SHOW NOTES

In this week’s episode, I talk about patience and how I’m in this for the long haul. I don’t just say it. I live it.

TRANSCRIPT

You just heard a clip from an interview I did with Dan Blank on the Dabblers vs Doers Podcast.

In this episode I’ll be talking about patience and why—and how—I’m in the writing business for the long haul.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 22. This week I wanted to spend some time talking about patience, because it’s something I have in spades, but many authors don’t.

Patience for me means that even though I know I’m not as successful as I want to be today, it’s being okay with today because I know that I’ll be where I want to be down the road.

So many people jump into writing expecting to be crazy successful right out of the gate. I myself was no exception to this.

When I published my first book, Magic Souls, I thought I’d be a six figure author by the end of the year. Ha ha. Funny.

The truth is that while Magic Souls was a good book, there were a lot of things I did wrong. Not with the story, because it’s a solid story, but with the marketing.

My original book cover didn’t speak to readers.

I bought ads at all the wrong places.

I spent my time chasing the wrong readers.

And most important of all, I had zero clue where my book fit in the market.

Top that off with a poor author website, a lackluster social media presence, and no author brand, and my first book launch by most accounts was a failure.

***

But you know what I think?

The book was a success. Sure, it didn’t make any money, but I choose instead to focus on the positive lessons.

In writing Magic Souls, I learned so much about the writing process that I could write my next book faster. The readers who did review the book absolutely loved it.

The launch also taught me that my goals were too damn unrealistic. It taught me that I wasn’t as good of an author as I thought I was. It taught me that there was a big wide world out there that I needed to learn.

And instead of sulking over it, I wrote my next book, taking the lessons I learned and applying it to the next book.

40 books later, you’d think I’d be doing something right. I am. Right now I’m doing a lot of things right. The fact that you’re listening to this podcast every week means that I’ve done my job as both an author and as a storyteller. I’ve sharpened my storytelling skills to keep you listening. In 2014 no one would have wanted to hear me do a Podcast like this. Trust me on that. I didn’t have the skill set.

For my books, I know my target audiences now. My covers are infinitely better. I don’t just have books. I have a brand.

All that because I committed to getting better rather than beating myself up over sales numbers.

Patience for me isn’t doing the same thing over and over again. It’s about iteration and introspection.

I spend a lot of time by myself, just thinking. One of my strengths is that I’m fairly self aware.

I know that long term, I’m going to be in a much better position, all because I’m better today than I was in 2014 when I first started.

Everything I do in my career is simply practice.

I’m practicing my craft with every new story.

This podcast is one big practice session in how to create content that connects with people on a human level. So is my YouTube channel.

Everything for me is one big experiment, and I’m totally fine with failing. And just about everything I have done has failed on some level.

***

I opened the show with an excerpt about burnout.

There are only a few things that make me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Burnout is one of them.

Patience and burnout go hand in hand for me. After all, I’ve been doing this for five years. It’s really easy to think maybe I should quit, but I refuse.

But burnout is real, and I do everything I can to avoid it. And the easiest way to avoid burnout is to see the positive in everything.

For example, I don’t necessarily enjoy editing this podcast. But I do it because I have to, and I see it as learning valuable experience for when I’m successful to hire someone to edit my audio and video for me. Doing the work myself now will make it easier for me to give direction and clarity to a future employee who will do this for me.

So I learn to like editing, and I have fun with it.

That’s my secret.

I’m eternally optimistic and I am always twisting things in order to see the lesson and the benefit. Even setbacks.

Hell, I view patches of writer’s block as blessings sometimes. That takes a mindset shift and a level of patience that most people don’t have.

I know that in order to have a successful long term career, I’ve got to 1) keep creating and 2) avoid burnout at all costs.

So I create content patiently with no expectations and I have fun with my writing.

So, if it takes me fifteen or twenty more years to be successful and make a living from my work, I’m okay with that. I can’t wait to see how much more skillful and developed I will be as an author and human being when I get there.

But if it happens tomorrow—I’ll also be ready for it, because I’ve been preparing every day, every minute, every second for the day my life is going to change. And when it does, sure, my circumstances will change. My problems will get magnified. My schedule is going to get crazy. But I myself won’t change because ultimately, I’ve been preparing all this time not to write a bestselling book, but to be myself in public. 100% authentic and true to myself and my readers.

And that’s easier said than done.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.” St. Jerome.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

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SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• How and why people watching is my secret to writing vivid, memorable scenes
• My seven-step process for capturing any scene or person on paper with stunning accuracy

TRANSCRIPT

[Bird sounds]

Have you ever been people-watching?

There’s a park near my house that I like to people watch in. Let me tell you about a typical day here: the sky is filled with the most amazing cirrostratus clouds. There’s birds chirping in the trees, wind chimes jangling from a house neighboring the park. Children playing, yelling at each other in delight. And every once in a while, a cyclist speeds by.

And all amongst this idyllic scene are people, each one with a unique story.

I have found people watching to be an endless stream of character and story ideas.

And I have a tried and true process for every session to capture everything I see accurately. It works like magic.

In this episode I’m going to share my process with you.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 18 of the podcast.

In this week’s episode I wanted to talk about my process for people watching because it makes for deeper stories and deeper characters.

A lot of people people-watch, but I’ve found that the most effective sessions I’ve had were the ones where I did it intentionally.

This sounds counterintuitive. After all if I said I was going to the park to intentionally find subject material, that would be a little weird.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I almost never people watch on purpose.

But when I find myself in a situation where the people are interesting, I have seven questions that I ask that help me capture the setting, the people, and the mood with stunning accuracy.

These seven questions are magical, and it’s amazing how well they work.

Seven Questions for Better People Watching.

It goes without saying that whenever I find myself in a great situation I pull out my phone. I use the Evernote app to capture my thoughts. A benefit of Evernote is that it lets you take notes, photos, and sound.

Anyway, the first question is what do I see?

I write down what I can see. I start with the setting. I describe in a sentence or two what it looks like. Then, if I’m watching a particular person, I describe what they’re wearing, what they’re carrying, or what they’re sitting or standing on. Colors are also important and something that may not be easy to remember later.

The second question I ask is what do I smell? If I’m in a restaurant, that’s easy. I describe the food in the air. If I’m at a park, it’s usually grass or flowers. If I’m elsewhere, then it’s usually more difficult and I have to really pay attention to what my nose is telling me.

Unless there is a really strong smell, this is something I forget later when I’m trying to recreate the scene, so I try my best. Also, if I’m watching someone I’m probably too far away to smell anything on them like cologne or perfume. Sometimes if I can’t smell anything in the moment, I’ll make up details that I think go with the situation, just so I can capture it in all dimensions.

The third question I ask is what do I hear? What’s the surrounding ambiance like? If people are talking , what are they saying? I write down dialogue to the very word, paying attention to dialect, cadence of speaking, and word choice. This is so, so important when you’re creating characters. If there’s music or if someone is singing, I get creative about describing the music without capturing lyrics.

The fourth question I ask is what can I taste? If there’s no food involved, I look for anything else that might help me capture this.

The fifth question I ask is what can I touch? I’m usually not in a position to touch someone and that would get me put in jail. Instead I focus on textures. Textures on the floor, textures on surfaces like jewelry and clothing, the person’s skin.

Describing textures is one of the best ways to develop as a writer. Most people can describe sight and smells, but a pro weaves in texture. Textures also have the benefit of doing double duty when you’re using them. If I said that a woman had an alligator purse, you would both see it and imagine the texture. See what I mean?

And you’ve probably caught on that I’m simply describing the scene in the five senses.

But there are two more questions that take my observations to the next level.

What’s the Story Here?

The sixth question I ask is a simple but fun one: what’s the story here?

For people, it’s “what’s this guy’s story?” “What’s this woman’s story?”

At this point, it’s all imagination. I use what I can see to make some simple assumptions about the person.

If it’s a man and a woman sitting across from each other, based on their body language I can tell if they’re on a date, married, or just friends. Any of those scenarios is always interesting to explore.

I start with an assumption, and ask “what’s the story?” As I describe it, I then ask, “what if?” What if this couple sitting at the table next to me in the French restaurant are on a date? What if the guy is from Canada and the girl is from New Mexico? What kind of culture clashes would they have?

What’s his story? What was his mom like? Where does he like to travel? What really pisses him off? What does he do for a living?

I write and write and write.

And then I ask the last, most important question: What does the person think of this place?

Something I learned from Dean Wesley Smith, a writer who I look up, is that it’s not just enough to describe a setting in the five senses. Your character also has to have an opinion about the setting.

If you’re in a hot swamp and you hate swamps, well, that’s going to color what you see, smell, hear, taste and touch, right?

But if you’re in a restaurant with someone of the opposite sex and you’re having the time of your life, you’re going to have a much more favorable opinion of the setting.

I like to write a few sentences about the person I’m watching and what they think of the place they’re in. This way, everything they see and do is filtered through that lens. It’s a simple but very effective tool to help me get inside a character’s head.

So that’s how I people watch. To recap, I ask, what do I see, what do I hear, what do I smell, what do I taste, and what can I touch? For bonus points, I then ask “What’s the story here?”, what if questions, and “What does the person think about the setting?”

This is the process I use to capture everyday scenes. You’d be surprised how much I consult my sketchbook when it’s time to write my novels.

And, another secret that I’ll give away—when I’m writing a scene for a novel, I like to take a minute or two and imagine the scene in my mind—I imagine the people, sights, tastes, smells, textures, and sounds, character opinions BEFORE I put the character into the scene.

If you want to see my people-watching process in action, check out a couple of my previous sketchbook episodes: Love in the Food Court, Episode 2, and My Run-In with a Weird Pyramid Scheme, Episode 16.

Next week, I’ll be posting another people-watching session I had that was both fun and vivid.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” Anthony J. D’Angelo

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

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SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• Why I started my YouTube channel for writers and why it went into a hiatus
• Why I'm bringing it back
• What it takes to design, run, and maintain a YouTube channel

TRANSCRIPT

In this week’s episode I’ll be talking about why I’m returning to YouTube and the fun, sometimes stressful process in building a channel.

Birth of Author Level Up

Hello, and welcome to episode 14 of the podcast. Can I just say that fourteen is a really good number? Just sayin’. There’s a thunderstorm going on outside my window, I’ve got a cup of my favorite tea, and I’m behind the mic bringing you another episode of the Writer’s Journey Podcast. So thanks for listening.

As a creative entrepreneur, one of the most difficult things to do is reign in your imagination. You have so many ideas and you want to run with them all, but at the same time you know you can’t and you have to pull yourself back.

This was the case with me in 2015, which, in many ways, was the most important early year in my publishing career.

I was doing a LOT of stuff. I wrote my first official series, Android X, which is still doing pretty well today. I published my first nonfiction book, Interactive Fiction, which did surprisingly well. It’s a steady little earner for me. I did my first collaboration with my friend, Justin Sloan, which resulted in our Modern Necromancy series.

In my personal life, my daughter was still a newborn so I was getting zero sleep. I had just started a new job in a new department with people who I would get to know and respect very much.

I look back at 2015, and it’s all a blur for me.

Somehow, some way, I had an idea to start a YouTube channel for writers.

I don’t even remember why. Honestly. I just remember being very inspired, and spending lots of long nights planning the channel’s design, the programming, and doing lots of research.

I called it Author Level Up, and like most of my projects, I launched it with zero expectations. I focused on creating good content and getting better with every video.

It was actually one of the most important things I did in 2015.

Video Marketing for Writers: New Territory

When I started Author Level Up, there weren’t very many YouTubers serving the writing community.

Writers seem to prefer podcasts, which are great, but sometimes the popular podcasts are guilty of covering the same thing at the same time, and it turns into an echo chamber.

I love podcasts—obviously because I have one!—but I’m not an interviewer.

In fact, I’m terrible at making conversation. Really terrible. So I didn’t want to embarrass myself by doing an interview show. There were plenty of those.

I also didn’t want to do a solo podcast because I didn’t think I’d be interesting enough for people to care.

Instead, I started a YouTube channel, and I focused on being visual.

Now, I’m a socially awkward, shy, introvert, so decision to put myself on camera was a strange one. Again, I credit having no sleep.

But surprisingly, because there were not many YouTube channels on writing, mine grew pretty fast.

I did over 100 videos and racked up 2500 subscribers in one year. Not great results, but pretty good.

It also landed me on Joanna Penn’s Podcast, which led to some other opportunities for me to build my brand.

I had to put the channel on a hiatus because my life got hectic, but I received a lot of emails asking me to bring it back.

So I’m bringing it back.

Starting Over

Author Level Up has nearly 5,000 subscribers now, which is double what I had when I pressed pause. That tells me a lot.

It tells me that my videos were doing a lot of things right.

It tells me that that’s how I can make my mark in the community.

I loved shooting video and kept wanting to go back to it. Now that I can, I want to do it better.

Some of my videos, such as my outlining methods video and my Ulysses writing app review, have been wildly popular and have racked up tens of thousands of views.

 Again, not incredible if you compare it to say, a beauty channel or a gaming channel, but for the writing community, that’s pretty impressive.

One thing I didn’t do with Author Level Up was monetize it. I cared more about creating good information and sharing it to help people.

But I’ve learned a lot since the hiatus and will be doing some things to turn the channel into a business.

Don’t worry, I’m not selling out.

But doing videos is something I love almost as much as writing fiction. I would be a fool not to do something more with it.

People have told me that the videos I made helped them. That’s not going to change. Instead, I’m going to figure out how to deliver even more value to my videos, and do some experimental things that haven’t been done in the writing space yet.

Anyway, I’ll share more on that in a future episode.

But I’ve purchased a new camera, lights, software and technical gear to up my production quality, which was already pretty good. It’s going to be better now.

I’m also shifting my focus to writing craft, product reviews, and marketing. Like this podcast, I’m going to focus more on my own personal journey, as I feel people resonate with that a lot more than just giving basic advice.

So I’ll wrap up this week’s episode by inviting you to subscribe to my YouTube channel, Author Level Up. You can find it at www.youtube.com/authorlevelup.

You can also visit my website at www.authorlevelup.com. 

The new videos will launch in July, and I couldn’t be more excited.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

 Let me know!

SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• How my love affair with Brazilian jazz began
• Why I celebrate the music of Ivan Lins
• Important lessons I learned from studying Ivan Lins' music that I carried over to my writing

TRANSCRIPT

Those are words of wisdom from a man who I have considered to be my creative mentor for the last fifteen years. If it were not for him and his music, I would not be a writer.

Few people in my life have had such an impact on me, and I want to spend some time talking about it because if you understand this, then you understand me and my work on a deeper level.

This man’s name, by the way, is Ivan Lins, and he's a Brazilian singer, composer, and musician.

My Creative Mentor

Hello, and welcome to episode 9.

I wanted to spend this episode talking about an incredible influence on my creative career.

I debated even doing this episode because I will guess that most people listening to this podcast have never heard of Ivan Lins.

So to keep this interesting, I'm going to tell this story in a way you might not expect.

The year was 2003, and I was a freshman in high school.

I was studying music, and around this time, writing wasn't even on my radar.

I wanted to know about every style of music. I wanted to listen to everything, deconstruct it, and learn how to write it.

I found a list of musical genres on the Internet and I made it a personal goal to spend two or three days in the land of each genre.

I started with Ambient…

[CUE YAWN]

And then I made my way down to samba and bossa nova.

[CUE BRAZILIAN SAMBA]

It was my gateway drug into Brazilian music.

Brazilian jazz just has this unique way about it. It's confident, different, and not afraid to go places sonically that are unusual to the ear.

Anyway, I spent hours listening to Brazilian music, so much that my goal of getting all the way through the list of genres went out the window when I happened upon the music of Ivan Lins.

What I noticed first about Ivan was his jazz sensibility, which was unlike anything I had ever heard, and his chord changes. One of the tests for me when I listen to a new musician is whether they sound like anything I’ve heard before. I had never heard anything like this.

When I listen to music, I care more about the emotions and the chords than I do the melody or lyrics. I don't know too many people who listen to music in this way, but I would argue that Lins’s music has the greatest chord progressions of any musician who has ever lived.

But I won't talk about his music because I can't share it on this podcast.

Instead I want to talk about his style and approach to creativity, because his approach is the same I've taken with my writing.

Lessons Learned from Ivan Lins

I opened the episode with a clip from an interview with Lins in 2011. He talks about starting off imitating black singers and trying to mix modern samba with it. What resulted was something entirely different and unique.

I’ve listened to every single one of his albums over and over again, and while I confess that I could never quite learn to play his music well, I learned some important creative lessons.

First, with every new project, I try to imitate something that I’ve seen and mix it with my own storytelling sensibility.

Lins also does something else important that I’ve learned to live by. He takes substantial risks with every new album. In fact, I would say that he reinvents himself with every new album. No two Ivan Lins albums sound anything alike. Yet, his voice ties them all together.

I’m drawn to artists who produce diverse portfolios. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because I don’t like being tied to anything. I like having the freedom to reinvent myself. I like that mind-expanding feeling that I get whenever I’m venturing into new territory where I’ve never been before. It makes me a better artist. It gives me staying power.

And lastly, Lins is himself. Honestly, if you listen to his songs, it’s amazing that someone with his style is as famous as he is. Most artists like him would have hit dead-ends in their careers. But he persists because his music is relevant. His sound is unique. There’s no one else like him, and he continues to redefine what music means to him.

There’s something to be said about being yourself in today’s world. There’s so much pressure for authors to fit themselves into a box. If you don’t fit into the urban fantasy box, or the LitRPG box, or the paranormal romance box, your books won’t sell. And so authors listen to that advice, and they compromise their work in order to make money.

But the money never lasts.

An artist like Ivan Lins proves that you can be yourself and still find an audience. An artist like Ivan Lins writes music that will stand the test of time, that jazz listeners will be talking about a hundred years from now.

That’s a creative lifestyle to live by.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” –Ludwig van Beethoven

More About Ivan Lins

Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ivanlinsoficial/

Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Lins

Full Interview featured in this week's episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0J6yeODzZ0&list=RDI0J6yeODzZ0&t=178 

My Top 10 Ivan Lins Songs (in no particular order)

Song Title – Album

1. Abre Alas -Modo Livre (1974)

2. Beijo Infinito – Ivan Lins (1986)

3. Amar Assim – Amar Assim (1989)

4. Anjo de Mim – Anjo de Mim (1996)

5. Clareou – Awa Yio (1991)

6. Corpos – Chama Acesa (1975)

7. Depois dos temporais – Depois Dos Temporais (1983)

8. Even You and I – Love Dance (1988)

9. Love Dance – Love Dance (1988)

10. Vieste – Maos (1987)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

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SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• How a recent search for my biological father didn't end the way I expected it to
• How I've learned to cope with the mess of feelings associated with being abandoned
• The incredible bright spot that came out of all of this (a book)

TRANSCRIPT

In this episode, I'm going to be talking about some personal struggles I had this year, and how they ultimately led to the most important book I’ve ever written.

***

Hello there, and welcome to episode 5 of the podcast.

This time I want to talk about a life-changing experience that shaped me as a writer. It’s April 2018 as I record this and it happened earlier in the year.

This experience is about my biological father.

My parents divorced when I was young. I never knew my father, and from what I've learned, he never wanted to know me.

In early 2018, I decided to try to find him. I had a lot of questions, and to be honest with you, I wasn't brave enough to search him out until then.

Growing up, I was angry that he didn’t want to be around. Really angry.

But now was different. I had a three year old and I knew what it meant to be a good father. I'd learned some important life lessons. I mellowed out. I just wanted to understand.

On a complete whim, I found him on Facebook. I spent hours on his profile looking at his posts and profile. He’d aged quite a bit, had remarried, and he was living in Florida. He looked happy.

It took me two days to muster up the courage to send him a friend request, with a short message that I was his son and that I wanted to connect.

He ignored my request.

I knew deep down that there was always a possibility of rejection, but I wasn't actually prepared for it.

It shook me to my core. I wasn't myself for days.

I had to come to the fact that my father had abandoned me. I had never actually accepted it before. I just compartmentalized it, pushed these feelings deeper inside myself with the hopes that one day they might disappear. I had suppressed these feelings for my entire life—loneliness, inadequacy, anger—but I never knew that abandonment issues were what they were called. Not once did it ever occur to me that these feelings weren’t normal.

Forgiveness came unnaturally to me, and I had to back into it. But I did forgive my father.

***

But let me tell you about something that I’m still struggling with.

I learned that my father’s sister lived only a few miles away from my childhood neighborhood. She even taught in my school district. I probably saw her many times and never knew who she was. But she probably would have known who I was.

Growing up, I had always thought that my father’s mother—my grandmother—died when I was young.

It turned out that she died only a few months prior to me reaching out to my father.

I was blessed with two amazing grandmothers growing up—both were like mothers to me. So to realize that I had a grandmother who didn't want a connection with me, was really hard. It went against everything I knew to be true of what a grandmother should be.

I could take my father. I could even take my aunt. But I couldn't take my grandmother.

I remember reading her obituary and thinking to myself that it’s irrational that I would be more upset over the passing of a grandmother I never knew than the fact that own father abandoned me.

I couldn’t shake the emotions. There’s this heavy energy I feel every time I think of her—it’s so powerful it usually takes my breath away. I don’t know what it means, but I don’t feel this energy when I think of my father. That’s why it bothers me.

I keep thinking if only I had reached out sooner, maybe things would have been different. But at the same time, I’m grateful that my life turned out the way it did—I’ve been blessed with an amazing mother and maternal grandparents, and an incredible stepdad who filled the void that my father left behind.

But I can’t ignore the emotions I feel, and I’ve learned to cope with them.

***

There's a silver lining to this story, I promise.

I've always had this notion that I'm going to do really well in life, and I'm going to be wildly successful in spite of my father. Just to show him that I didn’t need him. I used that to overcompensate for the fact that I had abandonment issues.

This experience taught me that I am who I am, and that, in and of itself is enough. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. Not even to myself.

But spiritually, I had to heal.

And that's when I rediscovered something that I have known all my life but had somehow forgotten: Writing is how I heal. It's how I deal with life’s problems. It's me figuring out how to deal with the world through my stories.

When my father rejected me for the second time, writing was the religion I turned to to heal.

My wife and I had a long spiritual talk about this—about my father, my writing. We talked about my creative well and how it’s always full. She said something that I’ll never forget. She said, it’s not enough to fill your well—if you don’t use it to help other people.

I started thinking about that.

After all, at this point in my career, I was publishing 10-12 books per year, which is something that most writers only dream of. I was doing this with a full-time job, no doubt.

How could I share what I learned about writing with other people so that they could improve their careers?

That’s why I wrote my book, Be a Writing Machine. It was the exact book I needed to write at that point in my life.

In Be a Writing Machine, I talk about my father and my life, so one hand it’s therapy. One the other hand, I talk about how I’ve learned to be a prolific writer over the years in spite of difficulties.

It felt really good to write the book, and I did it purely to help other people. I don’t care if I never make any money for it. If it helps just one person or a couple of people, then it did its job. That book was my way of sending out some positive energy into the universe to compensate the negative energy I felt from the experience with my father.

As we come to the end of this week’s show, I’d like to share the book with you. Here’s a clip from the audiobook version of Be a Writing Machine, narrated by John Freyer.

***

Quote of the week: “Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.”

Marianne Williamson

CREDITS

Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little.