S01E16: When quotes come first

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda are talking about writing quotes and marketable lines before writing the book... 

Next week Sam and Matilda are going to be talking about everyone's favourite part of writing a book... writing THE BLURB! 

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

The Rebel Author Podcast: https://sachablack.co.uk/2023/12/13/220-how-to-launch-a-successful-series-with-helen-scheuerer/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Matilda Swift here with my co-host Sam Cummings, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us, and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our mastery through missteps journey.

Each week we cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be marketable quotes and scenes.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

Sam, what are yours?

My major win is that I published a book today.

My seventh book and it's the third in one of my series.

And yeah, that went live on Amazon today.

And yeah, I'm happy that it's done.

I know that that's not the end of the process, but in my mind, I'm like, just for today and tomorrow, I'm pushing it away before I start talking about it on socials.

So I'm very happy that that's out there.

Very exciting.

It always feels a little bit anticlimactic, I think, when you actually get to publishing day.

Yeah, like where's the parade?

I don't know.

I have a friend who always gets a haircut when she finishes the book.

And I think I have got a plan this time for a launch, like an event to do for a launch.

I think I'm going to start from now on doing something personally to celebrate, which I might talk about in my win, actually.

So yeah, I think we need to start doing something more ourselves for our launches.

Yeah, but you're busy this week anyway.

It just felt a bit crazy week.

For those who are just listening, I am in a different location.

And it's part of my win as well for this week, is that I had a really busy week last week.

So I have taken myself away this weekend and the whole of this week, and I'm in Harrogate, which is North Yorkshire.

And I'm just living my best life of editing and walking around and drinking coffee.

So that's like a big win because it's like treating myself as the author I want to be treated as.

Yes.

And it's fair enough for me that I didn't look the same.

So is it like quite nice and sunny?

Yes.

Oh, today has been glorious.

Just a perfect day.

I've gotten all of my steps in and more.

So yeah, it's been amazing.

Is there a whinge?

There is a slight whinge.

Okay, I'll do two whinges.

My editing is still taking time.

So I'm currently editing another book.

And as much as I love what I'm doing, I didn't realize how much I needed to rewrite at the start.

And I love what I'm rewriting, because I think I'm really setting the story up for success.

I think it's going to be amazing.

But the rewrite is taking longer than I thought it was going to take.

But that's fine.

It's okay.

And taking time is needed.

So it's a little bit of a win just on my own part, because I should have written it better the first time around.

But that's just one of those things.

Do you aim to write it well enough the first time around that you don't need much editing?

Yes.

But on this one, I didn't, clearly.

I was just like, oh, I'll just do the words on the page and we'll see what happens.

So I can see parts where I've just taken shortcuts.

And thought, like, future Sam can deal with that.

And now future Sam is dealing with it.

She's not happy.

But then, like, my actual winch is more, like, admin-y related.

So I've set up a Facebook ad for one of my books, which is the other werewolf book, Curse of the Wild.

And it's getting great clicks on Facebook, but it's not yet converted.

So I'm just playing that fun game of how to turn clicks into conversions, which is what all of us play on a daily basis.

So that's my winch.

I forgot all about this part of doing ads.

The part where it doesn't like...

Yeah, my winch.

Because there's already a lot of work set up.

Yeah, yeah.

And I love that ad that I created, but we'll see what happens.

How about you?

What are your wins and twinges?

Well, I'm going to join a similar winch.

This is not necessarily...

My winch is a little bit different, so I have got a book bub this week.

I'm so excited about.

It's on Wednesday.

But because my KDP renewal period is supposed to be a book bub, I couldn't set up the full running that I would have wanted to sort of build up readers.

The book was on a box set that I really never promote and never seem to sell.

And so I thought I'd do some Facebook ads to try and at least pull it out of the low, low, low, all very high numbers.

I never know how I was supposed to refer to them, the big numbers.

So on the ad copy, it specifically says free to read and kind of limited.

I'm trying to get some KU readers before it's discounted.

It's this full-size box at the moment, or full price, sorry.

And it's got an Amazon, do I want to say attribution?

Attribution link?

You know the one where you can track the links.

I've got so many tabs open right now from Amazon.

And I was talking to a friend who's got part of their account closed.

And we were trying to figure out which part of your account is closed, which of the many, many things you have to be logged into has been closed.

So yeah, so it's got a link on it, but it's obviously days behind reporting.

It's always so delayed.

And the only thing I can do to go off is some page reads, but the rank is rising much faster than the page read suggests.

It's like people are borrowing it.

I just have no idea how many.

It's so frustrating to deal with ads when it's like, when that's the case.

It's like, I have to feel confident looking at the rank rising that there are enough of borrowing that there will be sales, that there will be page reads in future to compensate for the price of the ad.

And like each borrow, it's a bit of a large box set.

So each borrow is worth about a day's worth of ad pay that I'm spending at the moment.

So even if I got only one borrow a day, that would make it worthwhile.

But I don't know if I'm getting one more day from the ad.

And it's just like a lot of having to think about that, a lot of juggling trying to improve the ad.

And all you have to do is guess about, is this the ad?

So I'm doing dynamic creative, is this the picture that's causing the conversion?

Or is this the picture that's causing the conversion?

Which one is getting the right click through?

So you can get your click through rate high and your cost low and then not have the right conversion.

There's a lot of metrics and so much of it is guessing.

So I've been trying to do that this week.

That's a long way to say, I'm back in the Facebook ads trenches.

Again, it's so much effort to set them up and to do the process and the monitoring that you think, and it's also not successful.

It's not like wildly making millions, and now I just have to think about more.

So I took out the images that weren't working yesterday and put in some new ones that are kind of variations of the ones that were working.

And because of today's topic as well, so related to what we're going to talk about in a bit, I also made a video today to see, because I know that's supposed to get really low cost per click payments.

So I put that in to see if that works.

But as always, I put it in following Facebook requirements that I found online about sizing.

The sizing didn't work for the ad that I'd got, the ad placement I've got.

So I had to remake the whole thing, which was very laborious, because I don't have a paid camera account, so I had to actually physically remake every single scene in it.

So that took a while, and it's just been one of those weekends where every, I mean, it's one of those lives where every small thing turns into five other big things.

I literally just said that to myself today, just before we started this podcast.

And I was moving things around, right?

She just said out loud, why is everything so much more complicated than you want it to be?

Because I think that's the problem with my to-do list.

I always think I can make a to-do list that fits, if the to-do lists were correct, it would fit, whereas actually everything balloons into five more things.

And I don't make my to-do list to factor that in, and I'm trying to have a job and write books and market books.

And my win of the week is sort of also a whinge.

My win of the week is, or one of them is that I got a new accountant this week, because I didn't mean to do it for a couple of years.

I got an accountant when I moved back to the UK from Hong Kong, and I had a really complicated financial situation.

And they're still the only people that I found who even sounded like they vaguely understood the situation of multiple income streams from different countries.

So I was like, perfect, you guys, I'll go with you.

Even though I've never met them, they're nowhere near me.

I picked them and actually they've been quite disappointing.

So I wanted to change, but it's like 17 jobs.

You have to research the accountant, then you have to message them, and then you have to respond to the message and go and meet them, and then you have to figure out what to ask them.

And it's like, none of those things are fun.

You don't have to do any one of those things.

And they take up time when it could be writing.

But I finally got to it because it's time for resigning with your accounts at the front of the year.

And I was like, you know what, I cannot abide staying with them.

Because you pay them fair amount of money, and they'll basically do nothing for it.

And I was really disappointed.

And they made me feel really like I was an annoyance for asking questions.

And I was like, I'm paying you for this.

I could do this myself.

I'm just trying to do it properly and feel confident.

That's why I have.

That's the reason I hire you.

Anyway, so the wind part of it was I went to a local accountants and got to spend like an hour chatting to the nicest man on earth, who was just lovely.

Really made me feel like understood and listened to.

And he had a lot of much, much bigger clients, but he really felt like he valued everybody at the same level.

And he even said like, when it comes to tax money, we're quite often encourageable, like they have a lot of space there, because it's near me, I live in the countryside, there's quite a lot of space, if not a lot of money, I think for offices.

He's like, we encourage people just to come and sit in the office and do their taxes so that any problem you encounter, you can just literally nip over someone and be like, can you have a look at this please?

Which I was like, yes, that is exactly what I want.

I'm not going to be sat there looking, especially in goofing things that I don't understand.

And they've got a pool table there, so perfect.

Okay, yeah, you stumbled into like magic, accountant land.

It's, I mean, obviously the office is just beautiful.

Like it's beautiful, old building, an old mill that was converted.

So that was my big one of the week.

But I've had a week where I haven't done as much writing as I wanted to, but I have done loads of things like that, which like it's really useful or it's felt like it's been helpful, like a lot of prep for the book pub.

So I like reformatted the box set that's in it.

I put in leads for the new series.

I want to get some arc readers for.

I updated it with like the newer files because I've done some updates to other books, updated the cover, like tons of little things like this that are just taking forever.

But my actual win is that I've also, as you were saying, it will be good to do some sort of positive, exciting thing when a book comes out.

And I want to have a tea party when my book comes out, because in the new series, it's about a tea room that gets launched, and it launches with a Mad Hatter's tea party, like Madison Wonderland, inside this shop, because it's a tea room, but on a street or bookshop, so it's kind of literary themed.

And so I have spent the week, my dad came over for lunch and my brother came over for dinner, and I wrangled them into helping me test out some recipes that were kind of Mad Hatter related.

So I've made some little finger sandwiches that are Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty, and what was the other one?

Oh, Little Toadstools.

The Toadstools.

And then my brother came around, yes.

My brother came around, we did, we carved radishes into little toadstools, and they were so effective and beautiful.

So just really fun things like that.

And then I've also started making the brownies that I'm going to send to Toadstools.

So it's been really lovely.

And that feels, I was talking just about, when you turn your job, when you turn your hobby into a profession, you lose the one thing in your life that you absolutely love and own for yourself, that you would willingly spend huge amounts of time on in a way that is just for you.

Because once you start professionalizing it, it's not just for you.

You then have deadlines, and you're talking about it in a podcast.

And you know, you're sort of like, it belongs to other people.

And it's not like indulging that time that you are really cherishing for yourself.

So I used to write before work, get to rise every day in a coffee shop for books that nobody else ever really saw.

And like things I would take to a writing group, and it would just be a real commitment to myself.

Whereas this is now a commitment to trying to pay my mortgage with books.

And I think I haven't replaced that hobby since I've started trying to professionalize writing, and I really want to.

And I love baking in the same way.

And I think even if I make my baking connected to my books, I'm not going to become a recipe creator or a recipe book writer.

I'm only going to be doing it in a fun way.

So it would actually be quite nice to kind of, you get to make mistakes, and you get to showcase that, and you get to play and be creative.

And I think I'm going to try and make baking a bigger part of my life again, because I love it, and I love eating delicious cakes and being creative and making Humpty Dumpty's wall out of fake ham.

Which I can eat from.

I think that sounds so good.

Yeah, it's nice to pick hobbies that you're actually going to benefit from.

I don't.

I pick hobbies that just fill my house with more clutter than anything else.

It's like, constantly bringing things home, like, oh, we've got to find somewhere to put this now.

I mean, but then you've got like endless gifts of people, right?

Yes, that's true.

I'm sure they make beautiful ceramics.

Yes, my ceramics are great.

I love that vase that you made.

If you don't follow Sam, follow Sam on Instagram and you get to see her beautiful ceramics.

But yeah, that was a long win and win.

But I feel like we've both got a lot going on right now.

Yes, so much.

It's a very active April.

But in a way that I think has come from this podcast, I think we are both really stepping up what we're doing because you're having to follow through on the vague thoughts that you had because you said it out loud in a podcast.

You said it out loud to say anything else.

This is 100% it.

There's a lot of accountability.

So we should probably move on to the topic at hand, which was quotes and scenes that we're using for marketing.

So how do you find and utilize quotes and scenes in writing and marketing?

Kind of goes hand in hand, but I think this is a topic, I think that is really going to be helpful for people who are at our level of writing.

But also if anybody's listened to this, who is like a much more beginner stage, I think this is going to be an incredible thing to think about and listen to.

So I think you should start because I think you have been doing a lot more work than I this week.

I've been thinking about stuff.

I think you've really big this topic up.

It's going to be a really important topic, guys.

And then, Matilda, what have you done for this?

It's important.

I just think it's just a really key idea.

And until I heard this, until I thought or heard about writing as marketing and doing writing specific scenes and quotes on purpose, I had not thought about it before.

I think it's like an epiphany topic.

Epiphany.

Yes.

It's interesting because actually I think, to me, it doesn't feel like an epiphany topic, but I definitely have during this week connected to multiple things we've talked about recently in a way that makes it feel like I have been able to crystallize my thoughts on it.

I think maybe I'm going to have the epiphany in this podcast, so I'll keep my mind aware and ready for it.

So marketable quotes and scenes.

I guess first thing is like, what do we mean by that?

So definitely marketable quotes seem easy to at least, you'll have seen something, right?

If nothing else, you will have seen the Taylor Swift, Georgia Pro Departments, like, you know, billboard pictures online, which had quotes from her songs, which is interesting given that songs are audible.

Obviously she's well known for her lyrics, but the fact that, you know, there were literally enormous billboards that I saw pitched off online of just like tantalising lines from her songs and everyone analysing them and thinking about them.

And like that, that so crystallised.

It's like she put that on this week just for us, because we talked about it.

It really is.

Thank you, Taylor.

She's listed in the podcast 100%.

She's a fan.

Yeah, I can imagine.

She's got a lot of free time.

So yeah, so I think it's really interesting that, that quotes are marketable.

Then you'll see them online.

And I think we talked about this a number of times.

As I often mention, I think romance writers are so good at quotes that are really hooky and that really make you think, oh gosh, I have to read that.

Because they even having like little quotes and then followed by the tropes.

So they'll put like bullet points of the tropes.

Instantly, you know, reader, you're going to love that or hate that.

Like it's a very clear cut and dry.

I have to have it or not for me, which I think is relatively unique to that genre.

There's definitely some things I think in fantasy that you see where, you know, you might be an ogre fantasy person or you're a magic fantasy person and they're quite different things.

I think there are some other genres that have got, and the same with cosy in fact, like you're either paranormal or not paranormal, you're historical or not historical.

There's some genres that have got the kind of things you either do or don't do, but in romance, I think you can see on the like scene and line level, which you don't really see on the genres.

So you will, definitely when we've done some looking this week at different marketable quotes and like quotes that you see, and primarily we're looking on Instagram, because that's a place that we both spend too much time and like to pretend that it's for productive purposes.

We're searching this on Instagram.

But it's also, it's a visual, it's a medium that's both visual and text, so it lends itself very well to marketing books.

I constantly feel like I should get more on TikTok, and I think I would feel pressured to do it if I wrote in a genre that was more TikTok related.

Actually, history is still not taking over the TikTok area, so Instagram feels like demographically useful.

And there were lots of good quotes on there, but they are often romancey things, because that gives you the instant quick, like heart fluttery, you know, oh gosh, I really want to read this.

It's butter.

It leads in so well, last week and this week, because without us talking about butter last week, this week wouldn't have been as eye-opening.

It is pure butter going into these quotes.

And so I was thinking about like, yeah, so I started thinking about what, can I find anything from mystery writers that are kind of quotes that feel engaging?

I looked at a few other mystery writers that I follow online.

In fact, I think my favorite triad mystery author is very good at putting quotes online.

And it's Laurie R.

King, and she does the Mary Russell stories.

And she has really nice Instagram posts that quotes from her stories.

She writes stories that are Sherlock Holmes continuations.

So she puts the word Sherlock in those quotes, and you can instantly see, oh, I'd love to read a Sherlock continuation.

I will read that book.

Again, it's very buttery, hooky, like it gets you straight in.

I think that's the key thing about a quote.

But also lots of her quotes are intriguing.

And I think we talked a while ago about what's the brand being your emotional promise?

And I think the same with quotes.

So I also looked online, just Googling best mystery quotes and trying to figure out what was good and what was bad, what made me think I want to read that.

And it was the things that gave me the same feeling as a mystery.

It was the ones where almost like a joke, where the first half seemed to say one thing and then there was a twist and then there was a second half.

And you're instantly like, oh, I didn't see that coming.

And trying to do that in just like two lines or one line in a conjunction, it felt you got that feeling of curiosity.

And so that's what I did for research.

And I just looked at the quote level and I found it really hard to think about what could be done at the scene level.

So, yeah, let's just start again and switch over to you and talk about what did you do for the quote level sort of research.

So, Instagram, my hard work, like absolute favourite place to be.

Not really.

Yeah, I just was looking through book quotes that I was drawn to and found a lot of the stuff I do think is, the romance stuff is obviously the most focus pulling.

And because I write fantasy, and even though I kind of shy away from doing like romance-y stuff, it is nice to see like what other people are doing that, like, I do have some romance in my book, so I can lean into that.

It's just not like, obviously, crazy romance like romance writers.

But I also have, I haven't re-listened to it, but I have been thinking about it.

So, at the start of the year, I think it was, it might, let me see if I've got the date on here.

Actually, it was in December.

The podcast, the Rebel Author podcast, I'm sorry, I'm like looking at my phone and my brain's going mental.

The Rebel Author podcast, there's an episode, which is episode 220, and it is called How to Launch a Successful Series with Helen Scheurer.

And I specifically remember this episode listening to it, and this kind of all ties into what we've been doing this week.

Because Helen was talking about how she plans out a successful series, and she's had many successful series.

But the thing that really caught my eye, and it's something that I made a note of and have gone back to this week, is in her planning and workshopping her series, she intentionally, what she calls, slips TikTokable and marketable scenes into novels that will hook readers.

So I read that in December, and I remember thinking at the time, like, yeah, so she comes up with her quotes before she starts writing a book.

And I don't do that.

So my, it's so difficult.

When you've read your own book a hundred times, you can no longer see the good stuff.

You just see boring, boring stuff.

So you can't...

So I would say the hard thing is, because I have gone through a lookbook, because I wanted to put some on my website, and I've gone through a look before, and I've often found really good sections, but they're spread over a paragraph, or they're like dotted and they're intersected with things that are functional to the story.

Because especially in a mystery, you need a lot of functional sections of text.

And it was very hard to pull out fun quotable lines.

A concise quote that's just like, oh, it's so witty, so I'm good at this, so good at that.

So that's what she does.

And I do remember thinking in December, oh, what a great idea.

And I wrote notes in my Trello board of the notes that I wrote for the podcast.

And then I didn't go back to it.

And then this week, it's kind of, I remembered like, oh, yeah, no, I did think about doing this, and then I haven't.

So this week, what I've been doing, because I'm currently editing a book, and what I've started doing is writing, because I'm kind of rewriting some of it, I'm rewriting quotes that I think sound good, and then putting them into a document, so that when I come to do social media stuff, and like drum up excitement and whatever I'm going to do, I just have them saved already.

Because my worst thing is like reading through a novel that I've already written, and like trying to find quotes that I think people will find exciting, because I haven't been writing buttery stuff.

There is butter in there, in my other books, but like flora light.

It's like, it's not Kerry Gold.

It's Marjorie.

So I am so excited, like with this document that I've made, it's just an Excel spreadsheet.

I love an Excel spreadsheet.

So it's an Excel spreadsheet.

And what I've started doing is colour coding the quotes.

I know, I love colour coding as well.

So I have colour coded quotes that are like, show relationships.

So that's like a red quote.

And I've got a places quotes, which are like descriptions of cool places, or like some little things that are world building.

Like I've got humorous quotes, quotes showing people's relationships with each other, and like dramatic quotes.

So I've started colour coding them so that whenever I need to whip up an exciting social post, I'll just know like what I want to do, and it's just, yeah.

I think this is the big question is, what are you doing with quotes?

Because I think there's more to say a bit more on like creating the quotes and kind of how we go about that, but I think it is easy to think about what's the purpose of the quotes.

And I do notice that we're both talking a lot about quotes rather than scenes.

I found it really hard to think, how could I possibly use a marketable scene?

What would I do with a scene?

Whereas a quote, I think I could put it on a social post, but then I know that I found recently, I find social media posting really disappointing and not effective.

So then why am I thinking about that?

But then I'm trying to do Facebook ads.

And today I added a quote from the book that I am writing for this Facebook ad.

I do have a quote from that because it's three books.

So I could find something in there that I had found ages ago that I could put in.

And it's on a video ad just to see how that goes.

But what I think I would feel more encouraged about on the quotes front is like, figuring out a better way to use them.

Because I'm not on TikTok.

So what am I going to do with it?

Yes, I think in the future, because I've wanted to do this for a while, is try and figure out a good way to make short trailer type videos that have stock image of particular people or little scenes and things, and then have overlaid text of a scene.

So it's almost like watching a little short film with the scene overlaid.

So that's something that I want to do, and I feel like if I can collect these quotes or scenes that I think are very visually stimulating, because that's how I work, and that's how everyone works.

Like, reading is playing a movie in your mind.

I have a fantasia.

I do not play a film in my mind.

Not everyone does this.

Apologies to you poor, poor people.

But I play movies in my mind.

That would be distracting for the movie experience, but I appreciate that sounds also fun.

It is great fun.

So that's something that I want to move into in the future is trying to produce really nice trailer videos.

And I think I'm going to use it for that.

I worry with something like that.

I don't worry on my own behalf, you know, more than yours, because you're grown up, that I would do it as procrastination, because I don't...

People go back and forth on book trailers, right?

People are still making book trailers.

In fact, I saw a really good one this week from Joffey Books, who are always killing it with marketing.

So if they're doing it, I think maybe it is working.

And I've got other author friends who are doing it.

I think to an extent that works if you are really killing it on the video social thing already, and you have an audience for it.

And I think the problem that I always keep finding when thinking about using social media promotion is you just have to be incredibly consistent and prolific.

And I'm not going to become a videographer.

So is there a point in making a couple of videos?

Or a couple of quotes?

Yes, a suit of posts.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and you definitely do have to be specific and intentional with the things that you're making.

At the moment, my Instagram is kind of coming together, and I'm being...

And same with my TikTok.

I'm being a little bit intentional with it right now.

I've been retraining my algorithm to put me in with book reviewers.

And like this week, I've just been...

All of my stuff is people reviewing books, and I've been having interactions with people, so I've done quite a good job of that.

And my next step in my social media plan is to start posting more, like quotes and things, but just more bookish stuff about my own stories, because at the moment, it's just more about me and writing, and I'm throwing in book stuff here and there, but not as much as I want to be.

So I want to be doing multiple posts on the same thing, just with different music or different images and see which ones hit.

So just a bit more playful with my social media.

Okay, yeah.

Can you do that in the report back, because I don't want to do that?

Yes.

Well, I think the thing is, I want to do it if I, A, have the time, and B, if I felt really confident, like I'm going to be really successful at this, it's going to be worth my time, but it feels like one of the things where it would take your time, and I wouldn't let it be so.

No, you and me, we're very different in terms of what we want to spend our time on.

So I don't mind spending time on stuff that doesn't get a lot of feedback, but I know that you feel very demotivated or demoralized when people don't interact with the stuff that you spend a lot of time on.

Yeah.

I'm used to that.

I'm a little child.

So I'm just like, yeah, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

I'm just entertaining myself at this point.

But I'm fine with that.

Yeah.

Maybe I should be fine with that as well because I think that's definitely...

I had my therapy appointments on Sundays now.

The second thing I've been working on is like, you know, I was a real, like, mm, academic child and very much you do things that you're good at and you get praise and you get the grades.

But I could do with doing more things that I am visibly not good at or visibly failing at to feel comfortable with that.

And to an extent, obviously, book publishing is that.

But also, it's very hard to tell how well anyone's doing.

Like, a lot of people seem to be doing really well.

I don't...

Looking at a rank, you're not, so I don't know.

Are you making money some other way that I don't know about?

It's a lot of, like, smoke and mirrors.

It is.

I think, like, failing to succeed.

Do more social media where you...

Mm-hmm.

Learning something.

Exactly.

And I think it is...

Like, why don't you learn something?

You do.

I was saying this to my mythical boyfriend today.

But he is very much a...

Like, he doesn't want to fail at things, and he finds it very difficult to start projects thinking it's not going to go anywhere.

And I just...

I'm the opposite.

I'm just like, I want to start all the projects and see how far I can get.

Like, knowing that I'm going to be terrible when I start.

And assuming that I'm going to be a superstar by the time I've finished.

This feels so uncomfortable.

But it's such a good attitude.

I've just started them, so at some point, I'll get there.

I really do...

I'm sure that I'm supposed to be somebody, so...

I'm just taking my time.

Favourite new best friend.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's such a good attitude because I do think a lot of stuff in publishing is like, you can only try.

And it might work really well for one person, not work well for you, even if you both do the exact same thing.

And it can feel very paralysing to be trying to spend a lot of time evaluating everything, looking for the correct thing to be doing, otherwise you've wasted your time.

I mean, the part of you is like, there's always someone to say, oh, you should spend more time on your covers or, oh, you didn't do enough market research.

There's always...

Boring naysayers.

Negative voices.

Yeah, if you're looking for them.

I think generally it's a very positive industry, but I think you can find negative voices and I think I'm very drawn to that and very drawn to be like, oh, I'm such a fool.

I tried this thing that obviously everyone knew wasn't going to work.

I could just take a punt on more things.

I think that as well, is you are, and I'm not saying you, I'm just being in general, you, like us, we, the royal we.

It's so easy to think, oh, like it's going to take me so much time, I'm going to hate it, and I'm not going to get anything from it.

But the more you do of these things, like putting yourself out there, creating these things, like you might actually, you might fail at some of them.

They might not go anywhere.

But you could also find something that you love to make, like something creative that you love to put together and put on social media.

And then that could be the thing.

So I'm kind of looking at it from-

Like baking, right?

Like I'm deliberately doing baking, knowing that I'm not a fantastic baker.

I enjoy it.

I made brownies the weekend, and one half of the brownies fell massively, but I ate them and they were delicious, so it's fine.

But you will find, you find things that you are particularly good at making.

Like I can't make scones.

Don't know why.

Really?

It's like a phenomenon.

I don't understand.

But I am great at cookies, and I can make bread like, so many things that I can just throw together and it all turns out great, but I can't make scones.

That is interesting, because I felt they're particularly easy to make.

Yeah, I know.

I don't understand the taste really.

It's like one of the weirdest things.

That is an odd one.

Okay, that is useful to know though, so I won't ask you to make any scones in the future.

Yeah, definitely don't.

Yeah, I definitely, I think this is a useful attitude thing to think about.

If you come from a more academic background, and a lot of self-wishers do come from an academic background, and a lot of very high achieving backgrounds, it can feel very tricky to do things when you're not having quick success.

You can think, I'm going on the wrong path, but a lot of it is slower in trial and effort, and what might succeed one week might fail the next.

Like Facebook ads, I've had Facebook ads where I've run almost the exact same ad to the exact same audience, because I had to shift it around for some reason, and then suddenly it doesn't work.

You're like, that can't possibly be true.

And it feels very demotivating to me, but I should just keep a positive attitude.

Keep, yeah, helping a lot.

So...

I think I just, I learnt early on that people just, I'm not going to like everything that I do.

Like, I did art for A-level, and my art teachers hated everything I made.

Gave me thicker skin.

It was like, well, that's what I'm made.

It's like, oh well, I'll subject to you.

Yeah, gosh.

No, that sounds, again, I feel like my inner, like, A student feels very tense at the idea of that.

I'm just like, oh, I should change my art then so that I can be the teacher, so I can get the A.

I refuse.

I remember once, this is just a little tangent.

I did this huge painting, absolutely huge canvas of Castlefield in Manchester.

It was like the canal and like the bridge, like old bridgey stuff.

And I'd finished it.

And then my teacher came up to me and said, but it's not finished.

And I was like, what do you mean?

She went, you've not finished the water.

And I was like, that's how I wanted it to look.

And she was like, oh, okay.

Oh, that's worse.

That's worse than a criticism.

It's so, it was so good.

No, it was so good.

I loved it.

I feel personally injured.

That's such a...

No, that was, that's a hair problem.

Like that was such a weird thing to say.

And I just really thought like, wow, that was weird for you.

Because for me, I was finished.

I feel like there's a whole demographic of the audience, like I've got the older daughter mentality along with me of like, that is not an acceptable responsibility to have to me.

I will change what I'm doing so I can win you over and I will succeed.

Yes, no, I'm middle child all the way.

Just cheerfully going along, doing your own thing.

Flailing.

So yeah, in terms of quotes, then I think I also listened to, I found out my podcast map earlier.

I hadn't completed the episode, but I did listen to about half the episode that we were talking about with Ellen Shorira and Sasha Black.

And I remember having an instant response when she said, I write them before I write the book.

And it felt like cheating.

It felt uncomfortable, which is ludicrous because it's still you writing it.

It's insane.

I would have thought.

I know.

And I have been doing that this week.

And it really took me back to a fact that really joyous feeling of being like an angsty teenager and writing like a fantastic opening line, something that then you've got no idea what to do with that afterwards.

So I've written some really like short, you know, concise, crystallized, essence-y lines that would look really good in a quote.

Because now I'm not a teenager anymore, I actually know how to write the rest of the book.

So I can then put those into a book.

And I've thought about which characters will say them and kind of where it will come up.

And I probably would have written something like it when I got to that point, but it would have been ramblier.

It would have been, you know, choppy.

And in fact, I could make it choppier in the book, knowing that I own the copyright to this.

I can change it wherever I want.

I can't plagiarise myself, so I can change the quote when I want to put it on marketing.

And if I want to make it slightly ramblerier in the book, fine.

And it felt really good to think about those scenes, those quotes in isolation.

I definitely haven't thought about how to use them scenically for me, but I have thought about quotes.

And I have made some quotes already for the promotion of the book in future.

I made some little videos about the quotes.

I feel very excited about it.

Yes, your quotes are very good.

I had a little preview yesterday, and they made me very excited, and I'm so excited to read the book.

So come on, chop chop.

I know, I'm doing so much work for this book, of which I've only written the first chapter.

I really feel like I have to get on.

But that is what I'm doing this evening.

I'm looking at the year plan that you normally have behind you on your office wall, which I've done nothing with, and it's now the end of the fourth month of the year, and it's still blank.

I'm going to take it down after this, take it off the wall, write all over it, and put my deadlines in, so I can figure out how to actually get the books ready on time.

But I had done some writing this weekend, so I wrote the first, I wrote most of the second chapter, and I got to that stage where I was sort of paralysed by the first chapter.

I'd worked it so long, and it was feeling really good that I felt like I could only make it worse by carrying on the work.

But I carried on, and it's great.

Like, it feels like it was worth putting that time in to get kind of the tone and the style and the level of detail correct that now I've continued in that vein.

And definitely the writing of the second chapter is not as good, but I can go back and sort that out later.

That's fine.

Yes.

Good stuff, that is.

Yeah, that is pushing through the fear world.

And that is quotes to put in, and I think I would take my marketing.

And that is in fact social media thing that I do quite like doing, is like making little videos with quotes on.

You can do that in front of TV while you're just sort of relaxing in the evening.

And, you know, if that works, it works.

If it doesn't, you know me, I'm easy breezy.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

Not worried about the outcome at all.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Do we have anything else to say about quotes and scenes for marketing?

I don't think so.

I think this is much like much of what we've been talking about.

It's all ongoing.

Um, but it's just really nice to touch on these topics specifically and keep, like, open a tab in my brain.

So it's like, new tab open.

Hopefully I'll keep this one open for as long as possible.

Mm-hmm.

And we are meeting next week in person for our monthly session, which is great, so we can kind of have a longer chat and look at things if we need to then.

And we'll be planning out the next set of episodes, and then we'll also be recording an episode at the end of next Sunday as well.

And so for next week's topic, we are continuing on our series of writing, on writing and marketing, and that episode will be about blurb writing, which is very exciting, because it's one of those things that everyone hates, and actually I now really love.

I've, with like butter, my blurb, my new book, I feel really happy about it.

So yeah, I'm excited.

So do you have any initial things on that?

I have the same.

I've always been a little bit hesitant to write a blurb.

And I know that some people write them before they start, and sometimes I do have a go at writing one before I start writing a book.

But I can't say I always use what I've written.

Yeah, I do love the challenge of blurb writing, and I love that people have guidelines on what should be in a blurb.

But I do find it challenging to try and distill a story down, so that will be a fun thing to talk about, like the best ways to do it.

And yeah, like I am really enjoying it at the moment.

I've been tweaking some of my blurbs on Amazon and having a great time.

So yeah, I'm really excited to talk about it.

I think, spoiler alert, I think the end of it's going to come to the, or at least for me, the same conclusion as we've come for everything, like butter and quotes.

Do it before you write the book.

I've been, why have I been doing everything after I've written the book?

That is too late.

Yes.

Oh, I know.

Such idiots.

It really does feel like cheating.

That's my epiphany.

Epiphany.

Plan the marketing before you write the book, which again is one of the things that sounds so obvious.

I cannot believe that I'm having tears out loud, but fine.

We are learning as we go.

But I'm excited about this next week because I think I have definitely had a big, big journey with writing blurbs, and now I feel really happy with blurbs.

And partly that's coincided with the improvements in AI.

So yes, we'll have that discussion next week.

Yes.

But also partly it is just like a lot of things we talked about.

So it will sort of bring together everything we've discussed.

And I'm looking forward to that next week.

And I will see you in person on Sunday, next Sunday, and we will see everyone else next Wednesday.

So speak then.

Goodbye.

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