Story Magic

69 - Dog Training with Eric Goebelbecker

August 08, 2024 • Golden May

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about not fiddling around with writing and getting to work with guest Eric Goebelbecker.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • The reasons we procrastinate
  • How imposter syndrome and mental hurdles play into procrastination 
  • The parallels between dog training and writing
  • How to get yourself past procrastinating and back to writing


ERIC's WEBSITE: https://ericgoebelbecker.com/
ERIC's NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.ericgoebelbecker.com/


Ready to make readers so in love with your characters they can’t stop biting their nails in anticipation?  Grab The Magic of Character Arcs free email course: https://www.goldenmayediting.com/arcsmagic


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Rachel:

Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.

Emily:

I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And I'm Rachel.

Emily:

And today we are talking with author Eric Goebbelbecker, who's been in tenacious writing and in the Golden Maze Fair for a long time. And we're going to talk about all the ways that writers avoid getting to work and how to, how to get around it. So before we get into that super fun topic, Eric, can you tell us, tell the listeners a little bit about you and what you write and how you found us, maybe?

Eric Goebelbecker:

Oh, how I found you?

Rachel:

That was a while ago.

Emily:

That's a question from me. You know, the pre Covid eradic.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Wow. I have no idea. So where do I start? I guess I'll start with, I'm one of those writers that always wanted to be a writer. Going back to, like, junior high school. I wrote all kinds of short stories and all that. Lost track of that when I joined the army but never stopped reading, I will say. And the fact that I was able to write a helped me, even in the military, with their points when working on radars that I actually rewrote some test plans that they had when I got out of the military and became a programmer, which you could get away with in the early nineties without a degree. My ability to write helped in my career. And now? Well, not now, probably about a decade ago, I started writing about tech part time. Im actually in a couple of the unleashed Sam's books. I wrote a couple of chapters for them. And when I got fed up with programming and retired, we don't have videos of the fact that I'm doing.

Emily:

I know. I was going to say, uh huh.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Um, I am now for the day job writing about tech more or less full time, doing some editing, some strategizing, and part time. I've finished my first indie science fiction book with your help. And I'm working currently behind schedule on the second book in the series. That's why I'm the expert on aren't we all? I'm the expert on avoiding work, actually. Like, I do podcasts to talk about it instead of working.

Emily:

So cool. Well, tell us, can you tell us a little bit about shadows of the past? I know the story behind this book and I love it. So I want everybody else to know it, too.

Eric Goebelbecker:

So shadows of the past is a book about my grandfather in disguise, which maybe someday I'll write the book about my grandfather. And actually, I can talk later. I spoke to Ken Liu he's a science fiction author. He translated a book called three Body Problems that you might heard of. He actually gave me a really cool idea on how to approach the book about my grandfather. I can go to that later. But when I was a snot nosed, skeptical teenager, my dad, and I don't know why he waited until I was like 15 or 16 to tell me this story, told me a story about how my grandfather, when they were still in Germany in the late twenties, my father was born in Germany. Some Nazis tried to kill him because he was considered a hero in World War one. They wanted his endorsement, and he said, no, I think you guys are crazy. And they tried to kill him. That led to a riot in this tiny village that I visited in the eighties. And it was still tiny. And that's how we ended up in the States. And being a skeptical, stop nosed teenager, I completely forgot about this story. And I'll say that already. Like I said, I wanted to be a writer. And I, like, something in me was like, this is too good. This has to be exaggerated. There has to be some, what is the word, hagiography going on? I think how great my grandfather was. And he was this little guy, and he was really low key and really chill, taught me how to fix bicycles. And I'm like, this guy. No, this couldn't be. So I joined the army stationed in Germany. And my grandmother arranged to have my cousin Hans, because of course, my german cousins name was Hans, pick me up and took me to Liedelsheim, our little village. And like, even the name of the village, Liedelsheim, sounds like little, right? Like, how could this have been a hotbed of nazi stuff? And he takes me around during the day. He's like, this is my cousin Eric. He's american, he's in the army. And everybody's like, hey, Eric, how you doing? That night, though, he had a bunch of older guys over for drinks. And this is like 1983, so World War one, world War two, people were still out and around in the early eighties. And suddenly I was able's grandson. And all these guys are like, we're not worthy. We're not worthy. You're amos grandson. And they tell me the same story, but, like, actually more detail. It's even more interesting. And so, again, forgot about it. Yeah, go back to army stuff. Go back. I think I might have already been married by that point. I've got all this kind of stuff going on. I just kind of think in the background that this stuff really happened. And it's kind of cool and then right around when I, you know, past five or six years, I'm thinking about not programming anymore. I'm thinking about finally writing a book, thinking about finally catching up with my sister, who's got, like, 60. And. And politics, um, you know, politics been kind of interesting lately.

Emily:

I don't know if anyone noticed. In a minute.

Rachel:

Surprise.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And the stuff that's, that's been going on around here, if you. If you look at the late twenties in Germany. Um, yeah, I'm not going to say much more, but yeah, and I. I will say at one point when I want. I started researching about my grandfather, I actually thought I better write this fast because, you know, this stuff's going to end soon.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And I found out more and more, um. Oh, that's right. We don't have a video. I actually found two books. One book is about this tiny little village. When I went to that village in, like, 1983, it might have been 2 miles square. And the father and the house from the 18 hundreds that my grandfather was born in was still there.

Emily:

That's cool.

Eric Goebelbecker:

My wife and I went back, and just before COVID Christmas 2019, we were back there visiting family, and it's much bigger now. It's like, what happens over here. Carlsboro is the big city that's nearby. Carlsburg was mentioned in the shadows a couple of times. It's become more of a metropolis type that. Although my cousin, who's a librarian, actually rides his bike into Carlsruhe every day through this one path, I'm kind of jealous. Anyway, getting back to shadows. So I was working on the book about my grandfather, did a ton of research. A Donna fiddling, I will say, instead of writing a lot of research. Yeah. Found amazing amounts of information. This guy named Wegener, who, if you've read shadows, he's a character in there. He was a guy from the lidelsheim area that actually, after World War One ended, wanted to restore the Kaiser, except he wanted the Kaiser to be him. And of course, the proto Nazis were running around, and these two guys, the roets, were trying to get candidates elected to, like, mayor and local council seats in Liehlsheim, which is where my grandfather comes in. But I hit a point where I'm like, this is not the first book I'm going to write. This is way too serious. And still the question that Ken Liu helped me out with, which is, I can't write a history book about this. I can't even find the records of when my grandfather was captured by the French and when he was released. I have other books that he's interviewed for talking about it, but I couldn't find, you know, so, like, I can't do an academic book with footnotes. It's going to be fictionalized. But how much? And at some point, because I'm a science fiction guy and a little crazy, I was thinking about the Sohm and thinking about the battle of the Somme. My grandfather was on. And if you don't know about that battle, that. What was the PBS series set in England that was really popular? Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey, yes. Actually has scenes with the battle of the Stone.

Emily:

That was so funny that that's where you went to.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Well, I mean, that's something that people that are not, you know, World War two geeks. Right.

Emily:

Like Downton season. Love it.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Right. When you reach. When you reach 30 guys either have to be into roman history or World War one and two.

Emily:

Yes.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Right. So I'm trying to relate there, but that was a battle in the trenches in France, where in one day, I think it was 18,000 british troops were killed. Jeez. And if you think about World War one weapons.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, like, you had to reload the rifle every time to kill 18,000 people. What that takes. And that was the battle my grandfather had survived and what made him a hero. The British broke through in one place. Guess where it was. And here again, I hear the story about my grandfather. I'm like, get out of here. Come on. Then I'm in the New York public library reading about the battle and reading about his unit and it happening. He knew which way to run and saved his unit. And I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about how cool it would be to write about that. But again, I can't do it as my first book. So I made a book where it's the Martians instead of the British. And actually, that scene is in the book.

Emily:

I was just going to say, I remember when Amel knows the trenches because he's the radio guy. Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

So my grandfather is Emil Goblebecker. Goebbelbecker with the. With the umlaut. My grandmother was Emily Zimmerman. So one of the main characters in shadows of the past is Amel Zimmerman. Didn't even try to hide that. And so what I try to do in shadows is mix those two stories of the world War. World War one era battles, but in a world that it was changed by HG Wells. Martian attack.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

So if you're not familiar with the original War of the worlds and you're only familiar with the Tom Cruise movie. Or if you get a chance, the movie from the fifties is much better. They kind of duct tape a romance story to it, but it's a much, much better movie. The Martians show up in, I don't know, 18. I think I decided it was 1894. They tear everything up. They're literally eating us. And then they drop dead because they can't tolerate Earth's microbes. They catch the flu and die. It's Covid.

Rachel:

Think about that. Timely.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And I think Spielberg kind of does that, sort of.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And my question was, they had these heat rays. They had this amazing hardware. What happened to it? They just dropped dead and left that stuff laying there. And like, let's look at 1894. You've got Kaiser Wilhelm, for crying out loud. He was not a nice guy. He was actually trying to take over South America. What happens when he gets heat raised and poison gas? And the czar in Russia. I didn't even get to Russia yet in the book. But I thought about that and I thought about also one of the reasons why we're in the political situation we're in right now. The only reason that guy is even a thing is 911. 911 really changed our politics. So what would happen to America if aliens invaded? Yeah. What kind of country would we have turned into? And that's the american half of shadows. In the past, I think I could have done a better job. And the third book goes into that kind of a situation where how does a country like America react to being invaded? I mean, what did we do for 911? I mean, 3000 people and we lost our minds.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, go look at other countries where slightly bigger things have happened. They actually stayed democracy somehow.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah. Just saying. So that's where shadows comes from. Kind of all over the place on that.

Emily:

Yeah. Well, I think it's. I think it's really interesting because the topic that you sort of brought to us today is this idea of, like, stop fiddling and get to work, which I think is something a lot of us can relate to and also has lots of layers to it. Right. But I think what I love about your story with this story is that you recognized that writing your grandfather story felt so big. And so instead of just, like, not doing it, you decided to write something else instead. That used all of the research that you worked on. That was fun for you because it was Sci-Fi and it got to, you got to ask all these other questions without the pressure of, like, you know, quote unquote getting it right. So I think that's a great segue into, you know, what you brought to talk to us about today. So can you tell us a little bit more about why you suggested this topic?

Eric Goebelbecker:

Because I do it too much, and maybe if I talk about it in public, I'll have to stop. I think it's a problem everybody struggles with in different ways. I'm in a couple of writing groups, and it's interesting to, like, before we go into a writing sprint or before we review each other's work, we'll talk about where we're at. And I see these people, and again, I'm not judging them. We talk about it, engaging in these delaying behaviors. And I also have a history with dog training and animal behavior. And with dogs, we talk about displacement behaviors. You know, your dog is nervous. Like, my dog hates the harness for some reason. I don't know why. Never beat her, honestly. But when you approach her with the harness, she starts to scratch because having that thing go over her head. And I think we have those displacement behaviors. And sometimes I wonder when people talk about, well, I can't write till I have a cup of tea. Yeah, and a cup of tea puts me in the mood. I think it puts you in the mood, but I think it's also a kind of a. Before I go and write, I'm going to engage in this other behavior to prepare myself. I think about that. And also in the programming world, totally the same thing. Spend hours reading programming forums before I actually write some code, because I want to figure out how to get this one loop better. Or should I really be using 16 bit integers? Maybe 32 would work. I can waste five days researching that. I think that kind of thing. That seemed to be me, to be something that. To talk about and to bring out into the open. Steve Frisfield has an entire book about the resistance, and I think that's the same thing. Is the resistance, is that resistance to working those behaviors?

Emily:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we call it all kinds of different things. Like, we call it resistance. We call it procrastination. We call it fiddling. But, like, I mean, where do you think that comes from? Because a lot of times we talk about it coming from fear, but I feel like it can be more than just fear. Like, it can come from other places. I think that's the root of it. I don't know. That's a question for both of you.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Here is the first thing in my notes for me. I do think it like, I am in a scene right now on my book that I've been on probably for a week. It is very simple scene with a bunch of characters sitting around a table. And I, and I know that there are several things that have to happen in that scene for my story to work, and I'm afraid it's going to be boring. Yeah. The right thing to do would probably be to write the next scene, and I will avoid that at 230. And I think that's fear. And I think that you hear those voices in your head and saying that somebody's going to read this, they're going to put the book down, or you don't know what you're doing, or how could you possibly be writing a second book already, you loser? You've already sold 200. But we know what's going on, that kind of thing. So I think people will engage in that. And there's two ways you can go with that. One of them is find an opportunity to clean your office, get a new Mac mini, decide the scrivener truly sucks, because it does.

Rachel:

That's me. I'm always like, is it? I think it's Scrivener's fault. I'm going to go look at dabble. Stop it.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Look at tools. I think AI has probably been a boon to the procrastination industry. And the other one is to go find a class.

Emily:

Yes.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And I will say, I don't know if they'll, if they'll listen to this podcast, but I have a few friends that are professional students.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And, you know, and. But I think a lot of that, a lot of it is fear. I do think burnout is a thing. I think that sometimes you do need that break. And the paradox there being, if you don't stop and get up and go do something else, you're never gonna break out of that loop. And so, you know, I think that's a valuable skill for us to learn, is the difference between I'm just afraid of writing this scene or finishing this outline and I'm working too hard. I need to go touch some grass.

Rachel:

Yeah, I think that's, that's like, such learning that distinction, for me, made a huge difference in the being aware of my procrastination, being aware of my fiddling and then getting to choose whether I continue. I consciously am like, I'm not doing this right now. I'm gonna go scroll on my phone versus the resistance, the avoidance. And I just can't find a way to sit down in the chair. But to me now, at the beginning, it was really hard to differentiate between those feelings of, like, am I overwhelmed? Am I afraid? Or am I just tired? And, like, I think the more that you ask the question of why do I not want to do this? And you can, like, bring awareness to what it is and start to recognize the differences in those feelings. Sometimes. I, like, overwhelm is a big one for me, and I hit that over the weekend, wherever. I'm revising right now. And something about this, I was gonna revise the catalyst of my book, which is a scene that's, like, 4500 words. If that scene was a thousand words, I would have had no problem to do it. But some reason that. The reason that I saw it was 4500 words, I was like, I'm not doing. I cannot do it. And then for three days, I was, like, dreading it. And then yesterday, I sat down and I was like, if I just finish this one scene, it's fine.

Eric Goebelbecker:

I.

Rachel:

And then I got through it in, like, 45 minutes, and it was no big deal. And then I did three more scenes. It's like, gosh, why?

Emily:

Just.

Rachel:

There's all sorts of reasons why I felt so overwhelmed by, like, the. The amount of thing. Like, the amount of words that were before me. Yeah.

Emily:

That's making me wonder if there's. I was just thinking, like, that makes me wonder if there's a difference, because we've talked about fear and burnout and tiredness, but then also overwhelm. And I'm wondering if. Is there a tie? I almost think it's tied to both. The idea of overwhelm. Overwhelm is both tied to being tired because it's so much easier to get overwhelmed when you're tired. But I also wonder, is overwhelm a function of fear, of the energy it's gonna take to do something, right?

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah. Yeah, that could definitely be that. And with the size of a scene and the amount of work, there's another dog training concept of it's sort of related when you see any animal doing any kind of a complex behavior, like, if you go to, like, some animal act and, you know, a cute little seal dancing around and doing a sequence of events that wasn't trained in one shot that was broken down.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And even a simple thing like getting a dog to sit, depending upon where the dog is, can. Can take multiple steps. And what they say when a trainer is trying to take on too much at once, one of the things you can call is lumping. They call that lumping. And if you're looking at a scene with 4000 words, maybe you're lumping 4000 words together. And you just do 500 or do a thousand or do one scroll, you know, in word or scrivener, whatever it is. And you may find yourself saying, ask, good, finish it anyway. But, you know, trying to take on too much at once can, can contribute to that overwhelm and that fear. You know, I'm only mentally prepared to revise a thousand words right now. Didn't do a thousand words right now.

Rachel:

Yeah. This idea of, like, lumping. Okay. When you were explaining earlier, dog training, my brain, like, latched onto it and I was trying not to bring it back up again because I'm like, tell me about dog training. This is amazing. So I'm so glad we circled back to it because this psychology feels, it feels like such a compatible comparison to me. And I don't know why I'm just now like, wow, that is so interesting. Um, because I do feel like we tend to, I have no idea if this is going to sound correct, but now I'm latching onto that word lumping. But, like, I feel like we sit down and we try to lump on all these behaviors that we expect of ourselves, but we've not trained ourselves to perform one. So how do I, how am I supposed to expect myself to perform five at a time of, like, I've got to write, I've got to understand, show, don't tell. I've got a no scene structure. I've got to do. Like, we just expect ourselves to perform the complex behavior without letting ourselves go through the motions of, like, they have to become muscle memory first, or they have to become, like, we have to train ourselves to be comfortable in the face of fear, or we have to train ourselves to sit down even if we're feeling a certain way, or train ourselves to not feel guilty, to take a day off. Anyway, I want to hear more comparisons. I am a complex animal with complex behaviors.

Emily:

Train me well.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah, now I'm risking the wrath of the dog trainers because, well, pretty much forgotten.

Emily:

Eric on Twitter, right?

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah, yeah. At egoblevecker. Not that anymore, but find it and flame it. So there are a couple things in there that really work. So to not derail this into a three hour podcast on dog training, I.

Emily:

Mean, I'm like, let's name the podcast dog training with.

Eric Goebelbecker:

One of the pivotal, pivotal books when I started, and I don't know if it is anymore because it's been a while. For those of you who can't see me, I'm old. Was don't shoot the dog was the name of the book. It was written by Karen Pryor, a very famous trainer. She actually really, at most of her experience, as far as I know. And here again, don't shoot me. Dog people was actually training marine mammals, you know, your orcas, your dolphins and all that. And she wrote a book, don't shoot the dog. And what it was supposed to be about was supposed to be for people. And it was supposed to, if you know any psychology, operant conditioning. Skinner. It was supposed to be how to use operant conditioning in your everyday life, your roommate has this annoying behavior. How, instead of yelling at your roommate and trying to punish your roommate, can you switch it around and use positive reinforcement and, like, reward them for hanging up their towel or putting the cap on the toothpaste or whatever? Right? We're all married. We all know about this stuff.

Emily:

Right?

Eric Goebelbecker:

I. And have kids on the way. You have kids on the way. You will remember this conversation, but she called it don't shoot the dog. And if I don't even know if I have my copy anymore, she might had one chapter about dogs in there, and what the title was a reference to was, go back far enough. In the animal behavior days, you can't get the dog to do what you want. Get another dog could fill in the rest.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Dog trainer people latched onto this book and started using her concepts to train dogs. And actually, the Karen Pryor Academy was one of the certificates I had until expired. We used clicker training for training dogs, and it was, you know, 99.99% focused on training dogs with positive reinforcement. And there are a lot of techniques in there that apply to what you're talking about to take a long way around. One of them was they brought in the concept of tag teach, which was a way to use positive reinforcement training for people. It was huge. In the gymnastics world, one of the cardinal rules of tag teach is when you're correcting somebody one thing at a time. So they're trying to, you know, vault over that vault thing that they use in Olympics things, and they're dropping their arms and their knees at the same time. You pick one, either tell them to pick up their arms, tell them to pick up their knees. They do it one more time, they get that right. Great job. Do it again. Then you might tell them about the knees and what you're talking about. There is show, don't tell, you know, punctuation and all that. Trying to get all that right in your draft.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You will never finish. Right. That's why we have revisions. And when you're making, when you make multiple passes in revisions. Right? Like, what was I doing? First pass was pro writing aid. Second pass was autocrit. Third pass, I finally read the damn thing. You know, I didn't try to do that all at once. That's the same thing for us. And that can help overcome some of this fear. Like, what I really need to do, probably, now that I think about it, is just nail the dialogue in this scene around the table.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And then go back and fill in how my character feels, you know, how do you feel about that? Who cares?

Emily:

The number of times Eric was like, really? When I asked him that, why?

Rachel:

Why, why?

Eric Goebelbecker:

We're the heat rays. Let's bring out the heat rays. But that's, wow. We're going to talk about dog training and writing.

Rachel:

I'm titling.

Eric Goebelbecker:

This episode does not listen to this. But, and, you know, we haven't another expression, the dog training world. Positive reinforcement works.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Rewarding yourself works. And whether that's, you know, giving yourself candy or making yourself a cup of lapse on sushan or whatever for finishing that chapter, you can do that. The premac principle is a really key one, which is the dog wants to go play in the yard. Right. Your dog likes nothing more than going into the yard to look for rabbits. My dog definitely does that. I'm going to make her let me put her eardrops in before I open the door and let her go outside. So use a less reinforcing behavior or a more reinforcing behavior as a reward for a less behavior. Reinforcing. Yeah. Well, there you go. Can't ride your bicycle till you finish that chapter. I will tell myself that today. Yeah, we'll see if that happens.

Rachel:

I feel like some of this has parallels to, like, what, what is often recommended for habit building for neuro, neurodivergent people, where you like habit stack. So if you're, if you don't know how, like, if you are so bad at flossing, well, make sure you always floss after you brush your teeth. And then they become, like, a stacked habit where you do both at the same time. And I'm now realizing, like, I guess that kind of became how I write where, like, I get all ready for bed. I, like, brush my teeth, wash my face, and I get in bed, and then I pull out my computer and I, like, write. So it just, and then I go to sleep afterwards. And that became, like, such a consistent part of my nightly life that writing at night works for me. But I guess I'm seeing a lot of parallels. I trained myself, I had, like, a lot of positivity there.

Eric Goebelbecker:

James clear. You read James Clear's stuff, and as somebody who studied a lot of animal behavior, his stuff makes perfect sense. He's dead on about this. Yeah. I have almost no college, but I ended up reading a lot of text to get the dog training certifications I had. And a lot of them were psychology books for humans.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, they're not that far from us dogs. And I could go on. You gotta stop me. I could go on for hours. I had a podcast for a while for this one association I was on the board for, and I was interviewing people from Duke and the canine cognition labs and.

Emily:

Oh, cool.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And the behaviors, like, dogs are better adjusted to live with us than primates are. But all this stuff with positive reinforcement and the downsides of punishment and all that apply to us exactly the same way. And we do punish ourselves.

Emily:

I was just going to say that that's a really good piece of this. Yeah. The shaming and the punishing that we do when we don't, like, meet our expectations, which are usually, like, out of the, you know, out of this world.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, I think that, you know, that's definitely played into it for me, was, I still don't call myself an author. I still don't call myself a writer. Or I'll put in caveats, like, no, I write about technology and, you know, the ways you can punish yourself. I think, like, you, you'll keep yourself from writing. So the technical definition of a punishment is something that reduces a behavior that's really, really important when you're going to people and helping them with their dogs, because they'll get hung up on, you know. Well, I yell at him and he keeps doing it. And, you know, and my friend Margie, she's. She's got lots of wise wisecracks. She's like, so how's that working for you?

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

The dog doesn't find you yelling, punishing. Matter of fact, they may find it rewarding. And as soon as your kids are able to crawl more than, like 1 mile an hour, you will learn of the ways that they will try to get attention from you. Yeah, I'm not sure if you're there yet, but you will. My son's 34. I think he's still doing stuff like that. But if they don't find it punishing, what works, the other hand is, so if you beating yourself up makes you write less.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Then you are punishing yourself and keeping yourself from writing. So that means don't read it and just type without reading behind yourself gets words on the paper. Do it, whatever it takes. And maybe find your ways to reward yourself. Like going up to tools word count and seeing it increment. That is rewarding for me.

Rachel:

Yeah, me too.

Eric Goebelbecker:

I love seeing that. So I used to stop myself from doing it, and I realized, no, honestly, ten words, dude. Ten words. It's only been 4 hours. You know, whatever it is, go ahead and do that and think about the things you're doing to yourself that keep you from wanting to write and don't do that.

Emily:

Yeah, this feels like a really important distinction because I think there's something about hustle culture that tells us the message that we receive is that if we're really hard on ourselves, we'll achieve more. So there's this idea that if your internal narratives, the more shame you pile on yourself and the more you guilt yourself into showing up, the more you're going to do it. But the reality based in animal psychology, like you're saying, is that that actually doesn't do what we want it to do. It has the opposite effect most of the time, because we can't. That punishment does not lead us to showing up on the. Showing up to the page or doing the hard thing or whatever it is that we want to do. It's just going to keep us from doing it.

Rachel:

I was on an Instagram algorithm this morning that was. It was like a mom algorithm. So I was getting lots of mom parenting videos, but one of the ones I came across was a post that was. The message was, moms, don't shame yourselves. Like, you're doing a great job. And that was wonderful. Then I opened up the comments, and the comments were like, shame yourself. Like, it was just so terr. Like, it was so disheartening to see these comments on this woman's video that were basically like, no, you should shame yourself to be better. And I, like, distinctly remember, I can, like, picture the comment box in my brain right now. It was like, shame teaches us to be better people. And I, like, had a moment of like, oh, my God, are all of our teachings wrong? And then I was like, no, no, that's not true. Like, I think there's so much data to back up that, no, shame does not teach you to be a better person. Shame makes you hate yourself more, which just is a negative spiral into not doing the things that you want to do. And that narrative of beating yourself up equates to doing better. Never once has that been a long term solution for me or anybody. That I've ever met. Like, maybe it gets you to change your behavior for one day, but then you, like, revert back to the original thing and, like, the narrative is even worse because now you failed again, and you just continue to shame yourself. And I wish, like, I want to, like, break. Break that, like, generational.

Eric Goebelbecker:

I will say, yes, definitely generational. And what I. You know, my relationship with my dad could be complex at times, but what I started to ask myself about parenting was, what's Chris gonna remember? Yeah, to me, was more important than anything else. And I wish I'd asked myself that question earlier, but that's a whole nother story. But we are also programmed in our firmware, not just psycho, you know, not just what we learned from our parents to kind of follow the group and follow the pack. You know, in dog training, you would hear a lot about social facilitation, and we would, in a lot of situations with dogs that were fearful, try to use other dogs to get them involved. And, like, I had a very, very fearful dog and a very outgoing dog. The outgoing dog's name was caffeine, as a hint. And I could use caffeine to get gauge. To engage in things. Engage. Wow. To engage in things. And one of the horrible things the social media does to that is it plays on that you see that Instagram influencer, and you're like, why can't I be like that? Why can't I be out with my six kids in their stroller and my sports bra running 40 miles an hour? We're programmed for that. And I think that to bring it back to writing. So being in a writing group was really critical to me. Seeing other people write and seeing other people have problems and seeing other people post on slack or discord that they're having a problem. And I'm like, I had that problem three months ago, you know, whatever it might be, and see that there are, you know, million books being uploaded to Amazon a day. There's got to be 30 of those people I can relate to and get over the imposter syndrome and all that.

Emily:

I like that.

Rachel:

Yeah, I feel. I hear that with fiddling, with procrastination, with this behavioral. There's a behavioral shift that needs to happen to, one, become aware of it, but then to two, to change the behavior. And I think we all understand it's not a perfect fix. These patterns come and go, and you have high points and low points, and there's all sorts of variables and factors that go into why we procrastinate. But community feels like a big one, like knowing that you're not alone, being aware, like awareness, understanding the fear, sounds like another big one. What other ways do we stop doing this? Or get back to how do we.

Emily:

Start working through this?

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

It'S a big question.

Eric Goebelbecker:

I mean, the best way to do the work is to do the work. So create the environment that allows you to do the work. And, you know, we talk about that voice in our head, that imposter syndrome, that voice telling us we're not doing it. You have to figure out a way to shut that person up, you know? And I think one of the reasons why I'm struggling for that is different for everybody.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

One thing that really hit for me, actually, very recently, the past few days, is one of my other many hobbies is martial arts and Zen. And I came across a Zen talk that opened with a story from the Moomin Khan, the gateless barrier, the story of Zen stories. And this famous monk, Zhou Xu, was a famous chan Zen monk in China. He was the abbot of a monastery. And a new student came to him one morning and said, please, please tell me what to do. And Jo Shu looked at him and said, did you eat your porridge? Yes. Yes, I did. You better wash your bowl. And the point of that story in the Zen world is Zen is just living and just doing your thing. But what hit me about that was, you know, I got this book that I already paid an editor to be ready for on September 6. What do I need to do? Write the book? I need. I need to wash my bowl. What's it going to take to get me to do that? Right, I guess is the first question. So from there, it's like, so why am I not doing that?

Emily:

Yeah, yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Why am I not doing that? And I, you know, and there's. And for everybody, the answers are going to be different. You know, the room is too hot. The room is too cold. Scrivener looks too much like word 95. You know, whatever it was like, I personally have stripped down my tools to just literally word at Onedrive, and I stopped playing. I spent all kinds of time trying to shoehorn my process into obsidian. And I just. After talking to my sister, and she's like, I've been using word for 20 years. I'm like, maybe she has a point.

Rachel:

Your sister blows my mind. I respect your sister so hard. So cool. To me, the first time you told me about her, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Maybe 60 books later, maybe she's got a point. Where's that resistance? And Pressfield, I gotta say, that book got kind of repetitive for me after a while. But what he is asking you over and over again is, is where is that resistance coming from? What's stopping you from doing it? And if it's, you know, like, time of day, you know, if, if you write best at night, then make your nights available to write for me, it's first thing in the morning.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

So I'm getting up super early to at least get a little bit of writing done before the dog is up my butt, wanting, wanting to be walked, and the birds are squawking too loud for me to think anymore, you know, and that, that's what you have to do. And, you know, and I go back to the, to the behavior thing. If you're not doing it, something is punishing you. It's just a fact. And now, please don't turn that into, oh, my God, I'm punishing myself. I'm such a terrible person, and I'm.

Emily:

Gonna punish myself for punishing myself.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Exactly. Exactly. Right. You know, you can, it could very quickly turn into, like, some kind of a Mel Brooks thing. But what are those things that are punishing you? For me, it's as simple as I did have a habit of every time I sat down and opened up the manuscript, I'd go back a few lines and read to figure out where I am. That would turn into, oh, that's terrible. I personally am using an outlining tool plotter that after you get done mapping your book out, it spits out into a word doc that you could work in. I go to the next thing in the outline, and I work on that, and I figure I will connect the dots in first round, the revisions.

Emily:

Yeah, I love that.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And that's the best place for me personally, and I'm not telling everybody that is not Eric Goldbecker's how to finish a novel. Advice. There is no course forthcoming. That's what worked for me was, you know, to stop punishing myself by reading what I wrote while I was passing out in front of the computer the night before. You know, whatever it might take. You can't write in a certain room and move to another room.

Emily:

You know, I love, I feel like the Zen story just, like, struck a chord with me because, and I think there's a lot of folks, at least in our, a lot of writers and a lot of folks in tenacious writing who probably resonate, will resonate with this, is that I am a perpetual learner, but I have, like, a a deep love of, like, learning about myself. And so I will, like, I love mindset stuff. Like, I love to understand why I'm doing things. And what I will often do is, like, put a lot more weight to why I'm not showing up than I am. I'll be like, I need to figure it out. Like, I need to figure out what's holding me back. I need to figure out, right? And there's this, like, what's the next mindset thing I need to level up in, right. And the story just struck this chord of, like, it's really not that. It's really not that complex. Like, when it comes down to it, you're writing cause you wanna write. You're writing cause you wanna write a story, right? It's part of I'm gonna butcher the Zen stuff, but, like, just, like, you're living, right? It's just, like, part of what your life is like. And so if you're not showing up, something's in the way. And it can be that simple of, like, I'm afraid of something. Okay, now what? Right? And so figuring out, you know, what it is that's punishing you or what it is that you're afraid of can. It can be as simple as just saying, like, I'm just not gonna engage with that, and I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna show up today.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

I mean, as one author, I can't think of who she was now that I read about recently that she actually said she hates writing, but she likes revising.

Emily:

That's me.

Eric Goebelbecker:

So she had to write. She's got to get through the draft to get to what she likes, which goes back to that premack principle.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, and if you don't like drafting, what will make drafting go easier for you and for me, honestly, one of the things I disliked in the first book was the outlining here and then drafting here and then going and all that back and forth. To me, especially as a computer guy who wants everything to be as streamlined as possible. And when I saw a plotter, I was like, oh, God, there you go. And that just was one thing, you know, one situation where looking at a new tool actually made my life easier. But if you're stuck on your book, you're 20,000 words into what's going to be an 80,000 word novel. Do you really think dumping scrivener right now is the right move? Like, that's why I made sure, you know, I'm going to word. That's it. I'm sticking there, crashing, whatever. And you're stuck on that book. You're 30,000 words in. It's taking a six week course. Really what you need right now where. And I'm not against learning, and I'm not against. To me constantly learning is the right thing to do. But there's a time and a place for everything. And, you know, what's a displacement behavior and what's going to help you get your job done?

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah. I will also say the one thing that I had to get past is there are a lot of trainer authors, authors that are acting as trainers that tell you that it's got to be a business for me that doesn't work. When I think of this as my job, I know this is something I'm doing because I enjoy it.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And I. That's where I came up with it's. I'm going to try to do one book a year. There's three books a year, three books a quarter, stuff like that. No, no, no.

Emily:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Now, maybe you're the type of person that treating it like a job is rewarding for you. Fine. But ask yourself that question and yourself what. What story do you need to tell yourself to make this rewarding and fun?

Emily:

Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Planning to have it be a business for yourself could be a reward, but it could also be a punishment. Right. Saying that it's not good enough unless it performs an x y Z way.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah. It killed dog training for me because.

Rachel:

It became, like a business job and.

Eric Goebelbecker:

That had a lot to do with killing it. That's why I've done it on and off part time. And I find it much more, you know, rewarding that way that I can, instead of focusing on the rent, I can focus on the person in front of me who needs help with their dog.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

You know, that kind of thing. Because that's what I found rewarding. I figured out, you know, what was reinforcing about this was helping somebody relate to their dog, not how to fill the next class.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

And with writing, the story I want to tell is what's rewarding, not whether or not I'm breaking even on Facebook ads.

Rachel:

Right.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Rachel:

Yeah. That makes so much sense.

Emily:

Well, thank you so much, Eric. I know. Well, awesome. Well, to close this out, can you tell us a little bit about. Little bit about where people can find you and your books and anything else that you have your dog training?

Eric Goebelbecker:

So my neglected website is Eric goblebecker.com. is it worth it to try to even spell that. Or I guess it could be in the show notes.

Emily:

We'll put it in the show notes.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yeah. Eric with a C. Goblebecker. It's rekeblabog spelled backwards.

Rachel:

That's helpful. Yeah.

Eric Goebelbecker:

My newsletter is newsletter dot ericgoblbecker.com and Facebook. My author page, equally neglected is facebook.com. first initial, last name E. Goblebecker. But if you go to my main my website, you will find everything, including your book. My book is the first book, shadows of the past is wide, pretty much everywhere. If you can avoid giving money to Amazon, I'm very cool with that. But it is on Amazon and the second book is also wide available for pre order and it's also up on Hulu and library things. I've had a couple of library borrows that made me very happy.

Emily:

That's cool.

Rachel:

We've got in the show notes, we've got links to your website and your newsletters. So then go to Eric's website and click on the books tab and get more links to to where you can go grab it.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Yep, there's one of those books to read, things that take you all over the place.

Rachel:

Love that.

Emily:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Eric. It has been a pleasure having you on the podcast and I mean, we'll see you around.

Eric Goebelbecker:

Thank you.

Rachel:

If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.

Emily:

Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs after seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers slipping pages all through the night.

Rachel:

Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.