Episode 211 - Creating a Refuge: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets with Orna Ross
November 7, 2023
Orna Ross discusses CREATING A REFUGE: CREATIVE PLANNING FOR AUTHORS AND POETS, including what Orna saw that convinced her that writers needed a more holistic approach to planning; the power of linking between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers; drawing deeply on your creative passion and mission as an author and as a publisher; recognize that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: that of maker, manager, and marketeer; the importance of incorporating creative rest and play into your weekly plans; encouraging a growth mindset and instituting a pay-yourself-first policy; and the Kickstarter where she pulls all this together for her fellow indie authors.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
"When you see play or rest as breaks from the process of whatever it is you're trying to make happen, that's wrong thinking. Actually, creative rest and creative play, when indulged in a certain way, are the process. So work, rest and play become completely integrated." —Orna Ross
Orna Ross is a novelist, poet and founder of The Alliance of Independent authors, also known as ALLi. She was also my guest for one of the foundational set of episodes of the podcast—The Seven Processes of Publishing—which, conveniently enough, are episodes 101-107.
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Links
Orna's Links:
Kickstarter at SelfPublishingAdvice.org/planners24
Previous podcast episodes:
Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross
Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross
Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross
Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross
Episode 105 - The Fifth Process of Publishing: Marketing with Orna Ross
Episode 106 - The Sixth Process of Publishing: Promotion with Orna Ross
Episode 107 - The Seventh Process of Publishing: Selective Rights Licensing with Orna Ross
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Kickstarter at SelfPublishingAdvice.org/planners24
Previous podcast episodes:
Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross
Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross
Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross
Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross
Episode 105 - The Fifth Process of Publishing: Marketing with Orna Ross
Episode 106 - The Sixth Process of Publishing: Promotion with Orna Ross
Episode 107 - The Seventh Process of Publishing: Selective Rights Licensing with Orna Ross
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Orna! What part of Orna’s advice was most noteworthy for you? (I always appreciate being reminded about the need to bake rest and play into my creative life.) I’d love to hear about your thoughts!
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Orna Ross. Hey, Orna, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Orna: Hello, Matty. I'm doing extremely well. How are you?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.
Meet Orna Ross
[00:00:10] Matty: Just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Orna Ross is a novelist, poet, and the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, also known as ALLi. And she was also my guest for one of the foundational sets of episodes of the podcast, which were the seven processes of publishing, and those are conveniently episodes 101 through 107. And we're going to be talking today about what I think is a perfect follow-on to that set of episodes. Today, we're going to be talking about creative planning for authors and poets. I think this is a great time of year because this will be going out in November of 2023. It's perfect timing because I know a lot of people like to regroup at the end of the year, plan for the following year, and we'll be able to give them some good tips on that. The way I wanted to approach this is that I was poking around on the ALLi website, self-publishingadvice.org, and I found a description of Orna's philosophy about holistic planning. So, we're going to be diving into that ...
What did Orna see that convinced her that writers needed a more holistic approach to planning?
[00:01:06] Matty: But before we do that, Orna, I always like to ask people, what did you see either in your own writing life or your colleagues or your clients that made you think, "Oh, you know what, we really need a more holistic approach to planning."
[00:01:20] Orna: What I saw, not to put it too dramatically (I do love to be dramatic every now and again), was a lot of suffering, to be perfectly honest. I saw people doing amazing things, and this is in my role in ALLi and also as a writer. So, as a writer who became a self-publisher, I saw the difference that was needed, the need to move from being somebody who thinks about producing words to somebody who thinks about producing books and finding readers for them, and bringing readers to them.
So when I became a self-publisher myself, I adapted to that. The only planning system I ever had was a to-do list. I never needed any more than that. I knew what I needed to do, and I would tick it off as I did it and have an occasional flurry, and that was all fine. When I came to becoming a self-publisher, not long after that, I also founded ALLi. So, not only was I now a writer, I was also a publisher, and I was also running a nonprofit for other author-publishers. As Prince Harry said, it was a lot. So, I found that my to-do list was not equal to the task, and I was constantly feeling like I was having a great time, so suffering might sound very dramatic, but at the same time, there was this constant feeling of being harried and harassed. I was running after myself, never quite feeling like I had done anything, despite the fact that I had done oodles of things. There was always this mountainous to-do list ahead of me, and the to-do list never got shorter; it was always getting longer. I ticked something off, and the next thing came on. That was disheartening in some kind of important way.
Other things I was seeing in the community were people who were, even though they had achieved wonderful things, not feeling any pride in that, or not feeling always conscious of what hadn't been done, looking at other people with comparisonitis. All these things that we're all very familiar with in the community, and some people then became dangerously burnt out, really not doing well, finding that they wound up in a place where they just could not write because it had all kind of fallen apart.
And so, between my own experiences and theirs, I started to realize that the to-do list wasn't enough. I started to use planning programs. You know, I think I purchased every kind of program available, but they were very mechanistic, very much like you were a machine. Tick, tick. Fill that box, do that thing. You know, they didn't allow for the messiness of the creative process for today. You say you're going to do something, and actually, you wind up doing something else, but that other thing eventually turns out to be better than the thing you thought you were going to do. You know, that kind of thing that happens. And all the vagaries of being a creative. So I think, you know, really importantly, rest and creative play. No sign of anything like that. It was all work, work, work, produce, produce, produce, or else they were just fancy calendars. They weren't planning systems. They didn't have an outcome in mind.
What I needed was something that actually created a system that, you know what you want at the end, and then you work back from there, and your system provides the things you need to create. Sometimes, yes, that's work, but sometimes it is play, and sometimes it's rest. So that's where the holistic bit came in.
The other aspect of the holistic bit was time and money. You know, I think of time as having three kinds of dimensions. There's our clock time, which is what planners work on in terms of calendar time, you know, the chunks of actual 90 minutes or a month or a quarter or whatever. But there's also creative time, which is when you are in the zone, and time just loses all meaning, and you are connected with what you're doing. We all know as creatives that when we're in there, time becomes quite irrelevant, and productivity and everything just come together in a really great way. So that's the whole concept of how you get into creative flow and how your practices and your processes and your planning actually come together in order for you to be in that flow state as often as you possibly can be.
So that's what I wanted for myself. I started to try and put that together for myself, which I did, and things really improved as I did that. Then I started to share it with other people because people would often say to me, "How do you do everything you do?" That's the question. Probably the question I get asked most often, actually, "How do you do all the different things?" and I always say creative planning, and they say, "What do you mean?" And then I tell them what I was saying. They say, "Oh, I want to have a go at that."
So it went from that to handing it on organically, and then after a couple of years, I decided, "Yeah, you know what? I'm going to formalize this because I really do think it's, at first, I just thought of it as something that's just my kooky way of doing things. But then I thought, you know, there is something actually in this because I did see it kind of working. So I started a small Patreon group, and we've been working together for some years now. And now I'm kind of taking it out, if you like, with a Kickstarter, in November, which will take it out into the wider world.
[00:07:08] Matty: There are a couple of things that what you were saying made me think of. One is that the idea that task management falls short of planning because there's usually not much prioritization. You know, it results in busyness but not necessarily productivity. And the other thing that I really liked is the idea of a separate kind of time when you're in the creative zone.
And I find that for myself, and it's both a good thing. If I start, you know, I get through my task list, and I start working on my writing, and then sometimes, you know, eight hours go by, and then I suddenly realize it's time for dinner. But then I look back at those eight hours, and I think, you know, could I have achieved what I did creatively in less time and left time for a different kind of creative work or other kinds of work? So I think, you know, these are all things we'll be able to get into as we talk through the five points that are the characteristics that you lay out for holistic planning.
Emphasize the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers
[00:08:01] Matty: So I am just going to dive into the first one and ask you to sort of expand on it. And the first one is that planning should be a holistic effort that emphasizes the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers.
[00:08:15] Orna: Yeah, so this seems to me to be very important. So a lot of authors come into this space, and they hear other authors who have done well talking about what they did and how they did it. And I think that's completely the wrong place to start. Many authors spend years chasing around, listening to every piece of advice they get, trying out something that was never going to work for them because they weren't the same kind of writer or the same kind of publisher. Because, you know, we have different styles, depending on our genre and our writing style, and everything. There are certain things that will never work for you as the author you are. There are certain things that will never work for you as the publisher you are, and you trying to do them and then feeling a sense of failure because you didn't succeed at them when you never should have tried them in the first place.
So I think you've got to start with yourself. You've got to start with your own values. And so the workbook in this planning program begins there. It begins with your passion, what you love to do, and what aspects. We dig deeply into what aspects of writing you love, and also what kind of publisher you are. Are you a volume publisher, an engagement publisher, or a craft publisher? And then as a writer, you know, are you somebody who's looking to entertain, to inform, or to inspire and other levels of both of those things and your sense of purpose as a writer.
Some authors know this straight away. They know exactly where their mission and their passion come together into a sense of purpose. Others say, "I don't have a purpose, I just want to write because I like writing," but actually, there always is. There always is if you dig down a little bit deeper, and the more you can find out about your personal values and what's important to you, and then connect and see those values up and running in your writing, and then see, "Oh, they're up and running in how I approach my publishing as well," and if you bring that together into an integrated kind of system, now you know what your values are and you know what you're offering. You know what your gift looks like, and then...
In there is embedded so much of what you can then offer as value to your reader, and then you attract the kinds of readers who like the same kind of stuff that you like, who have the same sort of values that you have, who like the language that you use, who like the way you talk about things, the way you feel things, the way you express things. It's all embedded in your book descriptions and in your imagery. Everything becomes easier when you know all that stuff. And you never know it completely, and it's always in a state of flux. This is one of the things that makes our work challenging, is that it never just sits there.
It's never just, you know; it's always kind of getting away from us. It's always changing. The world is changing. The readers are changing. How publishing happens is changing. Everything is in a state of flux. That's the nature of life actually, and not just publishing, but... It's always in a state of flux, but the more you can kind of get to an understanding of yourself as an author and as a publisher and the values that you have, and then the value that you're offering the reader, everything really becomes quite lovely. It's a very enjoyable sort of experience, and when you realize that's what you're doing.
Because we don't want to be writers, in the main, you know, we don't want to be writers to make money. Of course, we want to make a living from our writing, and of course, we want to be paid properly, and anyone who knows me knows how passionately I believe that creatives deserve a living as much as anybody else. Of course, that's really important, but there's something else going on there too. If you've decided you want to be a writer and finding out your why and what's driving you is immensely enriching, so this planning program starts there.
[00:12:08] Matty: And when someone is coming up with their why, is it a statement like, you know, a company might have a mission statement? And if it is, can you share an example of the sort of idea a writer should have about what their mission is, what their why is?
[00:12:22] Orna: Yeah, so it might be different, you know, for different genres. So I'll just take myself as the example. But when it comes to my poetry books, for example, what I'm actually trying to do is cultivate the creative state in the person who's reading the work. So, not just to talk about it, inspire, but to make them feel inspired, if you like.
When I'm writing nonfiction ALLi books, the why I'm very much driven by is the empowerment, the self-empowerment that I get from creative writing, the enjoyment of the creative freedom, and the creative control that gives me. It's very much about empowering other authors to experience that and to have that. So, you know, that's just kind of two examples.
When it comes to my fiction, it's about bringing alive times and places that still have resonance and have caused us to have certain experiences in our time, that have historical tales on them. I want to tell those stories so that we understand the connection between the past and the present.
So these are just some examples, but it's very unique, and there may be more than one aspect to it. So each person delves into it. You're brought through a process. There are boxes to fill and lines to write, and then at the end of it, you kind of know what's going on more than you did, and you revisit it periodically as you go through.
[00:13:55] Matty: You had said early on that you saw writers who would hear about an approach that worked for someone else and try it, even though another person might be able to tell them that it was not going to be a good match. Are there red flags that people should watch out for, or I guess green lights they should watch out for, that would indicate to them, before they really dive into an approach, whether it is more or less suitable for them?
[00:14:19] Orna: Yes, I think so. You know, if you are the kind of person who loathes social media, you're probably not going to be an engagement publisher, or vice versa. If you are that kind of person, maybe volume publishing is what you should do. If you're somebody that loves getting in there and the texture of the words or the texture of the page or the texture, you know, the look of the cover, the crafty kind of stuff, then, you know, don't try to be a volume publisher.
Pick the one you know, sell directly and set up a whole different sort of thing around yourself. But if you want to write a lot of books, and the stories keep coming, and they're in one genre, and that genre is really popular, and it's got loads of loyal readers, then you are a volume publisher.
The problem is, volume publishing has been the dominant story in Indy because that's what happens on Amazon, and Amazon is the dominant story in Indy, and that big blanket over the Indy publishing sector, author publishing sector, is stifling many other ways of making a living, making income, and approaching publishing.
Now, I think that's beginning to shift as the community becomes more mature and as authors are developing the confidence to believe in themselves and start with their own values and so on, the very sorts of things we've been talking about already. We're seeing that more. And as the tools and technology, which allow these things to happen, are improving, and also as readers get used to the idea of buying directly from an author rather than buying from Amazon.
There is a shift that's happening, and we saw that with our indie author income survey earlier this year. We saw that there is a small but growing and significant sector of people who are doing things differently, who are making a living or better. Some of them are doing extraordinarily well with, say, direct sales or crowdfunding or different models from the Amazon model.
[00:16:32] Matty: Yeah, I think that differentiation between volume, engagement, and craft, I would put myself in the craft category. But early on in my author career, I found myself in a lot of virtual communities that were volume-based and was alarmed by the expectations it set. And I like that idea of needing to match the community you're tapping into for advice to the goals that you have.
[00:17:03] Orna: I think that's very important, and sometimes it can be hard to find that because you don't know what you're looking for. I think that's also what the planning process helps you to see. It can be very difficult to see yourself, especially on your first few books, as a writer. You're just following something blindly, and we're all "pantsers" in our publishing life at first because it's very hard for anyone to plot it out fully. It's the kind of thing you have to learn by doing. So seeing yourself, a lot of what the planning process does is try to help you see more clearly what's actually going on for you and to read the signs, as you put it.
[00:17:48] Matty: Yeah, I think, not a definitive marker, but an important marker is if you're reading advice or participating in a group, are you feeling energized or alarmed? And if you're feeling alarmed, you probably need to look for a different community or a different source for that.
[00:18:03] Orna: I'm really glad you mentioned feelings because we don't talk about them enough. One of the things that's one of the measures, there are four kinds of measures that the planning system uses, and one of them is actually creative, CHQ, your Creative Happiness Quotient. It's basically the pleasure you're taking in what you're doing. As you say, if you're not feeling good, that's a sign. That's not something you need to get over so you can drive yourself and push yourself to be something that you think you have to be. That's actually a sign to you that possibly you're going in the wrong direction.
Probably, I mean, there is such a thing as creative discomfort, which we do need to get over because whenever we're putting ourselves out there, we're going to have that scary kind of feeling. That's a different thing.
The point being that you need the tools that allow you to do that kind of self-examination. So you understand what your feelings are telling you. So you're listening to yourself. In fact, listening to yourself means listening to lots of different people. You're not just one person as an indie author. You're wearing three hats, for starters. You're a maker, you're a manager, and you're a marketeer. But then there's also all the stuff that comes up when you're writing and digging around in your psyche and bringing out these words. And then there's also the process of putting yourself out there through marketing and publishing and all the stuff that it brings up. So you're going to have different parts of you that are, maybe one part of you is energized, and a different part of you is alarmed, and you need to get them talking to each other.
So that's another thing that happens in the workbook, which is what I call the 'finding flow' process, where you don't stifle parts of yourself that want to tell you something; you actually get them engaged with each other. The whole program is about integration, about integrating your writing with your publishing. It's about integrating the commercial with the creative. It's about integrating the different parts of yourself and understanding what's going on there.
[00:20:02] Matty: Yeah, the image that sprang to my mind as you were saying that is deciding to dive off the high diving board. And that's going to be a scary experience, but for a lot of people, it would be an exhilarating experience. You know, if you think about getting past the creative discomfort, that could be an analogy, as opposed to climbing the rock wall, which would just be... I'm obviously using personal examples, because I remember that feeling of excitement and exhilaration, but still, some fear when I was young and went off the high dive the first time. But climbing a rock wall, I would have a completely different response to, that would be my sense of dread and discomfort. So, there are negatives in either one. The negatives are taking very different forms. One is excitement, and the other one is just discomfort. I think there are analogies to that as you're trying to find your path among the many that you're describing.
[00:20:59] Orna: Perfect. And then the thing is that for somebody else, the rock wall might be the exhilarating, fabulous thing, and the high dive might be pure torture. So it's totally about... nobody knows, you're the expert in your own life, you're the expert in your own publishing business, and you're the expert in your own writing. So, you know, really, I think this is one of the reasons why so many indie authors fall away, defeated, discouraged, is due to a lack of self-engagement in the process and the realization that writing is a creative process, but so is publishing. But it's a different one. It's completely different and it's going to call for completely different sets of skills and ways of doing things. But it is a creative process, and so you engage with it in the same way. Just as you wouldn't expect to sit down at the desk and be a perfect writer on the first day you sat down. Yet it's just amazing how many people expect to get the publishing right the first time. And if they don't get it right the first time, then, you know, 'I'm not selling. It's over, self-publishing didn't work for me. I didn't sell my first book.' And that kind of approach is still extraordinarily common.
[00:22:13] Matty: So, I wanted to dive into the second of the characteristics of a holistic planning effort that you outlined, which is to draw deeply on your creative passion and mission as an author and a publisher. And I think that some of what we've talked about already touches on this, but the idea of passion is something that we maybe haven't delved into completely. Any thoughts on that?
[00:22:33] Orna: Yeah, so your passion is what you love to do, and your mission is what you'd like to change, what you'd like to see changing in the world. What makes you angry is often your mission, and what makes you excited is often your passion, and it's when you bring those two together, as I said, that you get your purpose.
So your creative passion is a tremendous source, as well as your mission. Your mission operates almost like the bedrock, giving you the longevity and resilience to keep going when things don't go well. Passion is more immediate and can be cultivated. When you remind yourself of what you love about this work, suddenly things that seem impossible become very possible. When you're feeling that level of passion, and when you meet other authors who are in the same genre or do things in similar ways, the energy just rises up, and in that moment, they can do anything.
So, tapping into that passion, understanding it, and then coming back to it when things get difficult, which they will because writing and publishing are two high-level skills, they will be difficult. Personal development for a writer and a publisher is professional development and personal development; they're the same thing, so there are going to be growing pains, and you're going to feel it. When those things come on board, being able to remind yourself of your creative passion, what it is, why you are here, and also of your mission, why you're here, what you want to achieve, what you want to change, what you want to see happen, the kind of impact you want to have, the influence you want to have on your readers, and so on. Being able to tap back into those, knowing what they are, is the first point, and then returning to them and constantly cultivating them in the proper way. It gives you all this energy.
What generally happens instead with a lot of people is a lot of negative feelings about what they're doing. They don't see it as a growth thing and forget the passion and mission, getting bogged down in the work. I think that's where our creative capacity shrinks. So, in fear, there's a lot of leeching of creative energy. When we get into a worry cycle, fear cycle, anger cycle, or jealousy cycle, all of these things just drain creative energy away, and passion and mission are the antidote to those.
[00:25:25] Matty: Mission is certainly something I can imagine somebody crafting and writing down as a reference point. When you're thinking about passion, is that something that is more like a barometer that people should be keeping an eye on? Or do you see a benefit to people actually assessing, through writing, what their passions are?
[00:25:44] Orna: Accessing passion is done in a certain way by answering specific questions about what you love and tapping back into your past. Very often, we become disconnected from our creative joy, even though we're doing what is our creative joy; we can still become disconnected from it. If your passion is alive and well and functioning for you, you'll know it.
"You'll feel it. You'll be saying, it doesn't matter what comes up. I'm enjoying this. So, you know, I'm not going to burn out because I'm happy. But if you're not happy, then it's a sign that you're disconnected from the passion in some way. And then there is a way back to pick it up again. And that is, there's a process that you have to go through that time doesn't permit me to bring us through, but it is very much about identifying when you last felt happy about it and also tapping back into earlier years when you knew you wanted to be a writer and what was going on at that time and what you thought being a writer would do for you. You know what you thought the outcome would be, so passion is very much about how you will become self-fulfilled and self-actualized, whereas Mission is more about what you want to change in the world.
Recognize that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: that of maker, manager, and marketeer
[00:27:00] Matty: I'm going to move on to the third characteristic of holistic planning, which is recognizing that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: maker, manager, and marketeer. And I have to say that loving the nautical metaphor, I made a play on this in my own private group, which was, the voyager, the 'I'm voyaging, I'm filling the sails.' S A I L, or S A L E, or Swabbing the Decks, he's swabbing the decks as the manager, but talk a little bit
[00:27:31] Orna: I love this. Sales and sails. Excellent.
[00:27:38] Matty: So talk a little bit about why you think it's so important to separate those out and to understand what you're doing in each of those areas.
[00:27:44] Orna: Yeah, it's that, again, back to creative energy. So, and it's also about realizing that publishing is creative as well. So very often, we split in our minds, and we say writing is the creative bit, and publishing and marketing is the, we think of it as admin, and that's not true. So when we separate out into maker, manager, and marketeer, we begin to see how those different things are happening in different places.
So making, for example, doesn't just happen when you're working on your book. You have to make blog posts. If you're a blogger, you have to make social media updates, and you have to make email newsletters to your readers and so on and so forth. You have to, if you are that way inclined, you will be making maybe some of your illustrations for your marketing and so on. They're all making tasks, and you make a podcast, you know, the actual deciding what's going to be in the content and the making of it.
Then there is the managing part, which happens in writing as much as it happens in publishing, but we think it doesn't, but it does, you know. So there's, you have to be organizing and, you know, even if you're a complete pantser, you still have to do some outlining. That's a kind of a management task, but much more than that, the processes which allow the writing to happen, time and energy and the space even in which you sit down to write and what that looks like, all of those kinds of things fall under the manager's remit. And the manager's job essentially is to make sure that the maker and the marketeer have what they need to do their jobs and enjoy them in a sustainable way. So when we begin to think about the manager like that person who heads up the pace and the processes of the whole endeavor, then it begins to feel different than if we just see it as pure admin. It's much more than admin. It's in the managerial tasks and how we manage them that we become the creative director, not just of our writing, but of our publishing as well, and of how they integrate together.
And then the marketeer, I call it a marketeer, not just a marketer, because it's not just about marketing the books, but it's about selling them. It's about actually making sales, and so it's both marketing and promotion, and how we speak. You know, what promise we make to the reader, how we get across to them what the books are about, how we convey all that stuff that we were talking about earlier - the values, the passion, and the mission. How that gets transmitted all falls into the marketeer's role.
And the other thing that a manager is very key in is money. And this is another place where people, you know, the holistic thing falls apart when it comes to money. The whole mindset changes, and we go from being growth-oriented people and creative people, and expansive people to being tired, scared, and, you know, pulling in and afraid to spend a penny kind of thing. It's a very common dynamic that we've set up. Writers and artists don't like money by definition.
You know, if you want to make a living, then the less of an artist you are. All those kinds of things. We talk about these things all the time, but when it comes to ourselves and recognizing our own dynamics and our own relationship with money and everything, the planning system is very much about putting yourself first, making sure you get paid as well as everybody else, and making sure that you allocate your money so that you realize the money that comes in has to be divided up into the tax people will be taking some of it, and the money that needs to go to your editor and everybody else. But making sure that you get paid as well is really important. So that's what I mean about the holistic aspect of it. Everything hinges on everything else.
[00:31:41] Matty: I like that idea of not categorizing a set of tasks like email, let's say. I think that was a great example as one of those, and I'm extrapolating that not only should you be considering this from a planning point of view, but if you go into an activity like, now I'm going to write my monthly email newsletter. There's the maker part where you're crafting the letter, there's the manager part that understands what you hope to get out of the email and what you want your readers to get out of the email. And then the marketeer is considering how what you're doing with the email factors into the rest of your business. Like, is this going to be a sales-focused email or a community-building email or whatever, and I like that. It feels much more comfortable than kind of going, "Ugh, now I have to write my email" because, It seems to somebody like a marketeer thing or a manager thing, and maybe they don't like those things, but if you look at each task, it's having components of all of them. Is that a legitimate interpretation of what you're saying?
[00:32:41] Orna: That's so well put. It's exactly right. And the email, I think the email is a great example because so many authors, and myself included, for a very long time, the email is really hard. And why is it so hard? And we all wonder about that. I think the reason why it's so hard is certainly the point of discovery for me about why it was so hard for me was because I was leaving out the maker, manager, and marketeer tasks. I did not see it as just a manager task and a marketeer task, and I didn't craft them.
As soon as I began to think of how it connects to the passion, the mission, but also, you know, in the same way to the books and realize that they, you know, you need to approach this email in a way that it isn't just about getting it done.
I'm getting back to my creative work. This is my creative work, and you know what is more creative than actually reaching out to the reader directly. I mean, this is what writers dreamed about back in the days when you were third-party published, that you actually got to connect with your reader. But how quickly things become chores when we approach them with certain ways of. So yeah, that's exactly right.
There is a creative dimension to absolutely everything, actually, if you can find it. And the second you find it, you've got far more energy, and also something else comes in, something that isn't your conscious mind, something that's coming from the unconscious that is far more perfect than anything you would consciously craft.
And certainly anything you'd consciously craft when you're just trying to get the job over, so you can go back to doing the thing that you think you want to do more than anything else.
Incorporate creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work
[00:34:31] Matty: I think that's a really nice entree to the next characteristic of holistic planning, which is it incorporates creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work. And, you know, as you were describing, a different approach to crafting an email, you could see how that could become creative play. But I think you're talking here about something separate from the creative work when you're talking about creative rest and play. And this is something that not only I'm going to be very interested in hearing, but my husband's going to be interested in hearing this and then recording it and playing it back for me periodically because I'm a work smarter and harder kind of person. So, talk about creative rest and play a little bit.
[00:35:08] Orna: Yeah. So, you know, I'm such a believer in both of these. And, you know, you talked about how email could be playful. It won't be unless you know how to cultivate creative play more widely. And then it comes in, and this is the thing that you do.
So something kind of counterintuitive happens. People, when you see play or rest as breaks from the process of whatever it is you're trying to make happen, that's wrong thinking. Actually, creative rest and creative play, when indulged in a certain way, are the process. So work, rest, and play become completely integrated. So it's very counterintuitive. And it's hard to do. Like you say, most of us are indie authors, we're not afraid of work. If you were afraid of work, you wouldn't come into this room, would you? It's just, you just don't. So, some of us are workaholics. We need that compulsive kind of hit that we get from work and achievement and success, however we define it.
And that's all good. There's nothing wrong. Hard work never killed anyone, as my mother said. But actually it has killed some people, but probably not writers, but it can kill your joy. And that's what we're coming back to again. You know, kind of where we started at the beginning. Creative play and creative rest. It feels counterintuitive to stop and to go off and do these things. And when I talk about creative rest and play, yes, I'm talking about very specific things. So creative rest is anything that stills the mind. So it might be meditation, it might be sleep, it might be, you know, different people have different sorts of techniques, and that, you know, there are both short and longer versions of these built into the planning program. So the program encourages a retreat once a year, and that means a retreat, not a, "I'm going away to write," retreat, but an actual retreat from everything and downtime, and some writers and some indie authors find that extraordinarily difficult. And then on the other side, play is, again, anything you absolutely love to do, and is often physical for authors, because we get away from the desk, and we need to, you know, dance, run, or climb. In your case, high dive, and in somebody else's case, climb the rock wall, and those kinds of uplifting activities. So holidays, vacations where you are doing, you know, whatever you think is your ideal fun would be, is creative play, whereas, you know, crashing out on the beach and just reading easy novels is more like creative rest.
It's different for everybody. What we like to do and how we like to do it is very different, and again, there's a process in finding out what is right for you, and also in seeing, am I resting when I think I'm resting? Or am I just doing more stuff in a different way? And am I playing when I think I'm off? Or am I just thinking, you know, have I just brought work home? And I'm just thinking about the next thing I have to do and so on.
So there's a whole process of self-recognition in there. And then there is a kind of dissolving of habits. And when this balance comes in, you know, when work is feeding play, play is feeding rest, rest is feeding work, and work is feeding play, you know, and you've got that benign circle, that holistic, to use the word, that you've been using for this entire episode.
When that comes in, now we're really feeling creative energy. Now we're really able to do things that, you know, you don't even know yourself how you did them. They just happened, and you still feel energized. You're not tired, you feel great, and it's all because you took a little bit of time for creative rest, and you took a little bit of time for creative play, and now your creative work just blossoms. And again, it's because this thing comes in that is bigger than us, bigger than our conscious minds. So when we're relying too much on the conscious mind, we're shrinking ourselves. We've got much more to draw on, but we're cutting it off when we don't allow ourselves creative rest or creative play.
[00:39:27] Matty: I like that you're dividing that into two things because I think people have gotten so used to thinking of work-life balance, and there are only two categories, you know, there's work or there's life. I like the idea of separating out the rest and the play and how you're defining them.
[00:39:40] Orna: Yeah, when people talk about work-life balance as well, they're often talking about family and other people, you know, or life in other sorts of ways, but these are very specific things to do, and they're not things to do in the sense of another thing to tick off your box. That isn't how it is. And if it is like that, there's something not right there in that dynamic. But they are very specific in the sense that you can be “off” and not off at all. You can be draining yourself and not giving yourself what you need for your work or indeed for yourself or for your life. So there are huge life benefits in this as well, but they are done by yourself.
One of the practices that's recommended is what I call a "create date," and those of you who have done "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron will recognize the artist's date. It's very similar, and I just find artist's date very heavy. The whole idea of having to be an artist is kind of intimidating, so just a creative date with yourself. Short, once a week, doing something away from everybody else. It's so nurturing. It's just incredibly nurturing. And then also, the creative rest practices, when they're done in a certain way, they just nurture you so much, and everything just becomes, yeah, that loveliness comes back in again.
[00:41:09] Matty: The way I'm seeing this play out or not play out in my own life is that I really have to consciously remind myself, if I get up after, you know, 8 hours of whatever I've been doing and take a dog for a walk, then sometimes I consciously remember to remind myself. Not to listen to a podcast, because my go-to activity is going out with the dogs, and now here's my opportunity to, you know, be catching up on the latest in the indie and self-publishing world, and sometimes I have to say to myself, "No, let's just not do anything like that for a little while. Let's just walk the dog. Let's just look around and see what's going on in the world. It's hard to remember to do sometimes."
[00:41:49] Orna: It is, 100 percent, and, you know, the more we love what we do, back to the passion again, the harder that can be, you know, because we love every bit of it, so we want to keep going. But there definitely comes a point where you're just, you know, you're just making yourself feel drained. It doesn't work, and being in the moment, as you're talking about with the dog, whatever is around you and feeling and experiencing your life.
Because when you're writing, you're taking yourself out of your own life in a way. Even, and obviously, that's very obvious in fiction writing where you're literally taking yourself out of your own life and into another character's life. But it's true in every aspect of writing. You have to be in your head to write. It's a mental cognitive experience, and therefore you're out of your senses, really. You're not aware of what you're, you are in that moment feeling, unless something comes in, I, oh, I realize I'm hungry, or I'm cold, or something like that. But generally speaking, you're not in the moment, you're in your head.
And so redressing the balance of getting back into where your senses are activated and you're smelling and seeing and tasting and touching and feeling, and you know, all of that, it's really important. The other thing that happens if we don't fill the well with new activities and feelings and sense impressions. And as we dry up, we don't have a lot to say because we haven't, yeah, we haven't filled the well, so the well's dry and there's no, we have nothing to give.
Encourage a growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy
[00:43:16] Matty: So I'm going to move on now to the final characteristic that you called out about a holistic planning effort, which is it encourages a growth mindset and a pay-yourself-first policy. I mentioned this a little bit about the importance of being compensated for one's creative work, but, talk about that growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy.
[00:43:34] Orna: Yeah. So those two are really important. So I think I've kind of touched on them, but essentially the growth mindset is, you know, growth is possible. And how do I grow here? Because if we are writing, we want to grow as people so that we are worthy of being read. And if we are publishing, we want to grow as a publisher and reach more readers and, you know, have more influence and have more impact in the world. So it is about growth. Creativity is expansive. Growth is what we're after. We're here. We want to be there. There's a gap in between, and growth is what takes us there. And I think I mentioned earlier, you know, the personal growth, professional growth, the profit growth, they're all very closely intertwined in all the creative industries, writing and publishing included.
"So it isn't about, 'I don't like this. I can't do that.' That is not a growth mindset. That is a limiting mindset. So it's. At the simplest level, it's about understanding that growth is what you're actually engaged in, and whenever you hear yourself going contrary to that, and instead of being expansive, being contractive, instead of being proactive, being reactive, all these are signs that we are not now in the place of growth. So that's one aspect of it.
And then the 'pay yourself first,' that's at every level. You know, as writers, we are offering a gift. We're mining our gift to give it out. Yes, we get paid back and so on, but that is essentially the dynamic, and so we can give ourselves away, and we do. And you can see that, not just writers, but creatives in general, are taking advantage of everywhere, all over the place. Why? Because we allow it. And we allow it as individuals, and we allow it as a group. And I mean, I really, really want to change that. And I don't know if we can, but I feel that we can. And I think that we should.
And I think what's happening here, in our time, is that the creative industries are catching up with the other industries in terms of realizing the kinds of things we're talking about doing and the kinds of ways in which we are now approaching publishing and realizing how we reach readers and... how we make sales, you know, how we, all of these things. We're kind of catching up with other industries and thinking about how these things operate for us in our industry because it's not the same, but lots of it is the same.
But at the core, what we have to do is value ourselves, so that's it's back to where we started with the values. Valuing the reader and the reader valuing us is contingent on us valuing ourselves and understanding. So we don't see so many writers ending up either in severe addiction or, you know, making money for a year or two and then in poverty for the rest of their lives. You know, all these kinds of things that we have built up around our industries are signs of things. So I often think that we turn to writing or any creative activity to heal and to grow. And so allowing that healing and that growing to happen means putting it first and recognizing what you as an individual need in order for you to heal and grow. That is the holistic, positive, expansive, growth, creative way.
But allowing your gift to leech you so that you are giving everything away and you end up with nothing and everybody else gets paid. Money is a good indicator here. Everybody else gets paid, but you don't get paid. That is a sign that something else is going on. That's not expansive. That's not growth. That's not creativity. And so digging in there a bit and finding out what's going on. You could spend 10 years, or you could spend your whole life and never get there. Or you could do some planning, exploration, and, you know, move mountains in days and just change and grow enormously because the whole creative flow comes in behind your efforts to understand and to draw things together and to go there, you know, to go there for yourself, put yourself first, pay yourself first.
The varying timeframes of planning
[00:47:57] Matty: So, I wanted to wrap up with a question about timeframes. I realized that as we were talking, I was seeing a way to think of planning as a strategic, perhaps quarterly effort. As we were talking, I was seeing many ways to apply these concepts down to individual tasks. We were discussing the email, and I'm realizing that over the last couple of weeks, on my task list, I have a reminder each week to check my plan and my quarterly plan. Each week, I remind myself to review and ensure it still makes sense. I realized that for the last several weeks, I haven't done that because I just wanted to move on to the next item on my list. It's kind of embarrassing, but could you talk a bit about whether people can apply what we've been discussing at both a granular and a strategic level? Also, if they're focused on the strategic level, do you have recommendations for how often this assessment should take place?
[00:49:00] Orna: Yes, it starts with the workbook, which covers the topics we've discussed up to this point. Then, you move into a quarterly plan, a monthly planner, and a weekly and daily breakdown of tasks. So, you can take it right down to the task level. The revisiting should happen at least weekly. It's not just about the workbook and planners; we have an online group for this. We used to be on Facebook, but now it's all on Patreon. Every Monday, we map our intentions for the week and jot down what we intend to do under the maker hat, manager hat, and marketeer hat. On Friday, we return to log our accomplishments, what we actually achieved.
Some weeks align with our intentions, some are better, and some don't get started at all. It's the logging and the accountability in the group that is powerful. It helps people see progress. Over the years, I've noticed that people come in with grand plans every Monday, with mountains of tasks for the maker, manager, and marketeer hats. But as time goes on, these intentions shrink until they become week-sized intentions instead of year or quarter-sized ones in a week. This connection with how one's creative process unfolds across the week, month, and quarter is enlightening.
The quarter, in particular, is effective. It draws on both creative psychology and business principles. A quarter is a quarter for a reason, and it works. You can manage 12 weeks effectively in your mind and make significant changes in that time.
It's a really good timeframe, and you could break it into three, which is really great. Months one, months two, months three, you know, and if you haven't caught up, you can catch up with yourself, and you know, all of those things go on a quarter. A quarter is a very manageable piece of time. And so.
Anything that I tried from any management system that I met, I kept anything that worked for me as a creative, and I let go of a lot of the big-stick stuff, and the hit-yourself-over-the-head stuff, and the squeeze-yourself-into-a-box stuff. So.
Time is very much a part of this, and coming back to the plans. Because one of the things the plan does, what makes it a planning system and not just a calendar, is the actual understanding of your top priority, your top task for that quarter, for that month, for that week, for that day. So, returning to the plan, you can start off the morning knowing this is my top intention, and by 11 o'clock it can be so fragmented, you've forgotten what you even wanted to do that day, but the plan is there. So, you can just return to that. You can take refuge in the plan. It's there. It will hold, it kind of holds you up at the different time levels. And that gives you the space then to breathe and to bring in the three dimensions into the different tasks.
[00:52:32] Matty: I can imagine calling this episode, 'Creating a Refuge: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets.' I really like that.
[00:52:39] Orna: Okay.
[00:52:40] Matty: I think it's not what people think of when they think of a plan. They think of a plan as, almost a restriction in some ways.
[00:52:45] Orna: I think so. I think so because so many plans are, they're trying to make a machine of you, you know? And that's the other thing about these, because they're creative plans. They can be messy, and they can be changed as you need to, you know, you scratch out and use them in your way. So all of that is very much a part of being built in again. It's not something that you've done wrong and have to start over. It's actually built in. We have to allow that to happen because the creative process is idiosyncratic. We're not machines, and we never will be. And as the machines become more and more prevalent in our creative field now, I think tapping into our humanity is ever more important, and, yeah, hopefully, they help people to do that.
Kickstarter: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets
[00:53:37] Matty: That's so great. Well, Orna, it is always interesting and inspirational to speak with you. And I know that people are going to be interested in the Kickstarter now, so please share a little bit of information about where they can find out more about that.
[00:53:49] Orna: Yeah, so the link to go to is selfpublishingadvice.org/planners24. The Kickstarter starts on the 5th of November, and it runs for about 15 days. Spiral bounds are coming, people! If any of you are the people who have been asking for the spiral bounds, that's part of what the Kickstarter is about, to actually make those. But there are lots of different things, and also accountability and, you know, there's a sort of a 'give it a try' pack and various different things in the Kickstarter.
So hopefully, there's something there for everyone, at different levels of both engagement and investment.
[00:54:36] Matty: It's going to be an interesting time because I'm going for the first time to 20 Books Vegas, and my planner will be available when I get back from that, loaded up with all sorts of ideas. Having a way to sort through that and saying, "Yes, it would be fun to do 27 things in the next month, but let's take a step back."
[00:54:54] Orna: Absolutely. It's a filter. You can filter all that in and know that it will happen, and it's there, but it's not going to happen. You can only do one thing at a time.
[00:55:08] Matty: Thank you so much, Orna.
[00:55:10] Orna: Matty, for the opportunity, and yeah, happy writing and publishing to you too.
[00:55:16] Matty: Happy writing and publishing.
[00:00:05] Orna: Hello, Matty. I'm doing extremely well. How are you?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.
Meet Orna Ross
[00:00:10] Matty: Just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Orna Ross is a novelist, poet, and the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, also known as ALLi. And she was also my guest for one of the foundational sets of episodes of the podcast, which were the seven processes of publishing, and those are conveniently episodes 101 through 107. And we're going to be talking today about what I think is a perfect follow-on to that set of episodes. Today, we're going to be talking about creative planning for authors and poets. I think this is a great time of year because this will be going out in November of 2023. It's perfect timing because I know a lot of people like to regroup at the end of the year, plan for the following year, and we'll be able to give them some good tips on that. The way I wanted to approach this is that I was poking around on the ALLi website, self-publishingadvice.org, and I found a description of Orna's philosophy about holistic planning. So, we're going to be diving into that ...
What did Orna see that convinced her that writers needed a more holistic approach to planning?
[00:01:06] Matty: But before we do that, Orna, I always like to ask people, what did you see either in your own writing life or your colleagues or your clients that made you think, "Oh, you know what, we really need a more holistic approach to planning."
[00:01:20] Orna: What I saw, not to put it too dramatically (I do love to be dramatic every now and again), was a lot of suffering, to be perfectly honest. I saw people doing amazing things, and this is in my role in ALLi and also as a writer. So, as a writer who became a self-publisher, I saw the difference that was needed, the need to move from being somebody who thinks about producing words to somebody who thinks about producing books and finding readers for them, and bringing readers to them.
So when I became a self-publisher myself, I adapted to that. The only planning system I ever had was a to-do list. I never needed any more than that. I knew what I needed to do, and I would tick it off as I did it and have an occasional flurry, and that was all fine. When I came to becoming a self-publisher, not long after that, I also founded ALLi. So, not only was I now a writer, I was also a publisher, and I was also running a nonprofit for other author-publishers. As Prince Harry said, it was a lot. So, I found that my to-do list was not equal to the task, and I was constantly feeling like I was having a great time, so suffering might sound very dramatic, but at the same time, there was this constant feeling of being harried and harassed. I was running after myself, never quite feeling like I had done anything, despite the fact that I had done oodles of things. There was always this mountainous to-do list ahead of me, and the to-do list never got shorter; it was always getting longer. I ticked something off, and the next thing came on. That was disheartening in some kind of important way.
Other things I was seeing in the community were people who were, even though they had achieved wonderful things, not feeling any pride in that, or not feeling always conscious of what hadn't been done, looking at other people with comparisonitis. All these things that we're all very familiar with in the community, and some people then became dangerously burnt out, really not doing well, finding that they wound up in a place where they just could not write because it had all kind of fallen apart.
And so, between my own experiences and theirs, I started to realize that the to-do list wasn't enough. I started to use planning programs. You know, I think I purchased every kind of program available, but they were very mechanistic, very much like you were a machine. Tick, tick. Fill that box, do that thing. You know, they didn't allow for the messiness of the creative process for today. You say you're going to do something, and actually, you wind up doing something else, but that other thing eventually turns out to be better than the thing you thought you were going to do. You know, that kind of thing that happens. And all the vagaries of being a creative. So I think, you know, really importantly, rest and creative play. No sign of anything like that. It was all work, work, work, produce, produce, produce, or else they were just fancy calendars. They weren't planning systems. They didn't have an outcome in mind.
What I needed was something that actually created a system that, you know what you want at the end, and then you work back from there, and your system provides the things you need to create. Sometimes, yes, that's work, but sometimes it is play, and sometimes it's rest. So that's where the holistic bit came in.
The other aspect of the holistic bit was time and money. You know, I think of time as having three kinds of dimensions. There's our clock time, which is what planners work on in terms of calendar time, you know, the chunks of actual 90 minutes or a month or a quarter or whatever. But there's also creative time, which is when you are in the zone, and time just loses all meaning, and you are connected with what you're doing. We all know as creatives that when we're in there, time becomes quite irrelevant, and productivity and everything just come together in a really great way. So that's the whole concept of how you get into creative flow and how your practices and your processes and your planning actually come together in order for you to be in that flow state as often as you possibly can be.
So that's what I wanted for myself. I started to try and put that together for myself, which I did, and things really improved as I did that. Then I started to share it with other people because people would often say to me, "How do you do everything you do?" That's the question. Probably the question I get asked most often, actually, "How do you do all the different things?" and I always say creative planning, and they say, "What do you mean?" And then I tell them what I was saying. They say, "Oh, I want to have a go at that."
So it went from that to handing it on organically, and then after a couple of years, I decided, "Yeah, you know what? I'm going to formalize this because I really do think it's, at first, I just thought of it as something that's just my kooky way of doing things. But then I thought, you know, there is something actually in this because I did see it kind of working. So I started a small Patreon group, and we've been working together for some years now. And now I'm kind of taking it out, if you like, with a Kickstarter, in November, which will take it out into the wider world.
[00:07:08] Matty: There are a couple of things that what you were saying made me think of. One is that the idea that task management falls short of planning because there's usually not much prioritization. You know, it results in busyness but not necessarily productivity. And the other thing that I really liked is the idea of a separate kind of time when you're in the creative zone.
And I find that for myself, and it's both a good thing. If I start, you know, I get through my task list, and I start working on my writing, and then sometimes, you know, eight hours go by, and then I suddenly realize it's time for dinner. But then I look back at those eight hours, and I think, you know, could I have achieved what I did creatively in less time and left time for a different kind of creative work or other kinds of work? So I think, you know, these are all things we'll be able to get into as we talk through the five points that are the characteristics that you lay out for holistic planning.
Emphasize the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers
[00:08:01] Matty: So I am just going to dive into the first one and ask you to sort of expand on it. And the first one is that planning should be a holistic effort that emphasizes the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers.
[00:08:15] Orna: Yeah, so this seems to me to be very important. So a lot of authors come into this space, and they hear other authors who have done well talking about what they did and how they did it. And I think that's completely the wrong place to start. Many authors spend years chasing around, listening to every piece of advice they get, trying out something that was never going to work for them because they weren't the same kind of writer or the same kind of publisher. Because, you know, we have different styles, depending on our genre and our writing style, and everything. There are certain things that will never work for you as the author you are. There are certain things that will never work for you as the publisher you are, and you trying to do them and then feeling a sense of failure because you didn't succeed at them when you never should have tried them in the first place.
So I think you've got to start with yourself. You've got to start with your own values. And so the workbook in this planning program begins there. It begins with your passion, what you love to do, and what aspects. We dig deeply into what aspects of writing you love, and also what kind of publisher you are. Are you a volume publisher, an engagement publisher, or a craft publisher? And then as a writer, you know, are you somebody who's looking to entertain, to inform, or to inspire and other levels of both of those things and your sense of purpose as a writer.
Some authors know this straight away. They know exactly where their mission and their passion come together into a sense of purpose. Others say, "I don't have a purpose, I just want to write because I like writing," but actually, there always is. There always is if you dig down a little bit deeper, and the more you can find out about your personal values and what's important to you, and then connect and see those values up and running in your writing, and then see, "Oh, they're up and running in how I approach my publishing as well," and if you bring that together into an integrated kind of system, now you know what your values are and you know what you're offering. You know what your gift looks like, and then...
In there is embedded so much of what you can then offer as value to your reader, and then you attract the kinds of readers who like the same kind of stuff that you like, who have the same sort of values that you have, who like the language that you use, who like the way you talk about things, the way you feel things, the way you express things. It's all embedded in your book descriptions and in your imagery. Everything becomes easier when you know all that stuff. And you never know it completely, and it's always in a state of flux. This is one of the things that makes our work challenging, is that it never just sits there.
It's never just, you know; it's always kind of getting away from us. It's always changing. The world is changing. The readers are changing. How publishing happens is changing. Everything is in a state of flux. That's the nature of life actually, and not just publishing, but... It's always in a state of flux, but the more you can kind of get to an understanding of yourself as an author and as a publisher and the values that you have, and then the value that you're offering the reader, everything really becomes quite lovely. It's a very enjoyable sort of experience, and when you realize that's what you're doing.
Because we don't want to be writers, in the main, you know, we don't want to be writers to make money. Of course, we want to make a living from our writing, and of course, we want to be paid properly, and anyone who knows me knows how passionately I believe that creatives deserve a living as much as anybody else. Of course, that's really important, but there's something else going on there too. If you've decided you want to be a writer and finding out your why and what's driving you is immensely enriching, so this planning program starts there.
[00:12:08] Matty: And when someone is coming up with their why, is it a statement like, you know, a company might have a mission statement? And if it is, can you share an example of the sort of idea a writer should have about what their mission is, what their why is?
[00:12:22] Orna: Yeah, so it might be different, you know, for different genres. So I'll just take myself as the example. But when it comes to my poetry books, for example, what I'm actually trying to do is cultivate the creative state in the person who's reading the work. So, not just to talk about it, inspire, but to make them feel inspired, if you like.
When I'm writing nonfiction ALLi books, the why I'm very much driven by is the empowerment, the self-empowerment that I get from creative writing, the enjoyment of the creative freedom, and the creative control that gives me. It's very much about empowering other authors to experience that and to have that. So, you know, that's just kind of two examples.
When it comes to my fiction, it's about bringing alive times and places that still have resonance and have caused us to have certain experiences in our time, that have historical tales on them. I want to tell those stories so that we understand the connection between the past and the present.
So these are just some examples, but it's very unique, and there may be more than one aspect to it. So each person delves into it. You're brought through a process. There are boxes to fill and lines to write, and then at the end of it, you kind of know what's going on more than you did, and you revisit it periodically as you go through.
[00:13:55] Matty: You had said early on that you saw writers who would hear about an approach that worked for someone else and try it, even though another person might be able to tell them that it was not going to be a good match. Are there red flags that people should watch out for, or I guess green lights they should watch out for, that would indicate to them, before they really dive into an approach, whether it is more or less suitable for them?
[00:14:19] Orna: Yes, I think so. You know, if you are the kind of person who loathes social media, you're probably not going to be an engagement publisher, or vice versa. If you are that kind of person, maybe volume publishing is what you should do. If you're somebody that loves getting in there and the texture of the words or the texture of the page or the texture, you know, the look of the cover, the crafty kind of stuff, then, you know, don't try to be a volume publisher.
Pick the one you know, sell directly and set up a whole different sort of thing around yourself. But if you want to write a lot of books, and the stories keep coming, and they're in one genre, and that genre is really popular, and it's got loads of loyal readers, then you are a volume publisher.
The problem is, volume publishing has been the dominant story in Indy because that's what happens on Amazon, and Amazon is the dominant story in Indy, and that big blanket over the Indy publishing sector, author publishing sector, is stifling many other ways of making a living, making income, and approaching publishing.
Now, I think that's beginning to shift as the community becomes more mature and as authors are developing the confidence to believe in themselves and start with their own values and so on, the very sorts of things we've been talking about already. We're seeing that more. And as the tools and technology, which allow these things to happen, are improving, and also as readers get used to the idea of buying directly from an author rather than buying from Amazon.
There is a shift that's happening, and we saw that with our indie author income survey earlier this year. We saw that there is a small but growing and significant sector of people who are doing things differently, who are making a living or better. Some of them are doing extraordinarily well with, say, direct sales or crowdfunding or different models from the Amazon model.
[00:16:32] Matty: Yeah, I think that differentiation between volume, engagement, and craft, I would put myself in the craft category. But early on in my author career, I found myself in a lot of virtual communities that were volume-based and was alarmed by the expectations it set. And I like that idea of needing to match the community you're tapping into for advice to the goals that you have.
[00:17:03] Orna: I think that's very important, and sometimes it can be hard to find that because you don't know what you're looking for. I think that's also what the planning process helps you to see. It can be very difficult to see yourself, especially on your first few books, as a writer. You're just following something blindly, and we're all "pantsers" in our publishing life at first because it's very hard for anyone to plot it out fully. It's the kind of thing you have to learn by doing. So seeing yourself, a lot of what the planning process does is try to help you see more clearly what's actually going on for you and to read the signs, as you put it.
[00:17:48] Matty: Yeah, I think, not a definitive marker, but an important marker is if you're reading advice or participating in a group, are you feeling energized or alarmed? And if you're feeling alarmed, you probably need to look for a different community or a different source for that.
[00:18:03] Orna: I'm really glad you mentioned feelings because we don't talk about them enough. One of the things that's one of the measures, there are four kinds of measures that the planning system uses, and one of them is actually creative, CHQ, your Creative Happiness Quotient. It's basically the pleasure you're taking in what you're doing. As you say, if you're not feeling good, that's a sign. That's not something you need to get over so you can drive yourself and push yourself to be something that you think you have to be. That's actually a sign to you that possibly you're going in the wrong direction.
Probably, I mean, there is such a thing as creative discomfort, which we do need to get over because whenever we're putting ourselves out there, we're going to have that scary kind of feeling. That's a different thing.
The point being that you need the tools that allow you to do that kind of self-examination. So you understand what your feelings are telling you. So you're listening to yourself. In fact, listening to yourself means listening to lots of different people. You're not just one person as an indie author. You're wearing three hats, for starters. You're a maker, you're a manager, and you're a marketeer. But then there's also all the stuff that comes up when you're writing and digging around in your psyche and bringing out these words. And then there's also the process of putting yourself out there through marketing and publishing and all the stuff that it brings up. So you're going to have different parts of you that are, maybe one part of you is energized, and a different part of you is alarmed, and you need to get them talking to each other.
So that's another thing that happens in the workbook, which is what I call the 'finding flow' process, where you don't stifle parts of yourself that want to tell you something; you actually get them engaged with each other. The whole program is about integration, about integrating your writing with your publishing. It's about integrating the commercial with the creative. It's about integrating the different parts of yourself and understanding what's going on there.
[00:20:02] Matty: Yeah, the image that sprang to my mind as you were saying that is deciding to dive off the high diving board. And that's going to be a scary experience, but for a lot of people, it would be an exhilarating experience. You know, if you think about getting past the creative discomfort, that could be an analogy, as opposed to climbing the rock wall, which would just be... I'm obviously using personal examples, because I remember that feeling of excitement and exhilaration, but still, some fear when I was young and went off the high dive the first time. But climbing a rock wall, I would have a completely different response to, that would be my sense of dread and discomfort. So, there are negatives in either one. The negatives are taking very different forms. One is excitement, and the other one is just discomfort. I think there are analogies to that as you're trying to find your path among the many that you're describing.
[00:20:59] Orna: Perfect. And then the thing is that for somebody else, the rock wall might be the exhilarating, fabulous thing, and the high dive might be pure torture. So it's totally about... nobody knows, you're the expert in your own life, you're the expert in your own publishing business, and you're the expert in your own writing. So, you know, really, I think this is one of the reasons why so many indie authors fall away, defeated, discouraged, is due to a lack of self-engagement in the process and the realization that writing is a creative process, but so is publishing. But it's a different one. It's completely different and it's going to call for completely different sets of skills and ways of doing things. But it is a creative process, and so you engage with it in the same way. Just as you wouldn't expect to sit down at the desk and be a perfect writer on the first day you sat down. Yet it's just amazing how many people expect to get the publishing right the first time. And if they don't get it right the first time, then, you know, 'I'm not selling. It's over, self-publishing didn't work for me. I didn't sell my first book.' And that kind of approach is still extraordinarily common.
[00:22:13] Matty: So, I wanted to dive into the second of the characteristics of a holistic planning effort that you outlined, which is to draw deeply on your creative passion and mission as an author and a publisher. And I think that some of what we've talked about already touches on this, but the idea of passion is something that we maybe haven't delved into completely. Any thoughts on that?
[00:22:33] Orna: Yeah, so your passion is what you love to do, and your mission is what you'd like to change, what you'd like to see changing in the world. What makes you angry is often your mission, and what makes you excited is often your passion, and it's when you bring those two together, as I said, that you get your purpose.
So your creative passion is a tremendous source, as well as your mission. Your mission operates almost like the bedrock, giving you the longevity and resilience to keep going when things don't go well. Passion is more immediate and can be cultivated. When you remind yourself of what you love about this work, suddenly things that seem impossible become very possible. When you're feeling that level of passion, and when you meet other authors who are in the same genre or do things in similar ways, the energy just rises up, and in that moment, they can do anything.
So, tapping into that passion, understanding it, and then coming back to it when things get difficult, which they will because writing and publishing are two high-level skills, they will be difficult. Personal development for a writer and a publisher is professional development and personal development; they're the same thing, so there are going to be growing pains, and you're going to feel it. When those things come on board, being able to remind yourself of your creative passion, what it is, why you are here, and also of your mission, why you're here, what you want to achieve, what you want to change, what you want to see happen, the kind of impact you want to have, the influence you want to have on your readers, and so on. Being able to tap back into those, knowing what they are, is the first point, and then returning to them and constantly cultivating them in the proper way. It gives you all this energy.
What generally happens instead with a lot of people is a lot of negative feelings about what they're doing. They don't see it as a growth thing and forget the passion and mission, getting bogged down in the work. I think that's where our creative capacity shrinks. So, in fear, there's a lot of leeching of creative energy. When we get into a worry cycle, fear cycle, anger cycle, or jealousy cycle, all of these things just drain creative energy away, and passion and mission are the antidote to those.
[00:25:25] Matty: Mission is certainly something I can imagine somebody crafting and writing down as a reference point. When you're thinking about passion, is that something that is more like a barometer that people should be keeping an eye on? Or do you see a benefit to people actually assessing, through writing, what their passions are?
[00:25:44] Orna: Accessing passion is done in a certain way by answering specific questions about what you love and tapping back into your past. Very often, we become disconnected from our creative joy, even though we're doing what is our creative joy; we can still become disconnected from it. If your passion is alive and well and functioning for you, you'll know it.
"You'll feel it. You'll be saying, it doesn't matter what comes up. I'm enjoying this. So, you know, I'm not going to burn out because I'm happy. But if you're not happy, then it's a sign that you're disconnected from the passion in some way. And then there is a way back to pick it up again. And that is, there's a process that you have to go through that time doesn't permit me to bring us through, but it is very much about identifying when you last felt happy about it and also tapping back into earlier years when you knew you wanted to be a writer and what was going on at that time and what you thought being a writer would do for you. You know what you thought the outcome would be, so passion is very much about how you will become self-fulfilled and self-actualized, whereas Mission is more about what you want to change in the world.
Recognize that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: that of maker, manager, and marketeer
[00:27:00] Matty: I'm going to move on to the third characteristic of holistic planning, which is recognizing that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: maker, manager, and marketeer. And I have to say that loving the nautical metaphor, I made a play on this in my own private group, which was, the voyager, the 'I'm voyaging, I'm filling the sails.' S A I L, or S A L E, or Swabbing the Decks, he's swabbing the decks as the manager, but talk a little bit
[00:27:31] Orna: I love this. Sales and sails. Excellent.
[00:27:38] Matty: So talk a little bit about why you think it's so important to separate those out and to understand what you're doing in each of those areas.
[00:27:44] Orna: Yeah, it's that, again, back to creative energy. So, and it's also about realizing that publishing is creative as well. So very often, we split in our minds, and we say writing is the creative bit, and publishing and marketing is the, we think of it as admin, and that's not true. So when we separate out into maker, manager, and marketeer, we begin to see how those different things are happening in different places.
So making, for example, doesn't just happen when you're working on your book. You have to make blog posts. If you're a blogger, you have to make social media updates, and you have to make email newsletters to your readers and so on and so forth. You have to, if you are that way inclined, you will be making maybe some of your illustrations for your marketing and so on. They're all making tasks, and you make a podcast, you know, the actual deciding what's going to be in the content and the making of it.
Then there is the managing part, which happens in writing as much as it happens in publishing, but we think it doesn't, but it does, you know. So there's, you have to be organizing and, you know, even if you're a complete pantser, you still have to do some outlining. That's a kind of a management task, but much more than that, the processes which allow the writing to happen, time and energy and the space even in which you sit down to write and what that looks like, all of those kinds of things fall under the manager's remit. And the manager's job essentially is to make sure that the maker and the marketeer have what they need to do their jobs and enjoy them in a sustainable way. So when we begin to think about the manager like that person who heads up the pace and the processes of the whole endeavor, then it begins to feel different than if we just see it as pure admin. It's much more than admin. It's in the managerial tasks and how we manage them that we become the creative director, not just of our writing, but of our publishing as well, and of how they integrate together.
And then the marketeer, I call it a marketeer, not just a marketer, because it's not just about marketing the books, but it's about selling them. It's about actually making sales, and so it's both marketing and promotion, and how we speak. You know, what promise we make to the reader, how we get across to them what the books are about, how we convey all that stuff that we were talking about earlier - the values, the passion, and the mission. How that gets transmitted all falls into the marketeer's role.
And the other thing that a manager is very key in is money. And this is another place where people, you know, the holistic thing falls apart when it comes to money. The whole mindset changes, and we go from being growth-oriented people and creative people, and expansive people to being tired, scared, and, you know, pulling in and afraid to spend a penny kind of thing. It's a very common dynamic that we've set up. Writers and artists don't like money by definition.
You know, if you want to make a living, then the less of an artist you are. All those kinds of things. We talk about these things all the time, but when it comes to ourselves and recognizing our own dynamics and our own relationship with money and everything, the planning system is very much about putting yourself first, making sure you get paid as well as everybody else, and making sure that you allocate your money so that you realize the money that comes in has to be divided up into the tax people will be taking some of it, and the money that needs to go to your editor and everybody else. But making sure that you get paid as well is really important. So that's what I mean about the holistic aspect of it. Everything hinges on everything else.
[00:31:41] Matty: I like that idea of not categorizing a set of tasks like email, let's say. I think that was a great example as one of those, and I'm extrapolating that not only should you be considering this from a planning point of view, but if you go into an activity like, now I'm going to write my monthly email newsletter. There's the maker part where you're crafting the letter, there's the manager part that understands what you hope to get out of the email and what you want your readers to get out of the email. And then the marketeer is considering how what you're doing with the email factors into the rest of your business. Like, is this going to be a sales-focused email or a community-building email or whatever, and I like that. It feels much more comfortable than kind of going, "Ugh, now I have to write my email" because, It seems to somebody like a marketeer thing or a manager thing, and maybe they don't like those things, but if you look at each task, it's having components of all of them. Is that a legitimate interpretation of what you're saying?
[00:32:41] Orna: That's so well put. It's exactly right. And the email, I think the email is a great example because so many authors, and myself included, for a very long time, the email is really hard. And why is it so hard? And we all wonder about that. I think the reason why it's so hard is certainly the point of discovery for me about why it was so hard for me was because I was leaving out the maker, manager, and marketeer tasks. I did not see it as just a manager task and a marketeer task, and I didn't craft them.
As soon as I began to think of how it connects to the passion, the mission, but also, you know, in the same way to the books and realize that they, you know, you need to approach this email in a way that it isn't just about getting it done.
I'm getting back to my creative work. This is my creative work, and you know what is more creative than actually reaching out to the reader directly. I mean, this is what writers dreamed about back in the days when you were third-party published, that you actually got to connect with your reader. But how quickly things become chores when we approach them with certain ways of. So yeah, that's exactly right.
There is a creative dimension to absolutely everything, actually, if you can find it. And the second you find it, you've got far more energy, and also something else comes in, something that isn't your conscious mind, something that's coming from the unconscious that is far more perfect than anything you would consciously craft.
And certainly anything you'd consciously craft when you're just trying to get the job over, so you can go back to doing the thing that you think you want to do more than anything else.
Incorporate creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work
[00:34:31] Matty: I think that's a really nice entree to the next characteristic of holistic planning, which is it incorporates creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work. And, you know, as you were describing, a different approach to crafting an email, you could see how that could become creative play. But I think you're talking here about something separate from the creative work when you're talking about creative rest and play. And this is something that not only I'm going to be very interested in hearing, but my husband's going to be interested in hearing this and then recording it and playing it back for me periodically because I'm a work smarter and harder kind of person. So, talk about creative rest and play a little bit.
[00:35:08] Orna: Yeah. So, you know, I'm such a believer in both of these. And, you know, you talked about how email could be playful. It won't be unless you know how to cultivate creative play more widely. And then it comes in, and this is the thing that you do.
So something kind of counterintuitive happens. People, when you see play or rest as breaks from the process of whatever it is you're trying to make happen, that's wrong thinking. Actually, creative rest and creative play, when indulged in a certain way, are the process. So work, rest, and play become completely integrated. So it's very counterintuitive. And it's hard to do. Like you say, most of us are indie authors, we're not afraid of work. If you were afraid of work, you wouldn't come into this room, would you? It's just, you just don't. So, some of us are workaholics. We need that compulsive kind of hit that we get from work and achievement and success, however we define it.
And that's all good. There's nothing wrong. Hard work never killed anyone, as my mother said. But actually it has killed some people, but probably not writers, but it can kill your joy. And that's what we're coming back to again. You know, kind of where we started at the beginning. Creative play and creative rest. It feels counterintuitive to stop and to go off and do these things. And when I talk about creative rest and play, yes, I'm talking about very specific things. So creative rest is anything that stills the mind. So it might be meditation, it might be sleep, it might be, you know, different people have different sorts of techniques, and that, you know, there are both short and longer versions of these built into the planning program. So the program encourages a retreat once a year, and that means a retreat, not a, "I'm going away to write," retreat, but an actual retreat from everything and downtime, and some writers and some indie authors find that extraordinarily difficult. And then on the other side, play is, again, anything you absolutely love to do, and is often physical for authors, because we get away from the desk, and we need to, you know, dance, run, or climb. In your case, high dive, and in somebody else's case, climb the rock wall, and those kinds of uplifting activities. So holidays, vacations where you are doing, you know, whatever you think is your ideal fun would be, is creative play, whereas, you know, crashing out on the beach and just reading easy novels is more like creative rest.
It's different for everybody. What we like to do and how we like to do it is very different, and again, there's a process in finding out what is right for you, and also in seeing, am I resting when I think I'm resting? Or am I just doing more stuff in a different way? And am I playing when I think I'm off? Or am I just thinking, you know, have I just brought work home? And I'm just thinking about the next thing I have to do and so on.
So there's a whole process of self-recognition in there. And then there is a kind of dissolving of habits. And when this balance comes in, you know, when work is feeding play, play is feeding rest, rest is feeding work, and work is feeding play, you know, and you've got that benign circle, that holistic, to use the word, that you've been using for this entire episode.
When that comes in, now we're really feeling creative energy. Now we're really able to do things that, you know, you don't even know yourself how you did them. They just happened, and you still feel energized. You're not tired, you feel great, and it's all because you took a little bit of time for creative rest, and you took a little bit of time for creative play, and now your creative work just blossoms. And again, it's because this thing comes in that is bigger than us, bigger than our conscious minds. So when we're relying too much on the conscious mind, we're shrinking ourselves. We've got much more to draw on, but we're cutting it off when we don't allow ourselves creative rest or creative play.
[00:39:27] Matty: I like that you're dividing that into two things because I think people have gotten so used to thinking of work-life balance, and there are only two categories, you know, there's work or there's life. I like the idea of separating out the rest and the play and how you're defining them.
[00:39:40] Orna: Yeah, when people talk about work-life balance as well, they're often talking about family and other people, you know, or life in other sorts of ways, but these are very specific things to do, and they're not things to do in the sense of another thing to tick off your box. That isn't how it is. And if it is like that, there's something not right there in that dynamic. But they are very specific in the sense that you can be “off” and not off at all. You can be draining yourself and not giving yourself what you need for your work or indeed for yourself or for your life. So there are huge life benefits in this as well, but they are done by yourself.
One of the practices that's recommended is what I call a "create date," and those of you who have done "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron will recognize the artist's date. It's very similar, and I just find artist's date very heavy. The whole idea of having to be an artist is kind of intimidating, so just a creative date with yourself. Short, once a week, doing something away from everybody else. It's so nurturing. It's just incredibly nurturing. And then also, the creative rest practices, when they're done in a certain way, they just nurture you so much, and everything just becomes, yeah, that loveliness comes back in again.
[00:41:09] Matty: The way I'm seeing this play out or not play out in my own life is that I really have to consciously remind myself, if I get up after, you know, 8 hours of whatever I've been doing and take a dog for a walk, then sometimes I consciously remember to remind myself. Not to listen to a podcast, because my go-to activity is going out with the dogs, and now here's my opportunity to, you know, be catching up on the latest in the indie and self-publishing world, and sometimes I have to say to myself, "No, let's just not do anything like that for a little while. Let's just walk the dog. Let's just look around and see what's going on in the world. It's hard to remember to do sometimes."
[00:41:49] Orna: It is, 100 percent, and, you know, the more we love what we do, back to the passion again, the harder that can be, you know, because we love every bit of it, so we want to keep going. But there definitely comes a point where you're just, you know, you're just making yourself feel drained. It doesn't work, and being in the moment, as you're talking about with the dog, whatever is around you and feeling and experiencing your life.
Because when you're writing, you're taking yourself out of your own life in a way. Even, and obviously, that's very obvious in fiction writing where you're literally taking yourself out of your own life and into another character's life. But it's true in every aspect of writing. You have to be in your head to write. It's a mental cognitive experience, and therefore you're out of your senses, really. You're not aware of what you're, you are in that moment feeling, unless something comes in, I, oh, I realize I'm hungry, or I'm cold, or something like that. But generally speaking, you're not in the moment, you're in your head.
And so redressing the balance of getting back into where your senses are activated and you're smelling and seeing and tasting and touching and feeling, and you know, all of that, it's really important. The other thing that happens if we don't fill the well with new activities and feelings and sense impressions. And as we dry up, we don't have a lot to say because we haven't, yeah, we haven't filled the well, so the well's dry and there's no, we have nothing to give.
Encourage a growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy
[00:43:16] Matty: So I'm going to move on now to the final characteristic that you called out about a holistic planning effort, which is it encourages a growth mindset and a pay-yourself-first policy. I mentioned this a little bit about the importance of being compensated for one's creative work, but, talk about that growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy.
[00:43:34] Orna: Yeah. So those two are really important. So I think I've kind of touched on them, but essentially the growth mindset is, you know, growth is possible. And how do I grow here? Because if we are writing, we want to grow as people so that we are worthy of being read. And if we are publishing, we want to grow as a publisher and reach more readers and, you know, have more influence and have more impact in the world. So it is about growth. Creativity is expansive. Growth is what we're after. We're here. We want to be there. There's a gap in between, and growth is what takes us there. And I think I mentioned earlier, you know, the personal growth, professional growth, the profit growth, they're all very closely intertwined in all the creative industries, writing and publishing included.
"So it isn't about, 'I don't like this. I can't do that.' That is not a growth mindset. That is a limiting mindset. So it's. At the simplest level, it's about understanding that growth is what you're actually engaged in, and whenever you hear yourself going contrary to that, and instead of being expansive, being contractive, instead of being proactive, being reactive, all these are signs that we are not now in the place of growth. So that's one aspect of it.
And then the 'pay yourself first,' that's at every level. You know, as writers, we are offering a gift. We're mining our gift to give it out. Yes, we get paid back and so on, but that is essentially the dynamic, and so we can give ourselves away, and we do. And you can see that, not just writers, but creatives in general, are taking advantage of everywhere, all over the place. Why? Because we allow it. And we allow it as individuals, and we allow it as a group. And I mean, I really, really want to change that. And I don't know if we can, but I feel that we can. And I think that we should.
And I think what's happening here, in our time, is that the creative industries are catching up with the other industries in terms of realizing the kinds of things we're talking about doing and the kinds of ways in which we are now approaching publishing and realizing how we reach readers and... how we make sales, you know, how we, all of these things. We're kind of catching up with other industries and thinking about how these things operate for us in our industry because it's not the same, but lots of it is the same.
But at the core, what we have to do is value ourselves, so that's it's back to where we started with the values. Valuing the reader and the reader valuing us is contingent on us valuing ourselves and understanding. So we don't see so many writers ending up either in severe addiction or, you know, making money for a year or two and then in poverty for the rest of their lives. You know, all these kinds of things that we have built up around our industries are signs of things. So I often think that we turn to writing or any creative activity to heal and to grow. And so allowing that healing and that growing to happen means putting it first and recognizing what you as an individual need in order for you to heal and grow. That is the holistic, positive, expansive, growth, creative way.
But allowing your gift to leech you so that you are giving everything away and you end up with nothing and everybody else gets paid. Money is a good indicator here. Everybody else gets paid, but you don't get paid. That is a sign that something else is going on. That's not expansive. That's not growth. That's not creativity. And so digging in there a bit and finding out what's going on. You could spend 10 years, or you could spend your whole life and never get there. Or you could do some planning, exploration, and, you know, move mountains in days and just change and grow enormously because the whole creative flow comes in behind your efforts to understand and to draw things together and to go there, you know, to go there for yourself, put yourself first, pay yourself first.
The varying timeframes of planning
[00:47:57] Matty: So, I wanted to wrap up with a question about timeframes. I realized that as we were talking, I was seeing a way to think of planning as a strategic, perhaps quarterly effort. As we were talking, I was seeing many ways to apply these concepts down to individual tasks. We were discussing the email, and I'm realizing that over the last couple of weeks, on my task list, I have a reminder each week to check my plan and my quarterly plan. Each week, I remind myself to review and ensure it still makes sense. I realized that for the last several weeks, I haven't done that because I just wanted to move on to the next item on my list. It's kind of embarrassing, but could you talk a bit about whether people can apply what we've been discussing at both a granular and a strategic level? Also, if they're focused on the strategic level, do you have recommendations for how often this assessment should take place?
[00:49:00] Orna: Yes, it starts with the workbook, which covers the topics we've discussed up to this point. Then, you move into a quarterly plan, a monthly planner, and a weekly and daily breakdown of tasks. So, you can take it right down to the task level. The revisiting should happen at least weekly. It's not just about the workbook and planners; we have an online group for this. We used to be on Facebook, but now it's all on Patreon. Every Monday, we map our intentions for the week and jot down what we intend to do under the maker hat, manager hat, and marketeer hat. On Friday, we return to log our accomplishments, what we actually achieved.
Some weeks align with our intentions, some are better, and some don't get started at all. It's the logging and the accountability in the group that is powerful. It helps people see progress. Over the years, I've noticed that people come in with grand plans every Monday, with mountains of tasks for the maker, manager, and marketeer hats. But as time goes on, these intentions shrink until they become week-sized intentions instead of year or quarter-sized ones in a week. This connection with how one's creative process unfolds across the week, month, and quarter is enlightening.
The quarter, in particular, is effective. It draws on both creative psychology and business principles. A quarter is a quarter for a reason, and it works. You can manage 12 weeks effectively in your mind and make significant changes in that time.
It's a really good timeframe, and you could break it into three, which is really great. Months one, months two, months three, you know, and if you haven't caught up, you can catch up with yourself, and you know, all of those things go on a quarter. A quarter is a very manageable piece of time. And so.
Anything that I tried from any management system that I met, I kept anything that worked for me as a creative, and I let go of a lot of the big-stick stuff, and the hit-yourself-over-the-head stuff, and the squeeze-yourself-into-a-box stuff. So.
Time is very much a part of this, and coming back to the plans. Because one of the things the plan does, what makes it a planning system and not just a calendar, is the actual understanding of your top priority, your top task for that quarter, for that month, for that week, for that day. So, returning to the plan, you can start off the morning knowing this is my top intention, and by 11 o'clock it can be so fragmented, you've forgotten what you even wanted to do that day, but the plan is there. So, you can just return to that. You can take refuge in the plan. It's there. It will hold, it kind of holds you up at the different time levels. And that gives you the space then to breathe and to bring in the three dimensions into the different tasks.
[00:52:32] Matty: I can imagine calling this episode, 'Creating a Refuge: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets.' I really like that.
[00:52:39] Orna: Okay.
[00:52:40] Matty: I think it's not what people think of when they think of a plan. They think of a plan as, almost a restriction in some ways.
[00:52:45] Orna: I think so. I think so because so many plans are, they're trying to make a machine of you, you know? And that's the other thing about these, because they're creative plans. They can be messy, and they can be changed as you need to, you know, you scratch out and use them in your way. So all of that is very much a part of being built in again. It's not something that you've done wrong and have to start over. It's actually built in. We have to allow that to happen because the creative process is idiosyncratic. We're not machines, and we never will be. And as the machines become more and more prevalent in our creative field now, I think tapping into our humanity is ever more important, and, yeah, hopefully, they help people to do that.
Kickstarter: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets
[00:53:37] Matty: That's so great. Well, Orna, it is always interesting and inspirational to speak with you. And I know that people are going to be interested in the Kickstarter now, so please share a little bit of information about where they can find out more about that.
[00:53:49] Orna: Yeah, so the link to go to is selfpublishingadvice.org/planners24. The Kickstarter starts on the 5th of November, and it runs for about 15 days. Spiral bounds are coming, people! If any of you are the people who have been asking for the spiral bounds, that's part of what the Kickstarter is about, to actually make those. But there are lots of different things, and also accountability and, you know, there's a sort of a 'give it a try' pack and various different things in the Kickstarter.
So hopefully, there's something there for everyone, at different levels of both engagement and investment.
[00:54:36] Matty: It's going to be an interesting time because I'm going for the first time to 20 Books Vegas, and my planner will be available when I get back from that, loaded up with all sorts of ideas. Having a way to sort through that and saying, "Yes, it would be fun to do 27 things in the next month, but let's take a step back."
[00:54:54] Orna: Absolutely. It's a filter. You can filter all that in and know that it will happen, and it's there, but it's not going to happen. You can only do one thing at a time.
[00:55:08] Matty: Thank you so much, Orna.
[00:55:10] Orna: Matty, for the opportunity, and yeah, happy writing and publishing to you too.
[00:55:16] Matty: Happy writing and publishing.
