In this episode we’re sharing our best strategies for how to stay sane while working from home. How to organize your time, health and wellness tips, some tricks to help signal others in your house when you’re in work mode and some great resources to help you stay focused and on track.
This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources.
Resources we mentioned in this episode
- Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas
- WINK whiteboard paint
- Bose Quiet Comfort noise cancelling headphones (the holy grail of noise cancelling headphones)
- Beats Solo noise cancelling headphones (the ones Crystal showed in the episode)
- Scrivener
Curious Jar Question to answer:
Hashtag your ideal writers life…
(Got a question we should add to the Curious Jar? Email ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com)
Complete Episode Transcripts
This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources.
Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 011: Staying Sane While Working from Home
Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. I’m Crystal Hunt
Michele: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money, and energy, and you level up your writing career.
Crystal: Welcome to episode 11 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we are going to talk about some successful strategies. For creatives who are trying to work from home. But first, what have you been up to in this past week in your work from home adventures?
What has happened since the last episode?
Michele: I don’t know if I’m going to sustain these for any other weeks, but we usually present a book and today I didn’t want it to be any different from the other episodes. So I’m going to present another book. And it’s a book that I’m almost done with, so I was just at the very last part, the name of the book is the title of the book, I guess. Hey, you stop me if I say something stupid. Okay. Thank you.
It’s Writing the Breakout Novel: insider advice for taking your fiction to the next level from Donald Maass. And I’m just, I know if you’re on YouTube and you’re seeing this cover. This is basically what it is. But if not, I just wanted to say the title. And why is it interesting to me?
This book now, it has been written and published, I believe that something like 20 years ago. So there might be some people that probably would say, well, and it’s of course a book on I would say creative writing, but also how to make it as a more of a published author.
But there are some things that are very interesting also for any kind of writers out there. So some people might say it’s dated. So 20 years in the publishing industry, that’s a lot. There are a couple of things that are maybe not exactly related anymore. But I do believe that Donald says a lot of very interesting things.
So what I found very valuable is the inside look because he’s a very good, very established, even at that time, he was an agent then, now we as a publishing house.
There are some things that work when we write the book and we submit it to a publisher, and there are some other things that don’t necessarily work. And Donald take a lot of time in explaining basically how to write, what do you call it, the breakout novel. And he said, there is a system in place that any writer at any level of expertise can use to make his writing better. So I want to spoil. Spoiler alert I don’t want to spoil it too much, but what I’m saying is that regardless of the age, I do believe that this book is useful for people that are serious in wanting to craft a better story.
Everybody knows me really, so everybody knows it. Luck is a component. Every single time we want to publish a book. But definitely there are some suggestions here that are going to be helpful four any people interested in writing better books. That’s basically what I wanted to say.
Also, this is not regarding any books that I read, but I am basically, by the time this episode will be published, I will have published four stories in four months, which is something we discussed previously. And I just want to publicly thank Crystal because she was the one person that, and I don’t want to get emotional here, but she was the one person that really pushed me. And do believe that she needs to be…shot out? Is that what you say?
Crystal: Haha shout out! Yeah, no shooting! Don’t shoot me!
Michele: Right, shout out. Because I was able to do that because of Crystal and other people that are following me in this quest.
So I just wanted to, to say that, and I don’t know how it sounds, but it’s really something from the heart. And I need all the people that are listening or watching this to know it has been difficult, but it’s been less difficult, thanks to you, Crystal.
Crystal: Oh wow. Thank you.
Michele: She didn’t pay me to say that.
Crystal: Well, and what have I been up to this week? A lot of poking at Michele to meet his deadlines. But you’re doing very well with your homework. I have to say, it’s very impressive to see somebody who decides they’re going to do a thing and then does the thing and even sticks to their deadlines. I’m always super impressed by that. I’m, I’m the like, I’ll get it done, but it will be like squeeaaakk so many things to fit in.
That’s always a challenge. So congratulations on that. And I just read the fourth story and it’s very, very good. So remind me though of the title.
Michele: Soul of Stone
Crystal: Soul of Stone. Okay. So if you’re looking for it on Amazon you can to find Soul of Stone, and you can also sign up for the newsletter at micheleamitrani.com which we will put in the show notes so that you can definitely not miss that.
You may not promo it, but I will. So that is great. That’s why you collaborate with other people is so you can promote each other.
Michele: I didn’t even think of doing that. I didn’t even think of- genuinely, I wasn’t thinking of doing it.
Crystal: We’ll work on the marketing next week. It’s all good. So this is partly why it’s really nice to collaborate with people.
Even when we are working from home, doing it digitally, having some accountability to each other. I mean, there’s a reason why there’s a cohost on this podcast and that is because it keeps me accountable as well. So, you know, knowing ourselves and knowing what we need to stay motivated as part of what we’re going to talk about today.
Maybe just a little bit of history in terms of what we, what we do at home and why we do it at home. And for me, I’ve been a working from home person for I believe, just over 20 years now. So I have pretty much always worked from home, although I did also have side jobs for a while. I worked in the service industry as a cocktail waitress as they were called back in that day.
I worked in bars and nightclubs and restaurants and brewpubs and kitchens and all kinds of restaurant hospitality experience. Which was very helpful in learning how to communicate with people and was great for a lot of story ideas. You overhear a lot of interesting stuff. So that’s been very helpful.
But, for a lot of people, they’re just starting to work from home right now. And so I think this has been a very interesting time of transition as a lot of people who don’t have quite so much experience with it, working from home, have started working from home. And for those of us who are used to having the house to ourselves all day to do our work from home, how do we juggle that with kind our partners and families who are now at home with us. And that does make for some shifts in some of our patterns and behaviors and everything else.
So it seemed like a good idea for us to do this episode. And just talk a little bit about, you know, what’s some of the challenges and opportunities are in working from home, and then share any tips we have or things to get you thinking about how you might work from home and be very successful advocate cause we want you to be successful. So that has been actually what I’ve been thinking about a lot this week is just as I’ve been getting ready to shift from a lot more consulting work to a lot more writing time, looking at what do I want my days to look like and how am I setting up my environment to support that working from home in a creative capacity, not just focused in a business capacity, because they are very different in terms of how your brain works and different in terms of what is distracting. And so it’s just really good to know yourself and to know what your options are and then figure out the best way forward for that.
So maybe to get started, do you want to talk a little bit about like what is your experience working from home and sort of how do you find that?
Our experiences with working from home
Michele: Yeah absolutely. I want to just jump off what you said. I also have the luck, I would say, to have some, you call them like side jobs. And I think different kinds of things that you can do, broaden your spectrum of things you understand and can do.
You mentioned you were active in the service industry. I’m happy to say I’m the same. Lots of really interesting stories from interesting people come from that part of my life. It also like forces you to be very quick and adaptable. And I think every person that works, even for a few weeks or a few months in that industry can say. And other things that I did was on the side of the translation from Italian into English and English into Italian.
And I do believe that, especially now, working from home, he’s becoming one of the paramount important things and I to believe it’s going to be even more important in the future. I was talking with some friends in Italy and really didn’t use the smart working too much, like working from home and now they’re basically saying like, it makes sense and it’s saving in some regards, it’s saving on time and resources of course. Like you miss the contact with other people, but there are pros and cons. We’re going to talk about that.
But regarding what is my experience. As we are forced that home most of the time, I believe it’s important for us to understand that there are some things that we’ve changed the way we interact with ourselves and with the people that are around us. You were mentioning like the significant other, children, it’s one thing to have them, of course, treasured them for most of the day, but now you have them 24/7.
And that doesn’t mean that we are bad people. It’s just like we need to readapt and we have mentioned the adaptability as one of the quality of the, a strategic authorpreneur. I do think it’s something that you can use in your daily life. Your family and friends. And it definitely is definitely something we’re going talk about in this episode.
For what I’m doing right now, I have divided my day into 2 very different sections. So there’s the first section, which is a, from when I wake up until lunch, and then from lunch when I go to bed, basically, and this is my, it sounds weird, but that’s, that’s the approach that I use.
The first 50% of my day staying at home is related with something that we have mentioned before I believe which is work that comes from the creation side of our brain. It’s something that requires the most of your strength and I’m more creative when there is basically nothing going on around me.
And that’s why I wake up around 6/6:30 in the morning, and I get my writing down the first one hour to two hours after that. So I will start maybe on seven to write. And then I will take my break. I have my breakfast around 10/10:30. Then spend time with my lovely wife, and then we’ll have lunch.
And then the second part, so long story short, will not be usually be dedicated with something so brainy as the creative side of things. It will be more something that is, we call it the transformation kind of things, which is basically like using what you already have and making better maybe translating one story from English into Italian.
That’s not something that requires nearly as much energy as just creating a story. Pumping up my newsletter. I’m thinking of new strategy making a YouTube video. Those are all the things that belong to this 50%. The second 50% of my time This is very broadly speaking, the approach that I use nowadays, it might change in the future, but now it’s just the only way that keeps my sanity at a respectable level.
I also give myself prizes. If I do right, what I’m wanting to do. So breakfast is one of my prizes if I write enough. And I’m very good at punishing me if I don’t do something right. But I do reward myself. So for example, now I’m watching the Altered Carbon series at night if everything that I have on my to do list for the day has been done.
I don’t know how that sounds. Crystal, you may have something to say that’s similar to that because I do know that you have an even more organized your way of organizing the day in the week because you have like a huge like wall that you can use right there.
Speak about that. That huge wall.
Crystal: I’m not sure if I’ve spoken about the whiteboard wall yet, but one of the upsides of- we rebuilt our place this year cause it got wrecked in a flood and I got to repaint everything. And when we were repainting, I decided I was going to make one whole wall of my office as a whiteboard wall.
So I actually got special paint that you put on top of your paint and it turns the surface into a writeable spot. So I have a wall in my office, and then my office door inside and outside is also writeable and so was one little wall that’s out by our dining room table, which is also normally where the guys all game.
So my husband is a game designer and he likes to do a lot of like role playing game stuff and test things out with his friends who are mostly actors and various people who’ve been gaming their whole life. So yeah, there’s some very creative brains that get to work out there. So the walls are a fun part of that.
And I do use my wall to kind of organize my day. I find I really need a structure. So I think that’s one of the main things to highlight is that it doesn’t matter what your day looks like, as long as that works for you. But that having a structure for it is really important. And I think one of the keys to working from home is it’s really easy to work all of the time because you no longer have that transition of location as a boundary for you.
And so it can be very tempting to just do that. One more thing. the one more thing’s really never end. So that’s something you really have to be careful of. And so I like to start off the day. Same thing. I do divide my day up into chunks and I have certain times for generative creativity, which is what we talked about in episode nine.
And that’s just when you’re creating something from nothing. So I do try to have a certain amount where I start with the writing, but for me, I’m trying to be more active, which means I have to walk first because if I sit down at my desk, I tend to not want to get up. So I have a few little things built into the structure of my day to help support that.
So you can’t see. I used to have it in a, one of the blocks behind me, but then the blocks got too full of books, so I had to move them. But over on the side of my office, I have some weights sitting on top of a little list, like a little filing cabinet, and they’re out there all the time because at least once an hour I try to stand up and do some exercises.
Jared used to be a personal trainer, so he made this little set of exercises for me to do that if I do, you know, a certain number of reps of each of them, I will have hit all the different parts of the body by the end of it. So I do try to do that. Often I have to set a timer for myself and I try to do it in chunks so that I can focus for a little while and actually get into a state of flow and then I can do that.
So it’s more that I have the intentions of the things I’m going to do in the day, and then I have an order that I usually do them. Not so much that it’s like from this time to this time I have to do this thing. So I find that works better. So, as far as scheduling, I have a weekday schedule and I have a weekend schedule and the weekend schedule has nothing on it, which is the point that I can wake up at any time that I want to wake up, I can do whatever I want to do in whatever order I want to do it.
And it’s flexible and will bend with what I want because. For a long time. I just worked every day all the time. Really. And that has some negative health consequences in terms of, you know, your body stops working, your brain gets tired, you need downtime in order to recover. So I think that’s something that’s really important when you’re thinking about how you’re going to structure your day.
It is easy for everyday to look the same, and particularly right now we don’t have a lot of the distractions or outings or events that we would usually have to help break up that time. So I think it is really important to give yourself permission to stick to a schedule, which sounds really weird because you’d think that having freedom to do whatever you want would be actually the fun, positive thing.
But I think when all of your time can be however you need it to be it’s actually like being trapped because then you have to decide when to stop, which is hard. It is. And so if you have a scheduled and the schedule tells you when your Workday is done, and for me, I have a timer that goes off at six o’clock and that is time to get up from my desk.
And start making dinner and listen to some music and hang out with Jared for a little while and talk about our day and decide what the evening’s going to look like. And maybe sometimes we watch a show together. Maybe sometimes we don’t. Maybe we’re reading, maybe we’re playing games. It doesn’t really matter what it is that is the evening.
But evening for me is free time. And if I’m super stoked about what I’m writing, then I will maybe keep going. But it’s my choice, which makes it feel very different. So yeah, I think having a structure and having a structure that’s different on weekdays than it is on weekends, and tailoring that to acknowledge when you are feeling energetic.
When are your downtimes? I know that my afternoons are very low times in terms of energy, like I hit a wall about 2:30/3:00and so for me, I keep my administrative tasks for then. You know, I will purposely schedule meetings for that time of day because it’s not my most productive in terms of my brain.
I can still function perfectly fine, but I’m not going to be writing during that time, even if there’s nothing scheduled. So just trying to be careful about when in your day you schedule certain things and trying to create those patterns is good.
Michele: I also think like what you mentioned where it’s not like she’s shut down, but you know that basically the moment when you are done with your working day. I have something similar. It’s 6:30 to 7:00, it’s like yoga time, especially now. I never did yoga before. And I, I don’t know if I told you this, but I started watching YouTube.
And now it’s basically one of the things that I know, okay, it’s 6:30, I need to stop because this is my yoga time. 20 to 30 minutes, not too much, and I’m not an expert and I’m actually discovering that I’m not very elastic. Like there are things that I can’t do. You wouldn’t want to see me doing yoga.
It’s just because like I’m not very elastic, but I’m getting there. I’m getting there. Now it’s been a month that I’ve been doing that for these four times per week. But the point is basically, as Crystal said, having these kind of pointers, it might be useful. One of the things is of course, like you take what we are saying as basically writing advice. So some things can work for you, some others, they don’t. Don’t make us accountable for that. But I do find that there are some similarities between the two of us. And I do believe that there are some things that you can do to keep yourself healthy and not brain damaged.
If you keep having a, and accountability external force can be like a piece of paper with your weekly set schedule, things to do can be another person. I’ll give you an example immediately. The story that I need to publish in April. I didn’t have it until a few days ago when I asked Crystal, you need to kick me if I don’t give you all the first draft of the story in 48 hours.
And she was accountable. She made me accountable and she was like at 6 after day, after, Hey, Nope. Like on my calendar there is, I need to bug you. Where’s my draft done? So I go up, I got through hours and then I wrote and I said that that draft, but long story short, I don’t care. What kind of external accountability, your user, it’s always useful.
Not too you know, find yourself in the middle of a bad situation when you are in the middle already there, there’s so many things that you can do to avoid the pain and working from home is one of those things that, sometimes you don’t realize how much you’re working. And there are things that happens to your body.
You don’t want them to happen. And there are some things that you can set in place to protect yourself. I’m not working as nearly as much as I was working before and I can feel it. So I need to remind myself when I wake up at 6:30 the first thing that I do, is going out of my house and just walk around my building.
Just 5 to 10 minutes walking. It seems like nothing but it helps me because it’s fresh air, it wakes me up. It’s something that is now, it’s part of my routine. Yesterday I didn’t do it because I was a bit too late. Then I wanted to write something. Yeah. I felt it for the rest of the day.
My body was like, I’m missing something. So that was a good thing that I wanted to keep. And probably you have some the system in place to keep you healthy. If you can to follow them. Because in situation like this, I guarantee you, your body is going to notice, like some small things that change it, similarities in the way you even eating, I think. I don’t know about you, Crystal. Like I have a lot of carbs.
Crystal: The pandemic food theme is carbs. You look at Instagram and it’s just like cinnamon buns and muffins and pasta and all the things that store well, they are all carbs. So yes, that is, that is an issue.
Michele: Those are my next, you know, best friends and it doesn’t have to be like, that can be a prize. I use them as a prize, but it is easier for sure to fall into the habit of eating more carbs. And again, we love carbs and they’re lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely. But too many of them are not too good for us.
So I tend to buy more fruits and more vegetables when I’m outside nowadays, again, to keep that machine that is our body more healthy. Always reminding myself that the most important for me to keep this machine working and functioning correctly. Because if it stops, I can’t meet my deadlines.
And if I can’t meet my deadlines, Crystal is going to kick me out, kick my ass. So that’s not good. That’s worse. Right? So you, you put something in place that is worse than what can happen to you. And I can guarantee you’re going to behave.
How to organize your schedule when working from home
Crystal: I think as writers, we often live in our heads all the time and we forget about our physical selves.
And so it really is keeping the blood moving a little bit, getting a little bit of fresh air. Even if you have a window you can open in your office to get some air circulation going, even if you’re not physically outside, you’re still getting that different set of air in which is a good thing to do if you’re in kind of a closed environment.
So that’s important, I think giving ourselves permission to take time off is also really hard when you work from home. One of the things I noticed was at one point, I think it had been like five years since I really took a sick day. Cause you know, even if you’re not feeling great, if sitting at your desk in your pajamas is an option and you’re still kind of just plotting through something that needs doing.
So I actually made myself a sick day chart at one point that I was like, if I worked in an office, I would get however many sick days a year that it is, and I would have some vacation time and I would have some you know, whatever. I can take a personal health day or whatever if I needed to do those things.
And so I actually made myself a little chart and then I said, okay, I can cash in one of these days anytime I want, and I just colour in the box because I was having trouble giving myself permission to just take a day off completely. And to really unplug, because if your office is literally right there, there’s no excuse not to go to the office, but you don’t need an excuse.
You need permission. So that was my way of giving myself permission to cash in some of those days. Which I think is just an interesting way to look at it. You’ll notice I’m a big fan of checking boxes and you know, I put my tasks on the wall so that I can erase them for some things, if you don’t have a whiteboard wall at home, this is what I did before I had the whiteboard wall, and I still sometimes do, is I would make a to do bingo.
Which if you’re at home, it’s just a single sheet of paper in like a notebook with squares drawn on it and one thing written in each square and I found that I could put six things on a page and that is what I’m capable of in a day. Used to be eight as scale that back, because currently I’m not able to get through as many things as I normally would.
And that might be going for a walk, might be one of those six things. Recording a podcast episode is one of the six, a strata council meeting, changing the settings on my zoom account. Right? Those are all in there. And what I do, what I cross them off and when I’m done, I’m done. And so if you have your most important things for the day that you have to do, and you put them on that list and you start with those and you cross them all off and then you have permission to do whatever you want when those are done.
You don’t have to sit at your desk for eight hours in a day just because you work from home. We spend a lot of time in an office not doing things. And imagine how often you would get up to go grab a cup of water and end up chatting with someone for a couple minutes or whatever. And when we’re at home, we don’t have that necessarily.
And so, you have to make your own breaks and you have to, you have to get your work done. That’s the only have to. Is your work needs to get done. But you can give yourself a couple hours to chill out or to watch that Netflix episode or two, just poke around mindlessly on the internet looking for inputs.
And that’s one thing I wanted to ask you about. So I’ve noticed that without going out and running into people and hearing other people’s stories, I’m craving like TV shows and stuff a lot more than I normally would. And I’m wondering if that is because my writer’s brain needs input. It needs stuff to work off of, to generate stories from that are not part of my own experience.
And so I’m curious if you’re, how are you finding that shift as somebody who worked outside the house a lot and you know, you live in a bustling area, how are you dealing with not having all of that input.
Transitioning from working outside to inside the house
Michele: Yeah, I found that input is actually huge. When you are outside and you have all those things, like a friends, colleagues, people you work with, people in the street even.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I got stopped in the street by like random strangers and there are some interesting conversations you get. That stuff that goes in my books. But that’s not happening anymore because when I go out, it’s just to get groceries, and my walk, my daily walk. So what I do, and I mentioned this a couple of times before, I did purchase something that I believe is now one of my main sources of input, which I’m going to be very boring and say it again.
It’s masterclass. And for me. It’s basically like a kind of a symposium. It’s basically, I have access, to some of the best minds on some subjects be it, screenwriting, writing. Every single time I have- for example now real story. So I am watching Aaron Sorkin, the screen writer, also play writer.
The guy that wrote like the Social Network and Steve Jobs, West Wing, like the very good stuff, right? So many stories about his life and about his profession, about what he does when he writes, his writing habits. And every single person from masterclass, they’re so interesting that every single time there is a story that happened to them every single time something like this happens, there’s a spark. And I actually had a, a couple of story ideas from something that happened in this masterclass.
So this is one of my main input generators. The other thing is books. I tried to read as much books as possible. I was mentioning the Writing the Breakout Novel, but I’m also reading a fiction book, so I usually alternate them. I would read two books, one fiction and one nonfiction. Lots of ideas coming from them.
The other thing that I do- and I didn’t usually do this before, Crystal. I’m using it now as a reward. Before I mentioned Netflix and Altered Carbon. I usually, I don’t watch Netflix that much. And another thing, there is a series that I’m sure you’re familiar with, which is called The Big Bang Theory.
So I starting watching it now. And I think I’m one of the few people on the planet that didn’t watch it. And that’s another way, believe it or not, it’s an input kind of thing because there are so many geeks, nerdy science and science fiction kind of things that also let’s say fuel another part of my brain, which is like the, I dunno if it’s hilarious, but it’s the comedy kind of part, and I think that’s, that’s important, right?
You don’t want to feed yourself only serious things or very important to heavy things. You also want that lightness. So I would say this, and also a conversation with my family, my wife, my friends, lots of ideas I had talking with Crystal. I bother her a lot via messages and also like on call, like zoom calls.
So like feedback can come from any directions. I would say these are the main ones.
Crystal: Yeah. I think something to think about also is how are you doing the activity? Because you can sit and watch Netflix, but you can also sit and watch Netflix as a research activity.
So, right now I’m watching Chicago Fire, which is super old. It’s like, I remember watching like ER, and there was this whole sort of era of those shows that were, you know, doctors, lawyers, cops, firefighters, and it’s basically just dramatized, it’s sort of like a soap opera set in, in the backdrop of all of this emergency drama.
So I’ve been watching that, but with an open notebook beside me. And so every time there’s a character aspect that seems like it would be good- I’m trying to build a firefighters. We have the river’s end fire department, and so I’m trying to build a fire department basically for my town, which means I need the firefighters to populate it.
I need the equipment the trucks, the setting, the setup, the scheduling, all of it. And so watching shows that are related to some area that may tie in with character background, or it may just be random inputs is an interesting way to kind of do that research of just immersing yourself in how are they talking to each other?
How are they behaving with each other? You know, what is the culture of the firehouse? How does that work? And then for us who are in Canada, knowing your setting, and are you watching American shows? If you are writing police procedural or mystery or anything else, we are fed almost entirely American news media.
And shows, which means that all of the language and the procedures are not necessarily accurate. So I think, you know, just be careful as you’re doing your research, that you’re very aware of what is regionally specific. But if you watch 15 episodes of Chicago Fire and you write down all the terms that the firefighters are using, and then you Google them and you Google the names of the equipment that they’re talking about, you can learn a lot that way.
And then when you approach a local firefighter. You can go through their media contacts and get in touch with your local fire station and say, I’m a writer. I’m writing a book that you know has firefighter characters. I really want to do you guys justice and make sure that I’m doing this accurately. So can I talk to somebody from your station for a while, and just get you to vet some of this stuff for me and tell me like, what is just for TV and what is just because America, not Canada. And so you can do that, but then you do it in an informed way so you’re not wasting their time. You’ve got some questions formulated.
Just all that stuff, it’s like putting ingredients into a soup, right? You’re just filling your brain with ingredients and letting it cook and seeing what comes out. So I think. We have an opportunity right now to maybe. Express that or feed that in different ways. And so that is an opportunity if we are controlling what kind of inputs we have.
So we have courses, we have podcasts, we have random stuff on the internet. YouTube is fascinating. If you let YouTube, like you pick something that you’re interested in and then you let YouTube suggest the next thing and you just follow it down a rabbit hole. I mean, it can go terribly wrong, but it can also be very, very interesting.
And so songs are another place to get input from. So I will spend on my walk, I will either listen to a podcast episode or I will have music playing in the background and I will turn on Spotify and I will pick a mix or a channel that I’ve never listened to before. And then I will actually listen to the lyrics in the songs because songs are stories.
And so if you’re looking for an input in a way that’s not going to influence your storytelling directly. Like for some people, we don’t want to read romantic suspense if we’re writing romantic suspense because you don’t want to accidentally be sort of copying what somebody else is doing or let your language get pulled into the way that they are telling the story.
So some people I know won’t read in the genre they’re writing in, in that moment, like they go through phases and so, but you can still listen to songs and you can watch TV shows and you can, like, there’s other mediums that are less likely to have that kind of crossover influence or that you have to worry about them skewing what you’re doing too much. So I think lots of different sources of things that you can access from home and um, images. I will troll through stock photo databases. It just look up a keyword like firefighters. Since we’re in that theme, look up a keyword and just see what kinds of images pop up and see what kinds of things spark in your brain around that.
And I’ve got a ton of story ideas from just surfing through stock images, actually.
Michele: Yeah, I think images talk a lot. What is that saying? Like one image? It’s worth more than a thousand words? I think like you can apply that to when you say YouTube, but video is worth like a thousand images and then it goes on with like a series.
It’s worth like a thousand videos. Okay. Stop me. Because I can become dangerous. But yeah, basically the bottom line is that like you are the best judge of your character. You need. You need to know what is the thing that makes you more interested? For me, can be a masterclass and giving the stories or a lot of people that are successful.
For Crystal, it can be like a really spending some times and going into the YouTube rabbit hole. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be the same for you. Be a good judge of your character. I would say maybe this is a suggestion that can be worth for every single person that is watching or listening to us.
And there’s not one thing that will work for everybody. I do know that you know yourself better than anybody else. So if you look at your habits and what you do, for sure, you’re going to find what are the main source of your inspiration. And if you don’t, because you’ve never thought about that, this is a good moment to start.
So you’ll find something like listening to music. Write it down on a notebook or something. So then you’re going to remember, and maybe by the end of the day you will know I was inspired by this, this, and this. You can replicate that you can pick more ideas out of that. That is something that we do also as writers, like we get feedback and when usually put like notes, we write stuff to remember it.
Same thing with habits, same thing with healthy habits and same thing with working from home and doing it in a smart way.
Crystal: Yes, absolutely. I think one thing that’s worth talking about as well is how do we arrange our space and how do we share our space with other people? Because once we, have sort of established our own patterns or figure out what works for us, then there’s that middle ground of navigating what that’s like when other people are also home in your space.
And so I know we both are city dwellers, which means we have relatively small spaces. So maybe talk a little bit about how do you manage, manage your space in terms of creativity and your routines and patterns.
Michele: I will say my apartment is very small. I’m not going to say how small it is, but it’s very small.
It is good because it’s almost in the middle of downtown, which basically has everything I need downstairs, but I don’t, I would not like do my creative, the heavy writing in the home. But I’m lucky because I have like a downstairs, a place where there is a table, there are windows where I can see the city and that’s where I do my heavy lifting creative wise
I’m also very lucky in the sense that my wife is very considerate. She understands if I have to do something that requires me, for example, to be not 100% in the moment with her, which is amazing. And it’s super of course, because you don’t have somebody that is basically running against you, but it’s actually helping you.
But yeah, when I have to do writing, I’ll do outside. Before everything happened I usually went to the bar. I think I mentioned that before. Coffee shops. A bar is like European kind of side. I don’t think you use bar. Here I think it’s different.
Crystal: Different kinds of thing here. If you go to a bar here, you’re less likely to get some work done.
Michele: Absolutely not. So coffee shop, I would definitely do that in the morning when usually there are less people. Immediately after the coffee shop open’s. So I need a different space than my home, but transformation kind of stuff, I can do it anywhere. No problem at all.
So yeah, to answer your question, I think very well what I’m doing and where I’m doing it. I will have a number of steps that I take to make sure that my creative writing is protected. And one way I do protect the creative writing is I’m thinking of the space that I’m in. Here, there’s all this clutter, I can’t see that and do creative stuff.
So if you see behind me. You can see it. Come on. You can’t see it if you’re just listening to me, but invite you to see, on YouTube if you can. It’s mayhem. It’s organized mayhem but it’s mayhem.
But what I’m saying is like, I can’t write with all that stuff. So I go downstairs and it’s just a table, a chair and me. That’s it. So that’s basically how I organize my time. And that’s why I’m saying that I was liking in the way I do my thing. So I don’t have a lot of opponents forces. The stronger opponent force that I have is basically myself.
That’s my luck. I don’t know if you had similar luck. I do know that you have way bigger space than mine and I do envy you a bit for that.
Crystal: Yes, our space, I mean, we’ve got, I’m not shy about this. We’ve got just over a thousand square feet, which for any of you suburb dwellers with giant houses is going to feel really small. But for those of us in a city where apartment sizes started about 400 square feet, then it’s actually quite large.
We have two bedrooms and our daughter lives in her own house now. So the second bedroom then gets to be my office, which is what you see behind me. If you are looking at this on the YouTubes.
So we have enough room that my husband can work in the other room because he is working from home now as well. So I think when you’re looking at your physical space, it’s, you know, how can you set things up so that you don’t see a lot of the clutter or busy-ness or whatever else. So I know at various times I have just rearrange the angle of my chair or my desk.
I actually have a beanbag chair that I bought. It’s like a giant, it’s actually made of foam, not beans, but it’s like a giant bag and it’s stuffed with foam chunks and it looks like a nest. So I joke that that’s my writing nest because I just like sit in it and it sort of swallows me and then I’m trapped in it and I type.
So I have not necessarily different spaces for everything, but a little bit that I will, if I’m doing planning, I will often sit down at the kitchen table and I will have my book on, uh, character wounds. My emotional wounds thesaurus is open on one. I will have my notebook there, I’ll have my laptop and I’ll have maybe some scrap paper or a sketchpad.
When I’m planning I do a lot of things with ink still. And then once I’ve kind of, I figured that out, then I’ll put it into my laptop in Scrivener. And then when I’m actually ready to write, I switched to a little external keyboard and then my iPhone because I, and I can’t see anything else and I can’t do anything else. So I just can type.
So for me it isn’t about where my physical body is necessarily. It’s about the cues that I have to kind of control what my brain is doing. So that means I can write anywhere as long as I don’t have too many other distractions. So I try to, so if I’m going to go do planning, it doesn’t matter where I am, but I will have my notebook and I will have the emotional wounds thesaurus and I will probably have my laptop cause that’s where all my databases and all my spreadsheets and everything are stored for my town. So I try to keep whatever I need for that stage together in a place. So you can train yourself by relocating.
One thing I think that’s really important is you cannot guarantee that everyone around you will be quiet all of the time. And as lovely as our place is, it’s a wood frame construction, which means that it’s got nothing for soundproofing at all. So if we’re both working from home and we have meetings at the same time, we can hear most things, right?
So it’s very much distracting when you are trying to focus on something and creative especially. So these are noise canceling headphones that I’m holding up for anybody who cannot see them. These are shiny new ones that I bought the week before lockdown, which was a very good plan. I had been lusting after the ones that are called the Bose Quiet Comfort noise canceling headphones, but they’re like, I dunno, they’re almost $500 US.
And so I’ve been looking at them for like six years. Oh, one day I’m going to get those. But, um, I just can’t quite bring myself to go there yet. But these were a nice in between option and they do an excellent job of being noise canceling.
And I also found them on sale. So instead of being like $300, I think they were just under a hundred dollars, which was, you know, it’s an investment, but it’s, it’s not quite so crazy. So that means that I, I can put those on and I usually put rain sounds in the background, or I pick a single song that I put on repeat because it, it distracts my brain enough to let me concentrate, which is kind of weird, but it’s what works for me.
So it really is just about blocking out everything else. And it also acts as a signal. So one of the things I was going to suggest, if you have other people in your house and you’re working at the same time, like I might want to go get a glass of water from the kitchen, but my brain might be really deep into something, the story.
And if I go up there and we start a conversation about something else and I get pulled out of that flow, it can be really frustrating. So we just have developed a signal. Because we both have noise canceling headphones. If those are on, it means we’re concentrating on something. So we pretend we don’t see each other, if that’s the case, there’s no, no disrupting that.
So there’s, there’s some things you can do that if you just have a conversation with your partner. I know one of our friends because he’s working from home with a family and kids, and so he apparently just wears his work badge when he’s at work.
And if the kids can see the work badge, they know it’s work time. So conversations are off the table until the work badge comes off. So you can, little things like that you can use, we use a sticky note system at conferences a lot of the time where if you have a green sticky note in a pink sticky note or a red sticky note, you can put the green one on the back of your laptop when you’re open for conversation, but you’re typing and you can use, a red one if you are super focused and you don’t want to be interrupted, right?
So you can develop cues like that if you’re living with a bunch of other people right now, whether it’s roommates or family or, or whatever. But you have to figure out a system that will work for you and then communicate that and agree on how that works with the other people. Cause it only works if everybody understands it the same way.
Michele: Yeah, 100%. I remember that it was an author that I listened to and basically what he does is he’ll put on a cap. And you can’t see anything other than the keyboard, just doing business and doing stuff.
Crystal: Yeah, exactly. That works great. I think one last thing to talk about around this is that, our environment, when it’s our home can be very distracting because there’s always other stuff that needs to be done, right? We always need to clean that closet in the hallway or do the dishes or, you know, make lunch or whatever it is that’s distracting you.
Sometimes that’s not really as urgent as we might think, but there’s a story I read in a book fairly recently, and I’m trying to remember which book I cannot for the life of me call it to mine, but it was a coach, a counselor who was working with a woman who was saying like, well, I really want to be a writer and I want to do this thing, but I just can’t. I can’t seem to find the time to do it, so I’m not making any progress.
And he had her make a list of all the things she was doing in her day, you know and the time she was spending on them. And. He looked at the list and he said, Oh so you think that vacuuming is more important than you’re writing? And she was like, no, I don’t. And she was super upset. He said, okay, well let’s take a look at the paper.
And she did it first. Right? She was doing all of the housework things before she was letting herself set any time aside for working on her own project. And what we prioritize, or put first is what we think is more important often, right? So for some people, we use the excuse of, Oh, I can’t work if my house isn’t perfectly tidy.
But every day your house is going to get untidy a little bit again, and so it can become an excuse or it can become a barrier. So yeah, when we talked earlier about putting your most important things down on the page and doing them first before the other stuff, you know, you’ve got to retrain yourself to have permission to do some of those other things later.
And I mean, for me, this was really hard because, yeah. There’s stuff that you just take care of and should be all in order, and I like things to be a certain way, despite my horrifically messy childhood. Sorry, mom and dad. But I, I don’t think, well, when there’s chaos around me, similar to you.
And so I will happily clean and organize and tidy things for days instead of doing any writing. But I think we need to set some boundaries around that kind of stuff where maybe you need just a corner that you keep tidy or that you face something that looks tidy so you can’t see the rest of the mess, whatever it is.
And that we give ourselves permission to prioritize our creative time. That is something that matters, and I think it’s hardest for working moms who are also trying to cram in a that creativity piece or working dads who maybe are also doing some home care. It’s very tricky when it comes down to stuff that you-
You’re looking after your kids or you’re not. And you know, that’s a really tough thing to juggle in terms of how to prioritize that without compromising the values that you have. And so I think being a bit gentle with yourself, but also, seeing if there’s any time where you can make those boundaries solid and enlisting the help of anybody else in the household, just to see if you can figure out a specific time when you can prioritize that.
And that’s often why people talk about getting up so early in the morning before everyone else is up. Because if they’re not awake, then you’re not choosing. And so that gives us like a guilt free permission slip to actually focus on our thing because no one needs us yet that day. So however way you have to do that, but just being aware to not fall into what I call the call of the dishes trap, which is, you know, you prioritize the little fiddly easy to get done, things over the stuff that makes you awkward and uncomfortable when you have to force yourself to sit down in the chair, it’s much easier to just, Ooh, if I do the dishes, I can check that off the list for the day rather than forcing yourself to actually focus on the thing that matters most.
Michele: Yeah. And we totally get it, right? It’s difficult, especially if you have like a significant other and your child. We believe it’s really like you can be intentional in protecting your writing time, right?
If you’re writing something, we hope you’re writing something because it’s basically the gift that you’re giving to yourself. So totally understandable. This is a very particular time, but as much as we can we shouldn’t make this an excuse to cheat the other people of our contribution in the creativity process.
So this is something we do for ourselves. We do it for our family too because like, it’s something that we do, some of us just to unwind, some others because they want to build a career out of it. It’s important for us. And if it’s important for us and for the people that are around us, it’s important that we take the time.
It can be like at 9/9:30 in the morning. It can be like at midnight. Really tried to be very intentional in the way you’re organizing your time. Considering of course, your family, considering your health. But I do believe that the part of your health, even the internal spiritual health depends on your creative work. So by doing that, you actually feel better in the long run.
Hashtag your ideal writer’s life
Crystal: True story. You know what else would make me feel better? The curious jar gets to make an appearance. So we have a lovely jar, filled with all the things, and I’m going to stick my hand in it and rifle around and you’re going to tell me when to stop and then, and answer the question.
Our question is hashtag your ideal writer’s life.
Michele: Can you translate that for me? I’m not really tech savvy.
Crystal: So like on Twitter or wherever, Instagram you would do a post and you would put hashtag journal. So here, I’ll do mine first cause I think that’ll like show you what it is, some ideas and buy you some time. So. So my ideal writer life would be #tealattes #journals LamyFountainPen #speedykeyboard #noisecancelingheadphones #freedomfromscheduledthings.
Michele: Okay. How long can it be? This hashtag stuff can be a sentence?
Crystal: You can be whatever you want because you make your own hashtags. So.
Michele: get me a sentence, like a 5 or 6 different words?
Crystal: Yeah. You can use phrases that just, you mashed them all up, like a hashtag is just like a hash symbol and then a bunch of words.
Michele: So you’re hashtagging yourself as a writer?
Crystal: Yeah. It’s like if what would be in your ideal writing life? Maybe it’s #bestseller #moviedeal #romance #whatever. I feel like I need to like write this down on a piece of paper as opposed to say it out loud. Verbal hashtagging is hard for the record.
Michele: Okay. Okay. No swear words?
Crystal: Just go for it!
Michele: So the first one is fine. It’s #writeon. And then the other one would be from a book I read and it’s #readmotherfucker, because it’s basically really one thing that I really liked.
But no, this is from Seth Godin. I can’t take it from him, but I just like it so much.
Crystal: As long as you credit him, you’re fine.
Michele: It’s #whosgonnamissyouwhenyouregone
Crystal: Yeah. Nice. But that’s also from song lyric, you could say from a whole bunch of places. Yeah.
Michele: Okay. So it’s not just that, but giving the idea, it’s something that he repeats a lot. I liked it. Who is going to miss you when you’re gone? Yeah.
Crystal: Nice. All right. Excellent. Well, how would you hashtag your life we have the comments under the show notes and you can tell us how you would hashtag your ideal writer’s life at ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com is where we need you to send your additional questions to add to the jar. It looks full now, but the levels go down fast, so we want to keep resupplying some questions into the mix, so pretty please do send us some questions.
Michele: And for show notes, links to resources we mentioned and coupons or discounts on tools we love, then you can visit us strategicauthorpreneur.com and you can also subscribe to our newsletter and each week we will send you just one thing that we think can help you and will help you on your authorpreneur journey and a link to the latest episode.
Crystal: And our podcast is only 11 episodes old. We’re still just a baby podcast, so we need your help to get some reviews, some stars, some ratings on whatever channel you are listening to this on. We would love it if you would give us a bit of a hand up there so other people can find us as well. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy life to get to know us and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we’ll be talking with artist, author and mystic, Constance Mears about alignment in your business.
Michele: Thank you! See you.
Crystal: Bye!