S01E25: When setbacks need solutions

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda chat about the setbacks they have experienced, and still do... and the best ways to overcome them.

Next week Sam and Matilda will be talking about shoulda, woulda, coulda... if they could go back in time, what would they change about their publishing journeys? 

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:

Writing and Marketing Systems by Elana Johnson: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B4MN9BJ/

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.

Welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Samantha Cummings, here with my cohost, Matilda Swift, 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 quick-to-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 handling setbacks.

But before that, let's do our friends and twinges of the week.

Okay, am I starting?

Yes.

Yeah, I had a very, very busy week.

So I have been in the play, a local amateur production of Midsummer Night's Dream this week, and we had six performances.

So we had dress rehearsal last Sunday, and then performances Monday through Saturday, which was quite a long play.

So I've been in the theatre a lot, and that combined with day job was sort of when I've done nothing else.

I had a relatively small part.

It was one of the fairies.

I was Moth, who I think was a pivotal role.

But I mean, I had a lot of time backstage, so I did it at time well, in part to read to an Amazon book and kind of make notes on it, which was useful, but obviously there's only so much you can do when you're in a busy dressing room.

So I didn't do a lot productive, but I did really have a good epiphany, epiphany about play and creative play.

And I felt, even though I was tired from doing a lot of stuff this week, I felt I'm creatively too, I'm too busy generally to do any writing, but I felt very positively and creative this week.

Like I think I'm gonna come out of this week feeling like very energized for writing.

And it really made me think that I need to do more creative play activities.

I think we talked about this before, where obviously writing at some point transitions from it's your hobby, it's a thing that you do just for you, to it's a thing that you're trying to make into a career, so you treat it as seriously as your job.

And then you lose that fun connection that you have with yourself.

And I am in no way aiming to be a serious actress, a good actress, nothing.

I'm just there to meet friends and have fun.

And I think going in with that attitude, it has felt really lovely this week and has made it just such a stress-free, enjoyable experience.

And I don't think I can commit to doing a lot of plays at the theater just because it is a big commitment.

So rehearsals are for months.

And then if you have a slightly bigger part, even slightly bigger part, you're in three nights a week for rehearsals for eight to 10 weeks, which is a lot and really gets in the way of my writing.

But I think I want to make sure I'm doing more creative play.

I have previously done artist states from the artist way, and I'm just not good at keeping up with that myself.

I don't keep that commitment, and I really want to do that.

So I'm gonna try and find a way to do that, even if it's just like going to the pub and doing some origami.

I've made a list of things like that that I want to do, but I just don't do them.

So I'm going to remember and hold tightly onto this experience this week as a way to encourage myself to do it more.

How about you?

I've had a bad week.

So whinge of the week is just, I was so tired this week from hay fever and just being busy in my day job and looking after somebody else's dog for a night.

So my whole week was just kind of thrown away.

So I haven't done any work, any writing work, which is fine, because I have done a lot of thinking stuff, which I'll take that as a win.

But I have finally ticked off, kind of half ticked off, started ticking off one of my Q2 goals, which was to get in touch with some reviewers to send copies of my books to, just to see if they want to read it and potentially review it.

So I've been in touch with three reviewers on Instagram with pretty good followings.

And they've come back to me super enthusiastically saying that they would love to receive a copy of my book.

And that feels like a huge win.

And it kind of, I feel like it's like a trickle on from last week's episode when we were talking about money mindset.

And I was saying how I had such a bad mindset around, well, money in general, but just having things kind of come to me and like holding on to things too tightly.

And this whole week, I have been trying to really be positive about things coming to me easily.

I'm trying to tell myself I'm on the right path.

The direction I'm going in means that opportunities will come to me and money will come to me.

And it feels like even though I put myself out there and contacted these people, it's because I went in that direction that the results were good, if that makes sense.

Like I just feel I'm feeling really positive.

I also have been getting people reading my book and getting people reading on Kindle Unlimited, so getting page reads and getting money coming in.

And I even found money on the floor.

Oh, I love that, that's the best of me.

I feel like, yeah, I just feel like, my positive mindset is really paying off.

I feel really good about, even though I didn't do any writing work, I feel like everything else is abundant.

Like I once found Fiverr just in the snow, walking down the street.

I think I do have a general idea that money will come to me.

And I think it's because at an early age it just did.

I used to often, you know, feed like a tombowl or like a raffle, would always win at that.

And I think I've got slightly, slightly higher than average luck in that field, and it makes me feel like, yeah, things will work out.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to start thinking.

Yeah, it'll work out.

I'll win the archery.

Screw it, screw everyone else.

Yeah, you might do.

I was going to add, actually, I was going to add one more win that I wanted to just mention, because I think it's not getting up out of the time, and it was really nice to take note of.

In this play, as I said, there's a lot of different people.

There's a cathedra of 22 people in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and a lot of downtime in the theater.

And everyone has came from a different background.

I got to learn about everyone's different professions.

So someone is a Greek culture professor, someone's a speech therapist or a music therapist, sorry.

Lots of teachers in there, and just really interesting.

And one of the people was trying to write an academic paper or a semi-academic paper, like a paper, a conference report.

And she didn't really like the writing aspects of it.

So she'd written lots and lots of notes, and she'd got a couple of thousand words, and she's like, I was meant to go into an article just about 500 words long, and I don't really know how to shape it, and I don't know what I'm doing.

And I'm like, oh, hand it over and I'll have a look.

And from this jumble of notes, and she'd done some thinking about it and writing it down in sensible ways, that I found it incredibly easy just to spend about 40 minutes rewriting it as a 590-word document, I think, about a conference I'd never attended, about a topic I wrote nothing to, you know, no knowledge about at all.

Incredibly easy for me.

And it was just such a nice reminder.

She was so grateful.

She was like, it would take me hours to sort this out.

And it was such a nice reminder to really take note and appreciate the skills that you have.

And we've got an episode coming up soon about kind of the skills that your day job teaches you.

But I think it can go both ways about appreciating the skills that you get from somewhere else, but also appreciating that we have uncommon skills from the amount of work you put into writing.

And blurb writing and newsletter writing, those are all skills.

And it was really nice to kind of challenge myself in a new way and to really see how far I've come, but like how strong that skill is.

And to really appreciate that and to have it appreciated, that's absolutely lovely.

So I'm gonna see if I can find more avenues to explore like that.

Yeah, because I do know a lot of people really hate writing and I really love it and find it easy.

So I should do it and take that way for the people.

Yeah, definitely.

I think that's, yeah, I can't wait to talk about that in another episode about, I guess like, I don't know if we've got this in our list of things to come up, so we can add this if we haven't, but other ways to make income outside of writing that are still writing.

We don't have this.

I'm gonna make a note of it.

Yes.

I'm gonna make a note of it and obviously I'll forget exactly what it means you have to remind me.

So I'll make a note and then you remember the details.

Yes, gentle listener, please take note that we write down topics that we want to talk about and then have to send a text message to each other afterwards saying, what did this mean?

No, I think that is a particular topic because I hear about it a lot from other writers and just a lot of the ideas they give, they are the date very, very quickly or they're just incredibly unrealistic.

If you've not got some sort of foot in the door, so they'll be like, oh, become a freelance content writer.

And it's like, how?

How would I do that?

There's like people doing it for very, very little money on Fiverr.

How would I become someone who does that for a lot of money?

And like, I have got contacts who have offered work like that, or I've had work like that from it.

And it is just networking.

It is not as easy as just do this.

So I think it'd be good to talk about like the realities of that and the realities of how to make money from other sources and when it's worth it and when it's not and how to go about doing that.

So that'd be a great topic.

But that is not today's topic.

Today's topic is handling setbacks.

So let's move into that now.

I'm gonna ask you, have you faced any self-publishing setbacks and how did you handle them?

So, yes, it's funny because self-publishing setbacks are, I think, most of the time, mental setbacks that feel like you don't know what you're doing, feeling like people are doing things better than you, feeling like you're making mistakes, you should have gone with a different cover.

Maybe you should have had somebody else like spell check it one more time.

There are so many things that feel like you should be doing, and you feel like you're failing all the time.

And that's, I think, my biggest thing about setbacks is it's all on you.

It feels like it's all on you.

And unless you have a very good mental attitude, that is the sort of thing that can stop someone from being a writer or from progressing in writing.

And I feel very lucky that I have such a sunny disposition, because I know other people would have quit.

I'm just somebody who's like, well, I'll just keep going, because I'm sure it's going to work out.

But I know that not everybody has a sunny disposition and it's just a very, very hard job to be doing.

I feel like I've rambled a bit.

So you say what you're feeling.

Yeah, no, I think that is right.

Because I think when we hear the word setbacks, and obviously there are real setbacks people can face, or at least perceive that they face.

And I was trying to think of some, and I have some big setback things that are not necessarily mindset stuff.

But I think often there were small things like, oh, I chose a book title, and someone chose the exact same title, or someone saw my pen name the exact week that I published for the first time.

So I think there are real setbacks, but I think you are, and I think one of those things about those small things is, if you put it in a Facebook group for authors, 99 out of 100 of ones you get is like, it's not a big deal.

It feels like one, but it's not a big deal.

Or like negative reviews.

Like in the, I think that is sort of mindset thing, like people not thinking about the grand scheme of things.

You see so many Facebook group comments about just like, oh, can I report this to Amazon?

It's a negative view.

And actually it's about the condition of the book arrived in the physical copy rather than the actual book.

It's like, don't even think about it.

Literally you're wasting, you've wasted time throwing that out.

Don't think about it.

So I would say, I would say maybe all setbacks in some way are mindset related, because it's about how you handle the thing that's happened.

And it's not even like happened to you.

It's just happened in your vicinity.

I've definitely had setbacks, setbacks.

So things like I started publishing in autumn 2019.

And I had a plan and I was like, I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna release, not quite rapid release, but you know, cause I had, I was working five days a week at that time.

And I, we'll talk about this in the next episode.

We'll talk about what we would do differently if we're gonna start again.

So we'll talk a bit more in detail about that then, but I had got a plan to go kind of quickly with the first three books, you know, to continue with one continuous series.

I was like, I know what I'm doing.

I think I've done enough research.

I haven't obviously, but you know, I didn't know the time.

And then I published my first, I put the prequel out in August and the first novel in October of 2019, which seemed like, oh, just chilled, happy relaxing days.

Then I had like a writing retreat come up at Chinese New Year the next year, which is end of January, start February.

While we were there, I think I was working on book number three in the series.

And just news coming out about this weird virus in China.

I was like, what's, that's bizarre.

What's going on there?

And then from that, everything became very stressful.

The fact that I had already been sort of thrown off track by the very serious protests in Hong Kong for six months that were basically covered the entire time was right at the beginning of my series.

And they were directly outside my bedroom window, and like my apartment window, because I lived in the very epicenter of it.

And I had handled the setbacks by, I had enough mental energy and like wavelength bandwidth to kind of roll with it.

And when I had to get me a tight editing deadline, and there were just constant riots outside my apartment, I booked a hotel on the other side of the area.

And I've had a week, because the hotels are very cheap, because nobody wants to come to Hong Kong during the protests, booked a hotel, wrote in my hotel room, edited my hotel room, met the deadline and felt like it was fun doing it.

And it was like a little adventure, but then straight after the protest, there was a pandemic.

I moved countries after a month of that.

That was a lot of work.

I changed my job pattern.

I changed my hours.

I then had to move to another house, and then I moved again since then.

Just constant upheaval.

It is not very creative.

And at some stage, I run out of bandwidth for feeling creative and doing that.

And really there was a time in the pandemic where I wrote two books, one of which I've tried to be writing a couple of times, and it just, I can't, we talked about this earlier about like how much we write a book, and I realized that I need to be able to feel something about it.

Like I need to feel it's real, and I can't really describe what it is, but it's like a tangible sense of like, okay, now I know the book well enough to figure out where to come in on it, how the style should be, what the balance of characters is.

I've got several drafts of this book, like whole drafts of this book that don't work.

I can't get the feel of it.

And I had another book that I wrote in that time that was for the ongoing series that I did manage to rewrite, because I think I knew the feel of the series well enough that I could rewrite it, but it was Bleak, the first version of it, because I was not feeling very creative when I was writing it quite mechanically.

And I was also trying to catch up on the schedule that I'd lost track of, because I'd lost time in the pandemic, at the protests.

And I was like, okay, can I just try a new technique?

Can I try jumping around the book and write whatever feels happy?

Good to me, can I try Sprintz?

And I, because I was quite early in my writing career, I was trying to find the thing that worked for me.

I was still trying to work out what worked for me.

And I was like, is it Sprintz?

Is it writing non-quadlogically?

I don't know.

Spoiler alert, no, I have those things, not I have those things.

But I didn't know that then, and so it meant I wrote a book that I had to rewrite basically.

And that I think, but I think the mindset of that is, I should have been more accepting of that.

I really just tried to pretend that the world wasn't ending, which was just pointless.

And I haven't learned this lesson because actually I steal this all the time in a small way.

I cannot judge when I need a break.

I have taken a break today.

I've taken a break all of today.

I've done literally nothing because I'm actually not feeling super healthy after a very busy week at the theater and going out, being there late every night, and we'd stay for a drink after the show.

It's a lot of late nights, a lot of long days, and I'm just feeling worn down.

And I don't want to get sick because I'm off to SPS Live next week.

Then I'm doing a writing retreat straight away after that, and then I'm going on holiday straight after that.

So I do not want to get sick, so I just took today to do nothing.

And I stayed on my sofa, played with my cats, watched movies, scrolled on my phone, was so unproductive.

But I had to really, really decide to do that.

Normally, if I were even a little bit less feeling rubbish, if I were feeling a little bit better, I would have dragged myself through the day and made myself do things and tried to write probably, and they just written rubbish.

So I think that is the big key to handling setbacks for me.

It's not the actual handling of it itself, it's learning processes to handle it, and I've not done enough work on that.

I'm the same.

I definitely work till I just pass out.

And I'm not great at knowing when that passing out is gonna happen.

And then it hits me and I'm like, oh, I'm so tired, and my boyfriend will say, because you haven't stopped for four months.

And then I look back and I'm like, oh yeah, you're right.

I definitely find that when you're in those, because I've had a week of no productivity, but I found what really helps is every day of the week, I have a set schedule.

So even though I've had a week of doing nothing, I know that starting from tomorrow, I'm just back in my schedule again.

So I'm really glad that I have got set processes, like what time I do work when I get home from work and what days I do work and what days, because I always take a break one day a week.

It's just nice to know that I've got that to fall back on, but I obviously still fall into the old traps of just like feeling like, I feel like I've not done something.

Like I feel like I've done things wrong and yeah, wasted time or something.

And it's like, no, no, it's fine.

You're okay.

You could just get back on track next week.

Don't worry about it.

Well, I think self-exception is like the biggest hurdle to having accept backs because I don't think everyone suffers with this at all, I think.

But I think interesting you and I both have very different mindsets generally, and we both kind of have this issue.

So I'm not a sunshiny person.

I am a very stubborn person.

I'm a very determined, like, this will not defeat me.

I can overcome any problem just by sheer force of will, that's not quite sunny.

But I do then also.

I think it's not that I think everything will work out, it's that I am certain and that's a sort of optimism, where I am certain that I can make it work.

It's not that there is positivity in the universe, it is that I am like burning with the fire to that cannot be quenched.

So I think it comes to the same outcome.

And I think it means that we are both very, like, feel like we're on a path in some way.

And I really, really struggle to allow myself to take breaks.

Yes.

Because my time is limited, right?

My time is very limited outside of work.

And there's only so much of what I can spend being creative.

And, you know, I've got obligations and I've got, I want to do other hobbies.

And somehow every other day is very busy.

I don't know how this happens to me.

But I do, so then if I have days where it's like, I've planned somewhere and I'm on a schedule and I've planned out my schedule a year in advance, if I hit a week where I'm feeling rubbish, I very much struggle to let myself say, I'm in it, this is a setback.

Setback is I'm ill at the moment and I should take a break.

I just think, I'll just keep going.

It's in the schedule, so I can't, there's no option.

And I have, one thing I have definitely done this year is I have scheduled everything with a buffer week and for things that are quite long, with two weeks.

So when I'm in writing a draft, like writing a first draft phase, if it's a book length that would normally take me seven weeks, I will give myself eight weeks because I have an autoimmune condition and I relatively often get somewhat ill and I might not get ill, like I have to take time off work, but I get like fatigued and I just cannot do anything creative.

And then what I do if I'm on a very tight deadline is like, well, you're on the deadline, so you should keep going.

Whereas now if I know I've got the extra week, it's like, oh, you've told yourself you have a spare week, so you should take this week.

Although as you get more ill, that has been a big help.

But that is something that I should be much better at it.

Like this is one very minor thing that I've really had to force myself to do.

And I want to get through that.

Recognizing anything because I see setbacks as a failure.

I think because I'm so self-determined, I see anything goes wrong as like, I should have seen that.

I should have known that there was gonna be pandemic.

I haven't thought that, but I could think that.

And I waste a lot of mental energy on pushing myself and blaming myself and forcing myself.

And I'm not good at recognizing and treating myself well and recognizing things that are real signs that I need to take a break.

And I want to get through that.

I definitely have a lot of mindset work this year that is helping significantly.

And that is handling a setback.

I had a real, at the end of last year, I felt really rubbish meant to me.

And I just, I'm normally someone who, you know, you might go through ups and downs, but I can pick myself back up.

And I just wasn't, I just wasn't picking myself back up.

And I felt like it was going the wrong way.

So I read a lot of books about mindset.

I read a lot of, like did a lot of workbooks about that.

I had therapy for about five months.

I talked to a lot of friends about it.

And I stopped writing.

And that feels quite dramatic, but actually it's not.

If you look back on it, it's not a lot of time.

It wasn't a lot of work.

You should do it all the time.

I should have a month off to work on mindset things.

Why doesn't everyone do that?

So much of the job I should say is mindset and so much of the time I should have on mindset.

Yes, I think that's a great idea.

I imagine if you were just like, do you know what, January is my mindset month where I don't do any work and I just do the inner work that I know I'm going to need for the year to come.

That sounds like a really nice...

I think I should do it in December, in fact, because I don't really do it all month in December because I'm a big Christmas person and I do a lot of Christmas activity.

And I would never want to give it up.

And so it means that I sort of schedule lightly for writing-wise around that.

But I could do things like mindset work.

Again, it's about, I think, who is always very good at this?

Some on his books that I've read, I will find them put in the show notes.

Really, really focusing, we've talked about this before, on spending more time observing yourself and observing the patterns that you have and when you're feeling good and when you're not feeling good, when you're lying to yourself about being able to write and you end up just staring at your screen blankly.

Any idea who I'm talking about?

Who do I mean?

I mean, Ilana Johnson.

I would never have come up with that name.

I will be honest with you.

I don't even mean it, but I'm sure it is.

I agree, yes.

Yeah, I find it very hard because it's not as natural for me if it's a waste of time to do all that observation and I really struggle with it and I try to do it, but I want to do it in some way, in a way that works for me.

So I want to get better at observing myself.

And treating it back as a very natural, normal thing.

Like life is not going to go perfectly.

I think that's every day as well.

With my to-do list, even my non-right to-do list, I schedule things, assuming that everything will go correctly.

But every time you do something, you find that you need to go and do that before you can do this actually.

Everything is always three things, and I don't slay in, and I just live in a constant state of delusion that time is flexible and eternal.

I have no concept of time whatsoever.

I'm terrible at it, and I've even started recently asking my boyfriend just to plan the things that we need to do in the order that we need to do.

Because I have got, it's undiagnosed, but I've got ADHD, and it is just something that I've come to realize about myself is that I just can't be trusted with being in charge of time stuff.

And as I've been trying to figure out how long it takes me to write things, how long it takes me to edit things, and I'm trying to really figure out my processes this year, I've come to realize that I have no clue.

I was like, oh, yeah, I know how fast I can write a book, but I've never looked at how long it takes me to edit a book, and I am baffled at how long it's taken me to edit this book that I'm editing.

And I just hope that I can, because I'm keeping a track in a spreadsheet, I hope that I can now just factor this into any of my future planning, because, yeah, it's worrying how little I really understand time.

And I always think I've got so much of it, and I really don't, I'm like, oh, I'll get, I can do loads in like, in an hour, I can sit down and I can like edit pages and pages, and I sit down and it's like an hour, I'll do half a page of editing.

Like, oh, so that's how time works.

But it needed it, right?

And like, there shouldn't be like, oh, it needed it.

So I think it's, I think I definitely want to get better at not feeling blamed about the set block and not feeling bad about it.

Yeah, I think that's, yeah.

You for sure should try to do that.

Yeah.

I wish that I had taken more time, or could take more time, or saw it as a part of the job, to like, I don't know what job this would be in a company.

Not necessarily to streamline, but like to organize the processes and observe.

I wouldn't like a consultant in my own business, right?

That's what I want, is a consultant who comes in and says, you spend too much time on this, the morale in this area is too low.

This is a waste of everyone's efforts.

And the problem is I can't be a consultant for myself, because again, I'm me and I'm all the jobs, I'm the consultant.

Yeah, I know.

That's basically project managing, which as a funny turn of events is a job that I'm going to be moving into in my current job.

Excellent.

I can tell other people what to do and how long things should take, but I can't turn that at myself.

Yeah.

Because I think this, because you can't be the project manager.

I mean, you're supposed to be, you're supposed to be the project manager and the writer and the marketer.

But it's just so much.

So you can't do them all at the same time.

That's the problem.

That's where everything seems to take longer because you can only do one of those jobs at a time.

So everything is just stretched out far more than it would be if you had multiple views running around.

And you could have them all doing things at the same time.

Simultaneous working would be amazing.

Let's clone ourselves.

Yeah, because I think if you're a project manager head on, you would be very strict with the creator saying, like, you're being far too slow with this and you've got a schedule of four weeks and you're already on week three and you're nowhere near finished.

Can you explain that to me?

And I would then flip back to being a creator and be like, I don't know.

It just didn't happen.

I didn't know what to tell you.

I sat down every day that I was meant to write and I didn't have the words.

I didn't feel creative.

And I don't feel like I'm getting any better at it, if I'm honest.

And part of that is like this year, I'm trying to make a big change in like mindset stuff.

So I have taken more time on things than I should.

Not should.

Than I had allocated.

But it constantly feels like I'm going to get this perfect finished state.

And that just seems like a real waste of like delusion.

Yeah.

When am I going to get to this?

Like, okay, now I know everything, I can do everything.

It is always learning.

And I think I don't act like the learning is the thing.

Because project managers don't count for like just the project never ends and you're constantly learning.

Learning is the project.

Yeah, that's true.

Because if you're always learning, there is no setback.

Because you're always learning new stuff.

I think that's why I feel like I don't, I never like beat myself up really, unless like I break my computer, in which case I feel like that is completely my fault.

And that nothing makes me angrier than technology failing me.

But everything else I'm like super chill about like, oh, I pushed go on an ad and the ad didn't do anything.

Oh, well, like, I guess I got that wrong.

I'm sure I'll figure it out next time.

Like, I don't have any kind of self loathing in me, which is, I'm very lucky.

I know parents who are just like, yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Yeah, like I don't, I really just don't have any problems with my lack of knowledge or my ability to succeed, because I just think that the longer I do something, the better I'll get.

So I'm sure it's fine.

Do you think that in itself causes any setbacks?

Like, do you think?

One thing I really struggle is like, I sort of don't want to let go of my critical voice, because I think it really does drive me.

And I know that's not necessarily a healthy thing to do.

And obviously, how I can sit in therapy about it, but it does feel like if I didn't have that drive, I probably would just do nothing.

Yeah, I have also a very strange mental thing where once I've decided to do something, and this is also a positive and a negative, and this probably all ties in.

Once I've decided to do something, I'll do it forever.

Once I've made my mind up, I'm like, okay, that's it.

That's my new life.

And so it makes it really hard to look at something and think, oh, that's not working.

Well, I'll just keep going because I've decided that I'm going to keep going with this when other people might look at something and think like, maybe I'll just let this go because I'm wasting time on it.

So I actually feel like some of my books I should have just not continued.

I haven't finished a series yet.

Sorry to everyone listening.

Because when I first started publishing, it was kind of a secret and I never tried to advertise stuff.

So it was only really over the last year that I've been trying to do it more professionally.

But a lot of people I think wouldn't have continued.

Once they decided to write in one genre, they would have just pushed everything else to the side.

But because I'd already started these other genres, because I'd started, I felt like I had to continue and there's no point stopping them, even though they don't sell.

And it's like a waste of my time to still have something on my board that says, you need to write the next book in this series.

And really, I should just not, I should just stop.

And I am getting to that point where I am trying to be a bit more critical and just trying to act more like, put my business head on and think that is such a waste of time and effort and money.

Just knock it on the head.

Just get rid of it.

You have no passion in that anymore.

Move on.

So that's...

That's interesting.

And I was thinking it's sort of going to apply to a lot of people because we come from both very different mindsets, but both really struggle with the external evaluation of what we're doing and how we should change.

And obviously that is really hard.

How can you externally evaluate yourself on something you actually don't know a lot about?

I don't know.

And so that's why obviously it's very tempting and everyone wants to listen to a guru.

Because if someone says like, I made this work, like do exactly this thing and it will work, you'd be like, oh, thank goodness, because I've got no idea.

And I didn't have to judge what's good and what's bad.

I will follow this advertising course, you know, your seven secret steps.

But I think I would have been better served.

I don't know.

I would have been better served, like rather than doing courses and like buying expensive courses, finding or being able to hone my self-evaluation skills.

Yeah, I don't know how feasible it is.

But I'm not sure I know anybody who's taking good at that.

Self-evaluation skills, I think, are, like you say, there's no one's greater in, but I feel like having people to talk to who are in your, like, like colleagues.

So like, since we've started doing this Mastermind and recording this podcast, finding those people to talk to who understand from, like, the deepest of depths level that you can is almost as good as having that for yourself.

So I know that I could ask you anything about my processes or your opinion on anything that I do, and I know that you'll give me a really good, an honest opinion, and that would help me out so much.

So I feel like that's something that I've learned recently.

A setback with writing is often that you're alone and you don't have colleagues like you would do in a normal job that would tell you when you've done something wrong.

So I think that finding a group of either just one person or a group of people, a Facebook group, a writing group locally, and having the external critical thinking or critiquing of your work is like a really, really strong tool to have in your belts when it comes to overcoming that sort of thing.

Yeah, and I think in fact, I said, I'm not sure anyone's a good external evaluator, but actually thinking about people that started around the same time as me who have become more successful quickly, they are people who are better at asking others what they're doing and what's successful.

So I think they're not necessarily better self-evaluators, but they are more willing to reach out for help and just be more upfront about saying, like, I don't know what I'm doing.

What should I do?

Rather than looking at like big, they're not trying to find the big correct thing.

Like, this is the best way to run Facebook ads.

I'm like, what have you tried?

What's worked and what's not worked?

I'm more of a peer to peer relationship.

And I think I need to get better at that.

Yeah, same.

It's easy.

Once you start writing, you just go really insular and you think, well, I'm just in charge of everything.

So your internal world becomes a lot more important, like from like thinking about your ideas to like making all your plans.

And you just get into a habit of just relying on yourself.

But there was, I would say like 99% of any other jobs, you would never just rely on yourself for anything.

And it's just so funny to think like that we do that to ourselves.

Like, oh, I can just, I'll just do it all myself.

You don't have to do it all yourself.

You have to do like the writing yourself, and you have to do like the planning and the running of the business.

But that's like, like there's thousands and thousands of people out there who are more than happy to help and more than happy to give you their opinion and guide the way.

Yeah, I just, we're so silly.

Yeah, I mean, I think we, when we started talking about this podcast, I think it does feel like there's not enough voices from people who are just close to the beginning of their journey.

It feels very much like there are a lot of voices of people who are saying, I'm making six, seven figures a year, here's how I did it, so this is what you should do.

And you think there's maybe not enough of a sense of trying and embracing failure and embracing that not knowing.

So that's definitely a big help in being in a mastermind group that you get to be a bit more vulnerable with a colleague.

And I hope this podcast helped people in the same way of seeing people who are talking through the process of trying to figure out what they should be doing or what they might want to try and fail at and evaluate.

And hopefully we'll get better at the evaluation process through this.

Yeah, definitely, I hope so.

There's one thing that I do want to talk to you about, which you brought up, and I thought this is probably a good topic because I didn't think about this originally, is one of the major self-publishing setbacks is a bad review.

And like you said, people go on to Facebook groups and say, what should I do about this bad review?

And a lot of the times it's just like, just leave it, don't worry about it.

But do you have a way of, have you had bad reviews and how do you get through?

I haven't had terrible, which is not true, bad reviews, people are like, oh, it's very slow, I couldn't get into it.

It's like, that's fine, it's not for you.

I think if I only had bad reviews, that would feel really, really tough.

And then I would be forced to say like, maybe it's actually a little bad book, or I'm really, really missed targeting at people.

And when I did the BookBub for this box set, the box that I read on NoProMarm before, and it had maybe four reviews, and they were all five star, and they were like, three of them were written reviews and very complimentary.

But the first reviews that came in, the ratings reviews came in from the BookBub, with people who obviously didn't get on with it, and they just DNF'd it very early on, and they gave it very low ratings.

And I felt like, oh gosh, have I totally been deluding myself?

And I had just managed to find the small group people that really liked my books, and actually everyone else thinks it's rubbish.

And I think it's useful, I didn't feel particularly bad about that.

I really was able to hold fast on to thinking, that's just the worst case scenario, that's probably not true.

And then straight away, within the next couple of days, great reviews started coming in, and it's that I think 4.2 or 4.3, with 50 plus reviews, 60 plus reviews, something like that.

So I was thinking, okay, it's not bad.

There were just negative reviews coming in at first.

I can imagine it's really, really hard.

If you get a lot of negative reviews first, you've got no other reviews.

So that is a good reminder to make sure that you are finding a warm audience when you first put books out there.

And that rather than rush to get books out to market, you make sure you spend time building some sort of audience who is sort of pre-screened.

I had a prequel that I put out on Book Funnel for my first series.

And in fact, for my second series, I put a prequel out as well.

And I'm going to do a prequel for this series.

I think it is a very good way of giving people a free taster and making sure that your book one isn't their first chance to see, do I like this or not?

Because then that's the review they're going to put on Amazon of this is rubbish, this series is awful, it's very slow.

So yeah, I would say I think I'm able to respond for interviews because I have been somewhat strategic in my way of gathering them.

Another thing I would say is I have had next reviews that were positive for the series.

So someone wrote a review about the two main characters in my book, they're women around my age, they're approaching 40 and one's a bit over 40, but they are female best friends.

And I certainly with my female best friends talk like a teenager.

Like I'm my silliest, most childish self and we make fun of each other and we're not professional grownups.

And that's how the characters in my book talk.

They're sarcastic and silly and they get to be that with each other.

That's the fun thing about the book.

You see them both be professional elsewhere.

And someone in one of the reviews critiqued and said like, oh, it's very unbelievable, these grownups, they're women, they're 42, they're teenagers, it's ridiculous.

And what we talk about is like cake and tea or something.

And they're like, perfect.

If someone reads that review, and they think this book is not for me, it's not for them.

Like, there's no way in which you might talk to the audience.

That is a great way of screening out people who would not give it good reviews.

And people who do read that and think, growing up just like having fun together and talking about tea and cake?

Yes, please.

Yes, that is a great review.

So I think try and find a positive.

Try and set yourself up to successful reviews.

I do think, because I'm looking at doing Netgalley reviews to get some arcs for my next series.

And that definitely feels a bit scary, because I've definitely heard negative things about that, about people on there just giving very low stars.

And they've not even, like, it's not my genre.

And I hated it.

It's like they're critiquing for the time.

They take it back.

Yeah, they're so cutthroat.

Yeah, but if it's not your genre, I didn't need you to read it.

And like, don't critique it for like, it's nothing like a horror story.

It's like, I know.

That's because it's not.

And I think it's a good exercise in just like, not caring, like really being able to separate from it.

And definitely after I published a book, I have very poor memory.

So I actually don't know what happens in my books.

I have to reread them if I want to go and refer something later.

So that kind of helps me distance myself.

So someone writes a bad review, they'll be like, oh, I felt like I could get the killer right away.

And it's like, I don't remember the killer, it's when I wrote it.

How about you?

Any other review experiences?

I haven't got a lot of reviews, and that's something I'm really building up to.

Because like I say, like I never really took this seriously and was too scared to chase reviews or to really like put myself out there that much.

But one of...

I had a friend who got the arc of one of my books and she left a review that was a three star, which isn't a bad review.

And I know it's not a bad review, but when I read the review...

It's a bad review for a friend, I would say.

When I read the review, I was like...

I was kind of heartbroken a bit that she hadn't just put that up to a four star, and that had just been a bit nicer.

But she obviously just thought, well, an honest review is better than nothing.

And to be fair, it's fine, but it really...

As somebody with rejection sensitivity, which is just like the stupidest thing to have when you're putting books out there.

When it's a stranger...

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, if it's a stranger leaving a review, I really don't care, but I think it's because it was somebody I knew and I took that a lot more personally than I would take anything else.

And it did make me actually sit down and think to myself, should I even be writing books?

Like, was it that bad?

Which is so stupid, because I've left three star reviews for books that I liked, but just wouldn't read again, and that's fine.

Oh, it's just like not in the drama that you're enjoying.

You thought like, actually, I couldn't get into it.

And it's like, you know, it might be that the book is war and peace, and it's like, a bit long for me.

It's like, yeah, it's quite a long book.

Yes.

So that's like the thing that I wanted to kind of move on to.

So even though like I had a stupid reaction, I was like, oh, I'm never going to write again, like, which is ridiculous, because if I didn't write things down.

It's a really human reaction to feel bad when someone says bad things about you.

Yeah.

But it wasn't even a bad, it wasn't that bad a thing.

It wasn't really a bad review.

It was just a, not my favorite book she's written.

I preferred another one that she wrote.

So it was like, it was nothing.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was a bit of cross promotion in there as well.

Yeah, it was just like a very, but like very dramatic.

And I know like when looking back, I'm like, oh, it's such, I can feel it.

It's like such a stupidly dramatic feeling that I get sometimes when particular things happen.

So I know that that's like I have like particular triggers that make me feel like, even though like 99.9% of the time, I'm not bothered by loads of things.

There is like one specific thing that hits me so hard that it makes me think, stop everything, crawl under a rock, and never let anybody see you ever again.

And that was one of those moments.

But over the last, I would say like the last week or so, I've been seeing a lot of people on Instagram and TikTok saying, you know, here are my hot takes on books that everyone else loved.

And basically showing like, really popular books that they didn't like and saying why they didn't like them.

And I know a lot of people look at those as in like bad tastes, like, so what, keep the opinion to yourself.

But it's like that age old thing, isn't it, of people hating books that you loved so much.

And I think, you know, if somebody hates this book that I gave five stars, it's just that's like, and it's like another traditionally published book that's had loads of editors, it's been looked over a million times, they have like this great cover design, they have like an acknowledgement section that's like four pages long, all these people that were involved, and this person still gave it one star and I gave it five stars.

Then, you know, life's not that serious, is it?

It's just, it's just as what it is.

I think the better.

Yeah, yeah, more reviews the better, and just hope that they even out to like, not being absolute trash.

There was the thing about people, somebody who was given Stonehenge one star review because they thought it would be bigger, and if that's not...

I think that's probably true, I think that's accurate.

I think it looks bigger in pictures.

Yeah, it does look bigger in pictures.

Sort of medium sized rocks.

Yeah, I think that is something that I try and remind myself of.

When you're feeling like you're writing absolute trash, or you think things aren't going to get good reviews, just think about the fact that somebody gave Stonehenge one star.

We also think, and we talked a bit about this in other conversations that we've had off the podcast recently, I think sometimes it comes down to you feeling like you can stand by it.

So you should be able to have a book, but you should, why do you think you should today?

I think the ideal situation is if you have a book where either 100 people said it was wrong, and it was a bad book, and they were like, this is the worst book I've ever written, you could still say, this is exactly what I wanted to write, and this is exactly what I meant.

I think it would be great to get to that stage to feel that assured about your own work.

And obviously, that's very hard for a writer.

I don't necessarily mean in terms of quality that you think I'm the best writer ever.

But as in, I think you feel like you're authentic.

I think that really stings when you think, oh, I've written a book to market, I worked really hard on this, and people are saying it's too slow or too fast, or the characters don't feel right.

It's like, but I did it for you.

And I think that can feel especially painful.

So I think I want to feel more confident in my own books.

And in fact, I have made a change following a review, and it was something I agreed with someone who is a, like one of my first readers who I sort of saw around a lot.

Like she would like a lot of posts, she would comment a lot of Instagram posts, she would reply to my emails, and she would like post about my books.

So someone that I know likes it, in fact, we've chatted a little bit online.

So we had some similar experiences in terms of like traveling and where we've lived.

So she's an absolutely lovely person.

And she left a three-star review on one of her books, and I was like, oh, I thought you really liked my books.

And the three-star review was for a book that's fine not to like actually, and it was a book that I can see why she didn't like it.

And I was like, oh, that's actually fine, but I felt a bit like her about it because she seemed like such a fan.

But she also left another review on one of the books, I think maybe a four-star, where she said like, oh, it just uses too many italics.

It's just full of italics, the story.

And I was like, hmm, I don't think it is.

I looked back and I was like, yeah, absolutely way too many italics.

Why have I used too many italics?

It's because I was underconfident in thinking like the emphasis has come through what I meant to say.

And actually having had someone else objective say that, I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I could just go take that out.

And it was, I have done.

So I think as long as you can stand by your book or that you can see a reason why someone's made the comment, I think only those reviews should affect you.

Reviews where you think, yeah, I can see why you thought that.

And I'm still correct.

Or yes, I can see why you thought that.

And actually you are correct.

I'll go and change it.

I don't really want to care about reviews where people say, yeah, they just talk like teenagers because they do.

And that was on purpose.

I did that and people like it.

It's also my favorite thing about it.

It's like they are kind of silly friends.

So yeah, I think it's a good thing about reviews.

That's the thing I think everything I feel good about in my attitude to slum pushing is I don't feel particularly bothered by or emotionally affected by the opinions of others, except when I got that slew of quick negative reviews.

I'm going to say slew, I mean handful.

Handful of DNF, but it's obviously low-stard it.

Of the box set that was in Bookbub.

I should not have been surprised.

I will be more prepared next time.

Should again.

I was surprised.

And that was just a thing that happened to me.

Next time you get a Bookbub, you'll know what to expect and you can act accordingly.

What to do today.

Right.

Well, I think that kind of wraps up our little self-publishing setbacks.

For next week's topic, we are taking a break from this series of real life versus writing.

And we're going to be coming out with an episode on what I would do differently if I was starting out now.

So do you have any thoughts on this right now?

And I think it's a great topic to do right after this one, because I think it's made me very reflective on how I think about my process and how I judge it and how I evaluate it.

So I do have lots of thoughts.

And I think I've got so many, I'm not going to disclose them, because I think I've got an episode worth of.

I'm going to jump straight in and get started to write my episode.

Okay, fair enough.

Yeah, same.

I think I have a lot of thoughts on this and also feel like I'm scared that I don't have enough thoughts on this, which is just me all over.

Do I have thoughts or are these thoughts all just going to disappear and I'm just going to completely forget what it all means?

We will find out.

I will be evaluating the process.

We'll see.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you very much for listening and we shall see you next week.