a storyteller. What effect do you want to have on the world? Start by connecting to that in yourself.

So the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. I cannot encourage you enough to start grounding practices that help regulate your nervous system's fear response as soon as possible today, if you're not already doing it, and if you were doing it and fell off, this is your reminder to pick it back up.

It's like a muscle. It can atrophy if we don't keep using it. Election season happens every four years. So this is a skill that you will use for the rest of your life. So to answer the question of this episode, what if it's election season? I'll say that your job is to stay grounded in yourself, create a calming practice, stay away from the news sources that profit from you being in a heightened fear state, [00:24:00] and make sure you carve out moments of calm for yourself regularly.

Multiple times a day, multiple times an hour. And if you're struggling to connect to the point of writing amidst the chaos and uncertainty, don't forget that stories are the only thing that has ever changed anyone's mind. You may feel powerless in other ways, but you have this power.

So I suggest we don't squander it.

Oh, and vote, vote. Oh my God. Vote, uh, use discernment, ask yourself which candidate will move this country and the world closer to the kind of place you want you and the people you love to live in, make sure you're nice and regulated and then go vote. So those are the things you have control over. Don't let yourself get caught in a pattern of being so upset about what you can't control that you neglect the things you can control.

Take a deep breath. You are here. You are whole. You are home. That's it for this episode of What If [00:25:00] for Authors. I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll join me next time as we explore another What If question together.

Episode 10: What if my account gets banned?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor dives into the anxiety-inducing topic of account bans and how authors can rebound and rebuild after such a nightmare scenario. Drawing from real experiences and practical strategies, Claire explores the steps authors can take if they find themselves banned from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or even KDP. This episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing this crisis and emphasizes the importance of resilience and adaptability.

Key Takeaways:

• Initial Response: Strategies for managing the initial freak-out and immediate steps to take after discovering an account ban.

• Appealing the Ban: Tips for reaching out to customer service and appealing the ban effectively.

• Acceptance and Adjustment: The importance of practicing acceptance and adjusting your strategy if the appeal doesn't work.

• Marketing as Water Flow: Claire's analogy of marketing channels and how to redirect your efforts when one channel is blocked.

• Support System: The value of having a support system in place and leveraging the author community during tough times.

• Rebuilding Strategy: Practical advice for rebuilding your business and exploring new opportunities, including selling direct or focusing on local markets.

• Accountability: Handling the emotional fallout if the ban was due to knowingly breaking terms of service, and the importance of taking accountability.

Why Listen? If you find yourself worrying about the possibility of account bans or if you're currently dealing with one, this episode offers thoughtful and actionable advice to help you navigate this challenging situation. Claire's insights into resilience and rebuilding provide a valuable perspective for any author facing setbacks.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain. Yes, I finally did a redirect link.

That's a little bit cleaner. Okay, so today's episode is going to look at something. Quite nightmarish for authors, actually. I mean, it really raises the heart rate when we even mention it in author circles. I've known plenty of authors who've experienced this, and I have seen some absolute spirals as a result, which is totally understandable, but there's also been enough time since some of these.

You know, catastrophe nightmares happened that I've seen these authors rebound and rebuilt after this terrible thing happened to their business. So [00:01:00] while it may feel like the end, it's not, are you ready? Today, we're going to ask the question. What if my account gets banned? Which account are we talking about?

Instagram, TikTok, even your KDP account. I've seen that happen too, unfortunately. And if you're thinking this could never happen to you because you follow the terms of service everywhere, first, I promise you're breaking terms of service somewhere, somehow without even realizing it, because those are frequently changed and tend to be vague and open to the discretion of the site.

, but also. Number two, I know people who didn't break any terms of service and still ended up banned. That can happen. Am I freaking you out enough yet? Wait, is that not the purpose of this podcast? Oh, right. Purpose is the opposite. To show you that there is no reason to freak out, at least not more than, you know, maybe a day of freak out.

We're all entitled [00:02:00] to, you know, a little something for us, a little, a little day long freak out. It can, it can feel luxurious sometimes. Okay, so I just want to be clear that whenever we're sharecropping on, you know, another site, there is a risk that the land we're working will be taken from us. That's there.

But if you'll allow me to be a big fucking nerd for a second, I want to talk about how we're not actually sharecroppers. We're more tenant farmers. This might seem like semantics, but I'm going to explain the difference here. Um, I spent eight summers attending this thing called Pioneer Farm. It was a camp.

So I might as well use what I learned, right? Uh, and I'm not talking about how to milk a cow or do leather work or whatever. Um, I do know how to do those. I learned how to do those. Among other things. Many other things. I can churn butter. I can do all kinds of things. That will be great when the, uh, when the power grid goes down in Texas.

Anyway, I'll post a picture of those days, , in the show notes if you want to check it [00:03:00] out. Me as a little pioneer. Anyway! Let's talk about the difference between sharecroppers and tenant farmers. So, sharecroppers owned basically nothing and offered up their labor first, relying on the landowner to then sell the crops and then pay the sharecropper for their labor.

Meanwhile, tenant farmers rented the land, they paid rent, and then they used their own tools, their own animals, and other supplies. , they harvested the crops, and then they were in charge of selling the crops, so that they could continue to pay rent. The distinction here is that if tenant farmers were kicked off their land, they got to take their tools with them.

And they learned the skills of selling their harvest themselves. All they lost was the land. They could go find somewhere else to rent, or maybe, you know, they could buy their own plot if they had saved up enough and not have to worry about that. But they're not completely lost. Sharecroppers, meanwhile, don't have their own tools and haven't necessarily [00:04:00] learned the skills of selling the harvest.

In other words, sharecroppers, if they get kicked off their land, are starting over at square one. Tenant farmers are not. That's why authors are tenant farmers. All right, so, um, nerd rant concluded. But I do think it's important. So if Kindle Direct Publishing closes your account and won't allow you to open it back up, you take your tools with you, right?

These tools look like your books because you own the copyright, hopefully. And it looks like your readers that you've collected on something like an email list, which I always suggest authors have if for no other reason than the event that something like this happens and you want to be able to tell your fans why you disappeared.

So you're not starting at square one as an author if someone bans your account. You still know how to sell books, like the tenant farmer knows how to sell the harvest they farmed. And you can take your tools and start selling books in another way.

I like to envision marketing as [00:05:00] water flowing through all these different channels, right? The total flow of the water is however much attention you have to give to marketing. And the channels are things like. Or a reader group or anything you do for marketing is its own channel. If you hire someone to help the amount of water, it grows stronger.

some channels are wider than others, allowing more water to flow into them. If the water has too many channels to flow down, you may only get a trickle in some, or most of them. If you limit the number of channels that the water can flow through, you get a much stronger flow down each. Now, say that one of those channels suddenly has a beaver dam built at the start of it.

This would be like one of those channels being shut down unexpectedly in your accounts band. The water is gonna flood the land for a little bit until you make the other channels wider to accept more water flow. This is how we adjust when [00:06:00] an account of ours is shut down and we can't negotiate it open again.

We widen the other channels and let our attention flow to them more. Maybe we even build a new channel or two for the water to flow through. Now here's how I've seen it go when authors get an account banned. Stage one is freak out. Totally understandable, You know, shake it out. Um, I recommend getting up and away from the computer and maybe going for like a brisk walk in the immediate aftermath to sort of blow off some of that panicked energy and complete the stress cycle.

So you can think more clearly and respond in a way that you'll be proud of later.

Next, you'll probably want to reach out to customer service for the platform. You'll want to appeal the ban, do it as many times as you'd like. You can take the approach of being annoying, which I have seen some people do and is very tempting, but if you do reach a human being at some point, the most successful approach is to treat them like a human being and try to connect with them rather than threatening them or making their day at all [00:07:00] worse.

If you can focus on how you can make their day better, not only are they more likely to help you out, but you'll feel better about how you handled yourself afterward, even if they can't help you out or change the outcome.

If you have any connections who can help you. This is the stage where you'd reach out to them one on one and ask them if they have any wisdom or guidance to offer you on this. Only after you do that, and nothing has worked, do I suggest you consider putting the platform on blast. In general, this doesn't do much, and I've seen authors come off looking kind of like petulant or even unhinged as they do this.

And that's my interpretation. , you know, someone may have a different interpretation, but that's the way it struck me. So I don't know that it rallied support as much as it may have made a lot of people cringe and sort of take a step back from that person at a time when they really needed people to take a step forward.

So you don't have to go this far though. putting a company on blast is not a [00:08:00] necessary step in this process. Most people who do it tell themselves it's an attempt to get their account reinstated and maybe it is, but it's also clearly a way of trying to emotionally regulate in a very public arena. I, I cannot suggest a long walk instead.

So those are the initial steps you can take. If your account gets banned somewhere, it can help to have a process and a plan for this that can really help with the anxiety, but that doesn't mean that the plan and process will work to get your account reinstated. So once you exhaust all your options there, it's time to practice.

Uh, acceptance, unfortunately. Practicing acceptance is incredibly difficult. And if you're an Enneagram 1, 3, or 8, you're going to have the most difficult time practicing acceptance here. Just a heads up. Knowing that about yourself can be really useful. Ones have a hard time letting a perceived wrongful accusation go.

Ones [00:09:00] can't let much that seems wrong to them go. Not, it's not really our strength. But practicing the skill is a crucial step on our path toward liberation. So it's worth giving it a shot. Just see what acceptance might feel like. Threes are just not used to there being no way forward. They tend to be so savvy and focused on the goal that they get there come hell or high water.

The idea that there isn't a way to get their account reinstated may not even compute for a long time. It may even be the first time that a three has encountered being frustrated in this way. So it may take a while, but eventually you're gonna wanna practice. Acceptance and eights are used to being able to force their will on a problem until it submits.

So accepting that it will not submit is going to be very difficult. If you're an eight. Add that to the gross power imbalance between, you know, the author business of an individual author, and a company like. Say, meta, and you have [00:10:00] a recipe for the 8's head to just about explode with a need for vengeance and like this desire to balance the scales.

If you're one of these types, and this happens to you, you get your account banned, just, you know, do some deep breathing, talk to people you view as wise, and channel your inner wisdom as much as you can. That's all I can say. Do the best you can on that. It's gonna be tough. Now that's not to say that the rest of the types will take any of this lying down, but maybe they won't rupture a blood vessel in their eye over it, like our dear ones threes and eights might.

Once you accept that it's over, that the appeals are over or over for now, if that's as much as you can accept at the moment, then it's time to start looking at how to adjust your strategy. If your KDP account is banned, for instance, load up on information about how to sell your books on Kobo, Barnes, Noble, Google, Apple, and the million other places where books are sold.

Or maybe this [00:11:00] is your chance to start focusing locally and look up local markets or cons, indie bookstores where you can sell books and Consider building like a community of loyal and local readers. Maybe the universe is telling you it's time to start selling direct, which you may not have had enough time or motivation for, , before your account got banned.

Sometimes. Spite is great motivation. It's not one of the nine core motivations of the Enneagram, but that's because it belongs to all of us. But I will say pace yourself and manage expectations of the outcomes of any new strategies. Because sometimes we can just push, push, push to try and get there immediately.

But at the same time, I'm not going to let this keep me down. That's a great thought to hold onto during this time of rebuilding. Maybe write it on a post it note and keep it on your computer. I'm not going to let this keep me down.

I find that adding the word fucking to my name helps. For instance, [00:12:00] I'm Claire fucking Taylor and I'm not going to let this bullshit keep me down. You don't have to use as many curse words, but I do highly recommend that you give it a shot. It feels pretty good. These are all steps that you can take for yourself, but I think it's also really important to remember that you'll have support along the way.

Authors generally hate to see this happen to their fellow author, with a few exceptions, of course. And you'd be surprised how many people will ask you how they can help.

Maybe 25 percent of those people really mean it and will follow through on whatever they promise to do. Now that's my cynicism coming through, obviously, but even if it's true, even if only 25 percent actually follow through on what they offer, it's a start. And more than that, it's a reminder that you're not alone in this, which is always a huge relief for our nervous system to learn.

For me, it's a start. I value any opportunity I get to find out who my real friends are. And having your account banned is an [00:13:00] opportunity to figure out who your friends are within the author community. My advice on this is to practice focusing your attention as much as you can on those who show up and not on those who fail to show up doing that you'll just be happier and more energetic during the rebuilding process.

So I don't want to paint an overly pretty picture here. Realistically, if your account. Gets banned. Anything that you use frequently, you'll see a noticeable dip in sales and, and. God, that sucks. It's scary. It's certainly not fun, but it's not the end of your career. The only end to your career is if you stop writing books and stop marketing the books you already have.

That's the only way it can end. It can be incredibly stabilizing when we're in a moment like this, when something has happened to us that we can't control and it's negatively impacting our business to pause and say aloud. This is the bad part. This is the bad part. [00:14:00] Oh yeah, Claire, this is the bad part. I especially encourage any type 7s to practice this, and that's because your defense mechanism of choice is sublimation, or finding the silver lining so immediately that you don't give yourself a chance to connect with a negative reality and acknowledge your negative feelings.

Now, you've probably been rewarded for sublimating a lot in your life, but it's not actually healthy, right? We need to feel those feelings so that they don't build up. And if you've been sublimating a lot, something big like this, you haven't had practice being in these feelings. So it can be very big and heavy.

And just saying, this is the bad part, could go a long way.

So. Anchor yourself in the bad moment, and this goes for all types. Imagine where you are on the timeline of your life, and stick a big red pushpin into the ground and declare, This is the bad part. That can be incredibly validating to your experience, but it does something more. It forces us to [00:15:00] acknowledge that the bad part is just a part, and that there will be good parts later.

Our job is to take our tenant farmer tools and go build ourselves the good part. And then, this is important, when you're in the good part, don't forget to pause, put a big green pushpin in the ground along your timeline, and declare, this is the good part. You made it. Congratulations. One of my favorite quotes is by Kurt Vonnegut, of course, who's surprised by that, but I think about it all the time, and neuroscience backs up the importance of the point that he's making in this quote.

It's relevant to the discussion, so, okay. The quote says, And I urge you to please notice when you are happy and exclaim or murmur or think at some point. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is. Bringing our awareness to the nice moments of life deepens our connections to those and [00:16:00] strengthens our belief that we will return to those moments, even when we're smack dab in the bad parts.

That sense of faith that we develop through that will get us through some knee deep shit like you wouldn't believe, but it has to be cultivated through repetition of small mindful moments. It doesn't show up out of nowhere. Wellbeing must always be cultivated. We have to water the seeds. We have to fertilize it, trim back the dead leaves, fight off any bugs.

And eventually our harvest is there for us when we need it.

Before I wrap this up, I want to touch on one last thing. I've been functioning mostly on the assumption that if you get your account banned, it's because you accidentally broke the terms of service or you did nothing wrong.

And there's no explanation. This happens. Yes. But what if you intentionally broke the terms of service to see if you could get away with it, [00:17:00] and then the consequences came and found you? So this happens too, and it's important to acknowledge that knowingly breaking whatever rules are set out and then getting caught comes with a whole heap of emotions that are incredibly difficult to manage and can add to the stress.

You might feel embarrassed for what you did, especially if some asshole authors decided to spread it around to everyone. You might feel extremely unsafe without fully understanding where that's coming from. You may feel ashamed or guilty. So I want to bring awareness to this because your impulse, if you're feeling these emotions, may be to lie, deflect, or pass along the blame to someone else.

And this is a very human response, okay? It will be incredibly intense, these emotions, to where you have a difficult time thinking coherent thoughts. Your ego is really going to show up here. Your ego defenses. So whatever lies your ego is telling you about how lying, deflecting [00:18:00] responsibility and blaming other people are the best approach and that they could work.

I promise you that you will make it out of this more unscathed and more connected to yourself. If you can find a way to own your actions and take accountability for breaking any rules. Intentionally breaking rules doesn't mean you're a bad person. I get it. Sometimes we break rules. Sometimes the rules seem stupid and we break them and see if anything happens.

All right. So your ego will do everything it can in a moment like this to protect itself and your idealized self image. That's not the path that leads to truth and connection with yourself and others, though. Your ego is lying to you about the best path forward. So take a break from the situation, withdraw, talk with a therapist if you have one you like, and practice owning your actions without taking those actions as an indictment of who you are.

An added layer to this, uh, might be If you were raised by [00:19:00] parents who shamed you a lot as a kid or couldn't separate out your actions from your character. Kids break rules. This includes teens. They do dumb stuff with their eyes wide open about how stupid this stuff is. That's just a part of being a kid.

If your parents use those moments as opportunities to tell you you are a bad person instead of a good and normal person who showed an error in judgment, then your reaction to being caught breaking rules later on in life will feel especially intense. You'll Essentially be back in that place again.

Being mindful of this allows us to have compassion for ourselves and that compassion is necessary to taking the accountability that leads to more positive outcomes for everyone involved. It's hard to take accountability if doing so. Is accepting that you are a bad person fundamentally, but that's not what accountability is.

We take accountability for our actions and good people sometimes break [00:20:00] rules and do things that they kind of know might not be the best idea. That's just life. So if you knew you were breaking a rule and you broke it anyway, I suggest you own it. You'll be proud of yourself in the long run for doing that.

Okay. So if you find yourself in a moment of catastrophizing and you wonder, what if my account gets banned? Here's what I'd offer. You're entering into a tough time, but you have so many good options for responding so that your business is stronger, farther down the line. Take care of yourself as you proceed.

When you feel yourself slipping into panic or apathy, go take a walk or speak with a friend who's good for some wisdom and then keep rebuilding. Maybe just take a break and start the next day. Practice accepting what you can't change. Take accountability. For what's yours, ask friends for support, [00:21:00] redirect your energy to other options available and take lots of breaks along the way.

You really don't know what amazing things are waiting for you. As a result of having that single door close, the land may have been pulled out from under you, but you still have your tools and you know how to sell a harvest. So you got this. I am confident that you will rebuild. If you stay in that mindset.

So that's it for this episode. I hope you take a minute to marvel at how much you've learned since you started doing this author thing. No one can take that from you. Isn't that fabulous? If you want to reach out to me, send an email to contact at ffs. media. I'm Claire Taylor and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of What If for Authors.

Episode 9: What if I don't have support?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the crucial topic of support systems for authors. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and author, Claire explores how to navigate the challenges of building and recognizing support in your author career. Whether you're struggling to find support or unsure if you have enough, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to understanding and leveraging the support you have.

Key Takeaways:

• Types of Support: Learn about the different types of support—personal and professional—and how each can benefit your author career.

• Recognizing Support: Discover strategies to identify and appreciate the support you already have.

• Building Support Systems: Tips on how to cultivate a robust support network, even if you feel you have none.

• Enneagram Insights: Insights into how different Enneagram types might resist asking for help and how to overcome these limiting beliefs.

• Practical Advice: Strategies for indie authors to start with minimal financial resources and gradually build up their support and resources.

Links mentioned:

• The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up: Find Your Path, Face Your Shadow, Discover Your True Self

Why Listen? If you find yourself feeling isolated or unsupported in your author journey, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective on building and recognizing support systems. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance independence with the invaluable benefits of a supportive community.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for Authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, on basically any online retailer.

You can just Google the title and there it'll be.

Before we get into today's topic, I would be remiss not to mention that enrollment is now open for the next session of the Liberated Writer five week course. If you like this podcast, but want some more individualized advice and time to learn, this course is the very best way to get that. So it includes an IEQ nine test code and 23 page report to find your Enneagram type and subtype along with a bunch of, you know, Fascinating other metrics, some of which I've mentioned on the show before each week, I host two 90 minute group calls for all of the participants of the course on Mondays, we have a topical call with a group [00:01:00] discussion and reflections.

And on Thursdays, we do a Q and a about the week's material and the reflection questions. So you'll graduate from the liberated writer course with a clear understanding of what an aligned and sustainable author career looks like for you. And you'll know other authors who are walking the same path.

So I can't emphasize enough how big of a perk that last bit is. If you're tired of working on your author career in isolation, meeting people who are committed to this thing for the long run in the same way that you are is key to persisting success. And making everything just a little bit easier along the way.

So the course runs from August 26th to September 26th of this year, 2024. Uh, and registration closes August 19th. So if you want to sign up and join us, you can go to. Liberated writer.com, you'll see the option to read about the course or the retreat.

So if you would also like to join me for the retreat in October, there are tickets left for that, and you'll get a Liberated [00:02:00] Writer course ticket for August included in that purchase. So think about what your needs are right now, and then go to liberated writer.com to read more about each of those offerings.

I would love to see you at the kickoff call on August 26th. Let's dive into today's episode that asks the question, What if I have no support? That's our topic today. And now this is an important question because we all need and deserve support to be able to keep doing what we feel like we were put on this earth to do, uh, or even just to do things that we weren't put on this earth to do, but need to be done, like, you know, paying bills on time, picking the kids up from school, all that stuff.

There's a cultural aspect to this discussion that's important for us to note, which is that most Western cultures put a lot of value. Uh, in the individual's ability to do things on their own, I'm all about personal responsibility, but this sort of nebulous cultural value can often look like [00:03:00] people feeling inferior if they ask for help or if they desire support.

Support then starts to look like a luxury or even like a cop out more than a necessary part of being a human. We are after all social creatures were made to live in groups. It also makes certain people ashamed to admit where they have support as if that would diminish their individual achievement.

Individual achievement is definitely put on a pedestal in our culture. Is that right? Is that wrong? I don't know, but I think it's important to remember that this is not how everyone does things. all over the world. The reason it's important to remember that the way you do things is not how everyone does things, is to remind ourselves that we have options and that by and large, these cultural values that we've absorbed by osmosis are pretty arbitrary.

If they don't work for you, [00:04:00] you're not required to keep giving them safe harbor.

That being said, I really should acknowledge that some people don't have access to the kind of support that others have. A lot of financial support is going to be based on the household you were born into. I think if, if we could control what household we were born into, a lot of us would have made different decisions, but we can't control it.

So what I mean is that if you grew up in an affluent household, you're more likely to have a bunch of friends who are affluent. That means that your social circle has a whole lot more financial resources at its disposal. And so at least in terms of finances, you're going to be more supported, presumably, than someone who grows up in a working class neighborhood and whose friends are by and large working class people.

Now I say presumably because you could be affluent with a bunch of affluent friends and they could be stingy assholes, right? So this doesn't always shake out that way. And there's the added setback of if all of your friends are affluent, you need financial support. [00:05:00] There's going to be some shame associated with asking for it.

Now, I don't know that working class people would have a whole lot of sympathy and compassion for the affluent person who is simply too proud to ask for help, but it is what it is. There are other kinds of support though, and these other kinds of support tend to be really undervalued, but absolutely crucial to your continued pursuit of an author career.

This is support like mental and emotional support and generally just people cheering you on. That is really important. So this kind of support can go a long way toward making up for any sort of lack of financial support that you may have.

The great thing about being an indie author is that you can do a lot of it yourself now.

If you're doing a lot of it yourself, that is a disadvantage, but mostly it's a disadvantage if you're comparing yourself to the speed of other people, which I don't recommend doing. But you can make your own book covers to start. You can write your own blurbs. You can trade [00:06:00] off with someone who does editing for a service that they may need. The market is certainly more competitive now than it was back in 2015 and 2016. But learning those skills, even for free from YouTube videos, that's going to be a huge advantage.

That's how I started publishing for real cheap. And that's how many of the authors I know who started around the same time as me, got their career off the ground for cheap. If you're an indie author, you can always update your cover later when you have a better one to use. Or, , you know, you can make money off of your book with your DIY cover and then pay a cover designer with that and sort of work your way up.

Does it take longer? Yes. Is it a little bit more effort? Yes. And this is why it's really important to have people cheering you on.

So it is possible, but yeah, it's going to take a lot more work and it's super unfair that I'm asking the individual to take on the work because of certain systemic injustices. I get that. What I will say is that doing all of this yourself [00:07:00] can be really fun. Learning skills is a great way to support yourself. And it helps remind us that if everything goes to shit, we can still keep doing this all on our own. You can do this for zero dollars. It's hard, but you can keep doing it. So if you genuinely have no support, there's still a lot you can do on your own.

Okay, but that's not ideal, right? And most of us have support, whether we see it or not. So that's what I want to talk about. You have support, you may just not be seeing the support you have. And so bringing some attention to that can go a long way. So this may look like friends who cheer you on. This may look like a spouse who agrees to give you some time to write and work fewer hours at your nine to five, or maybe they encourage you to quit your job completely and write full time.

Not everyone has a spouse as supportive as that though. I've heard an unfortunate amount of stories from authors whose spouses not only don't support them in any [00:08:00] noticeable way, but try and undermine their dreams of writing books. Yes, really. I wish it was more of an anomaly than it is. If this describes your situation, then you're really going to want to listen to this episode all the way through.

You're going to need extra support from people who are not your spouse.

The kind of support that every author can benefit from having includes emotional support, like having friends outside of writing, as well as having fellow author friends. Teachers and mentors who are farther ahead than you can save you some time by helping you avoid making the the mistakes they've already made. And this can include the people who post on YouTube and other free content, as well as paid courses and coaching. I also encourage you to find a group of peers to meet with regularly.

These can be people in your same genre or people who are at the same basic stage in their career as you are. Bringing together a group of people with a variety of skills and life experience can be [00:09:00] hugely beneficial too. We want to find that mix of sameness, as well as various individual unique contributions.

So you can meet with these people weekly or monthly, and the benefit will still be huge, regardless of how long in between the meetings, especially if you have an ongoing conversation on something like Discord or Slack, and you can ask your questions when they come up. Now, the probability of a group like this becoming toxic over time is relatively high.

But you can do a lot toward guiding the conversation to healthier bonding topics than, you know, who you collectively dislike. That being said, being an author doesn't mean you have to live in a world of professionalism and don't even get me started on the concept of professionalism and who got a say in what it meant and who didn't.

But you can make these people both your support for your career plans and close friends. It's okay to blur those lines a little bit as long as, you know, maybe you don't want these to be your only friends because if shit goes south in the [00:10:00] writing industry, it can be really nice to have people who don't care about your career to go hang out with.

So that being said, you can make them your close friends if you trust them. Maybe don't disclose to authors you don't trust yet. And I say that as someone who has been burned.

There does lurk within this industry strains of envy that come out at interesting times. So just keep an eye on it, listen to your gut and accept that sometimes you will make the wrong choice. That's okay. Still keep making friends. When it comes to finding someone to coach you, it's okay if you just don't vibe with someone.

Don't work with them if you don't vibe with them. I have plenty of authors who don't vibe with me and therefore don't consume any of my stuff. I mean, I respect that. I don't vibe with me sometimes either, but there's also a lot of free advice out there and some of it is garbage. You've probably figured that out already.

Some of it is old and no longer relevant because industry [00:11:00] has changed so much and so on. I tend to prefer finding coaches and experts who aren't going to pretend that there's one path that works or even three paths that work in publishing, but rather those who are able to differentiate and individualize for the person they're working with.

No one can know for sure what the outcome of a particular decision will be, but people will try and sell you on the fact that they know exactly what will happen if you do X, Y, and Z. So look for the people who help you understand the situation better. and help you figure out how you like to decide things.

This is generally why I continue to do Enneagram coaching. And I mostly direct people toward Becca Syme and her strengths coaching, if the matter at hand isn't one that Enneagram really addresses. Cause both Enneagram and strengths show us more about how we work, how our brain works, how our heart works, you know, our emotions, how our intuition works.

And these both help us make better decisions for [00:12:00] ourselves. The more we know about ourselves, the goal with my coaching, at least is that one day authors won't continue to need it because they'll understand themselves well enough to make whatever decision makes sense for them at the time, and then feel comfortable handling whatever the outcome is.

Cause we cannot predict the outcome. Well, we can guess at it, but. we can never guess at it with a hundred percent certainty. So the outcome is always an unknown. If your coach is giving you a set process that doesn't feel very individualized, they probably haven't done a lot of the work unpacking their own biases and starting to see the lens that they're looking through.

So maybe their process happens to work for you, and that's great. But if it doesn't, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. So when I say that you probably already have support and may not be recognizing it, what I mean is that there are people out there who will support you, but you may not have been fostering these [00:13:00] connections enough for them to show up when you need them.

So it might be time to start thinking more about that. Giving help and assistance to others for the sake of receiving it isn't a super healthy pattern, so that's not what I'm talking about. . But there are other benefits to showing up for others besides simply safeguarding your future and hoping that they'll show up for you if a shit storm blows in.

For one, showing up and providing support for others helps to remind us that we have more than enough. It gets us out of the zero sum game mindset, uh, where we can sometimes believe that other authors are our competitors, which in, I guess, a very broad sense, I think there's an argument to be made for that.

But we don't come into direct competition with any particular author. So we can realistically pretend none of them are our competition and not only be happier, but also come into no ill effects from that thinking. If anything, this industry could use a whole lot more solidarity among authors to collectively take on some of [00:14:00] these larger systems and models that are making it more and more difficult to be an author.

Anyway, when you show up for someone else, it signals to your own mind that you have something to give. You have something to offer that you're not all used up, that you don't only have what you need and nothing more. And it shows you that certain things like love and compassion and connection are renewable resources.

Now, the only caveat I would put on this is for Enneagram ones, twos, and sixes. Who are known as the compliant types, which means that you're trying to earn what you want through service, duty, and responsibility to other people. So that impulse to give with the hope of receiving. is going to be extra strong in ones, twos, and sixes.

Now, this isn't bad. It's just something to be mindful of because what can happen is that you can give more than you have the energy to give and commit to more than you have the resources to commit to. And then there's this hope that others will reciprocate so that you don't run [00:15:00] dry. If you're dealing with others who are not compliant types, which is most people, that hope is going to fall flat.

And then in comes the bitterness, the resentment, the anger, the mistrust, and all those insidious emotions that are very unflattering and that erode connection with others. So that will start eroding your support if you don't stay mindful of that sort of impulse of being compliant. If you're an Enneagram type 4, You're known as the withdrawing types.

, so something you might be doing that erodes your support over time from others is absorbing the support and not reciprocating. And I'm not just talking about reciprocation to the ones twos and sixes who really want it. I'm talking about everyone. you have to put a reminder on your calendar to reach out to the people who are supportive to you. and ask what they need, then do that. Do that. Uh, you will erode the support that you have available to you. If you don't [00:16:00] consciously balance this withdrawing impulse.

Others may not even know if you like them or not, frankly, if you're a four or five or nine. So it wouldn't be the worst thing to tell people explicitly that you like them. You probably do like them. And if you do let them know, cause you may not be giving off those signals. And those signals are really important to create the kind of connection that lasts and that makes people show up for you.

Now, if you're a 3, 7 or 8, you're what's considered an assertive type. So if you find yourself lacking support, it's probably because you are frankly terrible at giving off any hint that you even need support. Seriously, 3s, 7s and 8s take on a pattern of simply going for whatever it is that they want rather than waiting around to, you know, for the thing to kind of mosey their way.

And so, if you're a 3, 7 or 8 You look like a real go getter and your lack of trust that what you need will come to you without concerted effort on your part, [00:17:00] it shows through to others. They may fall into a pattern of assuming that if you need help, you'll just ask for it. But that lack of trust that the help will even show up when you need it, , even if you ask for it.

is probably going to dissuade you from asking in the first place. So you can see the miscommunication that happens here. And then it can reaffirm your belief that no one will show up to help when you in fact had people showing up and they, you were probably turning down their offers of assistance. So the help is showing up, but you aren't showing interest.

And then that confirms your existing belief and so on. So the assertive, compliant, withdrawn types are known as the Hornavian groupings, by the way, if you want to look up those. I find them really fascinating in how they show up in our business, especially our marketing. Do we go out and find the readers we need?

Do we take the approach of service for our readers? Or do we hope that the readers will come find us? Really interesting to think about. I'll probably do an episode [00:18:00] on that later.

Okay, so there are two types of support that we can look for, and that's personal and professional. Personal support is free. So it's your friends, your spouse, your siblings, if they're chill, your neighbors, your online friends, teammates, and so on. You can think of it as like anyone who would just drive you to the airport for free if, you know, they live within your area.

If you struggle financially, this is the type of support that you can look to to get you pretty far in your daily life and your career. Okay. It can go a long way towards our general well being and the more well being we feel, the more energy we have to put towards our career and the more open we feel to new options.

So that's all great. And then there's professional support. And that includes coaches, editors, doctors, a virtual assistant, any sort of teachers, and these are people that we pay. The reason we pay these people is because they know more about what we want to learn. Or what we need than our friends and family and or neighbors generally [00:19:00] do.

So we're paying for expertise. But for some of us there's an emotional component to this. It can be nice to say pay a therapist so that when you talk for an hour straight, you don't feel like you're burdening them. You've paid them. Fair exchange. If you're someone who has internalized that pattern that your thoughts and feelings don't matter, this can be really important.

You might find that your personal support, your friends, family, etc., that that sort of turns into you listening to other people all the time, but you just can't seem to break through to talk in depth about your own life in the way that you may want to. So professional support is great for that. Now, here's the thing.

When I poll authors about which one, professional or personal, they feel more comfortable building, it's usually split down the middle. And that's fine. I think it's important simply to recognize which type of support you feel more comfortable going after and getting for yourself. The problem is if you don't feel comfortable building personal [00:20:00] support, but you don't have the finances for professional support, then you're kind of in a bit of a pickle, right?

That's where I would say you might want to do some inner work to make it easier for you to connect, , to personal sources of support. And the Enneagram is a great guide for this. You can go pick up a book like the Enneagram Guide to Waking Up. And that's a great place to start. That's by Beatrice Chesna and Uranio Pais.

so yeah, you might want to do some of that work to, uh, sort of loosen up some of the blocks you have to creating personal sources of support. Or okay, if you can, focus on a single type of professional support that will then help you feel more comfortable building personal support, a therapist, something like that.

And then finally, the last skill we could all use is learning to ask for help. And this is difficult for almost everybody, some types more than others. So let's round out this episode by spelling out at least one limiting belief of each type [00:21:00] that keeps them from asking for the help and support they both need and deserve.

So listen for your type and see if this resonates with you. Here are the limiting beliefs. If you're a one, the belief might be I should be able to do this on my own. False. If you're a type two, the limiting belief may be, I don't need help. They need help. Also false. All of these are false. So I won't keep saying it at the end, but all of these are false beliefs that may be keeping us from getting the support and building the support that we want and need.

Type three. Here's the belief. Needing support is a sign of failure. Type four asking for support opens me up to rejection. Fives. If they support me, I'll have to support them. And [00:22:00] implied here is that they will never stop asking me for my time and resources.

Type six. I can't trust others to support me. Type 7. Having support will tie me down. Type 8. Needing support means giving up power. Type 9. I don't want to be a bother to anyone else. So each of these limiting beliefs around help, and false beliefs around help are a result of our ego's desire to be completely self sufficient.

And it really shows that cultural value of rugged individualism shining through. You don't have to do it on your own, y'all. More than that, you're probably not doing it on your own as it is. Instead, you, you're likely not recognizing the support you've had along the way to get to where you are. Be that friends who hype you up, free learning resources, or [00:23:00] any of the things I've mentioned so far in this episode, why it's important to recognize this isn't just a humble ourselves, which is, you know, , a great tool from time to time, but also to bring our attention to the fact that we have more support than we may recognize.

The best thing we can do to keep that support and develop it more is to feel and show gratitude for it in whatever ways we can. What you don't value tends to disappear from your life.

So to answer the question of what if I don't have support? I'll say that you probably do have more support than you're recognizing, at least available to be developed, but we can always benefit from more. So maybe today's the day when you start asking yourself where you can use gratitude and the belief that you have something to share with others to cultivate a rich life of interconnectivity.

There's no better way to start taking the kinds of manageable risks that pay off big time for authors [00:24:00] than to remember that you will be okay. And still have people to support you in various ways. If the outcome doesn't turn out to be what you wanted it to be. Having support, but more importantly, recognizing the support we have lowers the stakes on every decision and allows us to go after what we want from our career with less fear of what will happen when the unexpected happens.

So that's it for this episode. And don't forget about one source of support. You have this podcast. Seriously, this counts as support. Add it to the list. And I have a lot of other ways I can support you in your author career at ffs. media, or you can email me at contact at ffs. media. And I can help you sort through what support would be best for you right now.

Thanks for supporting the show by listening to this episode. I hope you'll join me next time on What If for Authors.

Episode 8: What if I'm grieving?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the deeply emotional topic of grieving. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her personal journey through grief, Claire explores how to manage an author career while dealing with significant loss. Whether you're in the midst of grief or supporting someone who is, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to navigating these challenging times.

Key Takeaways:

• Avoiding Unnecessary Suffering: Learn why it's essential to fully experience grief rather than avoiding or suppressing it.

• Importance of Support: Recognize the value of asking for help and surrounding yourself with supportive people during the grieving process.

• Transformation Through Grief: Understand that grief changes you and that your writing process and projects may need to adapt to your new self.

• Taking a Break: It's okay to pause your writing to focus on healing; your career can continue once you're ready.

• Complex Emotions: Embrace the wide range of emotions, including gratitude, that coexist with grief, and learn how to navigate them.

Links mentioned:

• The Grieving Brain by Mary Frances O'Connor

Why Listen? If you're an author dealing with grief or supporting someone who is, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective on balancing an author career with the profound emotions of loss. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to understand and navigate grief while maintaining their creative path.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, on basically any online retailer. Just Google that title and it'll pop up.

Fair warning about today's episode. It's probably going to bring up some big emotions for you. That's certainly not something to be scared of because when we bring up big emotions, it usually means that they were sitting inside of us waiting for a door to open for them to escape. , so it's good to get those big emotions out.

I don't want to attach a negative connotation to feeling deeply emotional or even crying. I think both of those are beautiful, but like, if you're about to head into an important meeting, maybe wait until after to listen to this episode.

I'm a little sniffly right now because writing out the notes for today's episode, , certainly brought me to tears. , [00:01:00] and that's because today's episode asks the question that I hear from authors a lot of, what if I'm grieving? How do you manage an author career while you have a hole in your chest where your heart used to be?

At least that's what my grief feels like. It feels like I'm sort of like a Looney Tune cartoon, and someone just shot a cannonball through my chest, and I have this big hole left behind that you can see right through, and then I'm walking around as if there's not a big hole there, and then people are asking me dumb questions like, How are you?

And I just want to scream, Do you not see the fucking hole?

So yeah, we're talking about grief and being a writer today. If you find that you can still write words just fine when you're grieving, or writing is even a great haven for you as you go through the difficult process, then fantastic. I will say one thing though. If you're using writing as a way of avoiding your grief, not [00:02:00] just taking much needed breaks from the grief, but avoiding addressing it at all.

Then you're in for a world of hurt later. Don't try to outright your grief. Don't try to busy it away. That way lies all sorts of medical emergencies. And I'm not saying that lightly. Avoiding grief and trying to stave it off, it kills people. You can't have that much pain inside your body without it affecting your breathing, digestion, brain function, sleep.

I only say that because I've seen authors take this approach as if it's somehow, like, more noble than letting the grief get them down. But it's, it's not. Don't fool yourself, y'all. It's a sign that you're scared to be in grief, not that you're tough and are able to conquer grief somehow. The only healthy way out of grieving, Is through it.

And I know grief feels like the ultimate suffering and a lot of ways it is, but sitting with it is also a way of honoring the [00:03:00] people, pets, and places we've lost. We can learn ways to be in that pain until we rebuild around it. It may take a whole lot of supportive people, but if that's what it takes, then start building that support.

You probably already have some that you haven't called in yet. Maybe it's time to call it in.

For those who don't tend to get a lot of words written when you're grieving, the rest of this episode is for you.

I've sort of alluded to my own grieving here, which I'm still very much in as I record this. I thought maybe I should wait to be on the other side before talking about it. But then I realized that, well, it would be a while, but also I wouldn't particularly want someone who's on the other side and prone to like the rosy hindsight, which we all are once we're on the other side of tough things.

Um, but I wouldn't want that to be the person talking to me about grief. So in my experience and from everything that I've read, which is a lot, when I, when I'm up [00:04:00] against something tough, I read about it incessantly, but grief is an emotion. Of the trenches and it seeks out others who are in the trenches with it.

There's a real comfort to finding other people who are grieving when you are.

My grieving is about losing my dog Penny a couple of months ago. Well, the grief is actually bigger than that because I lost my dog Sanga a little over a year before Penny and losing Penny brought Sanga's loss back up. Of course, grief isn't really that compartmentalized generally. So dog loss isn't like losing a child or sibling.

I would guess I haven't lost either of those, but all grief is a little different from other grief, but it's also so much the same.

I adopted Penny when she was seven weeks old. She was my sidekick through the hardest times in my life when I felt so lonely that I didn't want to be around anymore. She was what got me through until [00:05:00] more promising things came around. She was the only constant I had for a really long time, and wherever she was, was home for me.

I had to make the call to say goodbye to her after 15 years together. It was the most loving act I could do for her, and it ripped my heart out of my chest.

If you're familiar with the term soul dog, she was that for me. But her health was deteriorating fast and I didn't want her to have to go back to the emergency bed again because she hated that. Anyway, the house is completely silent now, and if grief had a sound to it, it's silence.

In the last year and a half, I went from writing books with two perfect dogs sleeping at my feet to being completely alone in silence as I write.

Back at the end of 2022, when Senga was dying from cancer, I posed this question to myself and it turned out to be an important one. [00:06:00] How can I grieve without causing myself unnecessary suffering? There's the essential suffering of loss, but I've also seen people do a lot of things that cause additional suffering.

Like trying to pretend they're not grieving, trying to hurry it along. and trying to do all the things they were doing before as if nothing has changed.

But I think this might be the key question to follow if we're going to play out the question of what if I'm grieving. I think we want to ask, how can I grieve without adding additional suffering?

So enough about my own grief, which is clearly really heavy today. Mondays are always like this for me, recording on a Monday, especially after a weekend where I get a bunch of socializing and the, the contrast of that connection to the silence I wake up to is pretty astounding. Pretty breathtaking. Yes, I'm still married.

Uh, but John likes to get up and go to a yoga class at 6 AM lately. So he's up way earlier than I care to be, but [00:07:00] Fridays and Mondays are the hardest for me. Friday's because I take those days off and most people don't. So. All the grief that I accidentally overlooked from the busy week is like, hello there.

And then Monday's for the reason I just explained. I don't know. I wonder if anyone else has found this to be true. Let me know if you have. Anyway, onto the helpful stuff. I knew I was going to need some backup when the time came for Penny to pass on, so I ordered a stack of books about grief. Might as well learn my way through it, right?

So my favorite book so far, and I have more to read, I haven't read the whole stack yet, but my favorite one is called The Grieving Brain by Mary Frances O'Connor. Highly recommend.

It takes a neuroscientific approach to what's happening in us when we grieve, and she talks with experts and breaks down some fascinating studies about grief.

You I find it to be a great basis for the rest of our discussion today. So the first distinction she makes is between grief and grieving. [00:08:00] Grieving is essentially a relearning process. It's when your brain is trying to remap the world without your loved one in it. That process takes a while, and it's full of jolts when you think you hear them coming in the house, or you get excited to see them, and then remember that you can't see them anymore.

I mean, it's just the gut punch after gut punch. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Penny's nails on the tile floor since she passed, or like, felt her sleeping on my legs at night when she wasn't there. That kind of shit is part of the grieving process. What's happening is that our brain map is having to update.

It keeps track of where and when we last saw things. So our conscious mind isn't overwhelmed by all the information. It's what helps you find your phone, right? When was the last time I saw it? Where did I see it? So, it maps the dimensions of space, the where, and time, the when, [00:09:00] but it also maps the dimension of closeness with regard to our loved ones.

How strong is the attachment with them at a point in time, in other words.

When we lose someone, our brain map keeps trying to place them, and all we get back is error codes. If you spent a long time mapping this person into your life, then it's going to take a lot of new information to map them out. Hence why we end up in the grieving process for so long, months, years. Our brains are relearning how to map the world without our loved one in it.

I've taken to saying ouch every time one of these gut kicks hits me. I find vocalizing the pain helps me give it the credit it's owed. Grieving physically hurts like a motherfucker. It just does.

So O'Connor defines grief differently from grieving. Grief is the emotion of loss, and while the grieving process [00:10:00] runs its course, and we eventually stop expecting to see the person or pet that we lost, we don't ever stop feeling grief when a memory of them comes up. We may also feel love and joy when we think of that person, but the emotion of grief will be mixed in there too.

It may be the only emotion we can feel sometimes when we think of them.

We'll always harbor a wish in our hearts that we could touch our loved ones again. If you find yourself wishing that wasn't the case, I asked you to consider the alternative. You stop missing them. They stop mattering to you. Who actually wants that?

The grief is where the love is. And we don't want to stop loving them, do we? So we have to accept that the grief will be part of it forever.

From what I've read and my own experience, grieving feels like wearing a weighted blanket around. That's the physical experience of it. And somehow that blanket is also like [00:11:00] draped over all of your internal organs too, just weighing you down from the inside. You don't ever take off the blanket, but you build up the muscles you need to carry it around and get your, get back to the rest of your life.

And this is where we look directly at our relationship with writing. So this is a podcast for authors, so you knew I was going to bring it back eventually. Now it can feel impossible to continue working on your manuscript when the grief is fresh and you're still in the grieving process. My advice is to avoid pushing through.

Seriously, call in every favor you have. Ask the publisher how far back you can push the deadline. If they're inflexible to your grief, fuck them, frankly. Fuck them. Let that relationship die. But most likely, some human being on the other side will know grief intimately and extend compassion to you. So now is the time to [00:12:00] ask for it.

I know it's hard to ask, but you owe it to yourself to do it.

The biggest skill you can develop in grief. Is asking for help, support, and favors, call in all the favors. Some people will not understand. And those people either haven't been touched deeply by loss or they were, but they didn't allow themselves the grace to face it. And now they're resentful to those who do allow themselves that space.

Either way, screw them. And I can't say that enough. Okay. Screw them. If they're not going to show up for you, screw them. Grief can gift us fantastic perspective if we let it.

What's most likely to happen when you start asking for help, support, and favors from folks is that you discover that almost everyone is eager to support you. The outpouring of love you'll feel from this can go a [00:13:00] long way toward getting you through each day in the thick of the grieving. This is your chance to see who shows up and who doesn't.

This is an opportunity for real clarity in a time when you're deeply plugged into the importance of love and connection and how nothing else in life really matters outside of that.

I'll never forget the friends who sent me cookies, gift certificates for food delivery, who checked up on me, asked what burdens they could carry for me, and just generally made sure I had someone to talk to when I needed it. I'll never forget the friends who didn't shy away when I wanted to talk about the loss and cry.

Those people, I'll remember them for the rest of my life. That clarity that we can gain through grief, it's profound if we lean into it. I will also remember those few, granted few people who made my grief feel like a burden to [00:14:00] them or who acted frustrated when I didn't hit a deadline I'd set prior to the loss.

I don't hold grudges, but I also don't forget that shit. So if you're not grieving right now, So, take this as an opportunity to ask yourself, how do you want to show up for people who are grieving? Because it's not just me who won't forget who was there and who wasn't.

Okay. So that brings me to my first bit of real advice for if you're an author who suddenly finds themselves grieving. The writing can wait. That's my advice. It can wait. And a lot of the times it can never be completed. And that's okay too. If you just never finish a manuscript, think about how many authors have unfinished manuscripts.

It's okay. It happens. This is the reality of it. If ever there were a good excuse, this is it.

The problem is that if we're midway through writing a book, when the loss [00:15:00] takes place, the person who started writing the book is not the same person who is then asked to finish it. We transform into new versions of ourselves when we grieve. It's a necessary process. We let go of things we used to think were important and we just don't care about them anymore.

Our values change, our worldview changes. That can make a manuscript that felt perfectly important suddenly feel like a complete waste of time. And what do you do about that? Maybe there's nothing to do. Maybe you just can't finish that book, or maybe you can't finish it the way you started it. And once you're feeling more recalibrated to the world, you may need to scrap the whole thing and write it in a way that makes sense to who you are today.

All of that is allowed. None of that is the quote, wrong way to write a book or to be an author.

So it's okay if that's what you need to do. Do it. You'll be [00:16:00] happier with the end product if you allow yourself to break some rules you had about how books, quote, should work. You don't work the same. So there's a good chance your writing process will look a little different from before. If you try to force your writing process and the plans for your book to be the same even though you've been forever changed by grief, you're really getting into that unnecessary suffering territory.

Trying to force it. So just as an example, I started planning and drafting the first Alice Lux space adventures book, Lucky Stars, before Senga was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So at that point I had planned on writing a fun and raunchy space jaunt that explored vulnerability. That wasn't the book or the series that I published though.

Senga was dying throughout most of 2022, which ran concurrently to when many folks started re emerging after the pandemic. So all of us are carrying general grief [00:17:00] from that time, whether we admit it or not. Maybe we lost someone we loved to COVID or, but maybe not. We still lost relationships though, didn't we?

Some people went a very different ideological direction from what we expected of them. And that's a loss right there, a loss of relationship, especially if they show a complete lack of care for a demographic that you belong to.

Then think about even just all the restaurants you loved that shuttered forever. And the time we lost. And how things we took for granted in our lives are simply changed forever now. Everywhere there's loss, there's grief. So Each of us are carrying it around with us out of those years, to some extent.

And some people still can't leave the house because they're immunocompromised. And just because the rest of us are sick of staying at home doesn't mean it's entirely safe or even responsible for us to be out and about. And in doing so, we're spreading illnesses that make it even more unsafe for others [00:18:00] to leave their house.

It's a mess, basically. And on top of that, my dog was dying. So how in God's name was I supposed to write the same book then that I planned back in 2019? I was changing too much. I had already changed too much.

So I started thinking about the trope in sci fi where someone's home planet is destroyed. And I related to that pretty strongly. Long story short, the first four books of that series are out now and they're about grief. That's, that's what they're about, more or less. They're about how to go on when your home no longer exists.

And people are asking me when the fifth one will come out, and I just, I don't know. Because I can't write it yet. I'm still too in grief about Penny to write it. I wrote the last one through my grief of losing Senga, and it just about killed me. So yeah, writing comedy when you feel like garbage is a real trial, I tell ya.

[00:19:00] Anyway, my point is that as you change, the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to allow your book to change too. Let the series take a new direction if you have to. Take your readers on your journey. Let them meet the new you. Let them see the new depth of your soul.

That is, If you can write new words at all. If you can't, that's okay. And don't worry, cause you'll be back. Eventually you'll want to write again. It might just be in a different genre, or it might take a couple of years. I know that's scary to think about, especially if your royalties are your livelihood.

That's why I'm saying, You need to get ready to call in every favor you have. Move home, move in with a friend, cut back on expenses. Ask someone who works with ads and does well with ads, if they'll take yours over for a while to get your backlist working for you, call in the favors. You can figure out what it is you can do in the [00:20:00] meantime, and then find people who will pay you to do that.

So it may not be writing. It could be crocheting hats, cleaning houses. Sometimes people in grief really like cleaning. Yeah, I don't know. If it's not you, it's not you. But if it is you, that's an option. You could design book covers if that's a skill you have or whatever. And if you're in a position where you don't have to write to pay your bills, then I suggest you consider taking the opportunity to not write.

Use that time to think, to heal, to rebuild, to get to know yourself all over again. And, of course, if writing is a comfort, feel free, but if it's not, forcing that is the unnecessary suffering pattern.

Other unnecessary suffering during grief includes feeling guilty for needing help, feeling ashamed that you're still not functioning the way you and capitalism would like you to, getting angry at yourself for not having it together, and so [00:21:00] on and so forth. There's really no reason to get down on yourself if you're grieving.

You're just grieving. It's that simple.

What if your only human responsibility in grief is to grieve? What if your judgment about the time it takes isn't beneficial in any way? What would that look like? What would that feel like?

As far as Enneagram is concerned, if you're not well connected to your heart center, then hold on to your butt. If you're grieving, you're about to be way connected to your heart center. There's nowhere to hide from emotions.

So this can be really overwhelming for folks who haven't built many tools for emotional regulation, but I promise that emotions pass. That's what they're designed to do, to come in and then leave. If you just let them show up, do what they need to do, they will leave. , you move through [00:22:00] emotions, you don't get stuck in them.

And if you are stuck in them, go talk to a therapist who can help you through them, because they're just made to come and go. you're gonna be overcome with grief like you've never experienced, right? You, I mean, depending on what the loss is, you may be completely overwhelmed. And you've never experienced anything like this.

And you may cry for an entire day straight without a break. Maybe you can somehow pause to get some water in you so you don't dehydrate, but maybe that's it. And if that's what happens, then that's what needed to happen. Okay? There's still no need for judgment in that case. There is a caveat here. So there's a difference between grief and depression.

So if you find yourself becoming depressed and having hopeless thoughts, then there's no reason to ride that out. Seek some professional help. But if you just need to fall apart and cry until you can't cry anymore, there's not necessarily anything abnormal [00:23:00] about that. Crying's not a danger to our health.

And I say that as someone who's recently cried so hard, my nose bled. , even still, crying is an amazing tool that helps us regulate our nervous system. It completes stress cycles, and there's nothing more stressful to the human body, mind, and heart than losing a loved one. I mean, literally nothing.

That's it. That's the most stressful thing we can go through. I used to hate crying and I tried to control it. Now though, I really see the power in it. I see the healthy benefits of it. A good cry can get me out of rumination on the loss and help me remember what I still have left. It can complete that stress cycle so that I can move on to what's left in my life.

In other words, crying can help us travel the road from grief to gratitude. So those emotions are two sides of the same coin. One is focusing on what is not here anymore, and the other is focusing on what [00:24:00] is here. What we've lost causes us grief, and a moment of remembering what we still have stirs gratitude.

Genuine gratitude is a balm for grief like nothing else. It's not forgetting what we've lost, because we'll never forget that, right? Instead, it's the decision to shift our attention. You don't have to force gratitude though, but in those little cloud breaks between the storms, you're welcome to look for it.

There's no shame in looking for it. It's not giving up to go look for gratitude in your grief. It's not forgetting about the person. When you have the opportunity to shift your attention to what's left. I recommend that you take it. Grief is a past oriented emotion. Gratitude is a present oriented emotion.

And faith is a future oriented emotion. But they all work together on the same continuum, if you let them. And they're all [00:25:00] available to you in every present moment. So we grieve what we've lost. What's in the past and is no longer with us. I mean, it is with us, but you know, in any physical term, we feel gratitude for what we still have in the present.

What is with us right now. And we have faith in what the future holds for us. The things we don't yet have. So sometimes remembering that there's still a big future ahead of us can loosen the grip of the past on us when we need a break. And now this is when we need a break. Don't use the future to escape into so you avoid the grieving.

And don't avoid the grieving like, well, I, I need to be in the present moment all the time. I can't be stuck in the past yet. You're going to be in the past a little bit. You're grieving. Come on. It's okay. No one's giving you a grade here. When we allow our heart center to stay open, we realize our capacity to hold many emotions at once.

It's complicated, but our heart is big enough for it. So like on a blue sky [00:26:00] day, you're outside. There's trees, there's birds, the sky is blue, the weather is perfect. You may feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the world while simultaneously aching for your loved one, who you wish you could share this moment with.

What I find exquisite. And what I love about it is that we're able to hold all of these seemingly opposite emotions at once, and it doesn't make any of them less real or less important. It just makes the blues of the clear sky more vivid for us.

If you're wondering what will happen to your author career if you're grieving, here's my reassurance. Your author career will still be there on the other side of grief if you want it to be, and you'll probably still want it. I haven't seen anyone not want it yet, but you will come back changed, and so will your writing.

You'll have all new stories to tell [00:27:00] and a new way of telling them and readers will likely be in awe of how much emotional depth you're returning with. It's such a gift to give them. But you may need to hit pause on writing during the height of the transformation and the height of your grieving. And this is a gift you give yourself and one you deserve.

It's our birthright, frankly, to be able to hit pause and grieve. So call in the support, call in the favors, call in the goddamn cavalry. This is what the cavalry is for. People will show up for you and that's what you need. So find connection and understanding in others who are familiar with grief and take the time you need, not the time you think you should need, the time you need to heal.

Grief can be complicated when it involves someone we had a strained relationship with, which is basically every human, you know, pets excluded, , to some degree. So I really hope that [00:28:00] you give yourself grace to be messy and to let whatever emotions need to come up, come up. I hope you'll allow yourself to ask for the help you need to call friends in the middle of the night.

They'll show up. You'd be surprised. Ask someone to find you a good grief counselor and schedule your first appointment for you, right? Except all those meals people want to bring you and be okay with some of it going to waste if you can't get to it or it just tastes like shit. That's okay.

And if you haven't been hit by grief yet, which many people have not, go ahead and practice the skills you'll need for it now. Okay. So build support for yourself, show up for other people, practice asking for help when you need it. Tell the people you love that you love them and show them in as many ways as possible, and that's about all we can do to prepare.

So at the end of the day, that's what matters. Being with people, connecting with humans, [00:29:00] feeling, showing, receiving love from others. The writing is nice, but we're here for each other. Your ability to write can disappear and come back later, it usually does, because writing is your human need to connect expressed through writing.

And your need to connect will never disappear. You may just need a different kind of connection for a while. There's no point. And resisting that transition in that natural flow.

So that's it for this episode. I'm tapped. I'm exhausted. I'm probably going to go light a candle on my little doggy altar. , right now I'm thinking of all the people out there who are grieving at this very moment, and I'm sending you the courage to heal. Through these sound waves, if that's possible. If it's possible, I will, I will do it.

And I'm doing my best to try. If you want to reach me, you can email me at, , contact at FFS dot media. I'm Claire Taylor. Thank you for joining me. And I hope you'll return [00:30:00] for next week's episode of What If for Authors.

Episode 7: What if people don't like me?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of not being liked. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the fear of rejection and how it affects different Enneagram types. Whether you're just starting out or are an established author, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your expectations and emotions regarding others' opinions.

Key Takeaways:

• Fear of Rejection: Understand that the fear of not being liked can be amplified once you start publishing, but this amplification can also be an opportunity for growth.

• Perfectionism and Approval: Learn how perfectionism, especially from an Enneagram One perspective, can impact your need for approval and how to address it.

• Different Enneagram Types: Explore how various Enneagram types experience the fear of not being liked and how it impacts their writing.

• Responsibility for Feelings: Recognize that how others feel about you is their responsibility, not yours, and take ownership of your feelings about others.

• Focusing on Supporters: Redirect your attention from critics to supporters to build a stronger connection with those who already like you.

• Parental Expectations: Address the influence of parental approval on your creative decisions and the importance of disappointing them to stay true to yourself.

• Internal Liberation: Embrace the clarity and freedom that comes from accepting that disappointing others might be part of your path toward fulfilling your purpose.

Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling with the fear of not being liked or are overwhelmed by criticism, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance the desire for approval with staying true to their creative vision.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor. I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career on basically any online retailer by going to books2read.com/syac for Sustain Your Author Career. Okay. So today we're going to address a question that's near and dear to my heart because it's one that I've had to do a lot of work around. I'm pleased to report back from the other side that the work is worth it. And actually you can pay me enough to go back to the way things were. So I have a lot of compassion for people who haven't tackled this one yet, but also there's so much hope ahead of you, it's wild. Today's question is one that I hear a lot in various forms from authors, but always it boils down to, what if people don't like me?

The number of [00:01:00] opportunities for fellow authors and readers to not like you is many when you start publishing books. You're subjecting yourself to the opinion of the general public, and they're allowed to review your books. Like, just anyone can do it. They can post a review to Amazon, blog about your books, shit talk them on social media, and it's not just authors making things up when they say, you know, When people hate my book, it feels like they hate me.

That's not all in your head. A lot of the public doesn't differentiate between the book and the authors. Which I think is absolutely silly, but my belief on that doesn't change the reality.

All this to say that, yeah, the fear of people not liking you can be amplified. Once you start publishing books, you know what though? I love when a situation amplifies an existing fear because that means we can't pretend it's not there anymore. That question of what if people don't like me, it can hide in the back of our minds for our whole lives without becoming big enough for us to have to [00:02:00] like, you know, roll up our sleeves and bow up to it. So any situation or opportunity that pokes at one of those sore spots until it kind of swells up so big, we can't ignore it. I think that's fantastic. I love those. It's not fun in the moment. Don't expect it to be fun. I don't want to glamorize this, but it gives us a really great opportunity for moving forward.

I think it calls us to look at it, you know, head on. And then we have to start asking questions that may lead us to overcoming the fear. Yeah. It's scary in the moment to face the fear, but we can always find support in our friends or mentors or even coaches and therapists, and then we can make it like a team effort and that's so much easier.

So today I'm on your team here. So let's look at this big, scary thing together.

My fear of people not liking me led me to do some really crazy things. Coming from the perspective of the Enneagram One, the reformer, My thought was that if I was simply [00:03:00] perfect, no biggie, then people would have to like me, like checkmate. I'm perfect. Now you must like me. And if they didn't like me at that point. I could presumably conclude that it wasn't about me.

They were just jealous or something, which was about them. So perfectionism was my armor for this fear. Unfortunately, I never seemed to get perfect enough for this plan to actually work. When people didn't like me, I could still see so many of my flaws. So I assumed that they were actually right to not like me.

Cause I was like, yeah, I see why you wouldn't like me. So this followed me around big time in high school and college. Want to know why I graduated with a 4. 0 GPA? It wasn't because I was enthusiastic about all my courses. It was the perfectionism. When I see someone who got all A's in high school or college now, I'm less impressed and more empathetic.

I never put to words [00:04:00] at the time why I was working so hard to be perfect, mind you. It was all subconscious for me back then. What I lost touch with is what's called the holy idea for my type. Which is holy perfection. This is an Enneagram thing, of course. So, holy perfection is essentially the deep knowledge That I am already perfect.

I can make mistakes and still be perfect in my essence or my soul. So we know this instinctively. We know that babies are born this way, right? , you have to have some real, real issues to look at a baby and be like, I have some notes. , so we feel it instinctively about babies, but then we lose touch with it in ourselves as we grow up.

Life just kind of like knocks us around a bit and then we have to arm her up. And we arm her up with things like perfectionism. Being totally transparent, I don't connect with the holy idea of holy perfection all of the time. Alright, I still like fixing things according to my flawed and limited idea of what needs to be, you know, [00:05:00] fixed. But I feel like I'm doing just fine more often, and I don't need to improve a lot of things about me.

So I'm feeling that more frequently than ever. I feel it most of the time, actually. The moment feels absolutely perfect. Right? Even if shitty things are happening, the moment can still be perfect. So I've learned to accept that just because I may have some notes on how things are done or how things aren't done the right way.

That doesn't mean that there isn't an order and perfect logic to everything going on that I just don't see.

And of course, this is from the perspective of the one. There are, there are other types who worry about if people don't like them and it's just for completely different reasons. So probably the types I work with who struggle with this the most are ones. Twos, threes, fours, sixes, and nines. And now that's not to say that sevens and fives and eights don't care at all.

Sevens certainly like to stay, you know, energetic and upbeat so people will think they're fun and exciting, but I don't see it interfere with the sevens writing decisions quite like it does [00:06:00] with those other types. And we do know that eights are squishy deep down, but they have this internal mechanism that makes the idea of people pleasing kind of repulsive to them because it feels like letting people's opinions of them Control them.

So there's sort of that built in fight back to the eight.

Okay, so I heard this phrase that I want to share with you. It's from one of my favorite podcasts, If Books Could Kill. So one of the hosts, Michael Hobbs, introduced me to the expression of bitch eating crackers. And I think about it all of the time. I think about this all the time. It's basically when you get to the point where you detest someone so much that even if they're doing absolutely nothing annoying at all, like just eating crackers, you'd still be like, look at this bitch eating crackers.

I've certainly been there with people and I'm sure people have been there with me. Positive. And I think it's important to recognize that when we get to the bitch eating crackers point with anyone, that's on [00:07:00] us. They might be doing some things that we don't agree with, but the responsibility for how strongly we detest them, that contempt that we feel for them, is our responsibility to sort through, not theirs.

So this is the place where I like to start doing the work on wanting people to like me. When we can take radical responsibility for our feelings with others in this way, then a natural side effect is that we start to understand that the way people feel about us. Is radically their responsibility, but we can't have it both ways.

We can't say that it's the responsibility of the bitch eating crackers to make sure we don't hate him, but then also want to feel like it's the responsibility of others to not feel contempt for us when we're simply. Eating crackers, right? So being consistent here matters. Take that responsibility for your feelings on yourself.

And that will help remind you that other people's feelings, even about you, are their responsibility. When we start to own that our feelings about others [00:08:00] are more reaction to our beliefs about ourselves than, you know, any great indictment about other people. Then we start to unburden ourselves. Of the weight of trying to make other people feel a certain way about us.

That ain't our job. And we couldn't do it if we tried. Have you ever tried to win over someone who really loathes you? If they're at all at the bitch eatin crackers level, everything nice you do for them will be transformed into ammunition against you in their heart. So at a certain point, you owe it to yourself to stop giving your precious attention to them.

And speaking of attention, our attention is one of the most limited and precious resources we have. And in this day and age of social media and the internet and, you know, phones being at our fingertips all the time, there's a battle being waged for your attention. It's a hot commodity. And yet we don't always [00:09:00] give a whole lot of conscious thought to where we're letting our attention flow.

When it comes to wanting people to like us, this can become a big problem for authors. I can't tell you how many authors I see who are giving more attention to trying to win over their critics. So you can see that there's a lot more to it than connecting with and pleasing their fans. When your fear that people won't like you really sinks its claws in, what happens is that the people who already like you stop holding much interest for you.

They're not the threat to be neutralized anymore. So once you feel confident that they like you, it's on to the next, on to the next, and then the next. And this is what I would define as craving. So it's motivated by fear and it's essentially a game we can never win. It's usually best to not play it.

I like to assume that most of my critics are at Bitch Eatin Crackers level with me anyway. If you spend your attention on those people and neglect the readers and fans who [00:10:00] already love you, you're not going to have any of those readers and fans for long. You're gonna neglect them. They're gonna disappear.

So a great trick to rewire your brain to flow less easily towards critics is to start to notice When you're thinking about people who don't like you or worrying that so and so won't like you if you publish this scene or whatever. So the trick to that is to notice that you're doing it and say, either to yourself or aloud:

What can I do today to strengthen my connection with the people who do like me?

When we forget to strengthen that connection with people who like us, then our bodies forget that anyone likes us. We feel like we're fighting for scraps at that point. And then we get caught in the fighting cycle of trying to win over people who have, frankly, no obligation to like us. Let me just drop this reality real quick.

The person you respect most [00:11:00] in the world has people who hate them. That's just a fact of life. People pleasing or the need to be liked by everyone is a form of perfectionism. Perfectionism is simply the pattern of focusing your attention on what isn't rather than what is. It's incompatible with gratitude in that way.

When we want to make sure that everyone likes us, we end up focusing on those who don't like us and forget about those who do our attention's limited. So we have to choose between those two groups to focus our attention on. And that's perfectionism. And so long as you don't pledge to take steps against that perfectionist pattern and intentionally redirect your focus from what isn't.

To what is at every opportunity you get, you will miss out on opportunities for gratitude, and not feeling deep gratitude for your readers is the fastest way to lose them.

So I think I've made a [00:12:00] compelling logical and maybe even moral argument for why we want to try to redirect our focus. When the fear is telling us otherwise, but knowing logically and then the deep sense of knowing nosis, it's sometimes called are two different things. When we know something deeply, we do it.

I know my teeth will brought out of my head if I don't brush and floss, so I brush and floss without anyone nagging me about it. Meanwhile, I know that I need eight to nine hours of sleep every night to feel my best, and yet. I don't always carve out the time to do that, so as much as I hate to admit it, the reality is that I clearly don't deeply know that eight to nine hours of sleep is needed, or else I would be going to bed earlier instead of answering emails at 11 p.m. because it's usually the only time I have to do that. I'd be choosing to disappoint more people who don't hear from back for me in anything resembling a timely manner. I'd be choosing to disappoint them so that I could get that sleep if I truly knew that.

[00:13:00] to truly know something, we have to take the knowledge of one of our three centers, the head, the heart or the body. And get the other two centers on board, what's sometimes called integration. Your heart is probably still saying, But I want to be liked, why don't they love me? About the critics. I think of my heart center as this sweet little child who's just trying to make sense of this harsh world.

And so like, when I think of it like that, I speak to my heart as if it were. Um, a sweet little child, sometimes I can't explain to my heart why things are the way they are. So instead I just say, I know it hurts. I hear you. And that often helps me lean into the feelings and just feel them rather than suppressing them with whatever kind of judgment, you know, saying I deserve to feel it.

Do I deserve to feel this way? Is this a logical feeling to have? If you're feeling a certain way, it's a logical feeling to have. It's functioning on heart logic, not brain logic though. [00:14:00] It's logical, and it's usually best not to call our heart crazy.

It's difficult to get our heart on board with anything if we're calling it crazy and gaslighting it. So there's this evolutionary need to be liked and accepted, too. For most of human history, that was the way we didn't starve or die of exposure. We've developed attachment in our brain because it makes sure that we don't wander off and die.

And instead, we stick around with our attachments, contribute to the collective safety and survival, and breed, breed, breed, right? By the way, I am so grateful to all of my ancestors who did all of that breeding so that I could be here today enjoying my child free life. Anyway, rational thinking alone won't overcome the impulse to be liked.

It's biological to some extent, and that's great. , you know, it's helped us get this far, but even evolutionary needs [00:15:00] can get a little out of hand, and people pleasing patterns are what happens when that happens., when it goes too far. So, this need to be liked, it will interrupt our ability to write and publish books if these patterns become too dug in for us and we don't try and detach them a little bit.

I'm not telling you to read this. Never to be hurt when someone posts negative reviews or when another author decides you're not worthy of being part of their click or whatever. That will hurt. I don't know that we want to set the expectation that it won't hurt. It will hurt. What I'm telling you is that there are always ways to make loving decisions for yourself and your career while living in that hurt that don't involve attempting to win over people who don't care about you.

It'll probably take practicing the techniques of shifting your attention that I mentioned. And also a practice of listening to and comforting your heart.

It might also take some movement or [00:16:00] meditation practice to tell your body that you're safe, that you won't be cast out of the tribe if you decide to write, like, a spicy scene, say, that some folks take issue with. And I use that example to show that sometimes even these little choices that, in the grand scheme of things, seem so small can really trigger this deep fear, right?

But at the end of the day, it's just a spicy scene. Okay, are we warmed up yet? Are we feeling contemplative? Are we feeling brave? Are we feeling open to some new concepts? Cool. Let's talk about our parents. As many of you probably know, or could easily guess, My parents are not huge fans of what I write. My mom especially does not vibe with the Jessica Christ series.

My dad did read the first book and then explained the Judeo Christian themes in it to me, which was very nice because I obviously hadn't even thought about that as I wrote the book. Yeah, [00:17:00] didn't think about it for a second. Uh, but basically that's the dynamic. My mom doesn't approve of my fiction and my dad will read it and then give me notes on what I should have done differently.

So, yes, this does still make my eye twitch, but generally, I think it's just kind of hilarious and silly. And I don't write for my parents. They're not my ideal reader. My ideal reader is someone who loves my stuff, essentially.

I know so many authors who have chosen the genre and content of their books based on what their parents would approve of. And these are adults who pay their taxes, have mortgages, and they're still making these decisions. Based on what their parents would think of it. So, yes, it's very common. I was, frankly, lucky enough to know that nothing my parents would approve of would be even close to anything I wanted to write.

So, I was sort of spared that option. But still, I [00:18:00] get it. I get it. So, if this sounds true for you, that you think about what your parents would think if you published the book you really wanted to write, and this holds true for people whose parents have passed away, too, then I cannot recommend highly enough that you practice Intentionally disappointing your parents.

Seriously, disappoint them. Their job is to love you unconditionally. And that includes when you publish books that aren't for them.

The dark truth is that our relationship with our family of origin is kind of like this final boss we have to conquer. If you were taught growing up that you needed to be a certain way to receive care from your parents. Um, and then you've internalized that big time and maybe, maybe you'd consider addressing that now while you're an adult, you have the resources.

You probably couldn't do it as a kid. You didn't have the resources, but now you can advocate for that kid and do it as an adult. And this is where a therapist can [00:19:00] be a really great guide. , once you teach your body that you can still be safe and receive care from the universe, if your parents are mad or disappointed in you, you'll likely notice that you care a lot less about those other critics.

Because you'll get at the heart of the fear that started way before some dumb dumb on Instagram with 30, 000 followers could talk shit about your book.

Your task, if it really bothers you to think about people who don't like your book, and don't like you, is to break the illusion you've created for yourself that if you just do X, Y, or Z, and you just do it right, everyone will love you. There is no X, Y, or Z. And you don't need everyone to love you to be safe and have inherent worth.

And now this is me talking to your brain, not so much your body or your heart, but that's maybe where we can start. So years ago, when I was feeling like a terrible daughter for, I don't know, some ridiculous reason, I don't [00:20:00] even remember. , I asked myself to imagine what I thought my parents would consider the ideal daughter.

Who would I have to be for them to give me their full approval? Who would I have to be to make them proud? Now, mind you, this is me. And I'm not going to be talking about this, you know, based on my lived experience and not them telling me what would be their ideal daughter. So I could be wrong here. I could be very wrong.

I may already be their ideal daughter. So that's not really the important thing. The thing is that I didn't feel that way. And so I was asking myself to create the image of what would allow me to feel the ideal daughter. Like I was doing everything right, and could get their approval.

The image of that daughter I would have to be, to avoid the feeling of disappointing them, was a fucking caricature of a person. And one that couldn't have been farther from my true self. The problem is that there may be things that some of our parents will praise us for, [00:21:00] right? There may be something that your parents will approve of, and if you do that thing, you get that praise you've been seeking.

But every bit of praise will keep us hooked and believing that if we just do everything right So, it wasn't that I wasn't disappointing my parents prior to my realization. That I was particularly good at pleasing them. I wasn't. The change I felt was an internal letting go. A liberation, essentially, from considering their feelings about me in my decisions.

So making these concessions to keep people happy may seem harmless enough here and there, but every time we choose to please over choosing to do what feels aligned to who we are, We actually harm our connection to ourselves.

This enough and you'll lose connection with what it is that would please you. If you're struggling to know what you need or desire, then those small transgressions against yourself over [00:22:00] time might be why. There's never a good reason to disconnect from yourself to make someone else more comfortable. How other people feel about you It is theirs to figure out, not yours.

Once I saw that I had no desire to become the type of person who would never fall foul of my parents expectations of me, I felt a deep acceptance that disappointing my parents Would always be a part of my path toward my purpose because my purpose just didn't align with their ideal of a good daughter.

I had this wave of clarity from that exercise and it's it's stuck with me. I disappoint them all the time both then and now. That part hasn't changed. What's changed is who I assign responsibility to for dealing with that disappointment. It's their responsibility to adjust their expectations of me to fit the reality.

It's not my responsibility to repress myself into someone they'll approve of. The same goes for you. Your purpose and your path [00:23:00] will run afoul of a lot of people's expectations of you. That's their problem. I need you to understand that. That is their problem. When a story comes to you, and it's absolutely calling your name to tell it, what clearer sign do you need than that for where you're supposed to be going?

So my answer to the question of, what if people don't like me, is essentially, Some won't, but many will. It's your choice. Who you give that attention to and who you give your attention to will determine how you feel about yourself, the world, and your place in it. So what if you listened to wisdom instead of fear on this?

And one last note for all my authors out there, if your editor doesn't seem to like you or your book all that much, ditch them. Ditch them! Protect your piece. Never hire them again. Go get some sample edits from some new editors and find someone who [00:24:00] seems to love you and your book. Make this one a non negotiable.

If you have any anxiety at all about people not liking you, working with an editor who doesn't like you, is the best way to turn that fear up to 11 for no good reason at all. There's no good reason. There's no benefit to having an editor who doesn't seem to absolutely support you. Having an editor who hypes you up, who gives you generous assumptions when your sentences make no sense at all, that's coming from personal experience, , having an editor that feels like they're on your team to make the book as brilliant and powerful as it can be while remaining your vision, That's the best chance you can give yourself to feel confident publishing that book and pushing it out into a world full of critics.

Yes, full of critics, but also lots of fans and future fans. So that's it for this episode of What If For Authors. If you want to reach out to me, you can email me [00:25:00] at contact@ffs.media. Emails for people who think of me as a bitch eating crackers can be sent to thatsnice@ffs.media. I'm Claire Taylor.

And thanks for listening. I hope you liked the show. God, I hope you did. Ah, if you didn't, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Oh no. Anyway, I hope you come back for the next episode. See you then.

Episode 6: What if I have chronic health issues?

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of chronic health issues and their impact on an author's career. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own health journey, Claire explores how chronic conditions can affect work and life and provides compassionate strategies for managing your author dreams alongside your health needs.

Key Takeaways:

• Chronic health issues do not mean you have to give up on your author dreams. Modifications and self-compassion can help you thrive.

• Connecting with your three centers of intelligence can provide valuable insights into how to handle chronic health issues and their impact on your work.

• Acceptance and care are essential skills for managing chronic health conditions effectively.

• Developing a loving connection to your body, mind, and heart is crucial for long-term well-being and success.

• Seeking medical treatment and advocating for your health is vital, even in the face of potential challenges within the medical system.

Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling with chronic health issues and wondering if you can still achieve your author goals, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance their health with their passion for writing.

Links Mentioned:

• Sustain Your Author Career

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors, I'm so glad that you're here. My name is Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book Sustain Your Author Career on basically any online retailer by going to books2read.com/syac Sustain Your Author Career and that "2" in books2read is the numeral, books2read.com/syac.

I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the top downloaded episodes of this podcast. So like 10 whole people are going to download it. Yay! Honestly, I'm so grateful. For all ten of you. So today we're asking and then answering. The question, what if I have chronic health issues? [00:01:00] And then tagging along to the end of that is the concern that's sort of implied of can I still reach my author dreams?

Is it futile to try? I remember having depression in my teens, that really high-functioning stuff that no adults knew how to recognize at the time. , and giving up on some of my dreams. I did that because I never saw any examples of people with depression out there doing the things that I wanted to do.

I used to want to be some sort of performer, oddly enough, like really wanted to. I've always loved the adrenaline rush of being on stage and performing for like a delighted audience. I specifically remember a moment while I was driving I 35, my freshman year of college. And I asked myself what it was I actually wanted to do with my life and what I had any talent with, that was also a factor.

So the only thing, two things that came up for me were writing and performing, so acting, singing, that sort of thing. [00:02:00] I didn't think it could be a singer or actor. With the kind of depression that I had. So I chose writer because, well, clearly some more obvious role models there. That moment and my rationale still really stand out to me though, as probably a pretty common experience of people who have any sort of chronic condition trying to figure out.

What can I do with this? What is now out of my reach? Unfortunately, although as we'll see very little is probably out of your reach. So we're gonna talk more about that And I think that's why it's important to talk about chronic health issues and how you may not see a ton of authors dealing with theirs After all, we're mostly at home dealing with it, but there are plenty of folks living their author dreams dealing with the time suck that chronic health issues can become, and taking good care of their body.

You don't have to choose between caring for your needs, however burdensome they may seem, and following your publishing [00:03:00] dreams. Modifications? Sure. We love those, but there's not really a norm in anything about this job. So in that way, there's no default to modify. Right? Everyone's modifying to their individual needs.

I can't tell you how many of the authors I know in this community experience chronic health issues. I'm one of them, even. If you are also one of them, or if you're listening to this because you want to support the authors you know who are dealing with health issues, very kind of you, by the way, I'll say that this is , eventually an issue that comes for us all, health issues, everyone, our bodies break down.

This is not to lessen the impact of it because when you have a chronic health condition, especially from a young age, it feels incredibly unfair. So I'm only saying that to remind us all that the ableism. You might be facing from others if you are in this position, it will bite them in the ass eventually.

It'll [00:04:00] happen. Sleep well at night knowing that, my type 8s and type 1s. In all seriousness, this episode will probably end up being mostly about the internalized ableism that tells us we shouldn't have the needs that we do. And I know talking about ableism makes some people roll their eyes. It's almost a buzzword on the interwebs lately, but that doesn't make the concept of it any less important because at the end of the day, your or my internalized ableism is a form of garbage perfectionism that can erode our connection to our heart, mind, and body.

Not great. That being said, I'm not here to shame anyone because I still have internalized ableism. I haven't rooted out yet. Just like I've been a feminist for, you know, as long as I can remember, and I still have internalized misogyny that pops up from time to time. And I'm just like, Whoa, where did that come from?

Same with racism. I've spent a lot of time reading and learning to practice anti-racism, but I still have, [00:05:00] you know, racist stereotypes popping in my head from time to time. Basically, we're all in different stages of our personal evolution on all of these issues, and it often takes a lifetime of work to counteract all these societal norms that, uh, help us internalize or force us to internalize these isms.

As far as my own journeys go, I would say that rooting out my internalized ableism, , is probably the one that I've made the least progress on, honestly, even though I've been dealing with chronic health issues my whole life, it's just wild how that can happen. So I'm here really just interpreting what my understanding of the Enneagram tells us about the importance of rooting out ableism and how some of the cultural mythos we take as law is actually hurting our relationship with ourselves.

There's so much to say on this topic of chronic health conditions, and I will absolutely not hit on all the points. Like, all the medical stuff is between you and your doctor, [00:06:00] for one. Uh, I'm not gonna get into the weird health conspiracy shit on that, though I do feel like I've earned a little bit of conspiracy in my life over the last few years of being exposed to it constantly.

And refraining from diving in the deep end. I don't know. I feel like I've earned a little, a little conspiracy treat. Doesn't it sound nice? Just let go and bathe in the conspiracy theories instead of all this critical thinking all the time. Ugh. Yes. I, I want to just pick sweet oblivion, but I'm not there yet.

I can't just let go in that way. Okay. So yeah, I'm not going to get into health conspiracies here instead. I'll stay focused as much as I can on the Enneagram specific approaches to our health and wellbeing, because those are things that you won't find in many other places. You can find health conspiracies just about anywhere nowadays.

So it's just gonna be Enneagram theory, not conspiracy theory. And it's going to be lessons from my time as an author mixed in.

I think the approach I want to take today is to talk about the three centers of intelligence. So these are three [00:07:00] intelligences through which we connect to ourselves. Lovingly, hopefully. In return, they provide us with important information. We can become disconnected from our centers if we don't value them, or if we disregard them, or, unfortunately, if we've suffered trauma around them.

I know this immediately sounds woo woo and new agey and borderline a conspiracy theory. So let me be clear that there are not three actual centers that you treat separately.

Describing us as having three centers is just easy language to talk about our patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that arise from our core motivations, perceptual filter. So when we discuss cognitive patterns. In the Enneagram, we discuss the head center, right? So people tend to associate the head with cognition and intellect already.

So it makes sense to just call this our head center, uh, for linguistic purposes. When we discuss emotional patterns, we discuss the heart center. [00:08:00] People tend to associate their heart with emotions, right? And when we discuss behavioral patterns, we discuss the body center, , sometimes called the gut center because people tend to associate the body with action.

And as a side note, intuition is talked about in the body center as well, which is why it's sometimes called the gut center. So I'll be calling it the body center through this episode, so just get ready. All of this comes from well established theory of human psychology, cognition, emotions, behavior, these are kind of the three things functioning inside of us.

So those, seamlessly. Our emotions can lead to particular thoughts. Our thoughts can lead to particular behavior, and our behavior can lead to, say, particular emotions. Think about how exercise influences serotonin and dopamine, for instance. So no one center is more important or intelligent than the other two when they're all [00:09:00] firing on all cylinders. Many of us were taught that the only quote unquote real intelligence was the head or intellect, but that's simply not the only or even the best way Of knowing emotions give us important information.

And so does our body. So devaluing the heart center, for instance, will cause us to disconnect from our emotions and possibly repress them. Almost everyone has a few emotions that they feel they're not allowed to experience. So we all have some emotional repression in us happening in us. Maybe at this very moment, , to varying degrees.

So it's normal, but unpacking that repression can be a huge gift to our health too. So this is why we learned to value all three centers. They all serve important purposes in our well being. A lot of the problems authors into can be solved by looking at the three centers and asking which one or [00:10:00] two is falling asleep on the job and causing the remaining one to try to do the knowing of all three.

Head centers are shit at emotion, for instance. Thinking through emotions can be useful sometimes. And you need the heart center present for that, and so on each center has its own purpose. There are two skills that really stand out to me about chronic health issues. And those are the skill of acceptance and the skill of care.

If you develop a health issue that will most assuredly not go away as long as you live, Then there's a certain amount of work around acceptance that we want to do to keep from pretending that it's not there, which can cause us to, to not make the accommodations we need and deserve. When this acceptance doesn't exist, I see authors trying to [00:11:00] ignore the condition and push through to get the words down, but that usually makes it worse afterwards, right?

Maybe you deemed it worth it to push through, but why? Really think about the result at the end. You push through. Great! But now you might have severe pain or fatigue as a result. And pain and fatigue lead to mood disruptions. So maybe you also feel like shit emotionally now, and it also disrupts thinking.

So you're struggling to focus on the book. , you know, maybe this is a book that you're trying to read for pleasure. You deserve it. Or maybe you're struggling to focus on the conversation you're having with a loved one. Basically, you left nothing for yourself when you pushed through. And listen, we've all tried to push through.

Of course we do. Of course we try. No one wants to feel that restriction or limitation. It can feel like our dream is slipping away in those moments. But spoiler, it's not. It's not. You don't have to push [00:12:00] through. Acceptance is really fucking hard y'all. When you truly accept your chronic health condition, here are some things you might be asked to accept along with that.

Letting certain people down. Being criticized, being called lazy, irritating people, feeling needy, asking for help regularly, missing out on what others are doing, and even losing connection with certain people. Not the great people, but certain other ones. so yeah, there are drawbacks to acceptance that you're going to face.

And I think that's why we don't face it sometimes. We don't allow ourselves to accept something because we're also accepting the possibility of those negative side effects.

But here's what you don't have to accept when you opt for self acceptance. Hating your body, mind, or heart, taking shit off anyone, giving up on your [00:13:00] dreams, having close friends, and, you know, just enjoying your one perfectly imperfect life. Those things can still happen even while accepting the reality of your needs.

If you can't accept things from that first list, you're likely going to fight through to hit those deadlines. You're going to push yourself farther than you know is healthy to please people and avoid criticism. You'll wait to ask for help until you really, really need it and are in serious trouble, and so on.

If you allow that to happen, you're forfeiting a whole lot of love for yourself. And in doing so, you're hurting your connection to your three centers. And you need those centers healthy, for daily functioning and thriving.

So there's the Buddhist idea that transforming the world starts by transforming yourself. I really like this idea, and I don't think it's as selfish as it may sound at first. It doesn't mean you navel gaze all day long, or you never offer anything to [00:14:00] those around you. But rather, it points to a deep truth, which is that you cannot be more connected to others than you are to yourself.

Ever wonder why you can feel lonely around other people? This may be the answer. If you feel disconnected from yourself in a moment, if there's some part of you crying out for attention that you're uncomfortable looking at, then you'll disconnect from it. The result is that you feel disconnected from others, too.

So that's not great. That's not great at all. Especially when writers tend to be such solitary people to start with. We gotta feel that deep and nourishing connection with others whenever we can get the chance.

So this center work is really important. If all you did was try to get in touch more with your least developed center, you would see transformation in your life and your writing career that you didn't even think possible before. Here's the problem though, we often have a chronic illness existing in our least developed center.

It doesn't always work out that way of course, uh, we could have mental illness and have our [00:15:00] head center be our primary center, in which case the overuse of the head center might be exacerbating the symptoms. Uh, we could do a little work around lessening that burden by connecting more deeply to emotion in our physical body, maybe.

Give that head center a vacation, essentially. Closing off to a center is not a route forward that will serve you well for long. I promise. I totally understand the impulse though. If your body hurts all the time, why would you want to feel connected to it? That's super valid. So like, for instance, I'm a big fan of body scan meditations.

I love them because they put me right to sleep. My body has such a pattern of muscle tension that the moment I pause and relax, Tune into what's going on. I'm out. I'm out. Don't don't threaten me with a good time of relaxing my muscles So I never make it down to my feet when I do body scans. I have no idea what's going on in my feet Well, actually I do it's plantar fasciitis So maybe it's good that I don't make it down to my feet [00:16:00] Or maybe I really really need to make it down to my feet in a body scan just to hear what they have to say You Even if they're just cursing me out, the point is that body scans might not be for everyone.

If you have condition like chronic joint pain, body scans might actually hurt your connection to your body because they lure you in and then drag you through the mud. Look, pay attention to your body. Doesn't it fucking suck to be in it right now? I mean, yeah. So if a practice does not make you feel better, don't do it.

, but there are other ways to connect to your body and that's the good news. Because the authors I know who disconnect from their body center have a hard time moving the manuscript forward. They think they're just disconnecting from the physical pain, but if, if they don't find some other way to connect to their body center, they'll disconnect from their knowledge around taking focused action, too.

That's the gut. The gut tells us when it's time to move. So, those are in the same center of intelligence. And writing books takes a [00:17:00] little of that action fire to keep going.

I guess we're starting with the body center for this episode, so let's keep it going. Some ways to connect with your body center are movement, sure, and that includes whatever's comfortable for you. If it's wiggling your toes, great. If it's scrunching up all the muscles in your face and then relaxing, awesome.

If it's a nice gentle walk, go for it. , if you can do more with whatever physical condition you have, Great, do it. But if you can't, all hope is not lost. Connecting to the body center is less about working yourself to the bone or trying to get your body to look a certain way. In fact, it's never about trying to look a certain way.

But rather, it's about creating a bond of love between you and your physical existence. I even use drinking water as an excuse to connect to my body. Get that big, cold glass of water, start drinking, mmm. I send love to all my cells in my body that need this water to function. It's like, here you go, cells.

[00:18:00] And then, I often finish drinking the water by going, Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. God, I fucking love water. Cause it's true. Water is amazing. Uh, just, you know, bring your attention to the kind of things you do to nourish your body. So, give some focused attention to that. As you are connecting to your body. And that leads to the second thing I wanted to talk about outside of acceptance.

Which is the skill of care. So accept that your body is doing the best it can, and that might mean that you can't be like a superhero to everyone, but practice that acceptance without neglecting to care for your body and give it the best shot it has at feeling alive.

Just to drive the point home, any body center practice can be done through vengeful attention or through loving attention. So running on a treadmill until one of your legs gives out because you hate the way your body [00:19:00] looks and want to punish it, that would be vengeful attention. Even though you're exercising, which is, I guess, fine, you're just pumping hate and rejection into yourself, and that severs the connection between you and your body.

I know plenty of very athletic people who would have what much of society deems an acceptable body, but who are totally disconnected from that center because of the beliefs they have about their body that they use for exercise fuel. So just keep that in mind. If you exercise, experiment with how to do it with loving care.

Figure out what an exercise gift for your body would look like. Acceptance and care. I can't say that enough. Your body, it's doing the best it can. Treat it the same way you would treat a child who's doing the best they can, while not necessarily feeling that great, right? Unless, you know, unless you're shitty to kids, then don't do that.

Don't spank yourself or, or do, just, you know, [00:20:00] do it with loving kindness, I guess. lastly about the Body Center, I want to point out that our career of sitting and writing is probably the worst possible thing we could do to our bodies. But we know that, right? There's research about sitting all day. But also, we tune out from our bodies when we write.

We lose ourselves in the story. It's a great feeling in many ways. But we end up sitting in our chair and looking like a damn shrimp. But also we don't sometimes notice whatever pain we're experiencing until it's pretty bad. So a way to care for your body when you're a writer is to set alarms to take frequent breaks and check in with how your body is feeling.

What does it need to be happy right now? And then go do that.

Mood disorders are also a thing that a lot of writers deal with and it can get quite a bit of stigma because people want to call you emotional, which like, Yeah, that's the thing I'm struggling with, dude. Thanks for your help. Uh, but also there's this big emphasis on consistency [00:21:00] that I hear around the industry.

So, like, to be successful, you must be consistent. People put consistency on this fucking pedestal. And that is super ableist. If you're a person whose health issues have flare ups You're not less of a serious writer because you have to take unplanned days away from your work. Fuck off with that nonsense.

People with mood disorders, I hope you hear me when I say that you get to go do what you need to do. If you never know if you'll be in a place to write from one day to the next, that's just fine.

Writing will be there when you come back. You're still a writer like everyone else. And, you know, maybe just stay off social media while you're riding those waves. That might be a good way to, , give some loving care to your heart center. Social media is already disorienting and destabilizing to our moods.

Like, God, TikTok screws with my brain's ability to produce serotonin so bad. I just feel like, Generally down for days at a time [00:22:00] when I have that app on my phone and just scroll it endlessly. Anyway, it can be a very loving thing to avoid social media. When you need that energy for yourself, you never know what someone will post on social media.

So you're almost guaranteed to run into something triggering, which is not ideal if you're struggling with mood. If you want to reach out to people and feel human connection, which can be really healing, reach out to people, you know, who love and accept you. You're also likely to regret anything you post when you're managing the mood fluctuation, and I'm speaking from my own depression here.

Take the apps off your phone if you have to, go outside if that's safe for you at the time, and see if you can't activate your body center a little bit to alleviate the burden from your heart center and lightness load. That's not medical advice, by the way. If you need medical intervention, a loving thing you can do for yourself is go get it.

But I also understand that mood disorders can lead to a lot of strife in the medical complex. Uh, medications that don't work well. You might have those. You might [00:23:00] experience some gaslighting from doctors and so on. So, um, best of luck. I'm, I'm just being, you know, sort of flippant here. All I can really offer is that there's never a good reason to stop loving yourself and stay as connected to your heart center as you can.

And finally, head center health conditions. Most of the ones I ran into working with authors are mild, like slight paranoia, circular thinking, and so forth. So when I see people who are struggling with these mild Mental health setbacks. I actually get kind of excited because I know the center work can be hugely beneficial to them.

, these are more cognitive patterns than any official condition I'm talking about though. So the Enneagram is all about decoding cognitive patterns. , often these happen when we're asking our head center to do the work of the other centers. So building up that connection with the heart and body can open a flow of new information to the person that allows them to know in the deepest [00:24:00] sense of knowing.

What action to take and how they feel about a situation. The head center can only ever collect 33 percent of the information in a room or situation. If you don't have the other two centers offering their intelligence, yeah, the brain is going to be exhausted. So if you're dealing with sort of these mild cognitive frustrations, then this is where you start.

Now, if you have an actual mental health condition, remember acceptance and care. Accept that you have it. And care for it accordingly and with love. There's this idea that mental health issues, and sometimes mood conditions like depression are lumped in there, but it's this idea that those things are somehow beneficial to your writing, and if you treat them, you'll lose your touch.

I don't know that I agree with asking yourself to suffer untreated, and that that would necessarily serve your writing, and It certainly doesn't serve you the best. A lot [00:25:00] of comedians, for instance, fear that if they treat their depression, they'll stop being funny. But what actually happens, turns out, uh, and they find this out, if they go get treatment, is that if they treat their depression, They're still funny, and now they are not depressed.

That's all that happens, right? So if you feel like, well if I go get treatment, then I'm not going to be able to write, I'm not going to be the same kind of writer. You might be the same kind of writer, and just not suffering. And that's great.

Also, if you're wondering if depression is a mood condition or a mental condition, let me just say that I don't know. This is really where the line gets blurry. So, my experience of depression is that it's very much in all three of my centers. So, there are the mental patterns of thoughts I used to have that were very mean.

And rude and added to the depression. I've unpacked most of those now, and I really feel like it's a disruptive cognitive pattern anymore, or rather with the thoughts [00:26:00] come through. I'm like, Whoa, easy there thought not today. And then I kind of help it move along and there's the mood around it. And I've been working through that and I mostly don't have the moodiness of depression, but when I do, it's usually a sign that there was a big emotion I was ignoring for a while.

And it just needed to have it's say so I invite it through and it does its thing for a bit and then it moves along And then there's the physical element of depression, which I still have to write out. So that's the the fatigue of it there are days at a time where I kind of drag ass around the house because there's not like a single drop of serotonin to be found in my body if I can muster it on these days I'll go for long walks to try to remind my body that serotonin is, is kind of important and would it please, please give me some, that I have to do all this work to accept and support myself in this way might come as a surprise to some of you listening, but that's because you [00:27:00] don't see it. There's so, so much we don't see about each other's lives. When I'm feeling this way, I cope by retreating like a sick dog. So by nature, you won't know about it.

That's my own learned response, uh, in my own baggage, even after all this inner work I do on a daily basis. I can't quite shake this belief that it's, it's my responsibility to take care of myself completely. And that my needs are too much to bother anyone else with. So I know that's wrong in my head. And I've gotten to the point where I feel comfortable asking for the support I need from like John or my inner circle.

And for now, that's just where I'm at. I don't mind talking about it though, because I don't take it personally. So these are just patterns I picked up at a young age. They don't align with my values and yet they still keep happening. So I don't know. I find it pretty fascinating to observe.

Also, as a side note, what I described was just my kind of depression. There are all flavors of depression out there. Your flavor may be very different and [00:28:00] that doesn't make it better or worse. And that doesn't mean that you're going to approach it with the same success that I have had doing it the way that I have done it.

So, yeah, your mileage may vary, and I'm really not trying to add to any stigma about depression. I'm trying to share my experience so that we maybe see that there's a little bit of hope there. If you're wondering when the depression blows in and my exhaustion starts, No, I don't usually get my writing done.

I will generally skip it. Because if I try to push through, I know that it won't be fun, and it'll create resistance to the process of sitting and writing, and I probably won't get much done anyway. Also, if I don't address the needs of my body on those days, the shit will just drag on and on. I'd much rather take a day or two off to get myself back on track quicker.

I don't, don't like depression y'all. I don't like it. I'm not a fan. [00:29:00] And I found that when I treat myself lovingly by giving myself what I need, I surprisingly, who would have thought, I enjoy being alive much more. Uh, but I've also had chronic back and neck pain since I was about six years old.

I get migraines at least once a month, sometimes more. Uh, and I've never had a normal period in my life. TMI for some of you, but it's a medical condition, so grow up. Basically, I'm not talking completely out of my ass here when I say it's worth practicing acceptance and care. I've gone through the self loathing myself.

I've gone through the disconnection from my centers that were causing me trouble. I've tried it. Would not recommend. Zero out of five stars. Living in harmony with yourself is much better for your author career long term, as well as your general will to live and enjoy this one life.

Also, even with all the days I've taken off from my regularly scheduled writing to care for myself, I've still managed [00:30:00] to publish quite a few books over the long term. And frankly, who cares how many I've published? The measure of a person's life isn't what they produce, or at least I don't believe so. If you believe so, I do invite you to ask who taught you that belief, and if it's served you well, or forced you to disconnect from your centers of intelligence to get the job done.

Just a little line of inquiry. Lastly, I do want to touch on something that's just speaking straight from my heart here, from me to you. It's just the two of us. It might even just be the two of us. There may be no one else listening to this episode but you. If you have a chronic health condition that's interrupting your life, please seek medical treatment.

You deserve it. In the best way. Now, I know that if you're a cisgendered woman or a trans person, you've probably been treated like shit by at least a few doctors. You know, gaslighted, told all the pain is [00:31:00] in your head, that sort of thing. And if you're black, then we know that the statistical chance your pain has been dismissed by a medical professional is extremely high.

And I don't have to tell you that if you're Black and have experienced that as a result. So I am really, truly sorry that anyone has to go through that. I know it hurts to be disbelieved by someone in that position of authority who's the gatekeeper of your care. The number of medical professionals who have written off my pain and symptoms is almost as high as the number of medical professionals I've seen.

But please keep trying if you can muster it. What I suggest is to build up the support you need. Knowing what you're up against, and call in the troops if you have to, but then go get the help you deserve to care for yourself. Maybe leave time afterward to download the experience with a trusted friend if you need that, but create the conditions and support you need to [00:32:00] keep going.

Get that second opinion. In the US you can call bullshit on a doctor and nobody can stop you like you can say it to their face and they can't have you arrested. You might not get the greatest care from them after that, but you probably weren't getting great care to begin with if you find yourself at that point.

Advocating for your health is hard, but it's one of the most loving things you can do for yourself. And I encourage you not to limit it to the medical industry, but continue that loving advocacy into your author career. Be the advocate your body, mind, and heart need to thrive. Don't participate in their downfall just because you want to get a book finished by a deadline.

Or you don't want someone to be disappointed in your lack of productivity. Or you want to impress someone who probably doesn't think that much about you anyway. I know it can be hard, especially if you're an Enneagram 2 who can't stand asking for help, but this is the [00:33:00] only way you'll continue to be able to show up for the people you love. First, you ask for help from them, and they'll feel so grateful to be able to return all the care you've given them. And then, You care for yourself so that you can continue later on showing care for others.

So, to answer the question of what if I have chronic health issues, I say that is part of life. You can still do incredible things as an author, I promise. All of our personal struggles can become doorways to richer empathy for the struggles of others. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Accept the things you cannot change, take action to care for your health where you can make a positive difference, and then always put your connection to yourself ahead of the perceived demands of people who probably wouldn't even show up to your funeral.

The unspoken secret in this industry [00:34:00] is that most people are managing chronic health issues of some kind. The folks who are out there encouraging everyone to just toughen up and push through are simply the ones who will crash and burn. Eventually and have to learn a lesson the hard way that you and I.

Already know.

So that was a lot, wasn't it? It's hard talking about health. I probably shouldn't have done this episode, probably stepping in it, but it's worth the risk. I guess that's it for this episode of what if for authors, if you want to reach out to me, you can email me at contact@ffs.media.

Emails that are designed solely to disrupt my peace and lash out can be sent to thatsnice@ffs.media. And now I'm gonna go take a quick break and check in with my three centers. I'm Claire Taylor and thanks for listening. I hope you come back for the next episode of what if for [00:35:00] authors.

Episode 5: What if my book launch is a dud?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of book launches. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the fear of a book launch failing and how it affects different Enneagram types. Whether you're launching your first book or your tenth, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your expectations and emotions.

Key Takeaways:

• A book launch's success or failure doesn't define your book's long-term potential.

• Understanding your Enneagram type can provide valuable insights into how you handle book launches and their outcomes.

• Develop self-compassion and curiosity when setting expectations for your book launch.

• Conditions outside your control can affect your launch; recognize and respect these factors.

• Celebrate your accomplishments and take care of your well-being on launch day.

Why Listen? If you find yourself anxious about book launches or feeling overwhelmed by their potential outcomes, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective.

Links Mentioned:

• Sustain Your Author Career - Available June 13th

• Reclaim Your Author Career

• The Child in You by Stephanie Stahl

• Nine Lenses on the World by Dr. Jerome Wagner

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. My new book for authors, Sustain Your Author Career, is available on all your favorite and most hated retailers June 13th.

So depending on when I end up releasing this episode, which I don't know yet, it might already be waiting for you to purchase and read. I would say that I'm much less of a smartass in it, but the depth of information in it is pretty good. So if you're listening to these episodes and want to go a little deeper, That book is the place to go.

Or you can read my other book, Reclaim Your Author Career. They've both proven pretty useful to authors, apparently. On to the actual content of the show. What's today's anxiety, you may be wondering? Unless you read the episode title where it spells it out. , well today we're going to ask the [00:01:00] question, What if my book launch is a dud?

In other words, what if you pour your heart and soul and a dump truck of cash into a book release To launch it up to the charts and then the book simply flops. It doesn't do what you wanted it to do. It fails to meet your expectations. This fear is so important to look at because it can keep authors from even trying , around their releases. Maybe they hit publish, don't bother telling more than a few people. And then deep down, wonder why their career isn't where they wanted it to be. Or on the flip side, they put a lot into launch and then it doesn't make them immediately rich and famous.

And they emotionally crash and burn as a result. I've seen both. , and I've actually lived both ways to some extent, so this is a no shame zone. As with any of these patterns that I point out in these episodes, if you spot it in yourself, that's not a call to feel ashamed, but rather a summons [00:02:00] to curiosity.

Where did you pick up that pattern? Where did it work well enough to protect you that you decided to keep it going? And do you still want it? Because if you don't still want to keep it around, you do actually have options here. You can start the work of trying new things and developing new neural pathways instead. Yay! Neuroplasticity for the win. So our patterns aren't us. We exist beneath these patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, which is great news because it means we can throw out any of those patterns that are keeping us stuck.

Bye bye. I know that this can work and that we can do this because I do this, uh, all the time now. I didn't for a very long time and life started sucking and feeling very cramped and so then I figured out that this was a thing I could do and I started doing it. So now I'm constantly noticing patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing on the daily, like [00:03:00] oh shit, that's unfortunate.

I don't think doing that aligns with my values. I should probably knock that off. And then over time, I figure out how to knock it off. It's great. And that's obviously an oversimplification because there's a lot of work that goes into quote, knocking off unquote, a single unwanted pattern, but it's possible.

And I found quite worth the trouble. And you probably already know what I mean, because you've noticed a pattern and decided to knock it off and interrupt it over time. We all do this occasionally. We just learn how to be a little bit more intentional with it. Okay, so launches. When I think of book launches, I think of dreams, desires, great expectations, without any burning wedding dresses.

, When discussing launches, I see a few themes emerge that lead me straight back to, you guessed it, [00:04:00] the Enneagram. First, I see a discussion of core desires coming up, that's kind of where my mind goes. I also see things like identity coming into play, idealized self, as well as that unholy chasm between expectations and reality.

I also see things like idealized self, as well as that unholy chasm between expectations and reality.

I wanted to spell one big myth though, which is that a book's launch is indicative of its earning potential over time. So I've launched books to absolute crickets before that eventually found their readers and continued selling well over a period of time. My Jessica Christ series fell into that category.

So the launch, , did almost nothing. I did everything I knew at the time, , to tell people about it and build that buzz, but it released and the sales sort of trickled, but it wasn't, it wasn't great. Then another author told his readers about it and another and then I ran some promos on it And then I figured out [00:05:00] how to use ads Anyway over the course of maybe six months the book gained momentum That this would be the first book and then the first I think four books were out by the end of the six months That's when it really all of it took off So the books gained momentum Until I started having some pretty solid sales months from books that I had been told there would be no broad audience for.

Now granted this was back in 2016 2017 and things worked very differently than in a lot of ways, , particularly in indie publishing. And Yeah, the sales for that series have since fallen off for I think a lot of small reasons adding up, but most importantly, I don't advertise those books as much anymore because other series of mine get a better ROI on ads.

So I put my money toward the thing that gives me more money. But my point is the same. It wasn't the launch that created the success for that series. [00:06:00] Meanwhile, , I have certain series where I can get a really good launch out of a book and then I just can't keep the sales up over the following months.

It drops off pretty quickly, , no matter what I've tried. And maybe I haven't tried everything because we know that, of course, I haven't tried everything. But from what I've tried, the effort I've put into it, Behind it, this is just a thing that kind of keeps happening with, , books in this particular series.

So, a strong launch doesn't tell you much about the earning potential of a book over the long term, just like a weak one doesn't. And of course this is anecdotal, and I only talk about my stuff to illustrate the point, but this is also the case over larger sets of data I've seen and with authors I've worked with, so there is a broader sampling I'm speaking from.

If your book launch is a dud, if it falls flat, uh, being disappointed about that, I think it makes sense. It's a very normal response. But if you notice yourself projecting that [00:07:00] disappointment onto the future of the book, like thinking, oh, it'll never earn back the expenses, then maybe interrupt those thoughts.

Try to keep the disappointment limited to the present circumstance, and don't project it into the future to also dash hope. Dashing hope can be very demotivating. And then you've created a self fulfilling prophecy for yourself, right? Because you don't believe that the book has earning potential. And that leads you to not take the necessary action to nudge it toward making money.

Now, what I've talked about up till now is mostly for indie authors. I understand that if a traditionally published book launches to crickets, that can actually mean that the future of the book is pretty much squashed because the publisher won't continue to put any money into marketing it. You may also not be offered another contract with them after a dud of a launch, even if the failure to launch was all the [00:08:00] publisher's fault from not marketing the book effectively.

Even still, if that's the case, all is not lost. So some of the very practical things you can do, check the contract to see when you can buy or request your rights back for the book, , then plan on doing that at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, you can always write another book. If no publisher will take it, they've seen that, oh, they released this book with this publisher and it didn't do anything, well, welcome to the wild world of indie publishing.

We are so glad you're here. Enjoy control over your own marketing destiny. So, on a surface level, there are plenty of options to move forward after a book launch. It doesn't meet expectations. You have many options and paths forward. And yet, it may not feel that way. So, why not? That would be the inner work that I won't shut up about.

That's why not. , [00:09:00] having options and feeling like you have options. are two different things. It can be really helpful when you feel like you don't have any options to remember this. So maybe you repeat to yourself, right now I don't see any good options.

I have faith that the options are there, but I may need help seeing them. Then if you can, Ask yourself who might help you see them, right? We do a lot of this work all on our own, internally, no one else can do the internal work. But we need support from other people to do it. So it's okay if you can't see the options, as long as you feel like you have someone you could ask to help you see some options.

And then you're open to listening to them. Okay, so as authors who are humans, We have this tendency to put a lot of stock into particular [00:10:00] moments. We build up these expectations that the outcome of this or that will pass a verdict on whether we're worthy, loved, competent, supported, or even good. Did you Enneagram sleuths catch that?

I was just listing off core desires of the types. Worthy, loved, competent, supported, good, right? These aren't all of them, but these are some of them. So, book launches tend to be just such moments where we wait with bated breath to see if we are the thing that we really want to be. So we attach our sense of self to the success of the launch.

And that's maybe not the wisest approach because it hands over how we feel about ourselves to external results that are influenced not only by us, but by an unnameable number of external [00:11:00] conditions.

I'm not going to say that the effort we put into our book launch makes no difference. It does, but it's not as simple as effort in equals success out. And I say that knowing that the idea is really going to bother Enneagram 1s, 3s, and 5s especially, who are all competency types, which means that they deal with conflict, by simply trying to be better at what they do.

But we all want to believe we're in control of our destiny, no matter what type. And I get that, trust me. I. Get. That. I did not go softly into the night when it comes to accepting how little control I have over the external world. , as a one I'm an autonomy type. So my deep hope is that if I just live perfectly enough, the world around me will bend to my will.

So there is a dark side to the belief that we have control over the results of our efforts. [00:12:00] And that is that when those results don't turn out the way we want, a failed book launch for instance, we blame ourselves first. So our inability to control the world around us then tells us something mean or rude about who we are and what we're capable of accomplishing.

Or rather, that's how we interpret it. It doesn't inherently tell us that. So if you have total control over results, then it follows that you must also assume total responsibility for any poor results. On the flip side, if we presume to have no influence over external events. We may give up completely and that's not great for your career trajectory either.

So there's a middle approach here, but it takes practice because it requires us holding some tensions, some internal tensions and polarities to be able to proceed with this middle approach. we can't fall too [00:13:00] far one way or the other. Even when the siren song of believing we have total control reaches our ears, or that ghostly voice that whispers to us to just give up because nothing we do matters.

We've got to find the little middle point between those two poles. Now, this middle approach looks like understanding that our actions may influence external conditions. Influence, not control, influence external conditions. But we can't know to what extent that they will. That may look like if I ask other authors in my genre to email their readers about my book release, it will influence some ideal readers to check out my book.

But I don't know how many, and there's always a chance that the other author will forget to send it out. So anyway, you can use that kind of influence a bunch of times over to increase the odds That you will sell books. [00:14:00] But you have to accept that your influence will not necessarily lead to a specific result you're hoping for.

One of the greatest tools we have as authors is curiosity. So if you find yourself in a place of certainty about results. Like thinking this will definitely work, then that's a good opportunity to pause and try and switch your internal dialogue from that to, I wonder what this will do. So no two launches are ever the same.

And just because a tactic was effective last time you launched a book does not mean it'll work again. You're not entitled to the same results. And that sucks. But it's true. That's reality. So even if a tactic led to, let's say, 500 sales the last three times you used it during a launch, that doesn't mean that you can count on it with certainty again.

So what I suggest is that We practice saying, I wonder [00:15:00] how effective it will be this time. And then we inspect the results afterwards, like a scientist. We can do a post mortem.

So this mindset will do a lot to keep you from being blindsided by your own lofty launch expectations if, and probably when, they're not met. So you don't have a set expectation, so you can't be let down. You're still committed to trying, because you'd like to sell copies of your book, of course. But you're going about it with curiosity rather than certainty, and that makes such a difference.

It doesn't do the whole job though, because even if you're practicing that approach, there's a good chance that deep in your heart, you're still wishing for a miracle. Maybe you're even expecting it. Maybe you feel like you're due a miracle after all the time you've spent in this career, getting less than ideal results from launches.

I get that. And I find that speaking to that part of us that hopes so [00:16:00] dearly, speaking to it as we would a small child who we love, Not one of those shitty kids who can't stand speaking to that part of ourselves with the compassion that we would use for a child We love that goes a long way toward understanding what's going on.

So you might say yes I know it would feel very good to sell a thousand copies on the first day Wouldn't that be fun? Even if that doesn't happen You've done great work and you have a lot to be proud of. So that sort of thing, right? Like we're talking to a kid here and I know this is going to sound obnoxious.

What I'm about to tell you, but trust me that it does help with your nervous system regulation. And we need a lot of nervous system regulation around launches. So when you're talking to this. part of yourself that is hoping for a miracle, , Place your hands over your heart. I know place flat palms over your heart, close your eyes, as you speak to this part [00:17:00] of you.

You may feel goofy, but do it for the sake of that little kid. Okay, so yes, that's inner child work to some extent. It's like inner child work Light really, and listen, we get there eventually with this Enneagram stuff because these patterns are picked up early in life and when we adopt a belief about ourselves or the way the world works, when we're like five, our understanding of that belief often doesn't develop beyond the unrefined understanding of a five year old. So we have to meet it where it is. So if you talk to that belief like an adult, that's not going to work. You got to talk to it like it's a five year old if that's how old you were when you learned it.

For instance, uh, one I hear a lot from people is that you can't rely on anyone to help you out. It's all on you. First of all, that's so heartbreaking. And most people learn this when they were very little, maybe their parents didn't show up to help or were absent or [00:18:00] incapacitated and , the kid had to make their own meals or get themself to the bus stop or make sure daddy made it to bed every night and so on, which is.

Tragic, tragic, right? If someone learned that belief at eight years old, me showing them statistics, otherwise that, that disprove their belief that you can't count on anyone else. That ain't going to do a lot of good because eight year olds are notoriously shit at understanding statistics. Anyway, that's where some of the work of assessing and removing patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing can get kind of tricky. So if you want to dip your toes into inner child work and you haven't before, I do recommend the book The Child in You by Stephanie Stahl. She has some useful exercises to get you started and can kind of walk you through the basic concepts of this work.

So outside of the inner child work, you can also direct your attention to the Enneagram's idealized self for each type. And you can read more about this in depth in Dr. Jerome Wagner's book, [00:19:00] nine lenses on the world. But basically there is this thing that we want to be able to feel about ourselves. We spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that we are that thing.

And our sense that we are not that thing drives a lot of decisions. For example, if you are an Enneagram two. You're doing a lot of work to believe that you're helpful and giving because the idealized self you want to touch is that you are a helpful and giving person. Meanwhile, a five wants to feel like they're wise and perceptive.

So they spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves and the world that they are. We're each so desperate to protect our idealized self, in fact, that we do a lot of work to distance ourselves from every part of us that doesn't fit this ideal. So if you're a 3 whose self looks like, I'm efficient and successful, then every part of you that [00:20:00] disagrees with that or contradicts it, Your failures, your lack of motivation, and so forth, will be shoved into a closet and locked away from sight.

This is being locked away from sight of not just others, but yourself. So opening that closet and looking around is what we call shadow work. Those are the blind spots. Anyway, we sort of look all over the place for evidence that we are our idealized self, and some situations seem especially ripe for finding that proof.

Here it comes, bringing it back around because for authors, book launches are one of these places. Book launches are these easily isolated moments with measurable results. So they feel perfect for confirming or You know, less flattering, denying that we've met our type's ideal. If we let this happen without interfering, if we allow ourselves to attach that significance to the moment of a book [00:21:00] launch, then a book launch becomes so much more than a book launch to us.

It becomes a big old verdict. It becomes an existential matter to us that we meet or exceed our expectations. It doesn't have to though, nor do we really want it to. Right? . So again, we have a choice about this, but the first step to making that choice is learning to pause and notice when we're doing the thing we don't want to be doing.

So if you're coming up on a book release at some point in the planning and then probably again, after the release, consider asking yourself the question I'm about to list off to you that's associated with your types idealized self. Okay. So just ask this ones ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm my rightness and goodness?

Twos ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will [00:22:00] confirm that I'm giving and helpful? Threes ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I'm successful and efficient? Fours ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am special and conform to elite standards?

Fives ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am perceptive and wise? Sixes ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am loyal and do what I ought to do? Sevens ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am okay? Eights ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am powerful and can do what I intend to do?

Nines asks, how am I hoping that the result of this will confirm that I am settled? And then maybe follow up the answer you get with, [00:23:00] could I be that thing anyway? Could I also be okay? With not being that thing? The last two questions might take a bit of inner deconstruction and possibly coaching before you hit on a definite yes, but go ahead and ask them anyway.

So

I will give you a little bit of a spoiler here. That yes, you will be okay no matter the results, but to get to the point where you feel that you'll be okay despite the results, that's a different matter. But if you want to, for now, you can just trust me that you'll be fine. So sometimes a book launch is just a book launch, but sometimes it's a verdict on who we are.

Or at least it feels that way, and that's where we get into the tricky stuff. But once we deconstruct some of our fixed beliefs about it, and stop taking it as a judgment of who we are, we can pretty easily answer the question of, what my launch is a [00:24:00] dud with, Then it's a dud and I'll be fine. I'm not out of good options yet, even if I can't see them without help.

I'll leave you with this final piece of hard earned wisdom by the time you make it to release day. See if you can have already scheduled everything that absolutely needs to be scheduled. It doesn't have to be all the things.

Just what is required. See if you can have done what needs to be done. If you're an indie, that's uploading the manuscript. That sort of thing. And see if you can do that so that you leave yourself very little to do on the day of the release. Then, during that time, go celebrate the release of a new book.

Take yourself out to coffee. Go have a nice lunch or dinner. Go see a movie. Or even just go for a long walk and sort of revel in your accomplishment. You wrote a book. You published it. There were undoubtedly times [00:25:00] during the creation of it where you struggled, but you pushed through. You did what most people only ever talk about doing.

And then you have the courage to push it out into the world. So what a strange and wonderful thing to be a storyteller. We get to string words together and then we get paid for it. What a silly and delightful hobby. or career. So not only do you get to do it, but You've done it. You wrote the book and now it's out there and people can pay you money to enjoy it.

The results of the launch don't change any of that. That has already happened once you hit publish. So what I recommend is to go celebrate..

So that's it for this episode of the What If For Authors podcast. If you want to reach out to me, email me at contact@ffs.media. And I hope you'll join me on the next episode where I [00:26:00] show you that there's probably no reason to worry at all.

Episode 4: What if I can't hit deadlines?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of deadlines. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the complexities of deadlines and how they affect different Enneagram types. Whether you love deadlines or dread them, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your writing schedule.

Key Takeaways:

• Deadlines can create a sense of control and order but may also lead to burnout and disconnection from your creative work.

• Understanding your Enneagram type can provide valuable insights into your relationship with deadlines.

• It's important to develop self-compassion and flexibility when setting and attempting to meet deadlines.

• Conditions outside your control can affect your ability to meet deadlines; recognize and respect these factors.

Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling to meet deadlines or feeling overwhelmed by them, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance productivity with well-being.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy Writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm a certified Enneagram coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer of a bunch of books. Oh, and I'm also a non-fiction writer. And by the time you listen to this episode, my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, will probably be available to buy on all your favorite retailers.

If you like listening to me here, you'll like the book. And if you hate listening to me here, you might still like the book because I'm slightly less snarky in it than I am on this podcast. I don't know. I didn't write that book for six drunk authors at Bar Con, in other words.

I'm pretty excited about today's topic, so let's jump right into it. Today's episode asks the question, what if I can't hit deadlines? I love this question and I get it a lot because it seems like our lives [00:01:00] would have so much more ease and flow if we could just hit the damn deadlines. Doesn't it? Like set a deadline, calculate how much you have to do each day, then do that amount.

each day. My Enneagram oneness is like, fuck yeah, order instead of chaos. We love it. The bad news is that I've worked with so many authors who are trying to do this, and of those who can pull it off, they usually aren't enjoying it after a while. It's like their consciousness has completely left their body in order to hit those deadlines.

So, in other words, whatever joy or relief the author might have hoped to get from getting those rewards of hitting the deadline, it's not precisely what they're getting. Maybe it's comforting to stay on schedule? I honestly wouldn't know because I have a tendency to fill my schedule so tightly that it's a miracle I get anything done at all.

But at what [00:02:00] cost does one earn that comfort? That deadlines and staying on schedule can bring. Now, if you're listening and thinking, I love setting deadlines, and I hit them easily, and I enjoy my life, so I don't know what you're talking about, Claire, then I'm, truly, truly happy for you. That's great.

You can skip to the next episode. Let the rest of us overwhelmed degenerates talk privately then. If you're an indie author, Then you're almost always setting the deadlines for yourself. So this makes the struggle to hit deadlines, feel even more ludicrous sometimes, but I promise it makes a whole lot of sense.

Once we look at what's really going on beneath the surface here, if you're a traditionally published author, then you may not be setting the deadlines, but you're agreeing to them for the most part when you sign the contracts. So that doesn't make it harder or easier to hit those deadlines. It's just a different kind of [00:03:00] complication.

Let's say you're setting your own deadlines and then failing to hit them over and over again. There are a few things that are probably going on internally inside of you. Your adult voice is trying to put some boundaries on your creativity and add a little bit of practicality in there because you want to make money selling books, so you need to, you know, publish books.

The adult voice and the playful inner artist voice don't necessarily get along, and sometimes that artist wants to rebel against the man, even if the man is you. Why do you keep setting deadlines then? Because you're probably afraid of the chaos that will ensue if you don't. Or maybe you know that you won't do anything without the fear of a time crunch motivating you.

So this points out what many of us use deadlines for, which is fear based motivation. We create a false time scarcity with our made up deadlines to [00:04:00] try to get that adrenaline going. That can help us sometimes muster the energy to sit and write, even when any, everything in our body in our mind, in our heart, is telling us to rest.

So maybe we're not hitting these deadlines because we're too damn tired and we haven't admitted to ourselves that we need rest or given ourselves the permission to fulfill our basic human need for rest.

But it's also possible that we catch onto our own scheme. If we're the ones trying to pull one over with the synthetic time crunch, then we know it's made up. Part of us knows that the world will keep spinning if we don't finish our first draft by the end of the month or whatever. So what do we do? We stick another project right up against the deadline to create even more made up reason for us not to fall behind.

It becomes this matter of, if you miss this deadline, then you'll be behind on the next book project. And you'll [00:05:00] keep falling behind until you die. I'm telling on myself with that example, but I see it happen a lot. And it's usually found in people who are really high achievers in school. So we learned that little bit of trickery. To keep us engaged in homework and projects that didn't matter at all to us outside of the grade we could capture from them.

So yeah, we're trained to disconnect from the meaning behind our mental labor very easily. Early in life,

that can be great. If you don't work a job you love, but not great. If you're trying to work your dream job of being an author, you got to stay connected to the work or else things start to fall apart. The other problem here is that people are generally bad at estimating how long things will take them to complete, even if it's things that they've done a thousand times before, like writing a book chapter.

Humans often fall victim to the planning fallacy, which dismisses how long a project or task has taken us to complete in the past, [00:06:00] and instead estimates the time as if there will be no complications or fuck ups along the way. We won't get sick, we won't have to take an unexpected day off, we won't get shit sleep one night, and be dragging the next morning, that sort of thing.

There's also the optimism bias that we suffer from. Yeah, everybody suffers from this, where humans plan projects based on the idea that they will be functioning at their peak throughout the duration. Instead of Looking back at how long it took us the last ten times and realizing that every single book we've written has fallen behind schedule by, say, two weeks.

No way we'd add two weeks to our deadline, though. Uh uh. Never. That last time? That was last time. This time, though. This time will be different. The optimism bias happens to almost everyone, by the way, not just the self-proclaimed optimists. So you can be a pessimist and still have the optimism bias.

Already there is a lot going on with our relationship to [00:07:00] deadlines. And if someone else sets the deadline for you, there's even more happening beneath the surface. Maybe you hate the person who said it, and resent that they're telling you what to do. You may internally rebel and find that it's hard to get yourself to focus because focusing feels like bending to their will.

Or maybe someone you don't like setting a deadline for you stirs within you some real fuck this guy energy that makes you want to beat the deadline by a mile, right? That can be gratifying in the short term, but Anyone who's ever met a deadline early can also tell you what happens next. You're assigned something else right away and then given even less time to complete it because you've established a precedent of doing things quickly.

So I learned this the hard way when I was an in-house editor for Romance Publisher. It was fast paced, high volume work. There was one time I was given a single Eight hour day to proofread a 200 page manuscript. Usually though, we were given four days for a copy edit, [00:08:00] which is still not enough fucking time.

I learned real quick that if I completed something early, my reward was another manuscript right away that may or may not be a complete disaster. So the work never stopped. That's also how it goes with indie publishing. The work never stops unless you make it stop. As in, taking a break. When I was editing for this publisher, I learned that.

And I would either go slow with lots of breaks to Google factoids, that I could find in the book. Or I would finish the job ahead of deadline and act like I was still working on it, just so I could catch my breath. So not the greatest employee, but I was doing what I needed to, to stay in that job and not burn myself out completely. I can attest to the process of doing something really quickly to piss off the authority who assigned the deadlines as not a great approach. That would be an example of stupid games, stupid prizes. Now let's say you really like and respect the person who assigns you [00:09:00] the deadline. There's a whole new bag of problems there, right?

If the deadline isn't realistic, on top of the stress of trying to meet it, there's the emotional stress of not wanting to let that person down or make them disappointed in you. Or maybe you don't want to let on that you're struggling, or you want to impress them, but don't feel like you can, or maybe you feel like you're going to get in trouble or hurt the relationship in some other way.

If you miss it, all those anxieties are emotional ones that can make the already tough task of completing the project, even more fraught yikes. So now that I've given voice to a lot of the feelings around deadlines, I should probably do what I do. Best? Maybe not best. Most frequently? Sure. I'll do what I do most frequently and break this down by Enneagram type, even though I said I don't want to do that in every episode because it's a lot.

I don't see another way. So maybe it's time for me to surrender. To the [00:10:00] trap that I've set for myself. And just let this podcast be what it's going to be. Alright. The trickiness of deadlines, if you're a one, an Enneagram one, is that you tend to set them, or agree to them, based on an idealized version of yourself and your capacity.

And then, once you make them, your sense of personal obligation and responsibility urges you to do whatever it takes to meet them, even if that's burning yourself out completely. So you've gotta watch out for that. Alright.

Here's my little kick in the pants to you ones. Stop expecting more from yourself than you'd expect from anyone else. Who made you so damn special? And I mean that with love. I have to tell myself that all the time to have a little self compassion. Come on, Claire, who made you so special that you're supposed to be able to do all these things in a short amount of time, an exceptionally high standard of quality, and without triggering a single migraine?

But seriously, Ones, a little perspective goes a long [00:11:00] way. Nothing we're doing is so urgent that it's worth destroying our health and our peace. We deserve joy, too, just like everyone else. The trickiness of deadlines, if you're a two, is that you're probably overextending yourself, committing to too many things with too many people.

That need to be needed can compel you to say yes anytime someone asks for your help before you have time to think about whether you actually have time in your schedule to do what you say you're going to do. Then you might make room in your schedule by skipping out on sleep or basic self care. And then everything starts to fall apart before too long.

You'd be lucky to meet a single deadline at that point, let alone all the ones you've agreed to. So that little pause to ask if you actually have the capacity to agree to a new commitment before you agree can go a long way. And I promise, that what feels like selfishness to you doesn't register that [00:12:00] way to people who are not twos.

So practice saying, I can't commit to that. I cannot commit to that. You'll find that meeting one deadline is a lot easier than meeting 20. Strange, huh? Okay Threes, you're gonna get a rush out of deadlines. That has been my experience. Threes love deadlines. And you're gonna get a rush so much that you might give yourself too many if you start measuring your value by how many deadlines you can hit.

If you're one of the Threes who struggles with workaholism, which is most of the ones I work with, and no shame on that. We all have the thing we struggle with. If that's the case though, then you got to look at every deadline with the most suspicion possible. You may be prone to setting so many deadlines that you don't allow yourself to second guess why you're doing all the work you're doing.

The real drawback for you to being so busy is that it disconnects you from your heart center. So emotions don't [00:13:00] work on a deadline, which can be incredibly inconvenient when you like hitting deadlines. So this, the temptation here is to push them aside until you have time to feel them. But if you keep going from one project to the next without pauses in between, you end up having to disconnect from your heart center, sometimes completely, and that eventually catches up with you in a big way.

Emotions will be heard eventually, even if it takes a while. depending on how long it takes and how much you've pushed them to the side, they could come crashing in at a very inconvenient time and in a very inconvenient way. Besides, if you're only making decisions with your head and gut and leaving out your heart, you're ignoring an entire center of intelligence and likely making, frankly, heartless decisions as a result.

Businesses can only get away with those for so long before it catches up with them. So if you're a three who enjoys deadlines, consider [00:14:00] building in breaks between those deadlines. And during the projects to feel your feelings at their own pace. Eventually that heart center might become integrated enough that it's involved in everything you do.

And if you get to that point, you're going to be unstoppable, frankly. But until then, slow those deadlines down and build in space to feel your feelings. They have important things to say. Fours, meanwhile, are like deadlines? Haven't heard of them. That's obviously a gross oversimplification. There are plenty of productive, , fours. Because it's not like fours don't feel like they should be able to work on a deadline. And sometimes they face deadlines whether they put themselves there or not, and the angst over trying to meet them can become a lot.

A shame spiral can follow if the four isn't careful in these situations. So if you're a four that has no choice but to try to meet a deadline that's set by your editor, or publisher, or [00:15:00] whoever, what I recommend is to take a sticky note, then write in all caps on it, Simplify, don't complicate. Because a lot of the trouble with fours trying to hit a deadline is that they feel the need to make everything more complex than it necessarily needs to be.

So this is especially true if the four has connected the concept of complexity with authenticity. Which many fours have. So not everything is more authentic when it's complicated. Maybe go ahead and think about how you might be doing this in your mind without realizing it. If you keep things simple, when that's all they need to be, then you might be surprised how much less stress you feel around deadlines you can't control.

It's rare that I see fours set hard deadlines for themselves. And that can be a good thing for stress levels. But if the four starts feeling stressed about not having it. having anything to show for their work or their, their time or their, their thoughts and [00:16:00] feelings about the manuscript, then it's time to put some of those structures in place.

Maybe not deadlines, but other structures. Take a little bit of the structure from your line to one, if you're a four and add that into the routine. So it doesn't feel like you're really spinning your wheels constantly.

That being said, there's a difference between structure and deadlines. So pick deadlines carefully. Fives may coexist with deadlines well if they're the ones that set them, but if someone else has set the deadline and it doesn't provide enough space for the five to do the learning and research they need for the project, then that will become a point of stress, or if the expectations of the project change midway through, or or the five isn't left alone enough to work on the project in peace, then the five will definitely be stressed out.

I tend to see fives who are quite happy with setting and meeting deadlines, with the exception of a five who is under a [00:17:00] lot of stress and moving toward that scattered type seven energy. The seven energy is so counter to the focus the five usually enjoys that it can be incredibly unsettling for a five to go there.

And it will make any deadline seem like a total energy drain. Of course, no one really likes deadlines when they're slipping towards their stress type. But I point it out because I don't want any fives to feel like they're an abnormality just because deadlines do stress them out. Sixes tend to like when others set deadlines for them, assuming the person who said it seems more like a friend than a foe and has the six's best interest at heart.

It can be a relief for a 6 who spends a lot of time in doubt to have the clarity of a deadline. But that doubt can sometimes lead to stress when the deadline is near, and there are still big decisions to be made. A 6 is likely to feel emotional stress around possibly getting in [00:18:00] trouble for not meeting the deadline, which doesn't always add clarity.

to the decision process. On the other hand, some sixes are just going to rebel about anything that anyone calling themselves authority tells them to do. In which case, the six will very much not respond well to externally set deadlines. A lot about this depends on how the six feels about the person setting the deadline, and whether the six wants to keep ties with them or subtly undermine them.

When it comes to deadlines that sixes set for themselves, I haven't seen a whole lot of success with this, but if the six can somehow wrangle their sense of duty to apply to their own progress, I could see it working. Sevens and deadlines are who, boy, . My advice to my type seven clients is generally not to set a deadline because it doesn't usually create the intended result of getting things [00:19:00] done.

Instead, it. It often causes the Seven to either miss the deadline and then develop a complex, usually one that was started way back in elementary school, about how they can never hit deadlines and are irresponsible, so on and so forth. Or the Seven does manage to hit the deadline, but only through massive last minute spikes in cortisol, overdoing it with caffeine, and inviting the taskmaster voice of their inner critic.

To berate them about being irresponsible until the job is done. So none of that is what I would define as healthy. what a shitty gift to leave at the altar of productivity. Here is, here is all of my health. I have destroyed it. I usually recommend seven set up a system of celebration checkpoints along the path and start to notice when they're feeling FOMO and use that indicator to bring their attention back to the task at hand.

The manuscript will be [00:20:00] done when it's done. And that actually goes for all types. Eights like the challenge of deadlines, but like ones, they're not particularly great at estimating how long they realistically need. Part of this for eights is that they are caught in cycles of forcefulness, so forcing things feels incredibly familiar and is therefore not their approach of choice for writing.

Too much free time can make the eight uncomfortable, so they create near impossible timelines with those deadlines to keep themselves in that aroused state of forcing. At the same time, eights can feel like deadlines are restrictions, even the deadlines they set for themselves. And if that switch is flipped, Then the rebelling will start if they're, they're feeling of being controlled is triggered, activate rebellion, even if it's not in the eight's best interest, this can happen.

[00:21:00] So eights need to be conscious of what it feels like when they go from rushing toward a deadline. To feeling the restriction of it, like it's trying to impede on their independence. A little flexibility can go a long way. With that deadline moving it a little bit back, just a tad, that can go a long way.

And it may be, just hear me out, eights. It may be, better than burning the deadline to the ground. I'm just, I'm throwing it out there. Nines almost always self identify as procrastinators, but I find that they just need a little extra time to percolate before they're ready to act. The percolation We'll often take up as much space as it's allowed though, so that's something to consider when looking at deadlines for a nine.

More percolation time doesn't necessarily mean a better result either. I find that nines would prefer not to have deadlines, so they don't tend to put them on [00:22:00] themselves. When they do, they can usually, you know, it doesn't matter themselves out of sticking to the deadlines. All the nines tendency to believe that they don't matter and therefore their work isn't important is usually a belief that I, I will work with nines to challenge and possibly dispel.

In this case, I agree. In the indie publishing world, especially, it doesn't really matter that much if you finish the book today or next week as long as you don't have, you know, like a pre order date set or an appointment with an editor booked already, then it's okay. I think more types could benefit from listening to the 9's approach here, but at the same time, if someone sets a deadline for the 9, then we can run into issues.

Adding a deadline doesn't suddenly sort out the 9's struggle to prioritize. And, you know, isolate the most important elements of their work in progress. So, for example, if a three is running up against a deadline, they might take a step back, [00:23:00] look at what parts of the novel are most important to readers, and give their attention to those specific places in the minimal time they have left.

A nine will probably struggle to see one element as more important than the others because of how the nine sees everything. Being so connected. I mean, that's their gift, seeing how everything is connected and in harmony with each other. So, the Nine is more likely to simply start back at the beginning for revisions and then try and just go all the way through giving equal attention to every part.

Which is slow work. So adding a deadline doesn't magically change this about the nine, so the nine may either miss the deadline, or simply be very, very stressed and disappointed in themselves on the home stretch. So there are all the problems with deadlines that each type may run into. As a one, I'm great at finding problems sometimes even where there are none, [00:24:00] but I would also be remiss if I didn't leave you with some possible solutions and hope, because that's what this podcast is about. Okay. So deadlines create comfort.

They create a sense of control and order over the future. And they certainly help when multiple people are involved in a project. Okay. But in general, I think capitalism's idea that our value comes from our production has made us worship at the altar of deadlines way too much. The world won't end if you don't have your beats written by a certain day.

If shit pops up in your life and you have to delay the completion of your book by a week or even a year, people may be disappointed, some may even be angry with you, but no one will die. That doesn't mean your book isn't important. It just means that it's not more important than everything else in your life.

I will always encourage you to put your health and well being first. Otherwise, you'll hit a point where you can't write [00:25:00] any books because you're so unwell or dead. So let's delay the inevitable as long as possible, shall we? I encourage you to go back and listen again to where I talk about your type's relationship with deadlines.

The first step to addressing the anxiety around missing deadlines is to really dig into your beliefs about what deadlines signal About you and about the world around you and notice how you might be using them as a way of avoiding dealing with deeper fears. Speaking from personal experience, I don't love the feeling of not hitting a deadline.

There was a period in my life where I prided myself on always hitting deadlines, no matter what it took. Now I just think about that and feel like, ugh. I push back deadlines all of the time, and I've never seen anything catastrophic happen as a result. Pushing back deadlines is one of the luxuries of being an indie author, and yes, [00:26:00] I've That means I set deadlines for myself, but they're as malleable as can be, because I have been humbled, more times than I can count, by my own ambition as it runs face first into the brick wall of reality.

So rather than deadlines, I create more of like production schedules that are designed to be easily pushed backward if I need that, and I usually need that. I intended to start recording this podcast, for instance, about four months earlier than I actually started recording it. Would I have liked to hit that deadline?

That malleable deadline? Well, no, actually, when I think about it, the deadline hitter part of me is like, yeah, I would have loved that. But the wise part of me says, no, I didn't want to hit that. My dog died right around that time. And I couldn't think straight. That wouldn't have made a very good podcast. I would have sounded like a raving, you know, lunatic over here. I would have been crying too many [00:27:00] times in between, sentences. So yeah, I'm actually really grateful for my developed ability to cut myself some slack around deadlines. And I really emphasize that this is a developed ability, this is a muscle that I've built. It meant that I could mourn when I needed to and still return to the project when I was ready without feeling like I was already behind or had somehow failed.

I'm going to leave you with this. We're in the heart of wildflower season in Austin, as I record this episode. And I think a lot about how that season changes each year. Nature doesn't have any deadlines. It has these natural flows. We don't get mad at the bluebonnets if they're not blooming by a certain date.

Instead, we sit and we wait with anticipation, knowing, having faith that they'll bloom when [00:28:00] they're ready to bloom. And when that happens, we celebrate and delight them. in the existence of the bluebonnets. We recognize that it's bluebonnet season, and then families go and take pictures in them. No one is mad about any delay in it, because we understand that the blooms are so dependent on conditions.

Conditions they can't control, like rain and sunshine and temperatures. They bloom when they're ready. And then we just fuckin frolic when they do. So, you, too, are actually dependent on the conditions around you that you can't control. So what if instead of letting our hubris convince us that we have the ultimate control over our life, we instead respected that the conditions might not have been right just yet for our manuscript to come to fruition?

And when those conditions are met, and our stories bloom, you, too, What if we just allow ourselves to pause, enjoy the moment, and [00:29:00] celebrate? So set the deadlines if they give you a sense of peace for now, or a target to shoot for, but hold them lightly. And don't let them tell you who you are and what you're capable of.

Do what you can to stay connected to yourself, to your story, and your purpose for writing. And then you can trust that the book will be ready when it's meant to be ready. So that's it for this episode. If you want to reach out to me, email me at contact@FFS.media, or check out how we can work together at FFS.media. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back with another episode for you soon. I'm not committing to a deadline for it though.

Episode 3: What if I've tried everything?

Episode Description:

In the third episode of "What If? For Authors," we dive into the daunting question many authors face: "What if I've tried everything?" If you're feeling stuck in your writing career and you're seeking new ways to break through barriers, this episode offers valuable perspectives and actionable steps to reignite your motivation and discover new possibilities.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding your Enneagram type can help you identify and break free from limiting patterns.

• There are always more options available than you might initially see, especially when you shift your perspective.

• Small experiments and curiosity can lead to significant breakthroughs in your writing career.

Why Listen? If you feel like you've hit a wall in your author career, this episode offers a fresh perspective and practical guidance to help you move forward. Claire's deep understanding of the Enneagram provides unique insights tailored to individual personality types, making this episode a must-listen for any author seeking growth and new possibilities.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'll be your host, your guide, your Virgil through the nine circles of hell and back out again as we ask the scary question and then answer it to discover that you're gonna be okay. It'll be fine.

You're great. Besides being a Virgil, I'm an author of a bunch of satire and mystery books, I created and run FFS Media, and I'm an Enneagram certified author coach. Woohoo! I also realized that I am coming up on nine years. Since I told my nine-to-five to suck it, and then started working for myself full time.

My last day working there was May 29th, 2015. Oh, 2015. Ah, we were so naive back then. It was early May. When I decided [00:01:00] I was going to leave, because I got tired of being the lowest paid person in the office, despite doing most of the work for the directors who didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground, totally separate story.

So I had like laid out everything that I've been doing for the last year for the CEO. And I was like, this is the role I want you to create for me. Cause I'm already doing it. I'm just not getting the title and not getting paid. And he said, that sounds good to me. Let me run it by the COO. And then she shot it down and blamed it on the board of directors. So I don't know. She hated me for whatever reason by that point. , but I do think about how my rage in those moments around getting shot down and then the days following, I do think about how that rage, while perhaps admittedly a little outsized in the moment, it was this great catalyst for me to get more in alignment with what I really wanted to do, which was work for myself and be an author full time.

So that anger. Came from a betrayal. So I, I had a long [00:02:00] history with the COO, but basically she used to be a mother figure to me growing up. So that anger was calling me to take action. That's what I really like about anger. As an Enneagram one, my main work is to examine my vice of anger in all its forms.

So, yeah, I think about anger a lot. I used to repress it and pretend I wasn't angry, but I don't do that. now I try not to, and I recommend that anyone listening try not to just swallow down the, the anger and rage. That's no bueno.

So relating to anger, I sort of split anger into two varieties. So there's healthy anger that points us toward right action. So maybe that's like the anger that causes us to stand up to a bully or engage in local activism, or You know, set a boundary that needs to be set or express to someone that they've hurt us or someone else.

That's what anger can inspire us to do. It can give us a little bit of physical energy to [00:03:00] go and do that sort of hard or scary thing. And then there's whatever anger is left over after you've taken all the right action you can think of. And that tends to be Unhealthy anger and it comes from things like, you know, internalized sense of entitlement or perfectionism or insecurity or these other little things that are really happening mostly inside of us stories that we have internalized, , where we're just going to be angry all the time if we don't address those stories.

So when I feel anything in the anger family of emotions, contempt, annoyance, frustration, irritation, uh, obviously rage, I now like to pause and ask what right action I'm being asked to take by that sort of fiery feeling. And if the anger is not asking me to take any clear and useful action, then probably, Probably.

I just need to deal with my own shit because I have some expectation of the world that's unrealistic and sort of causing that [00:04:00] disconnect and that frustration. Anyway, I should talk about today's question. I think it's a good one. , and of course I'm biased because I picked it, but this is one I hear a lot, so I think it's great.

Today we're going to ask this question. What if I've tried everything.

The implication is that if you've tried everything and nothing's worked to get your author career to where you want it to be, then what next? Like, I've tried everything. Do I just give up? , so this sentiment falls into likely the frustration category for most people, which is, my wheelhouse, as I mentioned. Great news though, and this may be a little bit of a spoiler, but you haven't tried everything. If you feel like you've tried everything, spoiler, you have not tried everything. You will never get to the point where you've tried everything. You might get to a point where you feel like you've tried everything you can think to do that fits within your set of rules of what you're allowed to do, but that's not everything that's available to you.

So let's talk about that because the [00:05:00] Enneagram has so much to say about it and it's all good news.

I'm going to do a very brief little primer on the Enneagram first because a lot of people think they know what the Enneagram measures and how it works, but they haven't necessarily studied it. Deeply. So if that's you, this is no shade to you. You're busy. You have other things in your life, which is why you're listening to me right now.

So I can pump facts straight into your ear holes real quick. So let's do it. Uh, each Enneagram type is built on a single core fear and core desire pair. So this is how you know what type you are, what your core fear slash desire are. These two are flip sides of the same coin, so if you're an 8, an Enneagram 8, your fear is to be harmed or controlled, and your desire is to be independent and strong.

You can see how those are the same things from opposite angles, right? Now, for the core fear and desire, which together form what we call the core motivation, these patterns [00:06:00] of thinking, feeling, and doing arise. To oversimplify a lot, I hate to do this, but I, you know, I, I understand it helps sort of grasp the concept at the start, but to oversimplify a lot, if you're an eight who doesn't want to be harmed or controlled, your attention is going to narrow in on threats to your autonomy and independence.

So that attentional pattern means that your thoughts will naturally drift towards power dynamics. You may tune out feelings that make you feel vulnerable. And your actions will mostly be bold and done despite what anyone tells you to do. That sort of sketches a picture of the eight for you right there, doesn't it?

Of course, if you're an eight, you're thinking, I'm not that simple, you don't know me. And I get it. I get it. I'm not trying to control you with this knowledge eight. So the pattern of thinking and feeling and doing Yeah. , those patterns relate to our type and they start at a very young age. You can usually spot them back to about three or four years old when we start having a personality, whether it's [00:07:00] nature or nurture, that's, you know, sort of the question that no one could ever really arrive at what.

What is nature? What is nurture? So I don't think it's important. , the point is that you have one type your whole life, and it usually starts to set in at three or four, but basically those patterns have a lot of time to dig their heels into our lives before we get to the point where they really stop working for us, and we have to like call a timeout and start doing this work.

To look at them, to see how these patterns that seemed like they were really helpful have now kind of, , built a prison for us. So by the time we get to that point, these patterns are, are pretty well established inside of us. So, essentially these patterns getting dug in means that they've created very strong neural connections in our brains.

we've created neural pathways. That when this stimulus happens, this thought about the world is a response, or this emotion is a response, or we do this action. We will default to these patterns before we even realize we're [00:08:00] defaulting to them. That's how, subconscious and sometimes unconscious they are.

So doing NERAM work is all about rooting out those patterns and trying to establish some new options for ourselves by experimenting with new thoughts, feelings, and actions, and creating some new neural pathways for our brain.

So do you know what that means? It means that the Enneagram work leads us to see more options. More options. You haven't tried everything. You're not out of options now. Woohoo!

The Enneagram type, sometimes called a style, is also referred to as a lens. So before we start unpacking these patterns, and that's something you can do through other processes like therapy, reading about psychology and sociology and so forth. There are other modalities that can help you start to see your patterns.

But before we start seeing and unpacking our established patterns. We're essentially walking around with blinders on. So our field of vision, [00:09:00] and this is a field of vision for what is possible, what we, as we know ourselves, do or can do or think or feel, that field of vision is incredibly narrow.

We also tend to assume that everyone is working with the same lens as our own. So when people act based on different core motivations, it can be shocking, enraging, confusing, depressing, or it can just be like really scary to us. So we sense that something is different between them and us, something very fundamental, but we don't have the language, the understanding to name it.

The big scary thing that nobody likes to name when they start learning about Enneagram is that if there are nine types, and they are just one of the types, then maybe their way of thinking, feeling, and doing isn't the best and only sensible one. So that can shake the ground you stand on to think about at first.

A lot of your defaults about how things work and your place in the [00:10:00] world are going to be challenged by just admitting that you are one of nine equal types. And this is where a lot of people kind of nope out of this learning altogether. They don't feel like they're ready to remove those blinders. They don't like how it feels when they do, when someone tries to take those blinders off of them.

It's, it's too much, right? It spooks the horse. There's a reason we have blinders. Okay, so that's a lot of theory, right? Let's ground this theory in some practical application to our author career, shall we? Let's go through some examples of how an author might feel like they've tried everything and nothing's worked, and then how they might go about seeing some new workable possibilities.

I'm gonna start with an example of an Enneagram 6 author who's usually called the Loyalist, but I like to call them the Faithful Writer. That's because the 6's journey is from fear to courage, and the key tool for that journey is [00:11:00] development of faith. So not necessarily in a religious sense, not faith in a religious sense, but this can look like faith in their ability to handle whatever comes their way, 6's are actually damn good at since they're usually over prepared.

So it's really about understanding it and building that confidence that they can handle it, not, building preparedness. Anyway, our sixth writer feels like they've tried everything in their career and their career is just not getting off the ground. Okay, first of all, bummer. That feeling sucks. So the Six's core fear is being unsupported and without guidance, and their desire is to have guidance and support.

Right? Two sides of the same coin. The problems arise when the Six starts trying to do, the thing that we all do, which is seek what can only be found internally, So they're trying to find outside guidance to listen to because they've lost trust in their inner [00:12:00] authority and guidance that inner guiding voice, the sixes start to lose touch with it.

And then they end up in all this doubt and fear because they feel kind of unmoored. It's, it's very, it can be very disruptive to live life as a six. I have a lot of compassion for the sixes out there, but also. We need you sixes. We need, we need someone to point out the risks involved in things and slow things down and make us think about things in a practical sense.

Okay. So the sixes are trying to find that outside guidance because they have lost touch with their inner guidance. But the problem with trusting someone else to be your guidance and support is that it gives them. easy access to betray you, or pull that support out from under you. So this reality can cause a 6 to live in a state of hypervigilance about their social connections and their resources and so on.

Just general hypervigilance about what could [00:13:00] happen. So here's where I'd start to poke around, from my position as a coach. So with a six who thinks they've tried everything, there's probably a lot of great options that the six is scared to try and can't imagine themselves trying feels unprepared to try.

So probably the six already knows what those options are in their gut, but has stopped trusting their gut. So I might ask the six what options they could see for someone else in their position. Or I might encourage them to ask what someone who seemed incredibly confident and brave might try.

Right, just to start sort of engaging in that imagination, it can be really helpful to get outside of her own sympathetic nervous system to start imagining. And there's really nothing better than a call to curiosity, to help us expand our options, right? Curiosity. [00:14:00] is a really nice antidote to fear and anxiety.

Because fear and anxiety is sort of like something bad will happen. And curiosity sort of flips that and goes, Well, I don't know what's going to happen. I wonder what will happen. Right? So we're already taking a little bit of that negative edge off. The Six may not be able to execute on any of the options they come up with for that, you know, imagined, courageous person until they themselves do some work on their doubt and these sort of hyper arousal patterns of hyper vigilance and anxiety.

And that's okay, The Six doesn't need to jump into things. What a lot of people will advise Sixes to do is to just rush towards the thing, right? Just go for it. No, not just go for it. Sixes, don't worry. I'm not going to be like, just face your fear and just run toward it. That is not great. There's this, , window of tolerance that we have, which I can talk more [00:15:00] about it later, but Basically, we want to stay within our window of tolerance and we can expand it through curiosity, but really just jumping outside of it is just going to traumatize us.

So like, if you just go for it and things don't work out really well, you're just going to be less likely to push that sort of, those sort of limits for yourself, you know, cautiously, but, but gently push those limits for yourself. So we don't want to We don't want to do that. Don't worry. What we want to do is, , just acknowledge that the Six can see some options for other people.

It's still progress to simply see that those options are there, even if the Six can't yet see themselves doing that. Right? That seed of curiosity is still planted, and if the six waters that seed, it'll grow.

So when we're looking to try new things, it's super helpful to start small and frame it as an [00:16:00] experiment. An experiment is premised on the idea that that we don't know what will result. And so in reality, we're kind of always experimenting. We may believe we know what the result will be. We may have a pretty good guess.

Our guests may follow previous patterns, but we never really know what the result will be. So living life in sort of this experimenting phase could be really helpful. It can keep us from getting stuck in our patterns. But essentially with an experiment, you're forming a hypothesis, right?

So we all have this hypothesis of what we think will happen. But then we run the experiment, and if it doesn't turn out the way we thought it would, that doesn't mean it's a bad experiment. It means we have more information, And more information, especially for a 6, can mean more security and guidance, You know more now. Right? You're more informed. That can be a sense of security. So it may feel like you're back to square one if your experiment doesn't go as planned, [00:17:00] but you're not. You have information that you didn't have before. You're smarter now. You're wiser. You're better informed. And so maybe the next experiment will work out better as a result.

Activate that curiosity. Maybe this will be better. Let's see.. Do I have time to talk about one more type without losing the attention of the six drunk authors at my table? Uh, maybe. Let's try it. Let's try it. Okay. So with the type four, sometimes called the individualist, but who I like to think of as the authentic writer. I think the authenticity is so central to Not only the gifts of the four, , as an author, but some of the problems that the four runs into.

Let's talk about it. So a four thinks they've tried everything and nothing has worked. Okay. The four's fear is that they'll lack significance and identity, and their desire is to feel significant and authentically themselves. So the four's tight grip onto this idea of authenticity and Is what usually causes the blinders, [00:18:00] to the options for getting their books in the hands of readers, right?

That need to be authentic, fully authentic all the time, can, I see it most often, start to create Some tough situations, some challenges when it comes to getting the books that they've written into the hands of the readers. , their narrow definition of authentic, that's what I would poke at a little bit.

That narrow definition is the narrowing of the blinders for the four. So, fours tend to mention their books, Once every harvest moon or whatever and then expect that something will happen, right? They'll mention it if it feels like an authentic moment to mention that they have a book, but they're not going to create Opportunities necessarily to mention their book and there's this hope that if I mention it once that should be enough.

that's Not reality with selling. It can seem kind of gross and inauthentic to a four to really sell the products So marketing can feel like phoniness and if that's the case for the four They're going [00:19:00] to run out of options that fit that narrow definition of authenticity really fucking quick Let me tell you, , they'll look at the three who has no time to wait around to be discovered and is actively telling everyone who will listen about their books and the four will go, Ooh, not for me.

And fair enough. If you're a four, you're not a three, but if your approach of posting a picture of your book once and then hoping it will be discovered, isn't getting you where you want, maybe it's time to reframe. And we can do a reframe that's going to feel natural here. So I'm not going to be just like twisting things and telling you, just be happy.

Just be optimistic. Um, I'm going to give you a very real reframe here. Here's the question I would pose to you to kind of get that curiosity going. Is it inauthentic to try to get your books to the people who would connect deeply with them? Is it inauthentic to care enough? to try to get the books to the people who would connect deeply with them.

And then I'll [00:20:00] ask you, what's your purpose of writing if not to be understood by others deeply and help them understand themselves more deeply too? That's important. So might it be worth making your cover More, you know, on genre or reworking your blurb to really make your tropes pop. And yes, you have tropes in your book, uh, or might a little bit of comprehensibility and simplification and your products packaging.

Be worth whatever quote unquote inauthenticity you're feeling there if it gets the words themselves into the hands of the people who would cherish those words.

Sometimes, fours can unconsciously convolute authenticity with complexity. So this can look like this. lead to the four making things complex, complicated for the sake of feeling authentic, rather than because the thing [00:21:00] actually needs to be complex. So I'm talking book covers, marketing copy, even just sentence by sentence in the book itself.

Fours can experience a real breakthrough to all kinds of new options when they take a hard look at that false correlation they may be holding between complexity and authenticity. So where might the most authentic expression of something Actually be the most simple. There's a challenge for you fours.

Where are you making processes and marketing and your writing career more complicated merely to appease your ego's need to feel special? Yikes. Okay. That was kind of a cheap shot, wasn't it? But don't worry, all fours like the emotional realness. I, I get it. Um,

so if you feel like you've tried everything, I want to encourage you to pause, take a few deep breaths, and rest assured that you have not. Regardless of your type, you have not tried [00:22:00] everything. Maybe you've tried everything that you can see with your blinders on, but just a little bit of this deep work can go a long way toward creating new options.

If you want to do that and you need a Virgil, you can come work with me and I'll show you those blinders and the steps to removing them. It'll be much more individualized. All my offerings are at ffs. media. But hell, you've listened this long, so, okay, here's a question to ask yourself for each type to start poking away.

Before you even come see me, just ask this question, see what comes up, and you may have some interesting answers. , ideas. You may see some things through fresh eyes. So I'm going to do this by type. So if you are a 1, ask, Where is my fear of making a mistake keeping me from running experiments? 2s ask, Where is my need to be needed preventing me from asking for advice from others?

Threes, okay, threes rarely feel like they've tried everything, but I'll include them anyway. Okay, if you're a [00:23:00] three, ask, where has my definition of success narrowed what I'm willing to try?

Fours ask, where have I been valuing complexity over simplicity when simplicity might be better?

Fives ask, where could I tap into the expertise of others Instead of trying to learn it all myself, sixes ask what low stakes experiment can I run to get more information? Sevens, sevens also don't usually feel like they've tried everything and their dilemma is generally that they want to try everything but can't make it all happen at once.

Uh, but if you're a seven who feels like you've tried everything to, say, focus on one task, here's what you can ask yourself. What pain am I not acknowledging here that is causing my attention to jump elsewhere? Eighths ask how has my need to be an island kept me from [00:24:00] collaborative options? Nines ask what part of myself have I been hiding to avoid conflict, and how has that created unpleasant tension?

inner conflict instead. On that last one for the nines, my hope is that the nine gets a little pissed off thinking about how the world doesn't feel safe for them to show up in fully because nines are in the anger triad, but they fall asleep to that anger. So waking up to it is how they start to connect with their types virtue of right action.

Again, some anger is healthy. Anger is in nines, whether they see it or not. And if they don't see it, then it just kind of sneaks around and fucks with their physical, emotional, and mental health. So nines. It's time to root it out. Alright, that brings us to the end of this episode. If you feel like you're out of options, you're not.

It might take a little work on the inside to be able to see those other options, but I promise it's worth it. A little bit of poking. Can lead to a [00:25:00] revelation, which I think is pretty rad So if you want to go a little deeper on this I do offer a five week course called the liberated writer and I also offer a liberated writer retreat each year for like a small number of Authors people who are fed up with their existing patterns and want a safe and supportive place to Reset and try some new things on for size, or you can book an author alignment with me. You if you're not even sure what your Enneagram type is yet, reach out to me and we can get you set up with an IEQ nine assessment, which is the most accurate one available and will immediately tell you a heap about yourself.

So thanks for joining me as we asked and answered this question together. I look forward to talking at you again in the next episode of What If for Authors.

Episode 2: What if I hate social media?

Episode Description:

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "What If? For Authors," the podcast that delves into the fears and uncertainties authors face. Join me while I explore the motivation behind starting this podcast and set the stage for the insightful discussions to come.

Why Listen? Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting your journey, "What If? For Authors" aims to provide you with the support, advice, and reassurance you need to overcome your fears and succeed in your writing career. This podcast is a safe space to explore the "what ifs" that often hold us back, with the goal of turning those fears into fuel for your creative fire.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or a fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to episode two of What If for Authors.

I'm so glad you're here. Today we are answering the question, what if I hate social media?

I'm Claire Taylor, your host, the owner of FFS Media, a humor and mystery author, an Enneagram coach for authors—et cetera. Okay, so this is my first full episode, so I will be figuring out how this works, experimenting a little, trying things on for size.

I don't actually know how long these episodes will turn out to be, but I'll try to keep it reasonable. There might be variation, which I will I have heard is not a great strategic move for a podcast, but I would counter that not saying things that need to be said because of artificial time constraints or saying bullshit just to fill up artificial time constraints is also not that [00:01:00] strategic for keeping listeners around. So we're going to do it the way I want to do it. So I've decided that my approach when it comes to speaking into the void is I'm just gonna imagine a group of like six drunk people sitting at a table with me at some bar con and someone just said, Hey Claire, what does the Enneagram have to say about that?

Oh God, I love it when someone cues me up like that. Anyway, I don't know that more than 20 people will ever listen to this podcast, so I like my new approach. I think I'm going to go with it. Um, and that's not to poo poo on the 20 people that are going to be the audience of this show. I would be thrilled if 20 people downloaded each of these episodes. Like, where else do I get to speak to 20 eager listeners each week? Fuck yeah, I'm here for it. Welcome 20 of you. Or if it's just the six drunk people at the table, uh, I'm glad you're here as well. So onto today's question, because I think it's an important one, and [00:02:00] that's, what if I hate social media?

Tough shit. Eat some raw meat and do it anyway. Uh, no, that is. That is not my answer. I have ended up on the wrong algorithm on Instagram, and that is now a lot of my videos. I, I started sending those, like , you know, the, the manosphere influencers. I've, I've started sending those to one of my friends who thinks this is funny as I do, and now the algorithm is very confused and sends me a bunch of that.

But no, you don't need to go on the carnivore diet or whatever, you know, you don't need to eat raw meat. You don't need a six pack to answer this question. We are just going to proceed, like well adjusted people. So of course it's fine if you hate social media. I kind of do too, frankly, maybe not hate, maybe that's a stronger word.

Uh, in some cases not strong enough word in other cases, and I don't feel the same way about all social media, but it definitely makes my [00:03:00] soul feel like it's swimming against the current every time I get on there. So generally when we talk about social media, we're talking about a lot of different things at once, and that's rarely the most discerning approach to making business decisions.

So as I use the word social media, I encourage you to pause and ask yourself, Which social media comes to mind when you think about how much you like or hate it? So which platforms? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, uh, Tumblr, X, Twitter. Did I miss one? Uh, Reddit, LinkedIn. Onlyfans? Now, I guess OnlyFans is more of a subscription service.

The point is that when we have a negative reaction to something as varied as quote unquote social media, that's usually a good indicator for us to pause and sort of activate discernment. So for me, I currently enjoy Instagram, or maybe I'm just addicted to it.

I don't know, but it doesn't make me [00:04:00] want to puke when I get on and check it. So I check threads sometimes, but I find that it stirs contempt in me for humanity that I don't necessarily consider healthy. so I, I regulate my time on threads. I will post a thread and then. Disappear. For me, Facebook is boring because I curated my feed to make it so.

Again, because of that contempt I was feeling for humanity. Uh, LinkedIn, it makes me feel like someone carved my personality out with a melon baller. So anyway, That's, you know, case by case, I feel differently about social media platforms is my point. So for me, Instagram is really the only game I cared that much about.

So TikTok was fun for me when I was on it, but it was way too much dopamine for my brain. And I started to notice that my mood was more dysregulated while I had access to that on my phone, not just while I was scrolling it or immediately after, but kind of on a day to day [00:05:00] basis, I was having, , trouble feeling, you know, sort of the high, fun, light emotions.

And I was just thinking, okay, my brain is just dopamined out. Like. Not, you know, not a drop of serotonin to be found. So obviously I took that off my phone, not worth it. So TikTok may not even be around much longer. I don't know which, and that's quite bad for some people who've built their businesses on it.

So I'm not going to make light of that. But for me, TikTok was not for me. So basically I don't love social media much either. And here's the thing. If you really don't enjoy a platform. You'll never be successful through it, period. You need to hear that. You will never take off, reach the stratosphere on a platform that you don't enjoy.

It's just not going to happen. You just are lacking the motivation that it takes to really move the needle. So if you only [00:06:00] half like threads, you'll lack the motivation to, you know, post incessantly, you know, to the point where you start to really gain random followers who have never heard of you before threads.

If you hate Instagram, forget about it. The algorithm is shit now anyway, but even back when reels could catapult your visibility, you had to do a lot to get them to get you anywhere. So don't worry, I'm not going to explain social media tactics on this episode, because for one, that's boring. Uh, and it changes so much that anything I could tell you, it would be obsolete next month.

So instead I I want to tell you, , what I know about people's relationship to social media, and lay out some options for you to use it, , options that hopefully don't make you want to become an off the grid outdoor survivalist. Do I think social media is necessary to have a career as an author?

Nope. I've seen people pull it off. it's tricky, but it can happen. Uh, you'll probably [00:07:00] want to get really good at ads or like hand selling at cons or markets. And you'll probably also want to master the art of an email list. if your goal, your objective is to sell books. but those are helpful for authors who do like social media.

So whether or not you're on social media, those are probably good skills for you to have. There's also the possibility that you don't care about selling a lot of books and that's perfectly fine. That's an okay way to live your life and run your author career. You don't have to be a best selling or even a mid lister, , author to have an author career.

If you have or want to sell a single copy of your book to someone, then you have a career. Woo hoo. We can call it whatever we want. These labels are very, uh, flexible anyway. You could say, I want to have an author career, but I don't care that much about, making a thousand dollars a month. That isn't necessary for my life off books. Great. You now have a bunch more options, including, , [00:08:00] just forgetting about social media if you want to. But if you want to sell some books, having social media accounts can be helpful. Even if you don't do that much with them or anything with them, really.

So there are a few approaches to social media, and I think it's important to consider which one we might take. You can view social media as a lead generator for your books. So that would be like taking a cold audience, people who don't know anything about you, warming them up, maybe getting them onto your list or reading your first book in series.

So this approach works easiest on platforms where organic reach is very fruitful, which is currently. None of them. All right. Even TikTok's organic reach is narrowing significantly and very quick. So by the time you listen to this episode, who even knows what will be happening with TikTok. , but basically people who got in early on there may continue to have good reach, assuming it's not shut down.

[00:09:00] but folks who are starting on TikTok today, Or who are on TikTok, you know, a couple of years ago, but haven't really done much with it. It's going to really be pushing a boulder uphill to get that organic reach to work for you in the sense of finding complete strangers. Which is a cold audience like ice cold audience and starting to warm them up to not just you But to the point where they will go purchase something.

That's a long walk for a reader So I don't encourage anyone to necessarily see social media as a safe place selling platform or a place to find cold leads for readers. That's really hard. And if you already don't like social media, forget about it. Like there's just no point in you expending your energy on something like that.

So instead the approach that seems to be worth taking is connecting with existing fans on social media. So you would make your profile a place where people who already like you and your books can come and see [00:10:00] more of you. So the difference between what kind of content you use to deepen existing relationships versus Hooking in people who've never heard of you, that's a huge difference.

So pause to think about that. What would it take for you to start following a person on social media who you don't know, have no information on, you just see a reel, right? it's just you and some random person on, let's say, Instagram. What would it take for you to start following that person on social media?

What would giving them access to your feed. So any, any creepy dudes sliding into DMs that are listening to this, you can sit this one out because I know it doesn't take much for you. But for most people, it will take more than a couple of funny or relatable videos in a row before you're willing to actually hit that follow button.

Meanwhile, what happens if you're already on social media and you see that your favorite author is on there? [00:11:00] Probably an instant follow, right? And you're likely to engage with their content more too, because you already know about them. So, if you, as an author, can tolerate it at all, taking the approach of using whatever social media platforms you like to just share little bits about your writing or your life, that's a great way to deepen your connections with your readers and keep your books front of mind for them.

And this is front of mind in a landscape where, , Attention is the most precious commodity. It is really hard to keep anyone's attention. And as marketers, our job is to not expect that someone will see our book once and go buy it. That almost never happens, even with some of our most rabid fans.

The super fans out there may need to see the book a couple times before they buy it. Not because they don't like the book, but because they're busy as shit, [00:12:00] right? They're busy. They're distractible like all of us. So you can use social media to just be another touch point, right? if you use it this way, that doesn't mean you need to post daily, or even weekly.

But you can tell people where to find you, and then when you do have something to share, or like a new book release, you have at least one more touchpoint for your readers to let them know that, hey, this is here. Would you like it? , your social media doesn't have to be more than that. Your presence doesn't have to be more than that.

But that is a really useful and sort of low maintenance use for it. But wait! There's less. You can also simply create an account on a social media platform and post on that account, something to the effect of, I don't use this platform, but I have free shit you might like on my email list. So click here to join that community.

So that's essentially being a social media squatter, you know, like just go be a social [00:13:00] media squatter. Who cares? Some people will join your list from that, which is great. , but you also have less of a chance of someone, you know, stealing your, , real estate, taking your name, pretending to be you, which almost never happens unless you're like super famous, in which case just hire someone to do your social media.

But, um, it is sort of staking your claim because there may be people who really like a particular platform. You may have readers who really like, , X. That's great for them. I just had a very visual image of what those people look like. And then I was like, Claire, you have a bias there. Look at that bias.

Okay. Thank you, brain. , But let's say you have a reader who really likes being on X, spends a lot of time on X, and has just finished your book or sees it, you know, on the table as they're scrolling on their phone. They may be like, Oh, I want to find this person. And if they can find you, because you just have like your profile set up with this little message of like, Hey, I don't hang out here, go somewhere else.

Then they might do that. Right. [00:14:00] they will at least be able to find you and get that connection.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk about Enneagram types and social media. So, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this are the triads of childhood needs.

Rizzo and Hudson talk about this in their book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, but basically it breaks down the nine types of the Enneagram into three groups, which they call triads. So the twos, the threes, and the fours are in the attention triad. The fives, the sixes, and the sevens are in the security triad.

The eights, the nines, and the ones are in the autonomy triad. It just means that each of these types has this underlying hunger for either attention, security, or autonomy, but it also means that one triad is going to be more motivated. to be seen on social media than the others in general. Can you guess which triad that will be?

Yes, you guessed it, the attention triad. [00:15:00] twos want attention, but they tend to be much more comfortable being the power behind the throne. So they'll crave attention if you're two, this is going to sound familiar, but you'd probably prefer to receive it through appreciation. That is earning that sort of attention.

And that's why twos are called the helpers. If you're a two and you're not admitting that sometimes you help specifically to be appreciated for helping, then it's time to do some shadow work. Sorry, twos. No hate, just realness. Trying to help you along here. Helping the helpers.

So threes want attention and they want it now. Uh, we love the threes, but threes are really good at winning, that attention. They, they win the social media game. Threes have it hands down. No one is going to have more of that natural, gift for it than the threes.

It's not even close really. So not only are threes motivated by the promise of attention, but they are able to [00:16:00] know what people want. Like, it's a supernatural sense. So they're able to figure out what the audience wants and deliver that. That is the gift of the three. Uh, So the only exception here is a self preservation type of three, which wants attention, but doesn't want to be seen as someone who wants attention.

So they aren't as out there about it generally, and they kind of look a little bit like a one, sometimes a little bit like a seven. Six.

Okay, so fours want attention, but they kind of want you to have to work for it. Sorry, fours. Uh, you're actually in what's completely separately called the emotional realness triad.

So, uh, This is, I'm being emotionally real with you here. A four wants to know that it's authentic attention. So they're reluctant to solicit the attention, because if they did that, how could they trust that it's authentic, and that you're doing it right? genuinely interested in giving them attention because of who they are, like they want the attention.

They want to know that you're authentically giving them attention because you can't [00:17:00] not give them attention because they're so complex and interesting. So this can even slip into the force, making their social media presence feel more like an abstract collage or a riddle to be solved than something coherent that communicates clearly what a person will get if they hit follow.

Okay, so When we move into the security triad, we see that security and a strong social media presence don't necessarily gel easily with one another.

The seven is the exception to this rule, but I'll explain that in a second. Let's start with the fives. So fives tend to, , not want to let people into their lives, especially not just like randos. So, you have to get over the drawbridge and pass the portcullis if you want to be friends with a five.

So if you're a five, it's okay that you're not posting about yourself, let alone about your [00:18:00] feelings or anything like that. So what you can do if you want to do a little bit of social media where you're open to it as a five, and this usually works, , pretty well for, fives who are open. Okay. To, , social media as part of their strategy.

And that is to post about your interests. Post about your interests. Keep it limited to that. Make it very clear that this is a place for people who have similar interests to post. It doesn't sound as draining as trying to connect like as deep human beings, right? Right fives? So, um, maybe give that a try. Or again, just don't worry about social media. It's not necessary. And it will likely drain you if it's not highly focused on your particular interests and you're a five.

Social media I've found makes sixes nervous. And part of that is because the sixes attention flows towards community and connection as well as the security that can be found in those. So if you're a six, those online pylons. are [00:19:00] really going to stand out to you. They're going to jump out to you, off of whatever screen you're looking at.

When people just gang up, when it gets really toxic, when you have that pile on, that sort of mob mentality. Cause that may be the 6's worst nightmare, having everyone gang up on him. So, I get why social media would make a 6 very uneasy. The best approach is simply to, Mind your business. If you're a six, if you're going to have social media, do your best to mind your business.

Do not join in on any of the dogpiles yourself. , that may be tempting, especially if the people that you're in alliance with are doing it, but action that we engage in creates a perception that others will engage in that same action. So to make yourself less scared that everyone's going to pile on, the best thing you can do is not pile on to anyone else.

So, , maybe if you want to use social media, create small groups for readers where the only people who really have [00:20:00] access to you are those who you've built some trust with. So this could be a Facebook group, or you could get people from social media off of social media into like a discord, something like that to create a little bit more controlled and coherent community that you can spend time with. Now, sevens usually enjoy a little social media. My theory is that it comes from two things. So first, they're what's called an assertive type. So this is the hornevian groupings. Three sevens and eights take an assertive approach to get what they want.

, for sevens, they seek security. That's that childhood need triad. By doing everything. Everywhere, all the time, no chance for not having what they need, they're going to get it. They're going to , do all the things, right? They're going to consume all the things. This is where we get into the vice of this type, which is gluttony.

And I know that has like weird biblical implications. So just take that stigma and just Toss it. We don't need that weird sinning [00:21:00] stigma, but the vice of gluttony is what can get sevens into a little bit of trouble , doing all of the things all of the time, seeking that security by doing everything everywhere, , it creates Let's face it, great content for social media, especially if you're one of those traveling nomadic sevens.

All kinds of pictures for Instagram. But sevens also tend to be wired for dopamine hits. if you're a seven, this is something to watch out for. You really like it. Your brain really likes the dopamine hit, sevens can become addicted to pleasure if they're not careful. And that is, sort of the avoidance of pain that sevens do.

Don't balance out the dopamine, the sort of pleasure hits that they're getting. So they have to seek more and more pleasure rather than being sort of anchored by the pain that everyone else sort of allows into their lives that sevens don't. So the, the sort of smorgasbord of novelty that you can get at your [00:22:00] fingertips online, it's going to be really seductive to a seven and the ease of just like popping off a post is also great for the sevens natural flow that, you know, you're doing something fun and then you're moving on before it gets boring or painful.

So this can sometimes lead to authors who are sevens getting on a platform with business purposes in mind, only to discover that they spend more time scrolling than marketing. So, just proceed with caution, sevens. If you find that you can't control yourself on social media, it might be better To be more intentional about which platforms you use, how you use them, when you have access to them.

There are all kinds of good apps that can limit what time of day you're able to even access those apps. And so, you know, if you have a, an hour each day where you're allowed to access them, you're more likely to do your marketing and then get off of them, right? Hurry and get your marketing done and then return to [00:23:00] work.

You know, the real world. Okay, so on to the autonomy triad, where everyone wants to exert control and influence over the world without letting the outside world control or influence them. That is the triad we're into. So eights are going to start us off. Eights may enjoy social media as a place where they can kind of come and tell it like it is and that may get a really nice response.

But once people start asking things from them. Or trying to dictate what the 8 posts, like what kind of content, or God forbid, what the 8 writes next, it's game over. The 8 is saying, fuck this, and throwing up walls. They're done. And the 8s are very sensitive to anything that feels like an attempt to control them. if you can manage this impulse as an eight, you may do all right on social media, but if you, if this is one of the more pronounced patterns for you as an eight, this sort of, uh, you know, [00:24:00] fuck this, I'm out, this person's trying to control me. Then, you know, social media might just be a trigger and you just maybe don't need it.

Right. So if you're a nine, But not the social subtype of nine. So the self prez or the one to one subtype of nine, then you're probably really struggling to figure out what to post on social media. That may be your main struggle. Like I'm on social media. I've been told I should do this. I don't know what the heck to post.

, so that process of trying to force something. to post, it might be draining you a lot. So this comes from the nine's narrative of, Hey, it doesn't matter. I'm nobody special. Who cares what I have to say? And it's really hard to motivate yourself to post to a platform. Where anyone in the world can then come and try to start shit with you for no reason at all.

When you don't even feel like it matters whether or [00:25:00] not you post to that platform. Social media also is rife with conflict, which nines hate. So I posted a thread the other day that included, you know, as a detail being stuck in a random and unexpected security line at the airport. And I was about to miss my flight.

This was not about the security line. It was about something completely different. There was a much bigger point that I was making. The first comment I got was something like, this is what you get for not showing up early enough to the airport. like shit, my brother cries. I do not know who the fuck you are.

Um, I muted that. I muted for all on that one. I was like, I don't need this in my life. Uh, boundaries. Anyway, the point of my story, went completely unnoticed by this guy. Like it just smacked him in the face and he didn't even know. , he was so focused on trying to start beef with me. Cause I guess some pivotal point in his childhood he was late to the airport and missed a flight that he can [00:26:00] never get over.

I don't know. I was like, brah, you gotta keep it to yourself. Anyway, if you're a nine, I get it. You don't have to be on social media. If it seems like too much conflict, if it's, you know, you're just opening yourself up and you're like, this takes all my effort to even think about what I should post. Yeah.

You don't have to be on social media. In fact, if it makes you so uncomfortable that it puts you out of your emotional and psychological window of tolerance, I actually encourage you to stay away. So that being said, social nines look a little bit more active and involved in social groups and might enjoy social media more.

So if you're a nine and it doesn't stress you out, go for it. But again, if it stresses you out, if the conflict on there, if the people constantly being at each other's throat, it's just too much for you, it's okay to say, I don't want this. It's okay to say you don't want this in your life. Your author career is not dead on arrival.

You can still have success in your author career without it. And [00:27:00] lastly, in the autonomy triad, we're going to talk about ones and. Just so we're all on the same page, I am an Enneagram one, so when I talk shit about ones, I, I come from a place of deep self loathing. I mean, self love. Okay, so, ones are a mess with social media, and that is, of course, speaking from experience.

we don't want to be wrong. All right, number one, we don't want to be wrong and we're sensitive to criticism. So where better to have someone just come out of nowhere and say you're wrong and you suck than social media. So when ones get triggered like that, we can also shoot ourselves in the foot and shoot our business in the foot by wanting to pass along the criticism to others, which can pull ones into these online crusades.

being a part of an online crusade, it may seem like a good idea at the time, you may feel very self righteous, but it's not a great idea. idea for your business in some obvious [00:28:00] ways that we can see when we're not in the moment, right? It's just not a good look to be viciously going after people, to be persecuting others.

It's just, we could just stop. Seriously. Almost every author community pylon I've seen is led by an unhealthy one trying to flip their position from feeling like a bad person in some way to feeling better than. , through self righteousness. I will own that about the type. I will own that that I have those impulses and I have certainly let it get away from me at times.

Thankfully not, not in any noticeable way. I don't think. Um, I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who think I'm self righteous. , but if you're a one, just notice. If the tension you feel in your shoulders as you engage with the social media platform, does that tension increase or decrease?

So, if you feel more tension in your neck and your [00:29:00] shoulders, , and your upper arms, And maybe even like a little bit of a headache when you engage with a social media platform. That might be a sign that it's more trouble for you than it's worth. Social media can be helpful, but it's never as helpful as it is harmful.

If it causes you that degree of stress and that degree of body tension, which leads to all other, you know, all these other health problems. So you can just let it go. Feel that. Just let those muscles relax. Ah, okay. So that does it with the types. Uh, no way I'll be doing every type, every episode like this because it takes too damn long.

I'm tired. I feel like I just ran a race. I really use a nap. Let's wrap this up though. So what if you hate social media? The answer is you have options, a lot of options, and those options will vary based on how motivated or demotivated you are to engage with strangers [00:30:00] online. Do you have to do it? No. Are there solid options for people who don't want to use social media to still have a social media presence?

For sure. So consider if a more nuanced approach might be right for your business. And if you look at your history with social media and decide you've spent years half assing it without getting any results, Maybe it's time to give yourself permission to not use it. Wouldn't that be a loving gift? Just, I have permission not to do the thing that I hate, that is ineffective for me, and drains my energy.

Hell yeah. Give yourself permission. So that's it for this episode of What If for Authors. Thanks for hanging out with me and I will see you next episode. But for now, I think I'm going to go take a little Enneagram induced nap.

Episode 1: What If? For Authors

Episode Description:

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "What If? For Authors," the podcast that delves into the fears and uncertainties authors face. Join me while I explore the motivation behind starting this podcast and set the stage for the insightful discussions to come.

Why Listen? Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting your journey, "What If? For Authors" aims to provide you with the support, advice, and reassurance you need to overcome your fears and succeed in your writing career. This podcast is a safe space to explore the "what ifs" that often hold us back, with the goal of turning those fears into fuel for your creative fire.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or a fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome, I'm so glad you're here at this inaugural episode of the What If For Authors podcast. Before I tell you a little bit more about the show, I do want to establish that this is going to be more of a headphones slash ear pods kind of podcast than you, you know, you may be expecting. There will be cursing, there will be realness.

There will very likely be soundbites that you don't want someone just passing by to catch out of context. That's because we're gonna get real on some big scary things like fear itself, and I've found that core-level fear is generally a pill that goes down easiest with a nice sweary coating, so maybe this can be your end-of-day loading the dishwasher podcast, or your long midday walks so your body doesn't break down on you podcast.

Or you [00:01:00] know, do whatever you want blast it for everyone to hear. I don't give a shit, but don't say I didn't warn you. Okay, so what can you expect from this show? Each episode is going to cover one of the questions I get asked frequently by authors.

And if you don't know me, well, yeah, I'm Claire, the owner of FFS Media. FFS stands for what you think it stands for. , I'm a coach and story consultant. I'm the author of a bunch of satire and mystery books. And I am a writer. Certifiably insane about the Enneagram, If you don't know what the Enneagram is yet, it's a personality profile that groups people based on a core fear and core desire.

And then the patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that tend to arise from those fears. That's it. Really all the preliminary info you're going to get from me about it here, but I will be referencing the Enneagram types a lot. So if you're not already somewhat initiated, it's time to pull up Google, read a little bit more about it, or you can go read my book, [00:02:00] Reclaim Your Author Career that breaks down the types more in depth.

Okay. So this podcast is for folks, authors who already know a little bit about the Enneagram and a little bit about me. This is not really like, Hey, first brush with Claire. If this is your first brush with me, I apologize in advance. Hopefully we've already met in some other context, be it coaching, maybe you heard me through the Sell More Books Show.

Or you heard me speak or read my book or whatever. I've never been one for small talk, so let's just dive in. Each week, we're just going to go for it on our topic of the week, and it's going to be super fun.

And if I know one thing about authors, it's that small talk is not necessarily everyone's favorite. I will be honest with you. That's a promise I'm going to make. So the first bit of honesty that I will deliver to you is that I've been thinking about this podcast for a while. I knew I needed to do something solo so I could let her rip and just do my own thing, which [00:03:00] happens to be my favorite thing to do, my own thing.

I will say it's a little weird talking to myself and hopefully I don't go full shining by episode 10. But if I do, you know, you're invited to follow along and enjoy it.

So as I started putting together ideas for this show, I found myself asking a lot of Um, what if I'm not ready? What if I don't know enough to talk on these topics? What if I make an ass of myself? What if I say something that someone misinterprets and then it leads them to make a terrible decision and they decide to make my life hell as a result?

So all valid questions. Which we will answer. So one of the best skills we can develop as authors, as people who have to draw our own maps for the duration of our career, is to actually answer the what if questions. We see these, what if questions everywhere, all the time we're asking them. Sometimes we're asking them subconsciously.

We don't even realize we're asking them [00:04:00] subconsciously until we bring them into the consciousness. And that is a first step of a really important skill. of asking these questions so that we can answer them with our adult brain. And so then if we don't know what the answer to them is, we have the question formulated and we can ask someone who can help us walk through it, which is what I do. Basically all the time now.

So I asked myself all of these what if questions, I'm going to walk you through it. So the first question was, what if I don't know enough to talk on these topics? if that happens, I'll notice that, that I really don't know what the fuck I'm saying, at least I hope to notice that, I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm just bullshitting.

So then I can just hit pause on the recording. This isn't a live show, thank God. I would never do that. , but I would hit pause in the recording and learn what I need to learn to at least [00:05:00] be of some help to some people. So there's that. Also, I know a hell of a lot about Enneagram, so it's kind of a silly question to begin with.

I don't know the most about the Enneagram, certainly. But I know enough that what I say may prove useful to folks and that's a pretty good reason to start talking. It's good enough for me. So the next question, what if I make an ass of myself? Even just pausing to think on that for a second kind of makes me laugh at how ridiculous it is.

Of course, I'll make an ass of myself. I do it all the time. It's one of the things my friends like best about me. So, yeah. Besides, making an ass of myself is a sign that I'm taking risks. And no risk, no reward. I can look like a fool and be okay.

I've done it before plenty. So, all evidence points to that. indicates that I can do it again. And then finally, what if I say something that someone misinterprets and then they make a [00:06:00] decision that doesn't work the way they wanted it to, and then they make it a hobby to make my life hell. So this one takes a little bit more consideration.

And when you learn about my core fear over the following episodes, you'll understand why it shakes me a little bit more. But basically this comes down to being an adult. Working with other adults. I will offer perspective for y'all, but at the end of the day, the responsibility for making the wisest choice for you, that falls to you.

I trust that you have the inner wisdom already inside of you, and I hope that you'll trust that it's there and listen to it. Also, sometimes decisions that seem immediately bad in the short term turn out to be wonderful in the long term. And holding that tension is a skill that faith, in the most secular sense of the word faith, allows us to have.

And if someone decides to make my life hell, it wouldn't be the first time, y'all. I was a teenager in the early days of AOL instant messaging. You think I haven't been [00:07:00] cyberbullied before? Please. , you know, people may try and, lodge some allegations against me, and that's fine, you know, maybe they have a point.

And that's okay. I get to be wrong sometimes, and I will do what I can to make it right. But even if it's just bullshit claims thrown at me, I trust deeply that the truth wins out at the end of the day. So I'm not actually worried about it when I break it down, when I go ahead and ask the question. So to review, all of my what if anxieties turned out to be answered with If That Happens. Fine. Whatever. I'll be okay. My goal in this podcast is to take you on that same journey each episode. You might not resonate with every topic, but it could be useful to give it a listen anyway, either because there'll be nuggets that you'll find interesting or because a friend of yours may one day throw that what if at you, and you'll [00:08:00] be able to know how to support them as they deconstruct the anxiety.

I have a lot of interesting episodes lined up for you, and we're gonna have a damn good time together. Because why not? Life is short. We have a shit ton of stories to tell as authors. So let's have some fun while we can. See you in the next episode.