Story Magic

79 - Lower your expectations with Rachael Herron

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about lowering your writing expectations with guest Rachael Herron.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • Why lowering your expectations can actually make you more prolific
  • Adjusting to the discomfort of failure
  • Finding emotional regulation in your writing process
  • Shifting your mindset to build self-trust


Rachael's website: https://rachaelherron.com/

Check out Rachael's first draft process: http://rachaelherron.com/sfd

Get on Rachael's email list: https://rachaelherron.com/write/

Listen to Ink In Your Veins: https://rachaelherron.com/category/podcast/

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


Join Tenacious Writing! With the perfect combo of craft, mindset, and community resources, you will build a writing life that feels sustainable, fulfilling, and fun—without any prescriptions or rules. Learn more: https://www.tenaciouswriting.com/


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Emily: https://www.instagram.com/ebgoldenbooks/

Emily:

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

Rachel:

I'm Rachel.

Emily:

And I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And today we are talking about failing at writing. We're going to talk about lowering your writing expectations. It's going to be a wonderful conversation. And we're joined by our very special guest, Rachel Herron. So, Rachel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Rachael Herron:

I am so thrilled to be here with you, too. And this is one of my favorite topics to talk about. So let's do it.

Rachel:

Let's do it. Before we jump in, could you share a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself to our listeners and how we what do you do? What do you do in the writing sphere?

Rachael Herron:

What do I do? I have been writing for a while. I think I'm around 30 ish books by now, and those are mostly traditional published, but some self published as I get the rights back to my older, traditionally published books. And I self published those ones. I got into this gig by getting a master of fine arts in creative writing and then absolutely failing to write anything or complete anything. I wrote quite a bit, but I failed to complete anything for about seven years because I was just, like, so hammered down by academia. And then I found NaNowriMo, which, you know, has problems this year. We don't need to go into that. But NaNoWriMo, national Novel writing month really helped me learn that I, like 98.9% of all other writers, need to write a crappy first draft before I even know what the book might be about and then start revising it. So I learned there in 2006. I wrote my first. I finished. I wrote the end for the first time. I think I'd started at least three other books before then and had never finished anything but that one. I finished, and I was shocked to find that the faster I wrote and the more I lowered my expectations about my writing, the better I actually wrote. And so that was the first book that I cleaned up and I sent out. I sent it out in query letters to agents, and I got my agent, and in the fairy tale dream come true, she sold it at auction in a three book deal to HarperCollins. And that's how it all started. So that was in 2008 was when I signed with her, and she sold it. And then my first book came out in 2010. So that was 14 years ago. And since then I've been.

Emily:

2010 was 14 years ago.

Rachael Herron:

Yes.

Emily:

My brain was just like, that's amazing, though. I love how long a track record.

Rachael Herron:

You have in this so since then, I've written memoir, regular mainstream contemporary lit, family fiction, romance, a couple of thrillers for Penguin, a couple of writing books, and I'm entering paranormal queer women's fiction next year with Hachette.

Rachel:

Wow.

Rachael Herron:

That's awesome.

Rachel:

In a word, prolific is a good word to describe you.

Rachael Herron:

Or ADHD. That's another good word.

Rachel:

Love it. I have a badge of honor for ADHD, too.

Rachael Herron:

Love it.

Rachel:

You're doing twelve things at once. You just can't stop.

Rachael Herron:

You gotta. Yeah. You embrace it. You embrace it.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah. So when we were wanting to talk to you, we were trying to figure out what to talk about, really, because you're also an incredible host of another podcast called Ink in your veins, and it is so widely listened to and it has such an incredible backlist. We're both in agreement when we say you're an expert in this field and we're honored to have you as a guest on the podcast. But there was so much for us to talk about, right? And as we were discussing right before this call, we were trying to decide what are we going to tackle today? And we started to talk about the idea of writing process and of failing in your writing, because I saw this episode in your backlist and it just latched onto my brain because in our tenacious writing program in the month of September, we've been hosting our workshop, which we periodically do called build a sustainable writing routine. And it's all about examining the hustle, culture, beliefs, perfectionism, basically the mindset that it takes to develop sustainability and consistency. And it's an incredible workshop. Our writers have been doing a fantastic job really probing what are the beliefs that they hold and how are they showing up as roadblocks. And we had one of our calls yesterday and we were talking about lowering your expectations. I brought this question to our group and I said, if I say everybody, you should lower your writing expectations, how does that make you feel? And you could just see on their faces this like intense, visceral reaction of like, no, absolutely not. I will not do that.

Emily:

How dare you?

Rachel:

How dare you? That makes me feel a certain way. Like you could just. And we had a really great conversation as we dove into it, but I felt like that aligned really well to what you had started to talk about in that episode of you've got to fail and figure out what is the manageable amount for you. What does that look like? So, yeah, that's what I want to talk about today with you. And what do you think about this idea of lowering your expectations over the course of your 30 books, it doesn't really seem like those two things line up right, that you would lower your expectations, yet you would produce 30 books over the last 1416 years.

Rachael Herron:

And I think that that is the. I love this, and I think it's the only way I have managed to produce anything is by lowering my expectations. And I want to say, like, I'm a card carrying perfectionist. I will never not be one. And I'm also a freaking snob because I came out of the MFA tradition. So, like, my sister was the one who told me about Nanowrimo. And if anybody doesn't know what that is, it is the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month. So it's a very short novel, but in a month. And my sister told me about it, and in sisterly fashion, I just remember saying to her, like, who would do that? Only. Only a hack would try to write that fast. And she's like, all right, whatever, I'm not doing it. I just told you about it. But as soon as she left, I went inside and googled it, and I was like, okay, I'm not finishing anything, so why don't I try this? And for the very first time, I took it really seriously. This whole Julia Cameron the artist's way method of, like, saying to yourself, I am only going to be in control of the quantity. The quantity is I'm going to produce quantity, and I'm going for a higher quantity of words, or, you know, chapters or scenes or whatever you're working on than I normally would. And something else will control the quality, and I'm not going to bother about it. And here's the thing I've learned over the course of much writing and much teaching is that these days that we tell ourselves that we're lowering the standard of our work in order to get a lot of words done. It's absolutely. It's false. It is false, because our voice is our writing voice. Is our writing voice, is our writing voice. The days that we have the worst days ever, and we're writing the worst words that have ever been put on the page. You have that on a Wednesday and then on a Friday. It flows. You go into flow. You don't even look up for 57 minutes, and it's beautiful. And you look back on the words, and they are going to change the world. You will win a Pulitzer, but in two weeks, you will not be able to tell those two days apart. Yeah, they are the same voice. They're the same writing. But on one day, you chose to get some dang work done. You promised yourself you would get the work done. So lowering your expectations and nothing, trying to make the words sound good. Oh, I have something if people want to look at it. If you go to rachelharon.com SfD, which stands for I don't know if we swear on the show, but crappy first draft. All right, so rachelharon.com SfD for shitty first draft. It'll shoot you over to an Instagram post where I show what my first draft writing looks like. And I think it scares newer writers because they tell me this. They're like, I didn't know you could do that. I write sentences like, she picked up the all caps whatever it was. She thought about all caps something. And then the song came over the radio and it was blankety blank. And then she said to what was that guy's name again? All in caps. All of these spaces that I leave behind to fill in later. Cause I'll fix it later. I don't even know if the scene will deserve to be in this book yet. Why should I make it good yet? And I would love to hear how you guys feel about this, but it is. I really, really think it is one of the truest truths. There's not a lot of universal truths about writing. Besides, you have to write in order to write. Yeah, that's a big one. But another one is that most of us need to do a crappy first draft and then revise it. Most of us should not be revising as we go along. There are exceptions to this rule, and those exceptions are revising as they go. And they are completing book after good book that they're proud of. That means it's their process. And there are those unicorns, but most.

Emily:

I just heard two of them talking on a podcast recently, and they were like, they're like, I can't move forward unless, like, the problem is fixed. I must go back. And they were like, they were just, like, feeding off each other. And I was like, oh, no, do you have to realize that you are just like. You are.

Rachael Herron:

Unicorns are unicorns, and God bless them, because they are finishing books. So that is their process. But what that does, it gets in so many people's heads because we all believe we shouldn't move forward until we fix the problem. But we don't know how to fix the problem until we've gone forward terribly, with gaping holes in grand canyons of caverns in our work, until we get to the end, where we go, oh, I thought it was a book about the relationship with her dad. It's actually the book about the relationship with her daughter. Oh, no. And that's why you couldn't have fixed it back then. And the vast majority of us work that way. And so when students come to me and say, like, I can't move forward until it's perfect, I say, you must. You will not finish books. That's why you've never finished your book. That's why I had never finished a book before. I tell people to lower their expectations to the floor and then pull up the floorboards and dig a basement for those expectations to go even lower. As low as you can.

Emily:

I'm just gonna waste the next two months.

Rachael Herron:

Like, yes.

Emily:

Nothing's going to come of it. You have to tell yourself that. That's what. I had a similar experience where I just couldn't finish anything. And I've told this story so listeners will be familiar with it. But I eventually was like, okay, I have nothing left to lose because I've still not finished anything. And so I just told my. I actually went and bought one of those free write computers, and I love that. So I literally couldn't, like, go backwards. And I told myself, like, you're going to work right forward for eight weeks and just see what happens, and you're probably going to waste those eight weeks. Of course I did not.

Rachael Herron:

Spoiler alert.

Rachel:

Spoiler alert.

Emily:

But, like. But it's almost like you have to trick your brain into. Because my brain could not even comprehend the idea that I would spend eight weeks only writing forward and actually get somewhere, which is so silly when you say it out loud, but, like, it's so. It's so.

Rachael Herron:

That's a brilliant solution there, because you made one decision. Your one decision was not, how do I fix the scene yesterday? How do I fix the scene today? Your solution was, I'm not fixing any scenes. I am merely writing forward. What will happen? And did you end up finishing that book?

Emily:

I did. I sold it. It's out. It came out last month.

Rachael Herron:

Congratulations. That is what I'm talking about, because you finally. Okay, so here's another snobby thing that I feel that I will only confess for myself, but, like, I always knew 100% with my intellect that everybody has to write a crappy first draft. Like, I understood that. I believed it to be true, and still, in the back of my mind, I had this, like, puritanical complex that was like, except for me, I must get it right on the first try, because I will die of shame and guilt and embarrassment if I don't. So I must get it right. And when you finally realize, oh, no, you're just like everybody else. It's such a weight lifted. Right? I love that story, Emily. That is so cool.

Emily:

Yeah. Well, okay, so I'm working on the second one now. Same problem. Does it get easier?

Rachael Herron:

No. You know what gets easier is the revision. Revision, always. Because you get those tools, you learn what tools work for you, and you know how to explode a book, you know? And, you know, so many people think revision is about making paragraphs and sentences and words better.

Rachel:

It's not.

Rachael Herron:

It's about pulling the story apart, looking at its structure, and getting under the hood and making sure that you can put it back together into a better package. And then after you've done that revision, then you can make all the sentences shine. We get those tools, and we know how to use them, and they will work for every book, no matter what genre. But I swear, every single first draft is like a mystery. It feels like we've never done it before. We will never get through it. We have absolutely chosen the wrong thing to write about, and we went in seven different wrong directions. And that's another case to be made for accepting, lowering your expectations. Like, yep, I am making. I'm not making a book. I'm making, like, an octopus, saxophone, birdhouse. And that's what I'm doing. And later, I'll make that into a book, and that's fine.

Rachel:

So, what did this look like? What did this look like for your day to day writing? I mean, for Emily. She bought a free write and then wrote forward for eight weeks. What did it look like for you? Or does it kind of depend on where you're at in a new book, or was it.

Rachael Herron:

It's really similar in that for most first drafts, I either use my. Well, actually, I don't love the freewriter. I had an old alpha smart, but it eventually died before the free rider, the freewrite thing. So I would use that, or I would use the old app that is now no longer supported. But it was called write or die. Did either of you ever.

Rachel:

Oh, yes. I did use that.

Rachael Herron:

It was great. I dedicated two books to it because I would go to the cafe. I didn't have the wifi password. I'd put my cell phone in my bag, and then I would turn on ride or die, and ride or die works so that you can configure it to do different punishments. First, it would go, like, red while you were. If you weren't typing it. Would go red and then it would start making terrible noises and then it would drop down images of spiders to start erasing your words so you just, and you couldn't get them back. Couldn't, like, control z to get them back. So you had to keep moving forward. And I would go in and I'd do 45 minutes of doing that, pop those in the draft, take a little break, and then I'd do another 45 minutes and that's what I would do for the day. And then I would do two sessions of that and then we'd go home. And I've always written forward in that way, accepting, I guess just like the whole acceptance washes over you that I am not going to fix this book in a first draft. And if I do, I'm wasting my time.

Rachel:

Yeah. So this idea of lowering your expectations, it works? I mean, I think I agree with you. I think everyone finds a pretty similar solution. Like, I looked up your link, which everyone, I'm going to put the shitty first draft post in our show notes so you can go look at it. But I looked at it and I do something pretty similar. And then I ended up calling it, like, layer writing because the first time I go through a scene, I'm like, I remember, this is so crazy. I have, like, pretty good snapshots of import, like, memories in my brain, but I can see myself, like, maybe ten years ago sitting in my bed writing and, like, just staring at a description and having, like, no idea how to describe what this girl's dress looks like and being like, I have no idea how to use words. I'm terrible. And, like, being just so critical of, like, I cannot keep writing unless I can perfectly describe the fabric of this dress and the jewels, the dress and how beautiful it is. And nothing sounded right. So I just, like, gave up. Right. But then I realized that, like, descriptions are my least favorite thing.

Rachael Herron:

So me too.

Rachel:

I'm not gonna write them. I'm just gonna skip them and come on back. And so I started to do, like, different layers where dialogue is the first thing that I like to write. So I usually end up doing, like, very little of other things and I just write out the dialogue and then I go back and flesh things out and then I go back again and I flush more things out and it ends up looking really similar like this because you just leave the blanks of, oh, I don't know what this is, so I'm gonna skip it.

Rachael Herron:

We have this, like, pretend image in our head that writers sit down and they write a pretty good. You know, solid draft. And then they clean it up, and they send it to their editor. And that is not what happens. We all, most of us there are the unicorns, but most of us write in those layers. And I'm exactly the same as you. I hate setting. I can't see it in my head. I don't have a good mind's eye. I can't describe people, and I just don't do it. And I remember when I first started doing that, I kept having those shoulds. Like, well, I should. I should be able to screw that. No, I hear the dialogue first, and you can get. You've got a 90,000 word book that you just wrote in 30,000 words because you only did the dialogue. They're just heads in space. They're not even bodies in a room or in a place. And then you go back and you put all that in to your liking and in your different passes. Some people I know worship setting and world building, and they'll build that first and then build plot character into it. Is it really?

Emily:

Yeah. So I can't do the talking head thing because if I can't see it, like, if I can't be immersed in it, it's not real for me. And if it's not real for me, I lose track of where I'm going, if that makes sense. So, like, so I. I will do, but I'll get lost in it, right? I'll get lost in the setting. I'll get lost. It will still hold me up. So what I do is what I call, kind of a bullet sketch outline, where I think through everything that needs to happen in the scene so that I don't veer off trail once I start putting prose down. And so I'll be like, okay, you need to describe this thing, just this thing. And then, you know, this.

Rachel:

The dialogue.

Emily:

So I'll think through the dialogue and everything, but I have to actually, I can't just stop at the bullet sketch and move to the next scene. I have to immerse myself in it and write the descriptions and do all of that. But I will. Honestly, I'll write my chapters out of order, where I'll do that bullet sketch, and then I'll write the dialogue in the middle, and then I'll go back and I'll do the description at the beginning. And so within a scene, I literally write my paragraph out of order. And then.

Rachael Herron:

But I've never heard anything say that. But it makes so much sense.

Emily:

Yeah. It's helped me get out of my own head, because if I try to do it all the scene in order, I'll get stuck. But I have to do the whole scene before I can move on.

Rachael Herron:

That is so cool. Can I ask you both what your mind's eye is like? Have you heard of aphantasia?

Rachel:

Yeah.

Rachael Herron:

I'm not aphantasia, but I'm almost there. Like, if you tell me to picture an apple, I can picture a dumb apple. I can't really see it.

Rachel:

Yeah. So, no, I can. I can picture everything, but that's why I don't ever put in the description, because it, like, it can never match. It will never match what I see in my head.

Rachael Herron:

Interesting. I've always kind of, like, criticized myself for not being able to see it, but at least I don't. I'm not doing it wrong because I can't see it anyway.

Rachel:

That's where my perfectionism comes in, of, like, you will. You will never say it as good as you can envision it in your head. I. It's just never gonna be that way. So then I was like, I won't try. I'm not gonna try to do that. I will put it in later when everything else is there and nobody really cares about, like, what the dress looks like because the dialogue is so funny. Like, yeah. So I had to myself, I won't care either. I won't care either because everything else is so great.

Emily:

That's so interesting. I feel like I, like, I've this sound. This is gonna sound really weird, but, like, visualize with other senses. Like, I feel like I can immerse in the visual, like, with, like, sound and scent and things like that. But, like, the visual itself is. It's there, but it's fuzzy. Like, I can't picture faces, so I have, like, such a hard time when I'm, like, scrolling Pinterest trying to find people who look like my characters. Cause I, like, I actually can't picture my characters. So I'm like, none of these people work. It's not because they don't match. It's just because, like, they just don't exist. I don't know. I'm the opposite.

Rachel:

I'm like, none of these are good enough because they don't match. None of these are good. I just commissioned some artwork, and I commissioned two different pieces, and I was like, ugh, this is not gonna be what I want it to be. It's just not gonna look the same way. And I'm very pleased with, like, the directions, but I was scrolling for inspiration photos on Pinterest and really, like, none of this is good enough. None of this works.

Emily:

Wow.

Rachel:

I'm like, use the eyes from this picture and the hairs from this picture and the chair this picture, and I gave, like, 12,000 reference photos, and then at the end, I was like, but I don't know. You do what feels right.

Rachael Herron:

That is awesome. I love how different brains work and that we're all making our different brains work in order to get the same job done, and we all do it in different ways. That's incredible to me.

Rachel:

I so agree. I think the uniqueness of the process is just. But that's why I think that this discussion of what works for everybody is so important, because you really do think when you start doing this or if you don't have a community around you that talks about it, because so many writers have been writing for years but are completely isolated, and they sit down and they just think, well, everyone else knows what they're doing. Everyone else can do this on the first show. And it's like, no one does. Everyone sucks at this, and that's how it is. Welcome to the club.

Rachael Herron:

I was teaching this. I used to teach this class at Stanford that was a semester long, and it was fast. Draft your memoir. And I eventually turned it into a book. But this woman came in, and I think it was the third week of class, and she was almost in tears, and she was supposed to have written a lot over the week. That's what we were doing. And she came in, she's just so upset. She said, I just don't think I can do this. I sat down to write, and I hated it. And I hate it every minute. And I think I'm in the wrong place, and I'm just not a writer. And my heart is broken because I've always wanted to be a writer. And I didn't really laugh at her, but I did smile because I'm like, oh, congratulations. That means you're a writer. You know, who doesn't care about writing or the fact that they're not writing is non writers. They don't care. Writers are the only ones who feel like this. We all feel like we are letting ourselves down all the time, and that is another great reason to lower our expectations. I love thinking about planning and goal setting. I have realized over the years that I am a huge planner and huge goal setter, and then I just, like, let the goals go. I don't care. I move the goalposts when I need to. I remember I was having a conversation with my wife about this one time, and she hates setting goals. As soon as she sets a goal, she basically sabotages it. And I didn't understand that. I said, why don't you just move the goal? Move the goalpost. So you didn't do x in when you were supposed to do it. Move the goalpost. And she says, you can't do that with goals. It's just like, you fail. You have failed. I'm like, no, you don't. The goalposts are made to be moved. You are in charge of those. But the thing about writers is we will always let ourselves down. I have never had a week where I've been, like, I did double my goals. Never. I basically never hit a week's goal. I probably will this week, but that's because the goal was so low. My goal was for 4 hours of writing because it's a really busy week, and that was my goal, and I've already hit it. But normal. I mean, but that's years of experience saying, rachel, you will not get five. This is what my bullet journal looks like this week. It's not pretty, and you won't get 5 hours. So set your goal low, and maybe you won't let yourself down, but also get used to letting yourself down. It's not a big deal.

Rachel:

So with this, this side of this is the work we're doing in tenacious writing from, like, a mindset perspective. So this is like when I first asked myself this same question. I mean, it's not like I didn't have the same visceral reaction of, like, I'm failing if I lower my expectations. Like, I remember very clearly it was about two years ago and I have a four year old, and so she was two, and things were just, everything's really hard all the time. So that just, like, what was going on? And I was exhausted and burnout and being like, you're what's lining, what you're setting yourself and what you're doing is not lining up, and it's causing a lot of problems. But I had this huge reaction of, like, you're failing, so give up. And then I was like, what? What? So what on your side? Like, what is, what's the mindset work that you did? Or how did you bring about this shift of, like, being okay with, I have a really low goal, and it's different than, like, the way I used to do it or the way I used to think.

Rachael Herron:

Right. How, how does that come about? A lot. It just comes from a lot. A lot a lot of failure and not giving up, just realizing that. I think over the course of a long time, if my goal was 20 hours in the chair and I hit 19 hours, I felt like a failure, because that was, you know, I didn't hit my goal. I talked to a lot of. It's just, it's all wrapped up in this capitalist western idea of perfectionism. And there's a great book out right now that I'm loving. It's called the perfectionist guide to losing control. And it's fabulous. You got to get it. But her whole point is that we will never get rid of our perfectionism. We can't push it away. We can't just, like, turn it off and say, hey, now, I'm chill. I'm a chill guy. I don't care about anything. We'll never be that way. But she talks about using your perfectionism adaptively rather than maladaptively. Maladaptively means I set unreasonable goals and I fail to hit them all the time. Adaptively means I can look at a week in which I'm super busy and traveling and teaching a lot, and rejiggering. Rejiggering is one of my favorite words of all time. I do it all the time, rejiggering things over and over and over again. So the goalposts are always moving, and we're always heading toward the new goalposts and truly, truly being okay with that. I was taking. I was taking piano lessons. No, sorry, my wife is picking piano lessons. I was taking guitar lessons for a while, and my teacher said and that he wanted me to practice for as long as I was having fun. And my whole life with, with music stuff, I've always practiced until I am frustrated. And then I speak of the day, I think, oh, I'm frustrated. I'm not. I'm not getting any better right now. I'll put it down and walk away. And that meant every single time I walked away from the instrument, I was walking away with kind of a sour feeling. And if every day you're not quite hitting the goal that you set yourself for writing, you're walking away from the day with this guilty. Your perfectionist is beating you up, guilty feeling that makes you a little bit more loath to even try the next day. Whereas if you just set yourself some stupid little goal, like, right, five minutes in the morning before coffee, and that's your only goal for the day, you will hit that goal, you'll feel great, and you might do a little bit more that afternoon, and then that feels pretty good. So you end up writing for an hour and a half, and that feels great. But the setting the tiniest goals is so frustrating to someone like me who needs to move fast and needs to do all the things right now. But there are these wins that we set up for ourselves, and then we're not leaving the day again, beating ourselves up for not having gotten the work done. But then another really huge, sorry, I just keep going on. This is my favorite, one of my favorite stories.

Rachel:

Yes.

Rachael Herron:

But the other thing that I think, and you all do a lot of work with mindset, I think the biggest mindset shift in writing is that. That getting your writing done is not about discipline, and it's not about stick to itiveness and it's not about ideas. It is about emotional regulation.

Rachel:

We're speaking our language because when we.

Rachael Herron:

Sit down to write and we feel like shit and we don't want to do it, and then, in fact, we write, and it's even worse writing than we've ever seen ourselves do before. There's only two reactions to that. You can get up and walk away, which is what most people do who don't have a community, who aren't talking about these kind of things. Most people get up, they stop. They say, I'll get back to it tomorrow or the weekend. And then two years go by and they never look at that book again. Or you can sit down and feel like shit and go, okay, I feel like shit today, and that's fine there. It's not going to hurt me, and it's not even going to really lower the quality of my words. I will not be able to tell this day from another day of writing in two weeks. Just sit here for another 25 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever your goal was, get some words done and walk away. And we learn how to be comfortable with that discomfort, and it's just not a big deal anymore. Like, you get up and your partner says, how did you write? And go, ugh, I hated every minute of it, but it's done. It was terrible. Yeah. And eventually, like, it's, you know, tongue in cheek, because then it almost gets to be enjoyable that we're like, it sucks again. But we're kind of, you know, giving the middle finger to the critical voice that's sitting over there saying, you suck. And you're like, I don't care. Keep talking. I'm not listening. I am in the work, you know? So it is about emotional regulation, accepting that it doesn't feel good. And that's fine.

Emily:

Yeah, I love that. That is such important permission because so often, like, none of us are having lots of fun all of the time doing this. Right, but we still love it. And so we get questions all the time, right? Where people are like, there's something wrong with me that I'm not having fun. And it's like, no, just, welcome to the club.

Rachael Herron:

Like you said, even scarier. They say there's something wrong with my book. I've gone the wrong direction. I'm screwing it up. And they. And they, again, like we talked about, they want to fix it right then and there and figure it out. But so many times, we can't. We're just not smart enough about the book yet. The book is teaching us what it will need to have done to it, but we can't get there until we get there. And another part of emotional regulation is just going, I will move forward with less clarity than I think I need. My perfectionist brain says I need clarity about where I am and where I'm going. And emotional regulation says, you're going to do it anyway, and that's okay. It's not comfortable. You know, have a nice walk and some ice cream afterwards. But you can, you will never have as much clarity as you want about your writing. So just write.

Rachel:

This is. This is be. We're going to sound by, like, so many different pieces, but, like, this is incredible. Last week, I was teaching a workshop, a different. A different workshop about very similar things. But I was in person with this group of, like, 15 other writers, and we were the. This workshop was so much overlapped what we're talking now, but it was about building trust. Building self trust.

Rachael Herron:

Yes.

Rachel:

And that's exactly what you're talking about with this idea of emotional regulation is like, when you have that trust in yourself, you can figure it out. Like, it doesn't feel like the world's ending when this plot hole came up, because you're gonna figure it out. You just keep going. And so we talked a lot about, like, how to build self trust, and that was basically what the workshop was about. We were examining our beliefs. We were learning, like, okay, if we have to let go of those things and build self trust in its place, and then that frees us up to having the space to write, because I think I have two points. This is also, ADHD is like, I have so many things to say about the same thing, but I think a lot of writers hit blocks or feel like they can't write because they feel like it's a book problem. But like, to me, nine times out of ten, I'm like, girl, that ain't not a book problem. That's a you problem.

Rachael Herron:

That's a confidence problem. That's a perfectionist in, in hiding, trying to be, trying to get it quote unquote right. And there is no right. There's no right. There's just what you choose and how you make it work.

Emily:

And so, so often it manifests as the spoken fear of, well, I don't want to waste time. And, like, it just is, like, it's a dagger into my heart every single time. Because I'm like, girl, you're wasting time right now. Like, isn't that the truest truth?

Rachael Herron:

Because you are wasting time by not making the decision, by not sitting down for 30 minutes to do the writing, you're wasting time. That, that just kind of blew my mind, honestly. Because that's one of the hardest things to work through as a newer writer. Like, how do I get over this fear of wasting time? Most people waste time and never finish their books.

Rachel:

Exactly.

Rachael Herron:

Ever.

Emily:

And that was, and you either never finish a book or you hit a point where you're like, I'm fucking sick of this. Right. Which is what happened to me. I was like, I've wasted so much time, I got nothing left to lose. And that was when I did that eight weeks. And I don't want to be like, oh, it was eight weeks. I wrote a book. I thought it was going to be trash. And then I saved all of it. Like, I threw out a lot of it. But you learned that. I figured out a. Yes, I figured out what the book was actually about and then immediately was able to do an outline for the revision and, like, figure out how to move forward from there. And so, yeah, I did quote unquote heavy, quote unquote waste.

Rachael Herron:

Right.

Emily:

Those eight weeks of the actual words. But, like, people have to realize that if you're going to be a sustainable writer who writes book after book, you have to get used to that. You got to get used to throwing out chunks of it in the interest of figuring out what the heck you're trying to say.

Rachel:

Yeah, and that's kind of weight.

Rachael Herron:

Yeah.

Emily:

It's not. Yeah, that's my point. That's what I'm trying to say.

Rachael Herron:

But also, I am not against a benevolent lie to yourself. Like, you know, I don't, I don't want to waste time. This is not going to be a waste of time. Even in the back of your mind, it's like, yeah, it's not going to be a waste of time. It's okay. Like, tell yourself it won't be. It's exactly the same thing that we do in revision. When we cut it, we cut the perfect scene. Like this scene, we know it can't fit here. And we put it over into the. To the cuts file, which is also known as the I will use this no matter what files. And we're telling ourselves, I'm coming back for you, baby. All these words, you're going to make it in, and the back of our brain goes, of course we're not. We have never gone into that trash once. We're not going to go get it out. But we lie to ourselves benevolently and kindly. Yes. None of that is wasted words. We're going to use you. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

I think that's what's so hard about the self trust thing for newer writers, is you. It's hard to have self trust when you haven't proven something to yourself yet. And so, so that's where, like, you know, the little benevolent lies can come in. Or, like, just trust us when we say, like, take them on borrowed. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Borrow other people's trust because you have to do it. You have to do it before. Yes. Take our workshop in my class.

Rachel:

I'll teach you how to do this.

Rachael Herron:

Learn how to self trust.

Emily:

But, like, the only way to build self trust is to do the thing when you don't believe you can do it. To prove that you can do it. That's the only way.

Rachel:

My class is, like, small, repeatable actions over time. Build trust and create progress. And that's way better than doing nothing and hating yourself for it and building.

Rachael Herron:

Up that muscle of remembering that it's about emotional regulation. Because in the next, like, you can have so much trust in yourself and the next little bridge that you've got across after 30 books, you're like, I can, I can. I don't trust myself. So getting used to also saying, okay, it's okay. You don't have to trust yourself in this moment. Just keep moving forward. You're not gonna die. I love the whole, the old, like, Indiana Jones cliche of him stepping out into the abyss and then the bridge swinging, and he's on the bridge. You know, I think about that a lot. The bridge is there, move forward.

Rachel:

What's the words, that leap of the pen, like, leap of the penitent, whatever it is. I think about that all the time.

Rachael Herron:

Yes. It's so good.

Rachel:

Yeah. So this is like, this is hard. It takes work, but unless you try, you get nowhere. And, like, I think what most people are afraid of is trying and then being bad at it. But even with, like, mindset stuff, you still are not good at it. Like, it takes more time to figure it out and to figure out which expectations feel good to lower. And then I also think there's this reaction that we have, like, well, if I lower my expectations the whole rest of my life, I'm a person who lowers expectations.

Rachael Herron:

Yes. And I'm like, suddenly I'm living under a bridge doing drugs that are very expensive, you know, like, my fear.

Rachel:

It's so funny you say that, because Emily and I did business coaching once, and we have a wonderful business coach. She's fantastic. But she was asking us our fears, and that's literally what was mine, was that, like, our business is gonna fail, I'm gonna live under a bridge, and we're gonna die.

Rachael Herron:

Fair. Fair, too. I've had that fear since I went full time in 2016. That has been my first. And I've made more money every year that I have.

Rachel:

Every year. Every year.

Rachael Herron:

But, yeah, just continuing is hard. But the thing that, like, breaks my heart the most is that nobody, I think that most people, almost nobody, decides, I'm not gonna continue this writing life. I'm gonna stop most people. What they say is, I don't wanna do it today, I'll do it tomorrow, and then I'll do it this weekend. You know what? Next week, when the kids are off school, I'll do some. Nobody actually has that thought. I'm going to give up on this book. And I don't believe there's a book that can't be saved. I really don't. You'll also hear those unicorn blowhards on podcasts saying, well, you know, I didn't finish that book that didn't deserve to see the light of day, which pushed the fear of God into other people's hearts. Like, what if my book doesn't deserve to see that? Every book is revisable, saveable, but people walk away because they're scared and they don't know that. They're not thinking that. They're just thinking, I'm really busy, and I need to work on the taxes. So if you all are doing, like, one thing, you're telling people with this podcast and with your classes that, like, don't walk away from it. Don't just keep coming back. Just keep coming back no matter what.

Rachel:

Coming back in the smallest ways, and it builds. Sorry, Emily.

Emily:

You know, that's okay. I love what you're saying about emotional regulation. I feel like that's so, like, I've been reading a lot of. Do you guys know who Brianna waste is? She's like. She self publishes. Self help is the worst word I can come up with for what they are.

Rachael Herron:

Prescriptive nonfiction.

Emily:

Yeah. She does a lot of really poetic writings about how to change your life and things like that. And I'm reading something of hers right now where she talks about this idea of, if you feel strongly about something, even if your feelings are very negative, fear and doubt and all these things, it means you're on the right path, because if you didn't actually care and you didn't actually want to go down this path, then you would feel apathy. You would feel nothing at all. And I just thought that was a really beautiful way to kind of reframe, like, all of these emotions don't mean that, like, you're not meant to write just because it's hard to write or just because it's miserable every time you sit down. Like, it has been for me this summer. Like, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be there or you are trying to do the wrong thing. So I just. I like that phrase, emotional.

Rachael Herron:

I'm gonna look her up. And that also makes me think of, oh, gosh, why have I just written the war of art by Stephen Pressfield, where he talks about resistance. Our resistance is the compass pointing to true north. It's the same thing. The more resistance you feel, the more it means you have to go in that direction. And the closer we get to completing something, the more resistance arises. So you must go.

Emily:

End paralysis. That's what I call it.

Rachael Herron:

End paralysis. And that is when resistance, capital r as a force, is at its strongest. And the only thing that breaks it down is just a repeated ignoring of it said, you know, sitting in the corner and saying, yeah, you suck, but I'm not listening to you. You know? What's that, Elizabeth Gilbert? That, you know, the editor can sit in the car, but it's got to sit in the backseat, and under no conditions can touch the radio. It cannot touch the volume control. Like, you could be there, but just don't touch.

Rachel:

Yes.

Rachael Herron:

Yeah.

Rachel:

There's also, like, still so much value, though, in recognizing that the editor is in the car. Like, I think there are a ton of writers that have no. Like, that, just that they haven't taken that next step of being like, oh, I'm acting as though I'm trying to edit this into perfection. Here's a realization here's a self awareness moment. Like, there's a lot of people that don't get to that step, even. They're just, like, grinding their gears day after day or not. Like, they're failing to write day after day, but they don't even look behind them and be like, oh, there's a voice there. And it's telling me things that aren't true.

Rachael Herron:

And what's wonderful about knowing that is when we learn that the voice is, like, provably, demonstrably not ours alone, because everybody hears the same exact thing. Everybody hears. No one's interested. Who are you? You're not talented enough. You don't have enough information. You're wasting your time. We're all hearing the exact same radio station, and if we can, and we can learn to turn that down and do the work anyway, it's. We've just gotten, like, two different radio metaphors, so please forgive us. But like, that, yeah, it's just the voice. I hope that somebody's brand new to writing and hearing this and going, oh, I'm not alone.

Emily:

I'm sure they are. I'm absolutely sure they are.

Rachel:

Me too.

Rachael Herron:

This is.

Rachel:

This is so wonderful. We are gonna start wrapping up, but do you have any, like, final thoughts on expectations, lowering them, hustle culture, no pressure. Dismantle this whole thing for us in a sound bite in 2 seconds. Go.

Rachael Herron:

I think it comes back to this fear that we were talking about, that if we lower our expectations, we are going to be solidified emotional, physical, spiritual, mentally, mental failure in all ways. And what regularly lowering my expectations around my creative life has done over many years has made me more prolific, more joyful. It keeps me in the seat. It keeps me loving my job, but it also bleeds into everything else I do. Literally everything. Like, we moved to New Zealand three years ago. We sold our house and left all of our friends and family and moved here because I was like, yeah, you know, if we. Let's lower our expectations, we'll do the best we can. If we need to turn around and go back, we will. It it. Learning that progressively not quite hitting your expectations, but always moving toward a spectacular goal, gets you there. It just. It doesn't have to be linear. It doesn't have to be beautiful. You just have to keep showing up, and it becomes joyful. So, yeah, I love it.

Emily:

Beautiful way to end.

Rachael Herron:

Yes.

Emily:

Thank you so much.

Rachael Herron:

Thank you so much for having me. This has been an absolute delight. It was.

Rachel:

So can you tell us as we wrap up where listeners can find you and how they can connect with you.

Rachael Herron:

Yes. If you have liked anything that I have said, I would love to have you on my writer's email list where I just send out writer encouragement and I send as much information for free as I can get that I don't believe in gatekeeping, any of that. I like to give. I like to give it all away. And that's at rachel heron.com write. So that'll be in the show notes.

Rachel:

Apparently so thank you exactly. Writing it down right now so I can put it in the show notes. That's fantastic. Thank you so much again for joining us. And everyone go listen to ink in your veins as well. We'll put a link to Rachel's podcast there too.

Rachael Herron:

Thank you. Thank you.

Emily:

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.

Rachel:

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 flipping pages all through the night.

Emily:

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