Welcome to SPOOKY SEASON! We are talking about what scares you... about being a writer. Being a writer can be fun, but can also be scary at times. In this episode, we talk about what scares us as writers and authors, and it might be the same thing that you worry about too. See? We are just like you!
Squirrel! Podcast for the Distracted Writer
13 Reasons Being A Writer is Scary
[MUSIC] >> Welcome to Squirrel, the podcast for distracted writers, hosted by Candice J. Thomas and Jody L. Milner. [MUSIC] >> Hello everyone, this is Candice, and this is Jody. >> Welcome to Squirrel, and welcome to spooky season. >> We've been waiting a year. >> I love back. >> I love it. >> Stooky season so much. I love October, I love how cold it's gotten, and the leaves changing, ah. This is just my very favorite season. >> The random torrential rain. >> Well, it happens, I mean, it's so funny where we live, it immediately changes seasons when it's supposed to. It's like, you know what, I'm done being summer. >> Kind of, it goes schizophrenic for about six weeks where it's still like 90 during the day, but it's like 50 at night. And you get these really random heavy storms. >> But not, it's like forget it, I'm done. >> Yeah. >> So, anyway, welcome to spooky season. And today we're going to talk about, since it's our 13th episode for our second season, we came up with 13 reasons that being a writer is scary. And both Jody and I are seasoned, we've been doing this for a while now. Anywhere in the process, you're going to be a little scared. You as writers though, we need to be brave to do this type of work, but it's like, it's not like we can't be writers, it's in us to be creative, but there are some very intimidating things about writing. And that is what we're going to start off our spooky season with, it's our 13 things that are scary about being a writer. And these are personal and we each came up with, did we each come up with one? >> No, we just came up with 13. >> You get a bonus one. >> I did. >> It's your episode. >> Oh, that's right. Yeah, we're going to end up on the, okay, so the first one that I came up with was having other people read your stuff. >> Oh man. >> Right? >> Yeah. >> There is something that is terrifying about having other people read. And even before you're published, you, in sharing your work, you become vulnerable all of a sudden, right? This is the first thing that we need to learn how to handle as having other people read our stuff. And being published, and that's always the dream, being published, now people own your books and own your words. And own that part of your soul that you just slivered out to them. And it's hard to know that they're reading your stuff, and that they're going to talk about it, and they're going to critique it, you know? >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, especially if it's something, and like on book length projects, it's something you've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours on. And having someone rip it to shreds, even if it's for your own good, is tough. Even if it's a short story, and you haven't put a ton of time in it, but you love the concept, and someone's like, I don't get it. And you like, it hurts your heart just a little bit. >> Yeah, it's really, it's just, that's something that we always need to deal with, yeah. >> All right, coming in at number two, facing constant rejection. Okay, so even if you're indie, you still get rejected for stuff. You'll still be applying to teach at conferences or be part of anthologies. And they will tell you no, you will get rejection letters, they'll be polite. But you are going to receive just a random constant steady stream of people being like, nope, we don't want you to come and teach. No, we don't want you to be part of our anthology, and it's never personal, it feels personal, but it's never personal. And putting yourself out there is scary. And so I think, you know, this constant fear of someone being like, no, we don't like your stuff. And rejecting you, like it is something you have to learn to get over. And I love the attitude of, well, I can put that on my bingo card. I got seven rejections. >> Yay. >> Well, I mean, yeah, that is true that there are a lot of conferences that I apply for that I don't get. And I often take it like, what did I do or what could I've done better? But it's the same thing. Sometimes I'm just not right for that. >> Well, sometimes it's not, it's not something that has anything to do with you at all. They could have gotten seven different pitches for what you are pitching. And someone else who is way more experienced than you is pitching what you were pitching. And clearly they should get it. >> Number three, when people ask about your book. >> Worst question ever. >> Right, as I'm the worst, the question I fear the most is, what's your book about? I get that a lot when I'm at different conferences or if they even find out that I'm an author anywhere. They're like, yeah, tell me about your book. And I'm like, I don't have a good elevator pitch. I know too much about the whole book, right? So this is something that I wasn't really expecting when I first became an author. I don't know why I should have thought of that. But you all become the face of your book and you have to become a, I don't know, a salesperson, you have to, in pitching it, you need to sell this person on your book. And that is, that's why you need that elevator pitch to get somebody to want to read it. And I suck at it, the worst. I said, it's dating, it's the first impression. And I worry that all, what I call it, kill the puppy. When I kill the puppy. >> That's horrible. >> I know, well, that's, if they don't take it the first time, if I can't sell it the first time, then it's not going to happen. Yeah, and I do, I do call it sad, sad enough, I call it kill the puppy. >> That is, that is so super sad. I completely agree with you on that though. Completely. All right. Number four, getting nasty or bad reviews. So I've been lucky not to getting really nasty ones, mainly because I just don't have that many. But I have several one star reviews with no text. I'm just like, dude, if you hate it, tell me why I dare you. >> Yeah. >> It's super annoying for that. But it's on the same line of rejection or having people read your stuff and not like it. It's like bundling those two together and then having it for the world to see that might want to buy your book. >> Yeah. >> Which is like, although my favorite is one star was not Jimmy Dean's sausage. That wasn't mine. Somebody else thought that one because I don't know. They ordered something that said Jimmy Dean and it ended up being this guy's book and not sausages. >> I don't know what to bring there. >> Yeah. >> But he's like, put that on a t-shirt. That's awesome. That's really good. These people, yeah, I don't know. This makes me sad. I don't even want to talk about it. >> Although I'll have to say Amazon feels like it's a little more honest-ish than like goodreads because goodreads anybody anywhere can write anything on your book. They don't have to have read it. There's no proof. They don't have to disclose anything. >> Yeah. See, the problem I have is I love reviewing books. But if I have a problem with it, try, I feel that I need to, if it really, really bothers me, I need to review. Here's the deal. It has an author. Am I going to get retaliation because of what I did? >> Quite possibly. >> So it's just really delicate balance that you need to do. So I usually don't like to review books that I don't like. I usually won't finish them. So that's a thing. So then I won't review them. But yeah, it's very difficult. It's difficult. So. All right. Number five. Being jealous of other people's creativity. This happens to me a lot. I get story envy all the time when people come up with brilliant ideas and I go, I wish that I would have thought of that. It seems so simple. But yet, oh, I just wish that I had found the idea before. I often think of the Midnight Library. And the Midnight Library is a lovely book about a girl at the pinnacle of life or death and deciding what her life would be. Now, it's just a very simple concept that veil between life and death is a library to her. But I love the concept. I wished I would have thought of it. Not that I could have done it better, but I would have liked to play around with that idea, you know, in my own creative playground. And yeah, I do love those people that come up with that creativity. But I do get, I love other people's creativity too. Yeah. And there's so many talented people out there. I just am jealous of people who can come up with a concise, beautiful story idea that you can say in one sentence and it instantly sells the book. None of mine can do that. And that's a personal character flaw of mine. Not yet, though. You're a dragon one is pretty, you said it's just the pocket dragons that gives me right there. It's closer to getting a concise idea closer. Yes. Right. Number six, going to a book signing when no one comes at all. So I've only had a handful. I actually don't do signings very often for this exact reason. Nobody knows who I am. And my family are only going to come to so many and my extended family less so. So like I've been to signings that lasted three and four hours and only talked to two people, both who were in the store to buy other things at the time and wanted to talk to me about the books they were interested in, but not my books. Oh, yeah. That's fun. Not my favorite. You go home a little sad on those days where it's just like I spent four hours sitting in this really lovely bookstore talking to other authors and not talking to a single reader who was interested. Yeah. It is. That is kind of defeating. That all like I don't think as once you get you publish a book, that's one of the things that you look forward to the most is having a signing. And the reality of if you don't have your name out there yet, signings are really for big top names. Well, even Neil Gaiman has had signings that no one came. That's sad. Which is really sad. Why didn't anyone tell me? There's somewhere in New York and I don't know if the bookstore just didn't tell anybody. But yeah, he's like, because there was, I want to say this was a Twitter thing. It might have been somewhere else, but someone's like, I just had a signing and no one came for my very first book and Neil Gaiman answered her and said, Oh, honey, oh, honey. This is how I have this many books out and I did one last year and nobody came. It's okay. It's part of the experience. I'm paraphrasing horribly. Oh, that's still, I'll try to find that for the blog. That would be terrific. Yes. Do it. Okay. Number seven, writing is lonely. And I worry that my family doesn't understand why I do it and or that I'm ignoring them. How about that? That feels really, it feels really true. I want to make sure that they are first, always, but here's the deal. When you get into this specific creative state and you're in the event of creating something that you can't be interrupted, oh, if you hit flow state and that is, it's so dangerous because I fear that if I ignore my family because of that or if something's happening or whatever, maybe they won't understand why, you know, since you know exactly what I'm talking about, that is, I mean, I don't mean to ignore them, but I just, something eating me so badly that I have to focus on this or I can't focus on anything else. And I believe that my family's come to a good understanding there with what I do. But there are, you know, that's, that's something also that I, my spouse is not really a fiction reader. And sometimes when I get creative, he doesn't get it, you know, that's just the reality of my life too. So I worry that my creative, creative brain sometimes gets in my way. Yeah, and there's nothing quite as bad as having that, that idea that changes everything. And it happens at the worst possible moment. And you're like, I really want to capture this, but this is a time where I can't sit down and do the work. And so all of a sudden you're like trying to madly write it into your phone or like, leave yourself a voice recording, and then you just can't ever capture it again. Yeah. And it's super tough. I still feel like in a way I hide working from my family because I only do it like when the kids are at school or when they're all very much tucked into their own activities. You know, they're safely tucked away doing things. Then I feel like I can maybe possibly work. But if they're home at all, like the second they show up in my doorway, I feel like I have to drop everything and be attentive and be present and be the world's best mom. And part of me is just like, but I was working on something that I was really, really engaged with in that moment and I've just lost it. And it was for something super, super minor. Yeah. Tirth. Absolutely. So number eight, finding a typo or another glaring error after something's been published. Yeah. Yeah. My third book briefly had the wrong title on the spine. That's crazy. Yeah. It had betrayal on the signs of redemption or it had apprentice. It was supposed to have Stonebearer's redemption, but it had apprentice because my cover artist didn't upgrade. She used the template of the other book to create the next one. She just forgot to change out the name and I didn't catch it because I assumed that would be a no brainer that it would be fine. And then I got a box of books that had all the wrong spines. Oh my gosh. So they're out in the wild. It's a rare collector's edition. If you have one, hold it dear. It is yours. There's also a different rare collector's edition that's out there. All three in the series have the wrong series name on the title page. Like once you open the book, like on that title page, like it's supposed to be the shadow barrier as in like a wall shadow barrier trilogy and it was written the shadow bearer as in one who carries things trilogy on all three books for like four years. I didn't catch it until I put out my third one and then I was slipping through it after I saw the spine was wrong and I'm like, wait a minute. And I pulled off the other ones off the shelf. I'm like, Oh my gosh. When I cute formatter, when I told her what it was, she had understood it was one who carries someone, not like a wall. And so yeah, we did fix it. And so the new ones aren't like that. But you also might have a rare collector's edition. You might have a double collector's edition if you have redemption with the wrong title page because accidents happen and it is my personal nightmare. Yeah, there are books out there that I wish that I had back about that. That's true. So all my very first ones I use for burning or for making projects with, you know, there's some, there's some books I just can't sell. And so I just, yeah, I make craft projects or role, you know, I've made a, I don't know, wrapping paper, my pages, printed pages. Look cool. There you go. The roses you can make. It's the worst. All right. Number nine copycatting. So I wanted to bring this up. I will often not try to read the same genre when I'm writing because I'm afraid that that author's voice is going to get into my voice. And I'm really afraid of copycatting. I also think that we get inspired by other people's stuff often. And so then our stuff starts to mimic what someone else has written. So I'll bring this up as I wrote the vitira when it came out. I had written and, but I had written it and, but it had not been published yet. And then tangled came out and tangled has the same kind of, there's a lot of elements that are similar to my novel. Now I had no idea that Disney had come up with this girl who could have, who had magic hair that could heal people. But here I have written a story of a girl who has magic hair who can heal people. So I now, what do I do? How do I publish this when it looks exactly like I just watched tangled and got this idea? But the thing is it doesn't like I've read it and I wouldn't have said, oh yeah, I know it's only tangled. But, but you know what I mean is that concept, which is like, wait a minute, when we get influenced by things that, that may have inadvertently gone into our stories and it feels kind of similar to something else. So that is my biggest. That's one of my biggest fears is copycatting. So all right, authors nightmare number 10. All right, worrying about technology failing at precisely the wrong moment and losing large amounts of work. I've done that, especially if you haven't saved something properly and then like the power goes out or your computer shuts down or somebody else closes programs because they want to get to their games. Yeah, nightmare, absolutely nightmarish. When you lose stuff that you know that's there that you don't want to see and you know it's in there and you can't find it. And there's you can't pull it out from anywhere. And I mean, with our acute poor podcast, figuring out how to make the mics work with the computer. That was a try. That was about three weeks of not being able to do good work because there was one setting we hadn't figured out. But I do remember having to rewrite a section that I completely lost when my computer died. And computer dying is just it's just heartbreaking. So now I upload everything to a cloud because I don't trust computers. I've seen your computer. You have very good reasons to upload the cloud. It makes a little buzz right now. It's a little like a kind of rumpy. So so I know what you I know what you mean. Oh, yeah. My number 11 is belonging. I see a lot of writers groups and I wish that I would be a part of them. I also know that I have thrown myself into groups wanting to belong and then I don't actually belong with them, right? I can in our local area, there is a conference called Storymakers and I just don't belong there. No. I have tried to be a part of that group and I don't fit in. I don't I guess. I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty I don't know. You feel like you're the target population for said conference, but but I am quirky. I am quirky and a little loudmouth and I get never I get a little witty and funny and make fun of things and I don't know if people appreciate that. I guess so or they don't understand my humor. There's something that makes me a little sad that I don't fit in. I want to belong to like everything, but I just don't quite fit those molds. So and I try to be flexible and whatever, but it there's a there's a reality that I need to just accept that I don't quite fit into all of the writers groups or the friend groups that I would like to and you always will fit the quirky ogres, Jeff. Well, and that's the thing is that I I want to be in a group where other people go. I want to be part of that. That's my goal. Right. So are you saying you're part of that group? I am. Yeah. I want to be part of my group. You're coming back from that sidetrack. Alrighty. Number 12. Alright, this is one that pops up all over the place and it is a very real. Everything for a lot of people. It's imposter syndrome, like even when you've achieved some amount of success, there's a nasty little voice in your head that whispers, you don't belong here. You're not good enough. So yeah, I think it is human nature to never feel like you quite belong. And so this is like part two of belonging is the imposter syndrome. I went to an out of state conference in February and and this is where the big guns go to do writing conferences and this I don't know what I was expecting, but a couple of things happened like my computer died while I was there and I had a panic attack that lasted three days and I couldn't like I couldn't calm it down. I had no tools to calm it down with. And so I don't remember much of that conference, but it's because all of a sudden I was surrounded by all of these people that had achieved these really cool things and I knew I was there to learn from them and I couldn't because I was having this man, this huge panic attack. And a part of it was this not feeling like I was allowed to be there yet. I had earned enough to be there yet, even though half the people around me, like when I was just talking to other people are like, oh yeah, we're waiting to be published, we're looking for an agent, we're not there yet. I'm like, well, I've done three books. I never felt like it was good enough. It was weird. It was really weird. It was such a head case. Yeah. No, I totally understand I have that. I have that all the time. I sometimes have to remember that I'm an author and I did all this stuff because I'll see authors and go, oh my gosh, I want to be just like that. You know, and yet here I am. Last one, number 13. And not that this is the most, the big tada or whatever, it's just the 13th that I thought of. So the 13th that I thought is the responsibility you now have to your audience, either letting them down or not having enough for them. It's not about, because I realized after writing a book, it's not just about one book, it's about all the books. And so then you've started a path of continual creation that you might not have stand enough for. It's never about the one book, it's always about what's coming next. And I don't want to lose fans either. And I want to make sure that my readers are not wasting their time. I think that's my biggest fear. And I think that's what every author wants. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's what we want is we want a big and a fan base that we don't disappoint. Absolutely. I know that my books are not for everyone. And I know that people will put down my books because it's not for them. But the ones that don't, I want to keep them forever. They're the ones that really matter to me, and I want to make sure that they keep reading my stuff, all of it, if they can read all of it. So that's my, that is the 13th fear, I think, is just the responsibility we now have of making sure that we have a good readership. You can never go back. No, it's true. You're committed now. So any finishing thoughts? I think it's really important to face these fears. If you have any of these fears, or if any of these resonated with you, instead of being like, oh, yeah, that's a thing, I'm going to hide from it and just pretend it doesn't exist, that's not going to help you. If anything, it's going to make it worse when it happens. So I would be active in the way you acknowledge the fear and come up with some form of strategy that will help you overcome it or avoid it. Because half of these things are avoidable, and the other half is human nature and dealing with other people and the industry. And so if you already have a game plan in mind, you will be that better, that much better off mentally. For my finishing thoughts, so I didn't know what the path looked like when the published path, but I do now. And the thought has occurred to me. Would I have still signed the contract if I had known what this life would be? And the truth is, I didn't realize how scary of a leap that was to sign that contract, but I wouldn't have changed it because I've learned so much. And I'd love this job. It's not that I would change it, but it's hard and people don't understand it. There are a lot of really scary stuff that you have to face that I don't think anything can be you can't prepare for because it just, it comes up, I mean, just our emotions take over sometimes, and we just in nature, you know, have these fears of either talking to people or fearing rejection or somebody doesn't like our story, that kind of thing. So for all of that that happened with me, I wouldn't change my journey. I feel that I am way more confident. I'm much more like commanding and experimental and driven. So this is not, if you would have met me before publishing, you wouldn't have believed it. Seriously, I'm just not the same person. So fear has brought me here and I'm grateful for it. So there you go, listener assignment, everyone, I want you to seek out what terrifies you about writing and/or being successful at writing. And write a journal page about it. That's Jodie's. I want you to write something down. If you write something, write it on our blog because I want to know what we're writing on a sheet of paper and burn it. This is your journey. Yeah, it is your journey and it's not, it doesn't look like my journey. So yes. So anyway, there you go. All right. Coming up next, we're continuing our spooky season and we're going to talk about phobias. Oh my gosh. And characters with phobias. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Fearing this podcast, there probably is already there. So all right, a huge thanks for listening today to this episode. If you've liked anything you heard, if you've learned anything, remember we do have a Patreon and a Bias of Book, otherwise known as Bias of Coffee. Find those in our description. If you haven't already, don't forget to like and subscribe. Hey, this has been fun. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to the Squirrel Podcast for the Distracted Writer with Candice J. Thomas and Jodie L. Milner. Please like and subscribe to our podcast for updates and new episodes and find more information at our website squirrelpodcast.com. Stay distracted everyone. Are we repeating what we're talking about? Quite possibly. Yeah. Are you understanding the words that are coming out of my mouth? Yes. Okay. You don't feel like you belong. And so I say you belong in my group because I quirky AF. Yes. You're even there with me. Absolutely. Okay. (laughing)