Episode 132 - From Big Idea to Book with Jessie Kwak
May 10, 2022
In this week's episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Jessie Kwak, talks about the process of going FROM BIG IDEA TO BOOK. She discusses the importance enjoying the process, letting your mind be still, of “working the word mines,” balancing creativity and efficiency, and leaving yourself a breadcrumb trail. Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out my YouTube playlist 2 MINUTES OF INDY, where over the week following the airing of the episode, I’ll be posting brief video clips from the interview on each of those topics!
Jessie Kwak is the author of multiple science fiction series, a supernatural thriller, and productivity guides "From Chaos to Creativity" and "From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice that Brings You Joy." When she’s not raving about her favorite books to her friends, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, or out exploring new worlds both at home and abroad. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and their house plant jungle.
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"I spend my day creating these books. How can I make that enjoyable? How can I find the most joy in the thing that I do all day long?" —Jessie Kwak
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Links
From the interview:
Episode 093 - Valuing the Creative Process with Nicholas Erik
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Similar topics:
Episode 029 - Fostering Creativity through Digital Minimalism with Zach Bohannon
Episode 030 - Common Writer Wisdom: Is it Right for You with Becca Syme
Episode 093 - Valuing the Creative Process with Nicholas Erik
Jessie's links:
www.jessiekwak.com
Twitter @jkwak
Instagram: @kwakjessie
Matty's events:
https://www.mattydalrymple.com/events.html
Episode 093 - Valuing the Creative Process with Nicholas Erik
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Similar topics:
Episode 029 - Fostering Creativity through Digital Minimalism with Zach Bohannon
Episode 030 - Common Writer Wisdom: Is it Right for You with Becca Syme
Episode 093 - Valuing the Creative Process with Nicholas Erik
Jessie's links:
www.jessiekwak.com
Twitter @jkwak
Instagram: @kwakjessie
Matty's events:
https://www.mattydalrymple.com/events.html
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Jessie Kwak. Hey, Jessie, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Jessie: I'm great. How are you doing?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jessie Kwak is the author of multiple science fiction series, a supernatural thriller, and productivity guides "From Chaos to Creativity" and "From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice that Brings You Joy." When she's not raving about her favorite books to her friends, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, or out exploring new worlds, both at home and abroad. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their houseplant jungle, and you can see some of that in the background for those of you who are watching the video.
[00:00:38] And we're going to be talking today about the book "From Big Idea to Book." And as I was preparing for the interview, I found this description about what the book is about:
[00:00:47] "This book is a how to guide both for new writers who are experimenting with their own writing process and established writers who want to be more efficient and productive. Most of all, it's for writers who want to find joy in the daily grind of putting words on paper."
Why the Book?
[00:01:00] Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking, what were you seeing among the writing community that made you feel as if a book about finding the joy in the daily grind was something that people were looking for?
[00:01:13] Jessie: Well, I know a lot of really frustrated writers who are constantly beating themselves up about not producing enough words, not writing enough books, not landing an agent if they're looking for a traditional route or the indy route of, I'm not writing a book a month, I'm not keeping up with everybody else around me. And I am also a very frustrated writer in that regard, I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't write fast enough. I can't write to market enough. There's just so many of us, I think, that are really focused on the outcome of what is this product that I'm trying to create as opposed to the many, many, many, many, many hours that we are sitting in front of the computer, creating that product.
[00:02:01] And so I personally have been really trying to retool my own thinking around this and focusing more on, okay, this is how I spend my day. I spend my day creating these books. How can I make that enjoyable? How can I find the most joy in the thing that I do all day long, as opposed to hating every minute of the writing process in hopes for what? What are you looking for? If you're not enjoying every moment of the day or attempting to enjoy as much as possible of the day that you're living every day. So that's where the idea for the book came from.
[00:02:43] And a lot of writers really enjoy talking about the writing process. We love asking each other questions. Do you outline, are you a pantser, like, How many words, where do you sit? I think we're all looking for that silver bullet that's going to make us a faster, more productive writer. And there's no silver bullet for anybody. It's really just a matter of experimenting and finding the thing that works for you.
[00:03:10] But yeah, as I said, if you're just experimenting for the sake of experimenting and being more productive and the outcome, you're not enjoying the process, what are you doing with your life? That's kind of where the book came from. Yeah.
Why "the big idea"? [00:03:25] Matty: Well, all excellent goals and big topics to address. And the title, as I said is "From Big Idea to Book." So did you have an idea of when you called it big idea, was there a definition that you had behind "big idea"?
[00:03:39] Jessie: That title actually came from my publisher. I feel like I'm very terrible at titling things, so my editor at Microcosm Publishing, Elly Blue, she is the one that came up with both "From Chaos to Creativity," and then "From Big Idea to Book."
[00:03:54] But what I love about that big idea is, there are so many ideas that you can have as an author. I think most of us have multiple ideas for books or series or different nonfiction books we want to write. But part of what I wanted to do with "From Big Idea to Book" was to start with generating those ideas, and not just how do you write, but where do your ideas come from? How do you iterate the process of coming up with and developing an idea and taking it all the way through to a finished final draft?
Planning
[00:04:29] Matty: And the book is arranged according to four large categories: planning, drafting, revising, and What's Next i.e., Getting It out There. And so what I wanted to do is just hit each of those parts and start out with one topic that particularly struck me. And so starting out with part one, which is planning, one of the sections was Coming Up with Ideas. The titles are Get Bored, Get Distracted, Scratch Out Small Ideas. So can you talk a little bit about those pieces of advice?
[00:05:06] Jessie: Yeah, so a few years back, there's an NPR podcast called "Note to Self,” hosted by Manoush Zomorodi. And she did a whole series of episodes called “Bored and Brilliant." And she wrote a book with the same title, which is an amazing, amazing book, but it's all about how your brain needs this mental space for creativity to grow.
[00:05:30] (Let Your Mind Be Still) And so many of us, myself included like every minute of the day, I'm on Instagram or Twitter, or you've got five minutes while you're waiting in line at the grocery store and you're perusing the magazine rack or whatever it is. And we don't often give ourselves that space for these ideas to just really kind of spark and start to coalesce together.
[00:05:53] So that's where the impetus for those categories of getting bored, getting distracted, finding those little ideas, it was Manoush Zomorodi's research and my realization that, oh, I've tried to put every minute of every day, make it productive and that's not really helping me be creative.
[00:06:13] Matty: Yeah, I definitely find that for myself, that my tendency is if I've been sitting all day writing and then I going to go out and walk the dog, then my automatic reaction is to put in my earbuds and listen to a podcast because why not, you know, multitasking, yay. And probably everybody who's listening or watching has that same feeling that if you don't, if you don't occupy your brain in some other way like listening to a podcast, I shouldn't even be saying this. I think everybody should be going out listening to this podcast, but just letting it clear is great.
Why is it Hard to be Bored?
[00:06:48] Matty: But why is that so hard to do? I mean, it makes so much sense, and yet it's very difficult to put that into practice.
[00:06:55] Jessie: It's hard to be bored. I mean, to just sit there and do nothing and stare at the car window or the train window if you're commuting or to go for a walk with your dog and just be like, oh my gosh, you sniffed that corner already. Let's go, let's see something new. We want to be entertained. And I especially am constantly like, okay, what's the next thing, what am I doing after this? I'm always either planning or I'm rehashing things that happened earlier. And even if I'm not listening to a podcast, my brain is like, okay, well, I'm going to think about this article that I have to write when I get back. And I'll plan that out, and maybe I'll just dictate a little bit on my phone since I'm out here. And yeah, it is very, very hard to just let your mind be a little bit still and bored and see where it goes. To be like, oh, what's that flower?
[00:07:49] Matty: Yeah, would that fall into Get distracted? Are there tips that you can share about how you can allow your mind to get distracted in a good way?
[00:07:57] Jessie: Yeah, one of the things that I do, you can see a little bit, this is also my sewing room, you can see part of my sewing machine there. And when I am trying to keep my brain from being really practical and thinking very hard on something and I'm trying to get that shower moment, right? When you take a shower and you're distracted by the shampooing and all of that stuff, and then your brain can kind of go off and do its own thing.
[00:08:26] So I often have a mindless sewing task, like I'm going to make some napkins, so I need to hem a bunch of napkins and that takes forever. But it's something that I can get the "needs to do something" part of my brain to just iron, iron, iron, iron, iron, iron, and then the rest of my brain is freed up to go off and wander where it wants to go.
[00:08:52] Matty: It makes me want to take up knitting again. I used to knit like a fiend and I haven't knit for years and years, but primarily because it's hard to multitask. The kind of knitting I do, it's hard to multitask. I used to be able to knit and listen to TV in the background, but it would be better just to knit and let my brain sit, as you're saying.
[00:09:12] How about scratch out small ideas?
[00:09:15] Jessie: Yeah, so that's an idea that I took from Twyla Tharp, and she talks about this idea of scratching for kind of her dance moves. So she's choreographing a new dance and, instead of trying to come up with something fully formed, just taking a small motion and trying it over and over again and trying it with other things, and much as you might sketch out something and just try some lines and see how the lines look together.
[00:09:44] And so with writing, taking whatever that small kernel of an idea is, and just sort of playing with it and maybe doing some free writing or maybe going on a walk and talking to yourself in a voice recorder. I do this a lot. I'm the crazy woman walking around the neighborhood. And just giving yourself permission to play with that idea, instead of being like, okay, I need to develop this character and, okay, check that off the list. Now I need to come up with this world-building idea. Check that off the list. And just encouraging yourself to be a little bit more playful.
[00:10:20] Matty: Yeah, I realized I had brought a different interpretation. I've may have transcribed that incorrectly from the book, but scratching out is like sketching out, not striking out, but it's the small ideas that lead to the big ideas, I guess.
Drafting
[00:10:35] Matty: So the second part is drafting, and (Working the Word Mines) one of the topics that caught my interest here was working the word mines, where should you start writing? That's a good one. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:10:50] Jessie: Yeah, so once you have your idea, yes, drafting, I like to call that working the word mines, you're going into the mine, you're coming back with the words. And I think one of the reasons that that metaphor really resonates with me is because I am a polisher and reviser. That is the thing that I really enjoy. And so I need those raw words in order to actually work with to create the finished product. I know a lot of people love the first draft. It's not my cup of tea. But, yeah, the idea of where should you start? I think, people say, well, should I start at the beginning? Should I start with what seems most interesting to me? Should I start by meticulously crafting sentence after sentence and revising as I go? Or should I just like, pour out the whole thing onto my screen or my paper, and then go back and revise it later?
[00:11:44] And that's going to be highly personal, depending on what works for you. And that's part of all of these sections are really about, here's how somebody did it, here's how I do it. Here's an interview with somebody who does it very differently than I do. So it gives you a bunch of different examples so that you can try different things in your own writing practice.
[00:12:04] Matty: One of the things that's come up a couple of times in past episodes is the idea of the pros and cons of trying something new. And so I think that this idea of where the words come from is, as you're saying, a perfect example. And people might say, I love to outline, or I'd love to just spew out all the words I'm thinking and clean it up later, or I love to whatever it is. And so there is the personal preference or the thing that you get the most personal enjoyment out of. And then there's the, what is most efficient, I guess. You know, it's balancing that creativity side with the fact that for many of us it's a business.
Creativity-efficiency Balance
[00:12:40] Matty: And so when you're advising people about the different approaches, they could consider for starting to write, (Creativity vs Efficiency) do you have any advice about how to strike that balance between creativity and efficiency?
[00:12:54] Jessie: Yeah, I think to your point, there's the part that you enjoy and that is a good starting place. There's the part that you might be good at, and maybe you don't enjoy it as much. I guess, listing your strengths and weaknesses. Here are the things that I like, here are things that I'm good at, here is a weakness for me. Here's things I don't like, like for me, that first draft.
[00:13:15] Maybe an example would be helpful. So for me, I feel like I am quite a slow writer, and I've gotten faster over the years, but the process of getting faster has been very frustrating to me because I wanted to write the words faster. I wanted to get my first draft to a point where I could be like, okay, I've got a first draft. I'll just revise it up, you know, polish it real quick, send it to an editor. And that's just never going to be how I write, which has been very frustrating. Because I like to iterate. I like to polish over things. I like to kind of round my way through the book.
[00:13:55] And so I'm sitting down and thinking, okay, here I am good at the revision process, I'm good at working with a finished draft and making it into what I want it to be. How do I get to the finished draft faster? Because I'm still going to want to do this process, so how do I iterate through the first draft process in a way that's faster and more enjoyable for me?
[00:14:22] And one of the things that I've started doing is learning more about outlining. I'm still very much a discovery writer, but now my process is more, I discover the story through the initial outline and then through doing a really fast rough draft of the first act or so. And once I get that first act written, then I'm like, okay, now I know what the rest of the outline should be. So then I revise the outline and revise that first act and do the same thing for the second act. Because I just can't figure out how to outline a book and know what all needs to be in it until I've literally written the book. And so I'm teaching myself how to write sections of the book and to discover what needs to happen in that section, instead of writing the entire 80,000 words and then throwing most of it out.
[00:15:13] Matty: Yeah, I just submitted an article to a publication on that very topic using two of my Ann Kinnear books as an example. The initial train wreck that was my fifth Ann Kinnear book. The very different approach I took for the sixth one. I just want to say for readers that Ann Kinnear 5 in the end, it's not going to be a train wreck. It was only the process of getting to the end that was a train wreck. I think the readers will still be happy.
[00:15:37] But it all keeps coming back to that idea of daily grind and joy. That the daily grind is the need to produce content at a reasonable rate, especially if you're making a living from this, versus the joy you might take in perhaps setting something aside for a couple of months and then coming back to it, which I think would be an anathema to many writers.
[00:16:03] And it seems as if some of it is balancing that what are your business goals with what's going to bring you joy. So if what brings you joy is being able to polish and polish and polish, and that process has to happen over months, not weeks, then you can try to get faster, but you can also just reassess your business goals to say, okay, well, what if I am, and I even cringe to say this, "only" putting out a book a year, what if I'm putting out a book a year instead of a book a month, or instead of a book every five years. And then what does my business plan look like that would make sense with that schedule?
[00:16:39] Jessie: Yeah, I think that's really key because it's very hard to keep your eyes on your own paper, when everyone else around you is saying, oh, I'm writing and publishing a book a month. I'm writing 5,000 words a day. And not everyone is. Maybe some people are, some loud people are, it's hard to keep that in mind that, okay, this, isn't the standard I have to get to in order to be a successful indy author. This is what one person is doing, or several people are doing, but look, other people are doing this.
[00:17:09] And so, there are very successful people who aren't putting out a book a month and you don't have to do that either, if that's not the pace that will work for you and sustain you. Because whichever path you take, however quickly you're publishing.
[00:17:24] I mean, think about this in terms of 10 years from now is maybe when you might get your big break, is this something you can sustain for 10 years? Or if you get your big break this year, can you keep sustaining that pace for long enough to make it worth your while? And it keeps going back down to how are you spending your day? Is how you're spending your day how you want to spend your life, and if not, what can you do to change that?
[00:17:52] Matty: And it's the way you're spending your day producing work that in that time in the future, you can look back on it and be proud of what you're saying and not thinking, oh man, if I had only just taken another couple of months with that book, I’d be happier about looking back on it.
[00:18:07] Yeah, it is sort of unfortunate. I think that what you're saying is really valuable about sometimes it's the loud contingent that is trumpeting the book-a-month, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be that an individual author is like obnoxiously loud about their production schedule, but just that it's just attention getting, hearing someone say that is attention getting and nobody's trumpeting the fact that they wrote a book in 18 months, so you don't hear about it, but it might be the vast majority of people anyway.
[00:18:38] And, I think it also makes sense to look at what other people who are creating the kind of work that you yourself are creating, what schedule are they on? Because the more elaborate the world, the more complicated the plot, the longer it's going to take.
[00:18:53] And so I do feel like I'm starting to feel a little bit of a reaction against this rapid release strategy, probably because enough people tried it and realized it wasn't for them, that "take your time if that's what you need," is starting to get a little more airplay, I think.
[00:19:43] Matty: Another item under drafting is Getting Unstuck: Leave Yourself a Crumb Trail. Describe that a little bit.
[00:19:52] Jessie: Oh, yeah. I love this idea and it's really just leaving yourself instructions for tomorrow. So whether you are writing every day and so, okay, tomorrow, I'm going to start working on this next chapter. And while I'm sitting here at the end of my day, I've just written this scene and I'm just going to jot down a couple notes. This is what I'm thinking about for the scene that I'll be working on tomorrow. So the next day, you sit down at your computer and you're like, oh, right, right, right, I was going to have her go do this. And you're not starting necessarily from scratch.
[00:20:27] And if you're sitting down every day, this may not be nearly as useful as if you are sitting down once a week, if you only have weekends to write, and if you sit down every Saturday morning and you're like, oh my gosh, where was I?
[00:20:41] Matty: Yeah, I'm finding I wasn't thinking of it as breadcrumbs, but it is sort of, it's reminders, that again with my sixth Ann Kinnear book, I'm using the phrase "framing out," I'm framing out carefully before I plunge into the detail of the dialogue and the description and things like that. And what I'm doing is, when I include a plot point that is supporting another plot point, I'll put a note in about it. Like, he went to the store taking the long way. And then I'll put a note saying, he had to take the long way because, and then actually put down a note as to why he was doing it, because one thing I found that I waste a ton of time on is that I will forget that there's this interconnectedness in the plot and I'll think, oh no, wait, it's got to be cool, I don't know why he's taking the long way, he'll just take the short way. And then you know, seven hours later, I realize that the reason he took the long way was such and such, and now there's the whole untangling.
[00:21:36] And one thing I like about Scrivener is that you can strike out parts that you don't want to be included in the compile. So I think that I'm probably always going to leave, I mean, maybe not at the very, very, very last edit, but through the whole process of doing this, I'm going to leave those notes in, even if I read them and think, oh, well, of course, I'm going to remember that, but have them struck out so I can compile the text without including it, just to keep myself from taking those routes that I don't remember that there was a reason that I shouldn't be taking.
[00:22:08] Jessie: Yeah, I use the comment feature in Scrivener for a lot of the same thing of just being like, this is what this means, "She said cryptically," like, this is why she said it cryptically. Oh, right, right.
[00:22:19] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And obviously, you don't want the final result to need explanation to the reader, but it's always good to remind oneself.
Revising
[00:22:28] Matty: Then the third part is revising. (Alpha and Beta Readers) And so one thing that I found intriguing there was the idea of beta and alpha readers. So can you describe how you use those types of readers and what is the difference between those two types of readers?
The beta reader [00:22:41] Jessie: Yeah, so, a beta reader is the type of reader that I've used for most of my life. I've got a final draft, I feel pretty good about it, I feel comfortable with somebody else reading it, I've given it to a critique partner, whether it's part of a writing group or part of a workshop I'm going through, and they can give you some really high-level feedback on, this plot's not working, this character, I don't get his motivation, this part was confusing, that sort of thing.
[00:23:08] And that is incredibly, incredibly helpful, I think, especially when you're getting started and trying to figure out what a book is. I think every writer goes through a stage of like, what is a book? Did I write a book? Does this make sense? And your beta reader can be like, no, you didn't write a book yet. It's okay, girl, we got this. You didn't write a book.
The Alpha Reader
[00:23:30] Jessie: So then the alpha reader would come in earlier in the process and be somebody that you are maybe bouncing ideas off of, or showing more incomplete scenes or rougher versions, versions that you wouldn't inflict on other people, basically.
[00:23:46] And so my alpha reader is my husband, and that kind of slowly came about over time as I grew more comfortable letting him read these raw versions of things. And he's not a writer, but he's a very good story doctor. He's like, this works, this doesn't work, let's brainstorm some ideas of how to fix it.
[00:24:07] And he's not gentle with his feedback, which is useful. He doesn't pull his punches. And so the first few times we went through this process, there were certainly a lot of tears on my end, and he's learned to be a little kinder and I've learned to have a little thicker skin. But it's become a really invaluable part of my process to show him like, okay, here's the first act of this book I'm working on, rip it to shreds so that I can use that in my revision and come back with a stronger version of this.
[00:24:35] And then I still do, once the whole draft is done, I'll send it to two beta readers who give me a lot more high-level feedback, but he helps me fix those structural problems as I go along. And that's why I consider him the alpha reader.
[00:24:47] Matty: Yeah, I have some fellow authors who serve in that capacity for me. And there are two things that I've found that help in this area. I didn't think to call them alpha readers, but based on what you just described, that's exactly what they are. And one of them is that if I can get them to let me tell them the story, instead of reading the story, that's really interesting because I might take them out to lunch and say, can I just take you out to lunch and most of the conversation is going to be me telling you my story? And it's very interesting, because you can see like when they're leaning forward, they're interesting, or they're like, oh, a little skeptical about something where they're shaking their head or they're nodding their head or whatever. So being able to do it in that real time fashion is fun.
[00:25:31] And then the other thing that I found is really helpful is because both of these authors I'm thinking of are very nice people, their tendency is not to rip it to shreds, but I started framing it up as, tell me what you think the editor is going to object to.
[00:25:47] Jessie: Oh, that's wonderful.
[00:25:49] Matty: Yeah, because it sort of relieves them of the emotional side, like then they're helping me out. Whenever they tell me something that needs to be fixed, they're helping me out. They're not criticizing, right? Because they're telling me something that's going to be one thing that my editor doesn't have to deal with. So sometimes that can help smooth the way.
[00:26:05] Jessie: I love that way of framing it because as I said, my husband doesn't have any problem giving me super direct, critical feedback, but I have that trouble with other writer friends, and it's been hard to get that kind of critique from certain other people who are like, oh no, that's great, I love that.
[00:26:22] Matty: No, it's not, I know it's not, I need you to tell me where.
[00:26:25] Jessie: I know, that's why I gave it to you, it's not working.
[00:26:27] Matty: Exactly. And I do think that how people put it, one thing that I loop back on periodically, is the idea that I used, I went to a writer's group and there would be critiques, and sometimes, some of the members would complain if someone who was offering their work for critique said, be gentle with me, or something like that. And they said, well, obviously they just don't want to hear anything bad. And I was like, no, I think they just want you to be thoughtful in how you tell them the things that need to be fixed, which I think is always a good idea.
[00:26:55] And in fact, there's an episode with Tiffany Yates Martin about Giving and Receiving Critique, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes, because it's a good tie-in.
[00:27:03] So the last section of the book is What's Next, i.e., Put It out There. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask if you had ever had a circumstance or thought about a circumstance where someone goes through those early stages of thinking of their big idea and using the tips about enabling themselves to get bored or get distracted or explore the small ideas, and then realizing, or maybe they should realize, that what their big idea is, isn't a book. Maybe it's either another kind of creative project or it's just never going to be a book. You know, it's an interesting idea, but it's not solid enough to justify a book, something along those lines.
[00:27:50] Jessie: Yeah, (Write the Next Thing) especially as you're getting started writing, you may write books that never see the light of day. I probably have seven novels, seven trunk novels that nobody will ever see, and that's fine. I was actually talking with somebody about this over the weekend, and he's a younger writer who had been working in this world for quite a few years, and he'd written a novel and was now working on a different novel because the first one wasn't working for him.
[00:28:19] And he was very excited about this idea, but it reminded me a lot of my early novels, which especially for people who write sci-fi and fantasy I think, if you get started at a young age, you have a tendency, you've read "Lord of the Rings" or some hugely epic world, and so you want to write this hugely epic story and you don't maybe have the chops for it yet. Maybe you need to write a few books before you can go back to your original idea that you spent, in my case, 15, 20 years world-building and writing novels in and trying to find the way the story worked.
[00:28:56] And it took me going away from that and writing a couple of sci-fi novels before I was like, okay, now I know how a book works. I can go back to that world, and I can do it justice. So I think the advice that I gave to the younger writer that I was talking to was, I'm not telling you to abandon your project now. I am saying, don't spend the next 15 years working on the same novel. If it's not working, try something different and you can always come back to it.
[00:29:25] So I think that would be my advice, if you have gotten to a stage where you're like, Ooh, I've been working on this for a long time. I'm at the revision process, but it's not coalescing or something's not right with it. Or maybe you are sending it out and you're not getting good feedback from your beta readers, or you're not getting hits from agents, if that's what you're trying to do. Write the next thing. Write the next thing. You can always go back and fix this first thing once you learn how to fix it, or you can always say, you know what, that one can go in the trunk, and I don't need to deal with it. So, write the next thing is my advice.
[00:30:03] Matty: And it may be that there's sort of a part zero head of planning, drafting, and revising, which is sort of steeping yourself in the type of book that you think you're trying to write, so that if you're thinking you want to write fantasy, and then you notice that all the fantasy books are 120,000 words long, and you're never going to write 120,000 words, maybe becoming sufficiently familiar with the tropes and conventions of the genre you think you're going to write in will indicate whether it's a good match or not.
[00:30:34] So you had mentioned the What's Next, Put It out There. And one of the primary questions is the traditional route or the indy route, and obviously we could do a whole episode, as I have, on that question.
Traditional Publishing
[00:30:44] Matty: But for yourself, what were the considerations about what decisions you made there? And then I'm interested to hear more about Microcosm Publishing, because the book is a very attractive book. I mean, it's a highly produced illustrated book, and so there's a flavor of publishing going on there that enables that kind of production. So what path did you take there?
[00:31:08] Jessie: Yeah, I'm glad you asked about Microcosm because I can rave all day about them, but I'll get there in a second.
[00:31:15] So I essentially started out wanting to go the traditional route. That was the only thing that was available when I was wanting to publish you know, my very first novels in like high school and college, and I'm thinking, okay, this is the road I'm going to take. And I got an English literature degree and eventually started copywriting.
[00:31:34] And as I grew my copywriting business and started freelancing and really got to a point where I was like, okay, I have now figured out how to write a book and this feels like something that is sellable or publishable now, I was like, well, I'm already running a writing business. I already am doing all the marketing and I've got the website hosting and I have the technical skill and all of these business side of the things, and I'm impatient, so I was looking at, do I send this book out? I'm already writing, like book three in this series. Do I send this book out and wait for the agent and all of that sort of thing? Or do I just start putting them out now and, knowing my skill level has finally reached where my tastes are, and this is actually a good book, the previous books, they don't need to be out there anywhere. They just don't.
[00:32:31] So that's essentially why I went with the self-publishing route. And I love it. It's a lot of work for sure, I mean, you're familiar. But yeah, I do have a book series that I would like to run by a traditional publisher and see if it could go that direction. But my science fiction, I certainly think just fits more of the indy molds, just a little faster-paced, we can get it out more quickly, written in a series. All of those things that lead to a little bit more success on the indy path.
Tweaking over Time
[00:33:00] Matty: One of the things that I'm really starting to appreciate about indy publishing is the idea of tweaking over time. So for example, Joanna Penn whose podcast I know you've been on, has recently talking about the fact that she did an edit on her first fiction novel. And you're always hearing about people who go back rebrand or get a new cover. I think that the sense in traditional publishing is more, you write the book, you produce the book, the book is out there, it's launched, and then you move on to the next thing.
[00:33:30] Whereas with indy publishing, it never needs to be over, which could be alarming for some people, but I think it's an exciting thing to do, because it's fun to be able to look back at something that's maybe been out there 1, 5, 10 years and think, there's still life there, and if I give it some love, it's going to pay me back in some way. So that's cool.
Microcosm
[00:33:48] Matty: So describe a little bit about what Microcosm is and what your connection there is?
[00:33:54] Jessie: Yeah, so Microcosm Publishing, they're based out of Portland, Oregon, which is where I live, and they've been around almost 30 years now, I think. And they started off, basically one of the owners, Joe Biel, making zines, stapling them together, throwing them in the back of his bicycle, taking them to local punk-rock bars and selling them at the counter of the bar. So this is kind of his small-time publishing empire that he has grown over 30 years. It's him now, own it together with Elly Blue, who had her own publishing empire that they merged now under the umbrella of Microcosm.
[00:34:28] And so my husband and I were both avid cyclists. And so I knew Elly through the cycling scene. And she had started publishing a series of anthologies, feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies, that I had submitted some short stories to. And so we were talking one day, and they were thinking about doing some fiction, but mostly what Microcosm does is a lot of nonfiction, very like advocacy-focused and something around the lines of helping yourself be a better person, so you can help the world be a better place. So there's a lot of really, really great titles that they publish.
[00:35:09] And they were thinking about going into fiction and Elly and I had been talking about that and I was like, actually, I have this other idea that I've been thinking about, which is kind of a do it yourself guide to productivity for creative people, like getting things done for creative brands. And she's like, I want that book. Write me that book. So that is where "From Chaos to Creativity" came from that conversation.
[00:35:32] And then, yeah, I just wrote "From Big Idea to Book" for them as well. And the process of working with them, like you said, they produce fantastic little books, they're very beautiful and just still have that like, punky DIY creative aesthetic. And yeah, I love, I love working with them, they're fantastic.
[00:35:57] Matty: It does give the content a whole different spin. You know, if one just read the text, it's wonderful, but the text paired with the design of the book, I'll just say, that there's a graphic element of the design of the book that is a really nice combination with um the text that you've written.
[00:36:16] So, Jessie, thank you so much for talking through that. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:36:23] Jessie: Yeah, so my digital home is JessieKwak.com. I'm also pretty active on Instagram and Twitter. I do have a Facebook page. I'm the only Jessie Kwak you're going to find if you Google me, so that's one way to find me. But from JessieKwak.com you'll find links to "From Chaos to Creativity," "From Big Idea to Book." Also all of my science fiction is there. I've got, of course, the free novella newsletter starter, all of that stuff. So if you're interested in sci-fi, that's a good place to start.
[00:36:57] Matty: Excellent, thank you so much.
[00:36:58] Jessie: Yeah, this has been fantastic. Thank you.
[00:00:05] Jessie: I'm great. How are you doing?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jessie Kwak is the author of multiple science fiction series, a supernatural thriller, and productivity guides "From Chaos to Creativity" and "From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice that Brings You Joy." When she's not raving about her favorite books to her friends, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, or out exploring new worlds, both at home and abroad. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their houseplant jungle, and you can see some of that in the background for those of you who are watching the video.
[00:00:38] And we're going to be talking today about the book "From Big Idea to Book." And as I was preparing for the interview, I found this description about what the book is about:
[00:00:47] "This book is a how to guide both for new writers who are experimenting with their own writing process and established writers who want to be more efficient and productive. Most of all, it's for writers who want to find joy in the daily grind of putting words on paper."
Why the Book?
[00:01:00] Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking, what were you seeing among the writing community that made you feel as if a book about finding the joy in the daily grind was something that people were looking for?
[00:01:13] Jessie: Well, I know a lot of really frustrated writers who are constantly beating themselves up about not producing enough words, not writing enough books, not landing an agent if they're looking for a traditional route or the indy route of, I'm not writing a book a month, I'm not keeping up with everybody else around me. And I am also a very frustrated writer in that regard, I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't write fast enough. I can't write to market enough. There's just so many of us, I think, that are really focused on the outcome of what is this product that I'm trying to create as opposed to the many, many, many, many, many hours that we are sitting in front of the computer, creating that product.
[00:02:01] And so I personally have been really trying to retool my own thinking around this and focusing more on, okay, this is how I spend my day. I spend my day creating these books. How can I make that enjoyable? How can I find the most joy in the thing that I do all day long, as opposed to hating every minute of the writing process in hopes for what? What are you looking for? If you're not enjoying every moment of the day or attempting to enjoy as much as possible of the day that you're living every day. So that's where the idea for the book came from.
[00:02:43] And a lot of writers really enjoy talking about the writing process. We love asking each other questions. Do you outline, are you a pantser, like, How many words, where do you sit? I think we're all looking for that silver bullet that's going to make us a faster, more productive writer. And there's no silver bullet for anybody. It's really just a matter of experimenting and finding the thing that works for you.
[00:03:10] But yeah, as I said, if you're just experimenting for the sake of experimenting and being more productive and the outcome, you're not enjoying the process, what are you doing with your life? That's kind of where the book came from. Yeah.
Why "the big idea"? [00:03:25] Matty: Well, all excellent goals and big topics to address. And the title, as I said is "From Big Idea to Book." So did you have an idea of when you called it big idea, was there a definition that you had behind "big idea"?
[00:03:39] Jessie: That title actually came from my publisher. I feel like I'm very terrible at titling things, so my editor at Microcosm Publishing, Elly Blue, she is the one that came up with both "From Chaos to Creativity," and then "From Big Idea to Book."
[00:03:54] But what I love about that big idea is, there are so many ideas that you can have as an author. I think most of us have multiple ideas for books or series or different nonfiction books we want to write. But part of what I wanted to do with "From Big Idea to Book" was to start with generating those ideas, and not just how do you write, but where do your ideas come from? How do you iterate the process of coming up with and developing an idea and taking it all the way through to a finished final draft?
Planning
[00:04:29] Matty: And the book is arranged according to four large categories: planning, drafting, revising, and What's Next i.e., Getting It out There. And so what I wanted to do is just hit each of those parts and start out with one topic that particularly struck me. And so starting out with part one, which is planning, one of the sections was Coming Up with Ideas. The titles are Get Bored, Get Distracted, Scratch Out Small Ideas. So can you talk a little bit about those pieces of advice?
[00:05:06] Jessie: Yeah, so a few years back, there's an NPR podcast called "Note to Self,” hosted by Manoush Zomorodi. And she did a whole series of episodes called “Bored and Brilliant." And she wrote a book with the same title, which is an amazing, amazing book, but it's all about how your brain needs this mental space for creativity to grow.
[00:05:30] (Let Your Mind Be Still) And so many of us, myself included like every minute of the day, I'm on Instagram or Twitter, or you've got five minutes while you're waiting in line at the grocery store and you're perusing the magazine rack or whatever it is. And we don't often give ourselves that space for these ideas to just really kind of spark and start to coalesce together.
[00:05:53] So that's where the impetus for those categories of getting bored, getting distracted, finding those little ideas, it was Manoush Zomorodi's research and my realization that, oh, I've tried to put every minute of every day, make it productive and that's not really helping me be creative.
[00:06:13] Matty: Yeah, I definitely find that for myself, that my tendency is if I've been sitting all day writing and then I going to go out and walk the dog, then my automatic reaction is to put in my earbuds and listen to a podcast because why not, you know, multitasking, yay. And probably everybody who's listening or watching has that same feeling that if you don't, if you don't occupy your brain in some other way like listening to a podcast, I shouldn't even be saying this. I think everybody should be going out listening to this podcast, but just letting it clear is great.
Why is it Hard to be Bored?
[00:06:48] Matty: But why is that so hard to do? I mean, it makes so much sense, and yet it's very difficult to put that into practice.
[00:06:55] Jessie: It's hard to be bored. I mean, to just sit there and do nothing and stare at the car window or the train window if you're commuting or to go for a walk with your dog and just be like, oh my gosh, you sniffed that corner already. Let's go, let's see something new. We want to be entertained. And I especially am constantly like, okay, what's the next thing, what am I doing after this? I'm always either planning or I'm rehashing things that happened earlier. And even if I'm not listening to a podcast, my brain is like, okay, well, I'm going to think about this article that I have to write when I get back. And I'll plan that out, and maybe I'll just dictate a little bit on my phone since I'm out here. And yeah, it is very, very hard to just let your mind be a little bit still and bored and see where it goes. To be like, oh, what's that flower?
[00:07:49] Matty: Yeah, would that fall into Get distracted? Are there tips that you can share about how you can allow your mind to get distracted in a good way?
[00:07:57] Jessie: Yeah, one of the things that I do, you can see a little bit, this is also my sewing room, you can see part of my sewing machine there. And when I am trying to keep my brain from being really practical and thinking very hard on something and I'm trying to get that shower moment, right? When you take a shower and you're distracted by the shampooing and all of that stuff, and then your brain can kind of go off and do its own thing.
[00:08:26] So I often have a mindless sewing task, like I'm going to make some napkins, so I need to hem a bunch of napkins and that takes forever. But it's something that I can get the "needs to do something" part of my brain to just iron, iron, iron, iron, iron, iron, and then the rest of my brain is freed up to go off and wander where it wants to go.
[00:08:52] Matty: It makes me want to take up knitting again. I used to knit like a fiend and I haven't knit for years and years, but primarily because it's hard to multitask. The kind of knitting I do, it's hard to multitask. I used to be able to knit and listen to TV in the background, but it would be better just to knit and let my brain sit, as you're saying.
[00:09:12] How about scratch out small ideas?
[00:09:15] Jessie: Yeah, so that's an idea that I took from Twyla Tharp, and she talks about this idea of scratching for kind of her dance moves. So she's choreographing a new dance and, instead of trying to come up with something fully formed, just taking a small motion and trying it over and over again and trying it with other things, and much as you might sketch out something and just try some lines and see how the lines look together.
[00:09:44] And so with writing, taking whatever that small kernel of an idea is, and just sort of playing with it and maybe doing some free writing or maybe going on a walk and talking to yourself in a voice recorder. I do this a lot. I'm the crazy woman walking around the neighborhood. And just giving yourself permission to play with that idea, instead of being like, okay, I need to develop this character and, okay, check that off the list. Now I need to come up with this world-building idea. Check that off the list. And just encouraging yourself to be a little bit more playful.
[00:10:20] Matty: Yeah, I realized I had brought a different interpretation. I've may have transcribed that incorrectly from the book, but scratching out is like sketching out, not striking out, but it's the small ideas that lead to the big ideas, I guess.
Drafting
[00:10:35] Matty: So the second part is drafting, and (Working the Word Mines) one of the topics that caught my interest here was working the word mines, where should you start writing? That's a good one. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:10:50] Jessie: Yeah, so once you have your idea, yes, drafting, I like to call that working the word mines, you're going into the mine, you're coming back with the words. And I think one of the reasons that that metaphor really resonates with me is because I am a polisher and reviser. That is the thing that I really enjoy. And so I need those raw words in order to actually work with to create the finished product. I know a lot of people love the first draft. It's not my cup of tea. But, yeah, the idea of where should you start? I think, people say, well, should I start at the beginning? Should I start with what seems most interesting to me? Should I start by meticulously crafting sentence after sentence and revising as I go? Or should I just like, pour out the whole thing onto my screen or my paper, and then go back and revise it later?
[00:11:44] And that's going to be highly personal, depending on what works for you. And that's part of all of these sections are really about, here's how somebody did it, here's how I do it. Here's an interview with somebody who does it very differently than I do. So it gives you a bunch of different examples so that you can try different things in your own writing practice.
[00:12:04] Matty: One of the things that's come up a couple of times in past episodes is the idea of the pros and cons of trying something new. And so I think that this idea of where the words come from is, as you're saying, a perfect example. And people might say, I love to outline, or I'd love to just spew out all the words I'm thinking and clean it up later, or I love to whatever it is. And so there is the personal preference or the thing that you get the most personal enjoyment out of. And then there's the, what is most efficient, I guess. You know, it's balancing that creativity side with the fact that for many of us it's a business.
Creativity-efficiency Balance
[00:12:40] Matty: And so when you're advising people about the different approaches, they could consider for starting to write, (Creativity vs Efficiency) do you have any advice about how to strike that balance between creativity and efficiency?
[00:12:54] Jessie: Yeah, I think to your point, there's the part that you enjoy and that is a good starting place. There's the part that you might be good at, and maybe you don't enjoy it as much. I guess, listing your strengths and weaknesses. Here are the things that I like, here are things that I'm good at, here is a weakness for me. Here's things I don't like, like for me, that first draft.
[00:13:15] Maybe an example would be helpful. So for me, I feel like I am quite a slow writer, and I've gotten faster over the years, but the process of getting faster has been very frustrating to me because I wanted to write the words faster. I wanted to get my first draft to a point where I could be like, okay, I've got a first draft. I'll just revise it up, you know, polish it real quick, send it to an editor. And that's just never going to be how I write, which has been very frustrating. Because I like to iterate. I like to polish over things. I like to kind of round my way through the book.
[00:13:55] And so I'm sitting down and thinking, okay, here I am good at the revision process, I'm good at working with a finished draft and making it into what I want it to be. How do I get to the finished draft faster? Because I'm still going to want to do this process, so how do I iterate through the first draft process in a way that's faster and more enjoyable for me?
[00:14:22] And one of the things that I've started doing is learning more about outlining. I'm still very much a discovery writer, but now my process is more, I discover the story through the initial outline and then through doing a really fast rough draft of the first act or so. And once I get that first act written, then I'm like, okay, now I know what the rest of the outline should be. So then I revise the outline and revise that first act and do the same thing for the second act. Because I just can't figure out how to outline a book and know what all needs to be in it until I've literally written the book. And so I'm teaching myself how to write sections of the book and to discover what needs to happen in that section, instead of writing the entire 80,000 words and then throwing most of it out.
[00:15:13] Matty: Yeah, I just submitted an article to a publication on that very topic using two of my Ann Kinnear books as an example. The initial train wreck that was my fifth Ann Kinnear book. The very different approach I took for the sixth one. I just want to say for readers that Ann Kinnear 5 in the end, it's not going to be a train wreck. It was only the process of getting to the end that was a train wreck. I think the readers will still be happy.
[00:15:37] But it all keeps coming back to that idea of daily grind and joy. That the daily grind is the need to produce content at a reasonable rate, especially if you're making a living from this, versus the joy you might take in perhaps setting something aside for a couple of months and then coming back to it, which I think would be an anathema to many writers.
[00:16:03] And it seems as if some of it is balancing that what are your business goals with what's going to bring you joy. So if what brings you joy is being able to polish and polish and polish, and that process has to happen over months, not weeks, then you can try to get faster, but you can also just reassess your business goals to say, okay, well, what if I am, and I even cringe to say this, "only" putting out a book a year, what if I'm putting out a book a year instead of a book a month, or instead of a book every five years. And then what does my business plan look like that would make sense with that schedule?
[00:16:39] Jessie: Yeah, I think that's really key because it's very hard to keep your eyes on your own paper, when everyone else around you is saying, oh, I'm writing and publishing a book a month. I'm writing 5,000 words a day. And not everyone is. Maybe some people are, some loud people are, it's hard to keep that in mind that, okay, this, isn't the standard I have to get to in order to be a successful indy author. This is what one person is doing, or several people are doing, but look, other people are doing this.
[00:17:09] And so, there are very successful people who aren't putting out a book a month and you don't have to do that either, if that's not the pace that will work for you and sustain you. Because whichever path you take, however quickly you're publishing.
[00:17:24] I mean, think about this in terms of 10 years from now is maybe when you might get your big break, is this something you can sustain for 10 years? Or if you get your big break this year, can you keep sustaining that pace for long enough to make it worth your while? And it keeps going back down to how are you spending your day? Is how you're spending your day how you want to spend your life, and if not, what can you do to change that?
[00:17:52] Matty: And it's the way you're spending your day producing work that in that time in the future, you can look back on it and be proud of what you're saying and not thinking, oh man, if I had only just taken another couple of months with that book, I’d be happier about looking back on it.
[00:18:07] Yeah, it is sort of unfortunate. I think that what you're saying is really valuable about sometimes it's the loud contingent that is trumpeting the book-a-month, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be that an individual author is like obnoxiously loud about their production schedule, but just that it's just attention getting, hearing someone say that is attention getting and nobody's trumpeting the fact that they wrote a book in 18 months, so you don't hear about it, but it might be the vast majority of people anyway.
[00:18:38] And, I think it also makes sense to look at what other people who are creating the kind of work that you yourself are creating, what schedule are they on? Because the more elaborate the world, the more complicated the plot, the longer it's going to take.
[00:18:53] And so I do feel like I'm starting to feel a little bit of a reaction against this rapid release strategy, probably because enough people tried it and realized it wasn't for them, that "take your time if that's what you need," is starting to get a little more airplay, I think.
[00:19:43] Matty: Another item under drafting is Getting Unstuck: Leave Yourself a Crumb Trail. Describe that a little bit.
[00:19:52] Jessie: Oh, yeah. I love this idea and it's really just leaving yourself instructions for tomorrow. So whether you are writing every day and so, okay, tomorrow, I'm going to start working on this next chapter. And while I'm sitting here at the end of my day, I've just written this scene and I'm just going to jot down a couple notes. This is what I'm thinking about for the scene that I'll be working on tomorrow. So the next day, you sit down at your computer and you're like, oh, right, right, right, I was going to have her go do this. And you're not starting necessarily from scratch.
[00:20:27] And if you're sitting down every day, this may not be nearly as useful as if you are sitting down once a week, if you only have weekends to write, and if you sit down every Saturday morning and you're like, oh my gosh, where was I?
[00:20:41] Matty: Yeah, I'm finding I wasn't thinking of it as breadcrumbs, but it is sort of, it's reminders, that again with my sixth Ann Kinnear book, I'm using the phrase "framing out," I'm framing out carefully before I plunge into the detail of the dialogue and the description and things like that. And what I'm doing is, when I include a plot point that is supporting another plot point, I'll put a note in about it. Like, he went to the store taking the long way. And then I'll put a note saying, he had to take the long way because, and then actually put down a note as to why he was doing it, because one thing I found that I waste a ton of time on is that I will forget that there's this interconnectedness in the plot and I'll think, oh no, wait, it's got to be cool, I don't know why he's taking the long way, he'll just take the short way. And then you know, seven hours later, I realize that the reason he took the long way was such and such, and now there's the whole untangling.
[00:21:36] And one thing I like about Scrivener is that you can strike out parts that you don't want to be included in the compile. So I think that I'm probably always going to leave, I mean, maybe not at the very, very, very last edit, but through the whole process of doing this, I'm going to leave those notes in, even if I read them and think, oh, well, of course, I'm going to remember that, but have them struck out so I can compile the text without including it, just to keep myself from taking those routes that I don't remember that there was a reason that I shouldn't be taking.
[00:22:08] Jessie: Yeah, I use the comment feature in Scrivener for a lot of the same thing of just being like, this is what this means, "She said cryptically," like, this is why she said it cryptically. Oh, right, right.
[00:22:19] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And obviously, you don't want the final result to need explanation to the reader, but it's always good to remind oneself.
Revising
[00:22:28] Matty: Then the third part is revising. (Alpha and Beta Readers) And so one thing that I found intriguing there was the idea of beta and alpha readers. So can you describe how you use those types of readers and what is the difference between those two types of readers?
The beta reader [00:22:41] Jessie: Yeah, so, a beta reader is the type of reader that I've used for most of my life. I've got a final draft, I feel pretty good about it, I feel comfortable with somebody else reading it, I've given it to a critique partner, whether it's part of a writing group or part of a workshop I'm going through, and they can give you some really high-level feedback on, this plot's not working, this character, I don't get his motivation, this part was confusing, that sort of thing.
[00:23:08] And that is incredibly, incredibly helpful, I think, especially when you're getting started and trying to figure out what a book is. I think every writer goes through a stage of like, what is a book? Did I write a book? Does this make sense? And your beta reader can be like, no, you didn't write a book yet. It's okay, girl, we got this. You didn't write a book.
The Alpha Reader
[00:23:30] Jessie: So then the alpha reader would come in earlier in the process and be somebody that you are maybe bouncing ideas off of, or showing more incomplete scenes or rougher versions, versions that you wouldn't inflict on other people, basically.
[00:23:46] And so my alpha reader is my husband, and that kind of slowly came about over time as I grew more comfortable letting him read these raw versions of things. And he's not a writer, but he's a very good story doctor. He's like, this works, this doesn't work, let's brainstorm some ideas of how to fix it.
[00:24:07] And he's not gentle with his feedback, which is useful. He doesn't pull his punches. And so the first few times we went through this process, there were certainly a lot of tears on my end, and he's learned to be a little kinder and I've learned to have a little thicker skin. But it's become a really invaluable part of my process to show him like, okay, here's the first act of this book I'm working on, rip it to shreds so that I can use that in my revision and come back with a stronger version of this.
[00:24:35] And then I still do, once the whole draft is done, I'll send it to two beta readers who give me a lot more high-level feedback, but he helps me fix those structural problems as I go along. And that's why I consider him the alpha reader.
[00:24:47] Matty: Yeah, I have some fellow authors who serve in that capacity for me. And there are two things that I've found that help in this area. I didn't think to call them alpha readers, but based on what you just described, that's exactly what they are. And one of them is that if I can get them to let me tell them the story, instead of reading the story, that's really interesting because I might take them out to lunch and say, can I just take you out to lunch and most of the conversation is going to be me telling you my story? And it's very interesting, because you can see like when they're leaning forward, they're interesting, or they're like, oh, a little skeptical about something where they're shaking their head or they're nodding their head or whatever. So being able to do it in that real time fashion is fun.
[00:25:31] And then the other thing that I found is really helpful is because both of these authors I'm thinking of are very nice people, their tendency is not to rip it to shreds, but I started framing it up as, tell me what you think the editor is going to object to.
[00:25:47] Jessie: Oh, that's wonderful.
[00:25:49] Matty: Yeah, because it sort of relieves them of the emotional side, like then they're helping me out. Whenever they tell me something that needs to be fixed, they're helping me out. They're not criticizing, right? Because they're telling me something that's going to be one thing that my editor doesn't have to deal with. So sometimes that can help smooth the way.
[00:26:05] Jessie: I love that way of framing it because as I said, my husband doesn't have any problem giving me super direct, critical feedback, but I have that trouble with other writer friends, and it's been hard to get that kind of critique from certain other people who are like, oh no, that's great, I love that.
[00:26:22] Matty: No, it's not, I know it's not, I need you to tell me where.
[00:26:25] Jessie: I know, that's why I gave it to you, it's not working.
[00:26:27] Matty: Exactly. And I do think that how people put it, one thing that I loop back on periodically, is the idea that I used, I went to a writer's group and there would be critiques, and sometimes, some of the members would complain if someone who was offering their work for critique said, be gentle with me, or something like that. And they said, well, obviously they just don't want to hear anything bad. And I was like, no, I think they just want you to be thoughtful in how you tell them the things that need to be fixed, which I think is always a good idea.
[00:26:55] And in fact, there's an episode with Tiffany Yates Martin about Giving and Receiving Critique, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes, because it's a good tie-in.
[00:27:03] So the last section of the book is What's Next, i.e., Put It out There. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask if you had ever had a circumstance or thought about a circumstance where someone goes through those early stages of thinking of their big idea and using the tips about enabling themselves to get bored or get distracted or explore the small ideas, and then realizing, or maybe they should realize, that what their big idea is, isn't a book. Maybe it's either another kind of creative project or it's just never going to be a book. You know, it's an interesting idea, but it's not solid enough to justify a book, something along those lines.
[00:27:50] Jessie: Yeah, (Write the Next Thing) especially as you're getting started writing, you may write books that never see the light of day. I probably have seven novels, seven trunk novels that nobody will ever see, and that's fine. I was actually talking with somebody about this over the weekend, and he's a younger writer who had been working in this world for quite a few years, and he'd written a novel and was now working on a different novel because the first one wasn't working for him.
[00:28:19] And he was very excited about this idea, but it reminded me a lot of my early novels, which especially for people who write sci-fi and fantasy I think, if you get started at a young age, you have a tendency, you've read "Lord of the Rings" or some hugely epic world, and so you want to write this hugely epic story and you don't maybe have the chops for it yet. Maybe you need to write a few books before you can go back to your original idea that you spent, in my case, 15, 20 years world-building and writing novels in and trying to find the way the story worked.
[00:28:56] And it took me going away from that and writing a couple of sci-fi novels before I was like, okay, now I know how a book works. I can go back to that world, and I can do it justice. So I think the advice that I gave to the younger writer that I was talking to was, I'm not telling you to abandon your project now. I am saying, don't spend the next 15 years working on the same novel. If it's not working, try something different and you can always come back to it.
[00:29:25] So I think that would be my advice, if you have gotten to a stage where you're like, Ooh, I've been working on this for a long time. I'm at the revision process, but it's not coalescing or something's not right with it. Or maybe you are sending it out and you're not getting good feedback from your beta readers, or you're not getting hits from agents, if that's what you're trying to do. Write the next thing. Write the next thing. You can always go back and fix this first thing once you learn how to fix it, or you can always say, you know what, that one can go in the trunk, and I don't need to deal with it. So, write the next thing is my advice.
[00:30:03] Matty: And it may be that there's sort of a part zero head of planning, drafting, and revising, which is sort of steeping yourself in the type of book that you think you're trying to write, so that if you're thinking you want to write fantasy, and then you notice that all the fantasy books are 120,000 words long, and you're never going to write 120,000 words, maybe becoming sufficiently familiar with the tropes and conventions of the genre you think you're going to write in will indicate whether it's a good match or not.
[00:30:34] So you had mentioned the What's Next, Put It out There. And one of the primary questions is the traditional route or the indy route, and obviously we could do a whole episode, as I have, on that question.
Traditional Publishing
[00:30:44] Matty: But for yourself, what were the considerations about what decisions you made there? And then I'm interested to hear more about Microcosm Publishing, because the book is a very attractive book. I mean, it's a highly produced illustrated book, and so there's a flavor of publishing going on there that enables that kind of production. So what path did you take there?
[00:31:08] Jessie: Yeah, I'm glad you asked about Microcosm because I can rave all day about them, but I'll get there in a second.
[00:31:15] So I essentially started out wanting to go the traditional route. That was the only thing that was available when I was wanting to publish you know, my very first novels in like high school and college, and I'm thinking, okay, this is the road I'm going to take. And I got an English literature degree and eventually started copywriting.
[00:31:34] And as I grew my copywriting business and started freelancing and really got to a point where I was like, okay, I have now figured out how to write a book and this feels like something that is sellable or publishable now, I was like, well, I'm already running a writing business. I already am doing all the marketing and I've got the website hosting and I have the technical skill and all of these business side of the things, and I'm impatient, so I was looking at, do I send this book out? I'm already writing, like book three in this series. Do I send this book out and wait for the agent and all of that sort of thing? Or do I just start putting them out now and, knowing my skill level has finally reached where my tastes are, and this is actually a good book, the previous books, they don't need to be out there anywhere. They just don't.
[00:32:31] So that's essentially why I went with the self-publishing route. And I love it. It's a lot of work for sure, I mean, you're familiar. But yeah, I do have a book series that I would like to run by a traditional publisher and see if it could go that direction. But my science fiction, I certainly think just fits more of the indy molds, just a little faster-paced, we can get it out more quickly, written in a series. All of those things that lead to a little bit more success on the indy path.
Tweaking over Time
[00:33:00] Matty: One of the things that I'm really starting to appreciate about indy publishing is the idea of tweaking over time. So for example, Joanna Penn whose podcast I know you've been on, has recently talking about the fact that she did an edit on her first fiction novel. And you're always hearing about people who go back rebrand or get a new cover. I think that the sense in traditional publishing is more, you write the book, you produce the book, the book is out there, it's launched, and then you move on to the next thing.
[00:33:30] Whereas with indy publishing, it never needs to be over, which could be alarming for some people, but I think it's an exciting thing to do, because it's fun to be able to look back at something that's maybe been out there 1, 5, 10 years and think, there's still life there, and if I give it some love, it's going to pay me back in some way. So that's cool.
Microcosm
[00:33:48] Matty: So describe a little bit about what Microcosm is and what your connection there is?
[00:33:54] Jessie: Yeah, so Microcosm Publishing, they're based out of Portland, Oregon, which is where I live, and they've been around almost 30 years now, I think. And they started off, basically one of the owners, Joe Biel, making zines, stapling them together, throwing them in the back of his bicycle, taking them to local punk-rock bars and selling them at the counter of the bar. So this is kind of his small-time publishing empire that he has grown over 30 years. It's him now, own it together with Elly Blue, who had her own publishing empire that they merged now under the umbrella of Microcosm.
[00:34:28] And so my husband and I were both avid cyclists. And so I knew Elly through the cycling scene. And she had started publishing a series of anthologies, feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies, that I had submitted some short stories to. And so we were talking one day, and they were thinking about doing some fiction, but mostly what Microcosm does is a lot of nonfiction, very like advocacy-focused and something around the lines of helping yourself be a better person, so you can help the world be a better place. So there's a lot of really, really great titles that they publish.
[00:35:09] And they were thinking about going into fiction and Elly and I had been talking about that and I was like, actually, I have this other idea that I've been thinking about, which is kind of a do it yourself guide to productivity for creative people, like getting things done for creative brands. And she's like, I want that book. Write me that book. So that is where "From Chaos to Creativity" came from that conversation.
[00:35:32] And then, yeah, I just wrote "From Big Idea to Book" for them as well. And the process of working with them, like you said, they produce fantastic little books, they're very beautiful and just still have that like, punky DIY creative aesthetic. And yeah, I love, I love working with them, they're fantastic.
[00:35:57] Matty: It does give the content a whole different spin. You know, if one just read the text, it's wonderful, but the text paired with the design of the book, I'll just say, that there's a graphic element of the design of the book that is a really nice combination with um the text that you've written.
[00:36:16] So, Jessie, thank you so much for talking through that. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:36:23] Jessie: Yeah, so my digital home is JessieKwak.com. I'm also pretty active on Instagram and Twitter. I do have a Facebook page. I'm the only Jessie Kwak you're going to find if you Google me, so that's one way to find me. But from JessieKwak.com you'll find links to "From Chaos to Creativity," "From Big Idea to Book." Also all of my science fiction is there. I've got, of course, the free novella newsletter starter, all of that stuff. So if you're interested in sci-fi, that's a good place to start.
[00:36:57] Matty: Excellent, thank you so much.
[00:36:58] Jessie: Yeah, this has been fantastic. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jessie! What part of our discussion most resonated with you? Which of her pieces of advice are you already practicing, and which might you add to your own writing practice?
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