Zoe Richards
Things are going perfectly for you, you've never had it so good ... and then bam! You fall ill, you have an accident, you make a big mistake with something you know well. It's called the upper limit problem, something defined by Gaye Hendricks in his book The Big Leap (well worth a read, or a listen on Audible).
Why are we talking about this here? Because during times of change we often find ourselves sabotaging those things that are working well for us. We get used to the status quo, the familiar. And change threatens that. We're hardwired to protect ourselves, so naturally our deeper consciousness will do anything to keep things as they are. Strangely when this instinct kicks in we don't just protect ourselves from bad stuff, we also harm the good going on in our lives too. It's almost like some deep-seated fear of success holds us back by sabotaging.
If you disagree, just think about the times you've picked a fight with your partner, or lost concentration and crashed or bumped the car. Then there's those times when you need to say something important and find jibberish comes out instead, or you lose your car keys when you've got somewhere important to get to ... maybe you've even lost your passport and only realise moments before you're due to leave to get an important flight.
I could give you plenty more examples, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. I first noticed my habit for self-sabotage when I found myself telling someone I seemed to have develop a habit for always being late, watching the train pull away from the platform just as I got there, or getting caught in traffic when I had an important meeting to get to. For some reason, that day was a wake up call for me. She suggested I read The Big Leap, and with each page I turned I discovered more about myself than I'd learned in years.
Possibly the most important thing for me to learn was that I could do something about this sabotage life I'd created for myself. So I started experimenting with my tardiness. Here's the three steps I used then, and still use today whenever I catch myself engaging with self-sabotage:
Why are we talking about this here? Because during times of change we often find ourselves sabotaging those things that are working well for us. We get used to the status quo, the familiar. And change threatens that. We're hardwired to protect ourselves, so naturally our deeper consciousness will do anything to keep things as they are. Strangely when this instinct kicks in we don't just protect ourselves from bad stuff, we also harm the good going on in our lives too. It's almost like some deep-seated fear of success holds us back by sabotaging.
If you disagree, just think about the times you've picked a fight with your partner, or lost concentration and crashed or bumped the car. Then there's those times when you need to say something important and find jibberish comes out instead, or you lose your car keys when you've got somewhere important to get to ... maybe you've even lost your passport and only realise moments before you're due to leave to get an important flight.
I could give you plenty more examples, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. I first noticed my habit for self-sabotage when I found myself telling someone I seemed to have develop a habit for always being late, watching the train pull away from the platform just as I got there, or getting caught in traffic when I had an important meeting to get to. For some reason, that day was a wake up call for me. She suggested I read The Big Leap, and with each page I turned I discovered more about myself than I'd learned in years.
Possibly the most important thing for me to learn was that I could do something about this sabotage life I'd created for myself. So I started experimenting with my tardiness. Here's the three steps I used then, and still use today whenever I catch myself engaging with self-sabotage:
- Acknowledge - notice what's going on, the situation you've created for yourself, and acknowledge what is happening. Using the example of regularly being late, I just started to say to myself 'ok, you're running late, that's cool, there must be a reason, no problem.' This removed the stress from the situation. Sure, there were still occasions when I was late, but I found myself encountering things that were positive - and bizarrely I would arrive where I was going and find that others were late too, or there was some reason the meeting couldn't start on time. I had interesting conversations with people because I was no longer self-obsessed with being late. And I would hear things on the radio that had a relevance to what I'd be doing later in the day. By acknowledging that I was running late I removed the stress. Having done that I could relax, and I found that things weren't all bad for me being late ... oh, and I'm seldom late these days!
- Breathe - this is the start of the relaxation process. When we're stressed we breathe faster and with short and shallow breaths. This increases our heart rate, and from there we are making ourselves unwell. For me, that would manifest itself in headaches and migraines. These days I seldom have either. So breathe. You'll thank yourself for that later.
- Consider - there are other options in life, and having relaxed yourself you'll find it easier to come up with the alternatives. Sometimes the alternative to consider is exactly the situation you are in. You can't do anything about it, so that's ok. Other times, having acknowledge your situation and relaxed yourself by breathing slower, you'll find that other options present themselves to you.
So next time you find yourself sabotaging the great stuff that is going on for you, next time you're going through change and notice yourself going into protection mode, try the ABC - acknowledge, breathe, consider. It's so simple, and so effective, and you'll give yourself the chance to grow ... until the next time you self-sabotage!
This episode guides you through some coaching you can do for yourself to help you be the productive writer you want to be. I share with you a tool I use in my work life, and you can get a free copy of the PDF to use as you coach yourself by going to zoerichards.co.uk/35 and signing up at the bottom of these Show Notes. Once you have signed up, the PDF will be sent to your inbox within 48 hours - so be sure to check your spam folder! In the episode I make reference to other episodes that you might want to go back and listen to, and they are, in the order that I mention them in this episode of the podcast: Episode 28 : Who Am I? Episode 32 : What We Can Do About Our Self Sabotage Episode 24 : How To Get Unstuck When You're Torn Between Two Writing Ideas (the split testing episode) Episode 2 : The 150 Rule Episode 14 : Help Yourself Get Unstuck With The 30 for 30 Technique Episode 33 : In Conversation with Philippa East (The Edit Episode) And I also make reference to the Cheshire Novel Prize, which gives feedback to anyone who enters the competition. It opens for entries for 2024 on 01/01/24 - don't wait until the competition opens to get your writing competition-ready. You can start now, and give yourself time to go back and improve it later. To find out more, go to the Cheshire Novel Prize website . Thank you for listening to Write, Damn It! the writing mindset podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a star rating, write a review, or share the episode with others you know who will benefit from listening in. You can find me on Twitter, Threads and Instagram as @zoerichardsuk Happy writing, and may the words flow for you.
Philippa East grew up in Scotland and originally studied Psychology and Philosophy before training as a Clinical Psychologist. She writes psychological thrillers / psychological suspense novels, and her debut Little White Lies was longlisted for the Guardian's "Not-The-Booker" prize and shortlisted for the CWA Dagger for best debut of 2020. Her further novels include Safe and Sound, I’ll Never Tell, and A Guilty Secret. Philippa lives in Lincolnshire with her spouse and cat, and continues to work as a psychologist and therapist. What you can expect in this episode: 11:00 - failing as a writer, even when we do everything right 18:00 - Writing on brand, building a reputation and a profile as a writer 21:00 - Here's where we get into editing 26:40 - A first draft of a manuscript on paper can look exactly the same as a completely finalised manuscript 30:00 - Structural edits 43:00 - The editorial letter with the editors thoughts on your novel 47:00 - Tech tip: be sure to save the original document with a new name to work on with your edits 53:00 - It's a collaboration - your editor has your best interests at heart 1:00:30 - Failing better and the rungs on the ladder Philippa's books Little White Lies (Feb 2020) Safe and Sound (Feb 2021) I’ll Never Tell (Jan 2023) A Guilty Secret (coming Feb 2024) - available to pre-order Philippa's Twitter Tutorials Philippa's editing thread on Twitter Philippa's Story Grid thread on Twitter - and you can also search #PhilippasTutorials Philippa's social media links Twitter: https://twitter.com/philippa_east (@philippa_east) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philippa.east.7/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philippa_east_author/ (@philippa_east_author) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGmuYBbitKjO2yhfGSR4SgQ Philippa's Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philippa-East/e/B07S3JQDGK Story Grid - Podcast , ( Podcast episode 1 on Apple ) Twitter , Book
The one where we get into talking about ADHD and neuro-diversity. This is a fascinating conversation with non-fiction author, Angela Kirwin, who has known she has ADHD from her late teens. After working for years in social care in prison, Angela left to write 'Criminal - How Our Prisons Are Failing Us All' which was published in 2022 with Orion Trapeze - the paperback came out in May 2023. She is now away on her new book which is all about ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and how the condition has both helped and hindered her life. Angela blogs about the subject on Substack under the name Hyperactive Living. In this episode of the podcast we cover a raft of subjects linked to ADHD: At 15:20 - keeping the chaos contained so that the creativity can come At 21:00 - how non-fiction is a story your invested and interested in, that just happens to have facts and data to back up the stories of people At 26:00 - using the voices in our head in our writing At 29:00 - finding peace in the writing process At 32:00 - vulnerability and Brené Brown, and doing the work on ourselves You can find Angela here: AngelaKirwin.com Twitter Instagram Hyperactive Living on Instagram Substack Angela's book Criminal is available here: Criminal People Angela mentioned to follow on Twitter: Harriet Tyce Books Angela mentioned Rick Rubin : The Creative Act Brené Brown
Sarah Hilary is the guest I chat with on this week's episode - and forgive me for it being a longer than usual episode, but I couldn't bring myself to delete any of our conversation. Sarah is such an interesting person to talk with, and I'm sure we could have carried on talking for a while longer. Sarah's debut novel, Someone Else's Skin won Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year 2015 and was a World Book Night selection, a Richard and Judy Book Club pick, and a Silver Faction and Macavity Award finalist in the US. Her latest book, Black Thorn, is out now. Megan Abbott called it 'a mesmerising story of family and community, secrets and lies, psychologically rich and captivatingly told. Ann Cleeves called it 'immersive, claustrophobic, unbearably tense and quite brilliant'. And Sarah herself has been described by Marion Keyes as 'an astonishingly gifted writer'. Amongst a raft of interesting stuff that we cover in the episode, here are some highlights to look out for: At 16:15 Learn about the importance of the thin skin we have At 20:10 We get into responding to feedback At 23:00 Sarah talks about focusing on what we have influence over as a writer At 27:00 Sarah quotes Iris Murdoch - 'a novel is a great idea ruined' At 29:00 I share Amie Kaufman's wise words about adventures At 34:05 We get into being true to our characters and our readers At 39:49 Sarah says about the darkest stories that we can tell can illuminate people's lives and comfort them At 45:00 Sarah talks of the benefits of community as a writer At 52:20 We're reminded of the need to be social as an introverted writer Sarah's books Someone Else's Skin Book 1 of 6 Black Thorn The people Sarah mentioned to follow on Twitter, and as a Podcast: Megan Abbot and Jane Casey on Twitter Red Hot Chilli Writers Podcast Sarah's social media and web links https://sarahhilary.com https://twitter.com/sarah_hilary https://facebook.com/sarah.hilary.author http://instagram.com/sarah_hilary999 St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend - 11-13 August 2023
Fascinating conversation with JD Kirk, the pen name of multi-award-winning author, screenwriter, and writer of comics, Barry Hutchison. Born and raised in Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland, JD wanted to be a writer from the age of nine, when a kindly librarian wrote his name on the spine of a notebook in which he’d written a terrible short story and put it on the shelf. Since then, he’s written over 200 books and is now thoroughly enjoying murdering people as JD Kirk. We covered a raft of subjects in this conversation, and probably the most notable are JD's attitude to writer's block which resonates for me, his wonderful podcast episode he produced with his daughter, and how the publishing world works, which really got me thinking as someone out on submission. As such a prolific and well-known writer, JD gets asked a lot of questions about writing and recently started collecting questions from writers looking for advice. He is going to start answering these questions in weekly videos. The form to submit questions is at link.jdkirk.com/learn You can find JD Kirk on social media here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jdkirkbooks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JDKirkBooks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jdkirkbooks TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jdkirkbooks You can buy JD's latest books here: The One That Got Away (DI Filson #1) – released 25th May – Crime Genre In Service of Death (DCI Logan #17) – due for release 25th July 2023 - Crime
I've been watching how my agent goes about her role within the editing process, and I've learned 4 really helpful things. As a result, I am now taking a different approach to my editing, and I think it's having a positive impact. If you're lost in the editing mire, listen in to find out what the 4 simple steps are that you can use straight away to improve your editing process. My agent is Clare Coombes, who I first met through an agent 1-2-1 session on a different novel than the one that led to her representing me. Although that first novel wasn't ready, she liked my writing style and I was then on her radar, so I genuinely believe that having an agent 1-2-1 is worth having - and she gave me incredible feedback that helped me improve as a writer. You can book a 1-2-1 with Clare through Jericho Writers or I Am In Print .
What if being too focused on getting an agent or a publishing deal is impacting on our writing? Product can become much more important than process and performance if we focus on outcome over experience. With that focus on the outcome, we may be missing out the practice stage - practice out-performs success every day, because we won't get success every day ... but we can practice every day and that practice helps up get better and better at our writing. Plus, if we focus on the experience, are we more likely to enjoy our writing? With our sights on getting an agent, getting a publishing deal, we may be missing out the practice stage, setting our expectations too high, leading to an inevitable disappointment, and missing out on the enjoyment. If you are not getting the outcome you crave, ask yourself, have you put outcome before experience.
A few years ago I was on a course and the tutor repeatedly told us that there are no rules ... and then in the feedback on my writing from the tutor and fellow students it became clear that there are rules, and I needed to know them. Some were about grammar, some about structure, some about pace ... and so much more. So I struggled being told that there are no rules when clearly there are. In this episode I delve into this maxim and consider whether it creates a problem for us as writers if we take the phrase of 'the rule is there are not rules' as a rule in and of itself. I look at how principles - rules to write by - can help us, how we can use rules to help us with our writing. If you want to sign up for the 200 Word Challenge use the link below: https://bestsellerexperiment.com/bxp2020/
Nigel Stewart is the guest this week. He's published 4 books, and is currently working on his 5th. His latest book is Justinian's Daughters, based in St Davids in South Wales. We talked about imposter syndrome, staying grounded, how writing lyrics helps with writing novels, phrases that keep us focused such as 'let's make this better', and trusting the reader. Listen in at 13 minutes to hear about trusting the reader Listen in at 22 minutes to hear about staying grounded Nigel's social media links http://Twitter.com/menigestew http://instagram.com/menigestew http://facebook.com/nigelstewartauthor Nigel's website Nigel's books - Justinian's Daughters; Secrets We Hide From Ourselves; The Lines Between Lies; Colouring In Things that came up in conversation: Episode 3 of Write, Damn It on writing and the 5 love languages Heidi James Podcast about writing The Sound Mirror Kolb's Learning Cycle
As we go in search of imperfection, it helps to understand the impact of cognitive bias through both the expert beginner syndrome and imposter syndrome, and what we can do about it. In this slightly longer short, I share the 4 things we can find ourselves doing when we hit a problem, and number 4 is the one we need to take most note of, as this will help us to learn and grow as a writer. Blog post I mentioned about othering rejection https://www.janefriedman.com/your-novel-has-been-edited-by-top-professionals-but-you-still-get-rejected-what-gives/ Seth Godin's blog post on imposter syndrom https://seths.blog/2017/10/imposter-syndrome/