S01E42:When We Uncover Our Obstacles

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda deep dive into how contingency plans accidentally uncovered some mindset blocks that need to be dealt with!

Next week, Sam and Matilda will be starting a new series called 'Putting our money where our mouth is', and the first episode will be about trusting the process... especially when it comes to ads!

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/3QHym3m

Most recent book: Heart of the Wolf (Moons & Magic Book 2) https://amzn.eu/d/4HecH3a

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:

Nothing this week - but check out previous episodes for helpful links. 

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 ads 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 Samantha 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 contingency planning.

Before that, what are your wins and whinges of the week?

This week I actually do have whinges, but I'm going to start with wins.

I've been planning the next book that I'm writing in November, and that's been going quite nicely.

That's a nice win to feel like I know my process, and I know following the process is working, and I'm feeling very comfortable in that.

I also attended a book fair this weekend, selling second hand children's books.

It was a little bit crazy.

Not crazy in a bad way, just in a, it was just a book fair in general.

So loads of people had donated books.

And then I also had my own little stall of second hand children's books.

And it was for like local scouts group.

I don't even know.

Like I honestly, I don't really even know the full story.

I was just invited and I showed up.

But it was really fun and really like reminded me of how much I like to be like a human being outside, talking to people and like talking about books and like specifically talking to kids about books.

Because I like, I love children's books and like, and young adults.

So I had some great interactions with, even though I myself do not want children, and generally don't like many children, I do like talking to them about things that I like.

So, it's very enjoyable and yeah, just nice to get out.

But I also kind of used up all of my human beingness.

And today I have been just so zonked, just so, so tired and emotionally, mentally, spiritually, metaphysically, universally drained from all of this stuff.

And it kind of is compounded by the fact that last week, my car broke down and I've had to get it all fixed.

And I'm currently just doing public transport whilst I wait to have things done.

So a real, like, just a real balanced week of good and bad.

But that's life.

And I think that it's a good week for us to be talking about contingency planning because of everything that's happened.

But before we do that, you tell me your whims and whims.

Well, before we do that, I'm going to apologize.

My cat and I are having a really weird fight in the background.

So if you can hear, they're just, they're very into it and they've been quite vocal.

So if you hear some moaning, it's not me.

It might be.

I have had a whinge.

I'm going to have a whinge week.

I've had a lot of whims and whinges this week.

So I also start with my whims.

But it's a really nice weekend.

Busy, but like really nice.

I did lots of things.

And I felt like I had achieved lots of things.

And I still got plenty of writing done.

So I did really good stuff.

Like I went to a world disco with some friends, and I did like pot painting.

Like, you know, you can paint pre-made pots with my family.

That was lovely.

And we had some nice like food and just lots of nice little things.

So that's been really lovely.

And my sort of winch is that I go back to book one in my new series and I want to just polish up some kind of loose ends, tighten some loose ends, add the last couple of chapters before sending it off to some friends who are reading it from me.

And as with every single other book I've written, which I don't know why I'm surprised by every time, there are whole chapters that I know I need to like delete and rewrite.

And when I write first draft, I write knowing this, I'm like, don't worry about it.

Don't worry about, you know, don't stress about it.

First draft, just get it down, easy breezy, just to get myself through it.

And then when it comes to edit, I am so annoyed at my past self.

Oh, I believe the lie, I believe like, oh, it was easy, it came out great.

It's like gonna be a winner.

And then I sit down like, oh, why is there so many rubbish chapters here?

So I'm surprised every single time.

And it annoys me that I'm surprised by it because the second I go to the surprise price, I'm like, no, you knew this was gonna happen.

I don't know why I let myself be fooled.

So a little bit on this week.

I still got a couple of days before I want to send off people.

I'm going to wrap up the middle section needs a bit of rewriting.

It needs to be perfect to send off to people because I'm still going to do a whole edit, but I want to remove stuff that I know is already problematic.

So that's a couple of days.

It has been nice to think about the book, but it's also left me feeling a bit existential.

And I want this book to be fantastic.

It's a new series.

I'm doing a big launch.

I'm really planning a great list of things for it.

And I look at it, I was like, oh, this whole middle section doesn't belong in the book.

I have to cut this whole bar out.

The ending is a little bit confusing.

And that feels like hard to plan for a really great book when all you've got in front of you is a kind of pretty mediocre book.

So a very existential week this week, which I think is going to bleed into the episode.

Even though last week we said it's going to be a non-extential episode because it's just a practical topic.

I'm feeling very existential.

I have already tried to have a therapy session before we started recording this and I had to stop because I thought, I need to talk about this.

I need to record this because then I can remember.

So this week, yes, we're talking about contingency planning.

So what does that mean for you in terms of writing?

So I think there's another one like last week.

And in fact, I think like our best episodes, I think we haven't had episodes like this for a while, since we very first started.

This is an episode where you think you have one problem.

And in fact, you have a completely different problem.

And so, contingency planning, the initial idea came up when I spoke to a couple of different friends recently, who they had something in their business that wasn't going as they planned.

And, you know, that's what happens to businesses.

But they had something in their business that wasn't as planned.

And they did what I always do in that situation, where they sort of panicked a bit.

And they're like, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's this.

I'll try to change all three things at once.

And I think we talked last week a bit about saying, I come off making decisions based on feelings at this experimental stage.

And part of professionalizing is I want to get to making decisions based on strategy.

So, contingency planning, the original idea was that we were wanting to make sure we're thinking about what could go wrong in your business and how would you prepare for that.

And I put together a list of things and it is useful to kind of think about that.

But the existential part of it that I'm going to go straight into, because I think it is the core to kind of talk about this topic is in my real life, like whatever I'm doing for decades, I have that really comfortable with risk.

Like I love to do something that I know is risky, because I will enjoy it.

And I feel entirely confident I can fix any problems I get myself into.

And I was talking to a friend recently who's a really, a person who worries more than me about things, is just more anxious about day to day things.

And we were trying to pin down, and you're like, oh, why do I, Matilda, feel like that?

And it is because I have had tons of experience of doing really risky things, and I'm always fine.

And it can be risky in terms of life.

Like I've quit jobs and no other jobs to go to.

In like the financial crisis, I quit a job without a job to go to because I'm like, I just don't want to do it, and I'm going to find something better.

And I did.

I have also like jumped down a cliff, knowing that the only way back was that I would have to just keep going wherever keep going was, I was going around an island.

And then I reached the end of the track and had to swim through the water to a boat.

But the boat took me back again.

It was fine.

Nothing is insurmountable.

In my real life, I genuinely believe there is nothing, like no problem, I can't miss out on.

I sort of think if I were like, you know, we were talking about this bizarrely, I had a conversation with people about someone.

This is very tangential.

But I was talking with someone who said their biggest fear was being wrongfully arrested and wrongly arrested and being sent to prison.

And I was like, I think that'd be fine.

I think I would win a prison.

I think I'd run the prison.

Not necessarily, I go into life, I go to all my experience in real life with that feeling.

I do not have that feeling in publishing.

And I think one of the reasons or the main reason is that in my real life, I have spent decades building this muscle of taking a bit of a risk and practicing how to get myself out of it.

Taking a bigger risk and getting myself out of it.

And like expanding, expanding.

In self publishing, I just, A, I haven't had enough practice of taking risks and B, I feel like I don't have enough tools to get myself out of it.

And that is what, that is where I've come around to in contingency planning.

I know this is, we've got onto the meat of the topic really quickly, there's no spoilers here.

This is what I think, when I've come around to thinking about contingency planning, I think of my real issue that I need to figure out how to get more comfortable with risk.

And I don't think, I think I was wrong to originally decide that the way to get around that was to make myself some lists of like, here's what you do in a problem.

I need to figure out a way to replicate what I've had in my real life and take risks and have them succeed.

And I just don't know really how to get there.

I definitely do want to do some actual contingency planning because it is useful.

Like, what do I do if I get kicked off KDP?

I don't want to be in a panic and fluster.

I want to have a list of what to do.

But anyway, so that is like a very quick download of my entire existential crisis this week.

Does any of that kind of ring true for you?

It's, yeah, okay.

So let's pile on my existential crisis.

Which I've just come to like realize.

Similarly, I don't really, I have such a dual, and I've said this before, it's because I'm a Gemini.

I have such a dual personality when it comes to risk and life.

So everyone that knows me thinks that I am the most relaxed, non-stressed person that I could be.

Like my boss always says it, like he's like, whenever we're talking about getting stressed, and he's like, you know, we just need to be more like Sam, Sam doesn't stress about anything.

And I'm like, yeah, like that's true.

I...

Easy breezy cover girl.

You are like the chillest person I know.

I am and I have thought that that exact phrase at least three times today, but myself, like so weird.

You said it before and I'm like, I have heard that sentence a lot today.

Easy, breezy, beautiful cover girl.

That is me.

But I've kind of come to realize that I'm kind of easy breezy when the stakes aren't too high and I'm in a place of comfort already.

So if something goes wrong at home, it doesn't really bother me because I'm like, I can fix anything.

Something goes wrong at work.

I literally don't care.

It's like, what's the worst thing that could happen at work?

It's nothing to do with me.

It's like, it's not my business.

I'm not that bothered about it.

And even in my last job where we were dealing with a lot of, I was dealing with like paying people money and also taking money off people.

Like I once paid somebody over 50 grand that they weren't supposed to have.

And I did not stress about it.

And you know, the person who I gave the money to could tell that I wasn't stressed.

So they weren't stressed.

And equally, I took 30 grand from somebody's bank account and it wasn't supposed to come from their bank account.

And I think because I wasn't stressed, he too was not stressed.

So I had some very-

Me and some sort of Nigerian-

I know.

Yeah.

Yes, I was sending people e-mails when you're long lost with your cousin and I need help.

No, it's just like things that would happen, like computer glitches and stuff.

And in my old job and in my current job, I'm the person people go to when something goes wrong, they're like, oh, Sam, I'm sure Sam can figure out how to fix it.

And that is me in a nutshell.

I do think I have a very good quality of not panicking and honestly thinking I can fix anything that goes wrong.

I honestly, like I have like real, really put myself in a high position.

I'm like, oh yeah, I think I could do anything.

And I do.

I think I could land it.

I think I could land it, even though I've done a flight simulator before, I can not land planes, but I can give it a good try.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how much practice I could not, but I'd still try.

But the thing is, I don't have that same.

I just read that.

Yeah.

I don't have the same easy breathing as when I'm outside of my comfort zone.

So when my car broke down, and I've been driving for 20 years, I've never broken down, which in itself is insane.

I'm very lucky.

And this time I didn't really break down, my battery was just flat.

So it wasn't a real breakdown, but I still had to call somebody to come out.

Are you capable of charging a battery, right?

Your battery's broken.

Yeah, it was, no, it was jumpstarted.

The guy did jumpstart it, but for some reason, when I tried to jumpstart it, it didn't work and my cables melted.

Let's not talk about it.

Very stressful evening.

But also I was only in a car park, five minutes from my house, so it wasn't that bad.

It was the softest breakdown you could ever, ever have.

I was in Tesco's car park and I was next to Marks and Spencers.

If push came to shove, just go and chill out Marks and Spencers.

But because I had never experienced it, I never had to call anyone before, I was stressing out of my, I was not in a good place.

I was like, I don't want anyone to be around me.

I'm going to probably explode.

And then when it was fixed, I was like, oh, fabulous.

I dealt with that well, didn't I?

And I didn't.

So to bring this back around to like contingency planning, the knock on effect that that had, that my car breaking down had, is that for the last few days since it happened, I have just not felt like writing or working.

I've really just felt at a complete loss.

I lost my, just like my usual routines.

And I was like, oh, I'm so tired from everything that I've been doing recently.

So I fell out of my habits.

And that's fine, because I know I can get back into it.

But I have a fear of like unknown, the unknown, which I didn't realize I had.

I thought that was fine.

I thought I was really good at just like bouncing back and things.

But it's just because I haven't put myself into more unknown situations where random things could happen.

So like you, I think that I'm, yeah, I, I don't know.

I don't know what to do because I haven't taken enough risks in the area where I need to.

I think that that's a major thing.

Because like we all just stay within our comfort zone.

It just feels like we had like a sad epiphany sound.

Because if we both had an epiphany of like, here's a thing.

Here's a thing.

We can't fix it right now.

Epiphany.

Yeah, epiphany.

Okay, let's just keep talking about it then.

So let's keep working through it.

So I think we, I think it's definitely useful to have kind of, or at least it feels useful to me to have pinned down what is the real problem.

And because I have really sort of been like chafing against something for a while that I feel frustrated.

I don't really know why.

And I think part of it is that I can't do anything about it.

I am a doer, like there is no unknown situation that I think that I couldn't handle.

I have done a lot of like traveling and a lot of difficult things and I have had a lot of really weird jobs.

And I just think I'm fine.

Like I'll figure it out in my real life.

And yet, and because always there's something you can do.

I, you know, I've got a lot of strings.

What's they call like a lot of strings to your bow?

Which makes no sense.

Why would you have more than one string to your bow?

Anyway, I've just got a lot of strings I can pull on, like a lot of things I can do.

So I feel like I am personable.

I can talk to someone and get help from them.

Which again, I think I, undervalued, we talked about this I think last week.

I could just be like, I love just chatting to a stranger and I can get them to help me out.

And I can think when I have a problem.

I have people I can call on to help me from my life.

There's a lot of different things that I feel confident I can rely on.

I can't even mention this podcast recently, but I've got a friend who can talk about life planning and she wants to make a big risk in life and she just can't.

And she's really stuck in making a big change in life because every thing that's suggested, she can make an obstacle in it.

And kind of drilling it all down, the real issue she has is that she's got no fallback plan.

Like there's no security and she literally has no fallback plan.

There's nothing she could do.

So there are a lot of steps that I would take in her position that would put you in a risky position, but I know I've got a fallback plan.

Like if I, you know, quit my job to write, and I just made and someone stole all my money, you ran your scam and you transferred all my money out of my account.

I had no money and I lost my house.

I could live with my parents.

I would not enjoy making that like that move.

I love my parents and we got on really well, but I would not like that to be the course of my life.

But I could, so that is a risk I'd be happy to take in terms of taking a big swing with my choices.

But I just, I just feel like I don't have any like things to pull or things like any dials to turn that I feel like in control of in terms of self-publishing.

And that, that to me personally feels frustrating, because that's something I rely on to feel confident, is that I know I can do things.

And it feels, and part of that is just like, I'm being frustrated by the stones of the process.

Like I need to get better advertising so that one of my dials I can turn is advertising.

And I need to have more books so that one of the dials I can turn is having different entry points to my series.

And that just takes time.

But also, it's a thing that specifically frustrates me.

As in, not just only me, but as in, it is a thing that frustrates me disproportionately to how big of a problem it actually is.

And I think it's useful to kind of have become aware of that.

And just think, and like just to remind myself that I am being frustrated by things because I'm relying on a mindset from a different part of my life.

From like, you know, traveling around the world part of my life.

And I'm trying to apply those skills to self-publishing.

And I do not have those skills in self-publishing.

And I need to find either ways to bring those skills into my publishing life, or to just develop different skills and find another way to feel confident.

And like I can take risks because currently I don't, and that feels incredibly uncomfortable to me because that is how I live.

It's funny because I think both you and I, the risks that we've taken in our personal lives, because I've been the same, I've traveled, I've gotten into cars with people I didn't know.

And I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I've gone to-

I've never died, and now I just feel invincible because I've done loads of stupid stuff and I've never died.

Yeah, I've done silly things.

I've never put myself in like immediate danger, but enough danger where looking back I'm like, I don't think I should have done those things.

You should be dead.

Yeah, but those like you kind of just go through life having those things happen.

But you also kind of we did put ourselves in those in those situations to experience life.

What are the risks in publishing that we need to make a list of that we can put ourselves in on purpose?

Maybe it's like, I don't want, I don't want to have things happen or go wrong.

Say like, I don't want to lose my KDP account and have to learn there and then how to fix it.

It's fine.

Yeah.

But it's interesting, because we came up this topic in terms of like, let's make a list of things to pre-prepare for worry that will keep us safe.

Yeah.

Even though the way that we both feel safe is in fact, not doing that in our real life.

So I was talking to someone recently, that friend of mine who was saying worries a lot compared to me.

And I was saying that actually what I prefer to do is all the time that he spends worrying, I just don't spend worrying, and I can use that time fixing the things that go wrong.

So say he worries about 20 things, I worry about none of them and maybe one of those things out of 20 goes wrong.

I could spend that time fixing things that go wrong.

I think, I don't know whether contingency planning is the thing that's going to make me feel safer, because that's not how I feel safe in my real life.

I feel safe by knowing my own strength.

Yeah, by flexing muscles or working on the muscles.

Yeah, but maybe that's not do-able in self-adversing.

So maybe I'm trying to incorrectly, like trying to grow muscle I can't grow.

I think that's it, because I don't think we'll be able to grow them until the things happen.

And so it's like, you can't, I struggle to imagine things going wrong.

I struggle to imagine the challenges that I might come up against, like, other than what I'm already coming up against in self-publishing.

That's like a thing in itself.

I think I will feel defeated by them, right, in a way that I just don't experience.

And I think it feels bigger to me.

I think the defeat feels bigger to me than, than I have really let myself recognize, because I just don't experience that defeat feeling in the rest of my life.

Yeah, I have pushed it away.

And we talked last week about saying we sort of maybe intentionally stayed small as a way to not confront potential problems.

And I do think there's definitely something of that that applies to this, in that if you don't make yourself face risks, you never have to confront the fact that you are in quite a weak position.

That I don't have dials I can turn.

And because I don't want to be in a situation where I rely on being able to fix a problem and I don't have a fix, that would feel awful for me, because that's not something that I...

That's a fundamental core part of my personality, that I believe I can fix problems.

I think I don't do things in the publishing, because I don't want to confront the fact that I don't have that power right now.

And I often find this when I speak to people that I know who are not problem solvers, who are kind of sit in situations where they feel a bit more fretful or they feel uncomfortable.

I find it sometimes hard to talk to them, because I'm like, well, just just fix it.

Just get on it.

And maybe that's why I feel like I am maybe not progressing in some publishing in some ways, is because I don't want to have to look at myself as the person who isn't fixing stuff and who isn't me like, yeah, just fix it.

And I don't want to see that version of myself.

So I do.

Yeah, I'm not stretching myself.

You're harboring a fretful person under your cool exterior.

Yeah, I know.

I know it's like just like a small, tiny version of yourself hiding in a corner, like, I don't know what to do.

Yeah, I hate that part of myself because it doesn't feel nice.

It doesn't feel nice to have a part of you that goes completely against the rest of you.

Like, it really is like being a war with yourself because, yeah, I just I don't like the idea of not knowing.

I hate feeling stupid.

And that's like, that's like a feeling that I've battled my entire life.

I hate feeling stupid.

Like, like, I've gone above and beyond to make myself useful to everybody and everything in my life.

Like, why can't I be useful for myself?

Yeah.

So what is the fix, right?

So I, if this were a problem in real life, I think it's just that I don't know.

I don't have any solutions.

But I think I'm also almost like catastrophizing in that I, I'm just I'm looking at this like void of worry.

And it's not even real worry, right?

I'm just looking at a void of like lack of solutions.

And so I'm almost not looking at it.

It might be helpful for me, I think, to pin down like places where I know I have maybe not the things I should have done because I wanted to avoid confronting the fact that I don't have solutions.

So one thing I definitely haven't done, and I can make excuses and explain away things as much as I want to, but I haven't advertised enough.

And you know, people say like, Oh, don't advertise if you've got three books.

So I was like, Oh, great.

I won't advertise if I've got three books.

And then I had four books and then five books and then six books.

And then it was like, Oh, I won't advertise until I've changed my covers.

Because actually the covers aren't market to market.

So I'll do that.

But then it's like, Oh, but that's going to cost a lot of money to change those covers.

And then it was like a pandemic.

And, you know, there's always something.

There is always something.

And, yeah, and then because if advertising, like I'm running out on Amazon and just going nowhere.

And it's like, I don't know.

Now what?

Do I just turn it off?

You know, it's like another, that I don't know how to do anything to improve it.

Like it's an Amazon ad.

There's minimal things you can change about it.

And it's an auto ad.

So it's just like, it's on a book that Amazon has plenty of data on.

They should know who to sell it to.

They have sold the book themselves.

I've seen the deal kind of pushes on it.

And yet the ads do nothing.

So I, so what?

Like that, that I hate that feeling.

I think I'm really, I that's that's the feeling to overcome is that I am being, is that I feel I have such a strong like impulse to turn it off or just to not look at it, because I feel like I don't have any solutions.

Yeah.

And I'm so used to having like fast, confident solutions that this feels like such a place of discomfort for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think this is, you can pin down yourself that you think you're, oh yeah, sorry.

I think it's similar to what you've just said is, but I feel like a huge part of this, of not knowing what to do and stuff is because as indie authors, we are expected to be experts at everything.

But really, like we're only experts at writing.

And I don't want to be a marketing expert.

Well, not even that, right?

You're-

I know.

Yeah.

Like I'm just a monkey at a computer.

And I don't want to have to get great.

I don't want to have to be like a brilliant marketer to sell books in the same way that I don't want to be a digital designer and do all my own covers.

And I don't want to be an editor and edit my or anyone else's books.

So the thing with marketing and doing ads and things is that, would you feel confident and comfortable designing your own covers?

Probably not.

You won't want to do it.

So why do we have to, why would you marketing ourselves?

I mean, this is a money thing, like spending to get somebody else to do it.

But why hold ourselves so accountable for something that we could ask somebody else to do?

We could do it, right?

Yeah.

That again, feels uncomfortable.

It's like, why am I not paying someone to do it?

And part of that is like what we talked about last week, is I just don't have enough.

I don't feel confident in the books.

And then why not?

And that's again, that's a position, that's me not making decision because I hate being in a place of discomfort and a place of not knowing.

And I think if I, it's too, I can't look at my books passionately and say, this is an eight out of ten.

It can on a like quality or saleability scale, like stand next to these three comp authors, so I should put the money and they do like, there's no way to view it that way.

So, so I am, it is just uncomfortable.

So I think that's, that's kind of, it's useful for me to kind of pin down.

There's nothing here that I'm saying I need to change in terms of like craft or marketing or literal things to do.

It's that I am, it's a mindset thing.

I am letting myself not confront things that that in my business make me feel uncomfortable, because I'm so used to feeling confident in the rest of my life.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think.

I know we have strayed so far from the topic today.

I know.

But no, it is related, because I think, I think, yeah, I think contingency is, it is a mindset because when you are knocked off your axis and you don't feel confident in what you're doing, the knock-on effect of that can be like, you stop writing or you get writer's block or you just take a break that just takes you out of whatever plans you've got.

And that, it can just be so demotivating to have a week or whatever, even like a few days of feeling like a decision that you've made has paralyzed you or a lack of being able to make a decision is paralyzing.

That's, that's really the, that's it.

Like, that's the worst for me.

It's like, I don't want to be paralyzed by a fear of something.

And I do feel like that's what happens to me is like, I just kind of freeze.

I can carry on like treading water and stuff and doing stuff.

But like, we both said this before, we feel like we're on like the, the brink of something, but we can't quite get over.

We can't quite make it over.

And yeah, like that's, that's a frustrating place to be.

Because I feel like we've done so well this year.

But we just haven't tipped the scale enough.

Yeah.

And I think maybe what's interesting in like the rest of things where we feel confident, is like I, I know that I said like I'm good at talking, asking people for help and, you know, if it's strangers, ideally.

But I also have people I could fall back on if I needed to.

But I feel like the way that I feel strong is that I feel like I personally can fix my own problems.

I was just thinking that today about myself.

Like you do it yourself.

I feel really proud of it, it isn't necessarily a great thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My dad said to me.

It makes me feel.

Yeah.

No, I agree.

I love looking after myself.

And I was, I, because I've been, I got the train to work today because my car is currently just sitting on my drive.

And one of my colleagues said, I can drive you home if you want.

And I just instantly said, no.

No, thanks.

No.

It's okay.

I was like, I've only bought a train ticket.

It's fine.

Even though I was so tired, I thought, I can't be bothered walking home.

But then I did walk home because I didn't want to accept a lift off somebody.

And my dad has said to me, he texts, because my dad's so good, this is where I get my can do attitude, which I usually have, is because my dad is very much the sort of person that's like, there's no problem that we can't fix.

There's nothing we can't handle.

If you ever have a problem, just give me a shout.

And he has been texting me saying, do you want me to drive to the shops?

Do you want me to drive you to and from work?

And I'm just like, no.

And I think that they find it really frustrating.

Exactly where I'm going.

I cannot, yeah.

Yeah.

I think I'm also frustrated.

I hate it.

And I think that I do find, I always think that that is a strength, but I do think it's a little bit of a weakness.

It's not accepting the help that is offered to you.

Yeah.

I think that's true.

And I think there's just too much to do in self-publishing to...

I think this attitude is detrimental in a way that I haven't really um, like, accommodated or like, determinedly fought against.

Um, and I think it's not the right attitude.

It's interesting, we were talking today in the Cozy Mystery Clubhouse that I'm in.

Um, we were talking about kind of like a wish I'd known then episode or meeting.

And it's just a it's a conference call for a bunch of cozy writers and people talking about what's the thing that they wish they had read when they started.

And a lot of the conversation was all about I wish I'd found a community earlier.

Um, and I wish I'd found other people.

And I do have other writer friends, but I really struggle to to ask for help to not to talk about anything in which I don't feel like I have expertise, because that's part of my like can to can do feeling and I want to feel competent and confident.

And I don't know how to explore areas in which I am absolutely like god awful rubbish.

I just don't want to I don't want to like approach me for myself.

And that is absolutely holding me back.

And I don't know how to go about things a different way, because it's so ingrained.

Like that's the way that I deal with things.

It's a way that I think is not healthy and definitely isn't serving me now.

Yeah.

Um, I'm not sure I'm also going to come to an answer within like a, I'm not going to find this, which is like a sub 1R podcast.

This is such a therapy episode.

But I think, I think it's something for us to keep talking about.

And we've got another series coming up that I think we will hopefully be, we are determined to try and tackle kind of something like this and to really push ourselves outside our comfort zones.

Um, but I think it is interesting to have talked about this today and to have talked about I think that when we were approached on a topic straight on, we thought we were solving a certain problem and it sounds like a problem.

Surprise!

It's much bigger and is within ourselves the entire time.

But on the intro topic of condensive planning, I do think there are some things that it is useful to have a plan in place for.

And it has been useful this week, I made myself a list of things that I want to make.

I don't, I didn't write the actual plans for them because actually I don't want to do that.

What I want to do is have a list of things that I will keep in mind that I know are bad situations that might happen.

And I work really well by having a kind of process in the back of my head, just mulling stuff over that I'm not sitting down and really just brushing out.

I prefer to put things in my head and then mull over them.

So it was useful for me to make this list of what are the things I would like to at some point have contingency plans for?

And I've just made myself a note on my phone of a list of things.

And as like ideas rise to the surface of my brain, I will put those in that list.

And I will kind of slowly over time build up this list of contingency planning in a way that feels comfortable to me.

So it has been useful.

I thought as we've hudrinked people into listening to our therapy session, we could read out our list of things that we wanted to have contingency plans for.

So I've got mine.

I don't think it's exhaustive, but it was useful to start thinking about it.

And it was kind of also useful to see how things fell into categories.

So I've sort of got them in order, but only vaguely.

And then some of them I just thought of at the end and added them in.

So my first thing was that I've got a book launch coming up.

If my book doesn't go as I expected, I want to have, I do think I want to have contingency plans for that and think about like, how am I not going to just spiral and take that personally?

And like, what can I can I do again?

I just don't have any leavers to pull.

I need some leavers to pull.

But anyway, so book launch is going to get expected, read through is low, Amazon message is saying, request copyright information or you lose your KDP account.

If I were a full-time author and I lost my income, like that I need to survive, what would I have in place for that?

Newsletter effectiveness drops off, technical issues in your newsletter website, a particular market drops off, like say a portion of your income was coming from the UK market and that just suddenly stops converting ill health life emergency, which I think they're pretty likely to happen to all of us at one point.

And in my current situation, if I lost my day job, my cover designer could disappear mid-series or there's piracy.

So there's a list there that I've started and I kind of want to just slowly add to that list and then slowly add solutions to it.

But as I was making that list, that's when I had the realisation that actually having a list of solutions isn't what I need.

What I need is to feel, well, I don't know, to feel a different way.

And I'm not necessarily sure what it's like bringing the feeling of my real life into my writing life or change how I feel about my writing life.

I don't know.

But that was my list so far.

Did you also have a list of contingency plan related topics?

Yes, I have got a very short list.

I know.

I'm going to start with what I mentioned last week, which is kind of like more of a practical contingency, which is making sure I have regular backups of my computer and all of my documents.

And making sure I've got like passwords and I know how to get into all my accounts.

Because that's something that really stresses me out is I have lost things on computers before and I have not been able to get into emails before.

And like I just have my passwords saved in the back of my head.

Like, oh, which number does this one end with?

I need to get a handle on that because that really stresses me out.

And I've got things like alternate income.

So, yeah, like when I'm having low months, where can I pull money from?

I really want to look into getting a credit card for my business because I want to know that I have a backup that's not just my savings.

And then things like backup editors, backup cover designers, backup alpha or beta readers.

Just things like, yeah, if you want, if you think that you're going to have a book published, then your cover designer like drops off the face of the planet, or your editor can't fit you in, or your formatter can't fit you in.

I need to know that I know what to do in those situations rather than being like, oh, well, I guess I'm not publishing for a while.

And that's kind of like, so it's quite short, but similar to yours, like, yeah, like exactly.

It's just stuff that I need to have in the back of my head.

I don't want to write down the answers to these things right now.

I just want to be aware that these are things that could crop up.

Because I'm the same.

I like to just hold tabs open in the back of my mind and like, just get that CPU whirring.

Yeah, so I think that is hopefully, you know, those things are going on in the background.

They will be solving themselves.

But in regards to the big issue of just a general...

Yes, I do believe that my brain does solve it.

Yeah, I think mine does.

However, is it going to solve the big issue of like, can we fundamentally change the way in which we approach?

Problems.

That's maybe something we need to keep thinking about and talking about.

And I think we're coming up to the to the end of the year.

So this is, right, in our episode number 42 or something like that.

42?

Yeah, we've got plans.

Yeah, we've got plans to kind of take us to our like year end.

And it's useful to be thinking about that, you know, it's only a couple months away now.

I'm trying to, yeah, not quite put a button on it, but as in like really have made some significant progress, you know, and so it feels like towards the end of the year, I kind of, I feel like I want to have this, a better handle on how I'm feeling right now.

So I'm not necessarily in a rush to say, like, oh, I want to figure out how to change my approach to problem-solving.

But again, that's, I'm going to keep that open in a tab in the back and just sort of keep pondering on that and saying, like, how can I make some meaningful changes in that area?

Because I think that is a thing that is holding me back.

But as I said, we have got ideas that we're going to be working on over the next couple of months to take us to the end of the year on that kind of goal of having made some meaningful change by then.

We have got a new theory coming up called, that we're calling, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, which I like as a theory title.

But the first episode, the title of that is maybe slightly needs a bit of explanation.

It's called Trust in the Process.

So what do we mean by that?

What's our episode going to be about next week?

I love when you ask me these questions because I know it's because you don't know.

I'm getting ready to write these things down.

But I know you will love to have a written down.

Yeah.

Well, I did write this down, but I still don't remember what we're talking about.

But I think it does tag on to this.

It is, in my opinion, Trust in the Process is another mindset thing.

It's just knowing that I know how to do what I'm doing.

Sometimes I do feel like I am, I often call myself a baby author, or think of myself as being a really low, wrong author.

But I'm not, I've got a whole process that takes me from planning a book, writing a book, editing a book, publishing a book.

I know how to do it.

But I still treat myself like somebody who doesn't know how to do it, which is just, it's all mindset.

And it's something that I've really learned this year is just like, my whole problem is just mindset.

So that's what I'm kind of coming at this as I really want to cement in myself that like these things that I do know.

And I don't know.

I really, yeah, that's kind of like what I'm thinking so far.

What about you?

I think one of our angles in this topic was because we want to really work on advertising and like in a way that is more systematic than our previous like experiment and see what happens style.

So we talked last week or a week ago about Facebook ads.

And, you know, even though you know that Facebook ads take a couple of months to really get going, you'll see the bad results and they just cancel straight away.

I am the same with this Amazon ad that I've got going right now, which is like a tiny ad that I'm just running.

And I, before I set it going, I was like, I'm just going to run this tiny ad to get better at the process of running this ad.

And instantly I feel like I hate everything.

I just want to turn it off and stop looking at it.

And I, the world is awful.

And I can't, I can't do anything.

I just want to slam wood or like a teenager, which is not productive.

So I think this episode, Trust in the Process, is about us getting more comfortable with things like that.

We're like, just understanding that, not even understanding, like literally embodying the things that we know, where we are like, running an ad, for example, and we know it's going to take a while to get going.

And then doing that confidently, rather than doing that and be like, I'll just, I'll let the ad go and not look at it, because that's the only way to get going.

So I've got in brackets on this, Facebook ads and Bookbub ads, as two ads we're going to try in this vein.

So yeah, it should be good.

Yes, I did already start mine.

Excellent.

I was a good girl.

Yeah, I started a new Facebook ad.

Just specifically for this, like, yeah, I'm going to, like I know how you do it.

I know how Facebook ads work, what I'm talking about.

So yeah, I'm already in the middle of something and I'm excited to talk about that next week.

I am going to go and start a Facebook ad right now because I've got a specific ad that I meant to start a few days ago and I did not start it.

And I'm going to start it and just get some, again, like just a little bit of trial with intention and get that going so we can talk about it next week and feel confident that the process is not a reflection on me as a human being and my ability to solve problems is just something I need to trust.

Yes.

Okay, so we're at the end of another therapy session.

Hopefully you're feeling better.

And people who have been listening have been thinking along about their own maybe mindset things that are holding them back.

And I think the key for me is thinking about how the real world relates to my writing world and how they're not the same and I need to find some new processes.

So epiphany for me, but epiphany in like a low voice or a whisper with a little bit of tinge of sadness because an epiphany is like, it would feel great.

But I think we will feel great as we kind of dig deeper.

We're now into the like excavating a wound.

Oh no, back into the metaphor territory.

I'm leaving metaphors today.

That's the end of metaphor.

Yeah.

Thank you to everyone who's listened this far.

Hopefully it's been helpful.

We'll be back next week with a maybe slightly more practical episode.

And we appreciate everyone listening to do.

Please leave reviews, tell your friends, like, subscribe, download everything.

Thank you again and goodbye.

Goodbye.

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