How can you manage the competing priorities of an author career? How can you deal with the demons we all have to wrestle with along the way? Tiffany Yates Martin talks about the role of intuition in decision-making, the challenges of feedback and rejection, and the importance of reclaiming creativity during difficult times.

In the intro, Amazon Music Unlimited will now include a free audiobook a month [The Verge]; When to pivot or quit [Self-Publishing Advice]; Thoughts on sunk cost fallacy, and how do you know when things are ending? Are they spiraling up, or down?, Quit: The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away by Annie Duke.

Plus, HarperCollins AI licensing deal [The Verge; The Authors Guild]; and Seahenge is out everywhere, as well as at my store, JFPennBooks.com.

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with over 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women’s fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Overcoming the “writer demons”
• Setting priorities to help manage overwhelm
• Honing into your intuition in relation to your author career
• Distinguishing intuition from hype or peer pressure
• Defining goals that are within your control
• Staying resilient when dealing with feedback and rejection
• Reclaiming your creative spark in difficult times

You can find Tiffany Yates Martin at FoxPrintEditorial.com.

Transcript of Interview with Tiffany Yates Martin

Joanna: Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with over 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women’s fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career. So welcome back to the show, Tiffany.

Tiffany: Thanks for having me again, Joanna.

Joanna: So we talked about your background when you were last on the show in April 2022, so today we’re going to jump straight into the book. Why did you write this book?

What problems did you see in the author community that led you to want to write about happiness and sustainability?

Tiffany: I know, it’s kind of a departure for me. I’ve spent all these years as an editor working on hard skills, craft skills, and teaching about that. Then I was actually in the middle of writing what was to have been the follow up book to my first, Intuitive Editing, which was a deep dive into character development.

I just kept writing and thinking and talking about these other ideas because I was hearing from a lot of authors that they were feeling overwhelmed by all the changes and the constantly evolving publishing environment.

I think it’s a fortunate time to be an author because I think we have the opportunity to have more control and autonomy over our careers. We have more avenues than ever before.

Publishing has become democratized, but that also brings with it a lot of overwhelm.

I was hearing a lot of discouragement, so I started in my blog, where I used to focus a lot on hard skills, I started writing more about this stuff. I just wanted to try to help authors based on what I was hearing and seeing, and they got huge response.

So the character book just kept balking at me, and I finally realized that one of the things I kept talking about in my blog posts was to pay attention to your motivation, to what you want out of your career.

That’s the part that we really have control over, is what our day to day life looks like as authors. So I decided to follow my own advice and turn my attentions to the book that really wanted to be written right now, that I felt like authors probably need more than ever.

Joanna: I think that’s so important, as much as I’m sure your character book will be amazing if you do do it. I think this is something I felt very much last year, which is the more prescriptive—you call it hard skills there—the prescriptive, “do this, do that.” I mean character development, there’s a lot of books on that. Your take would have been different. 

Also similar, my last nonfiction book, Writing the Shadow, it’s like the personal stuff, the mindset stuff, the lifestyle stuff, all of that actually is something that AI and the machines can’t share. I mean, they can share it, but it’s not their experience, whereas it is actually our experience. So I agree, I think that’s so important.

Just on that overwhelm and the changes that are going on, what are some of the things that people are saying to you? Because I think that will resonate with people listening as well.

Tiffany: I was startled by how many—particularly in traditional publishing—how many authors were feeling discouraged by what seems to be trends in the industry.

I’m a fan of any kind of publishing path that fits an author, so I’m not slamming on traditional publishing, but advances do seem to be going down, in general. There is a fascination with the debut author.

So if you’re not that shiny new thing, I think that it feels as if traditional publishing doesn’t help an author build a following and a career over the span of their career in a way that it used to focus on. So it’s like, come on, make a big splash with your book, or else they’re moving on without you.

As a result of that, a lot of authors—I just talked to one yesterday—are being encouraged to try new genres, to write under a pen name so that you can kind of disown disappointing sales in the past.

Competition is higher than ever.

There’s more than two million books published a year. So I think authors are feeling like it’s harder and harder to pop out of the slush pile.

Even with indie publishing, with all the opportunity that it offers and the greater autonomy in many areas, there are a lot of different responsibilities authors have to take on.

People who are creative aren’t always necessarily intuitively business minded, and that’s a whole new skill set you have to learn.

Then running a business in conjunction with running the creative part, which are both, I think, very consuming pursuits, is a lot. We’re trying to balance all of that with our lives.

One thing I talk about a lot, and I know you do too, Joanna, is I call them the “writer demons”. It’s the things I think writers and creatives have always suffered from keenly. Like imposter syndrome, and competition, and comparison, and procrastination, and self-doubt.

It feels like we open up more space for those with all the other overwhelm going on. So it’s kind of a combination of all those things.

Joanna: Just to stay on those demons because you have in the book, one chapter is called,

“When the demons come for you — and they will.”

It made me laugh because I think in my The Successful Author Mindset, I’ve got a section that says, “If you haven’t published yet, don’t read this,” which is like, do you really want to know all the things that you might feel later on?

It’s interesting, and I can’t remember if you have this in the book, but you just mentioned overwhelm. I feel like another one of the demons is overwhelm, in that we struggle with focus and making a choice. Almost part of the problem is authors are trying to do everything, and you literally cannot do everything.

How do we deal with overwhelm in particular?

Tiffany: This is a huge question, and I love it because I think it’s really relevant. One of the things I talk about in the book is really defining what drives you as a writer and what you want out of your writing career.

I think a lot of times we go into it just out of sheer love of the written word, and storytelling, and imagination, exploring our imagination. All that’s great, but we have to think about what a writing career actually entails because it’s a business. So we have to think about what that’s going to mean for us as authors.

So I think part of that is setting priorities. I had a friend who we sort of compare notes creatively and in our creative careers. I was really feeling overwhelmed myself. I’m a freelancer, and I’m pretty sure you can relate to this, Joanna, but you build your reputation and your career as a freelancer by being what I call the “yes girl.”

It’s very common for me to get overwhelmed and overbooked, and it does become hard to work on things and to give your attention when all you can see is the giant mountain of stuff in front of you you have to do. It’s hard to start taking a single step at a time.

So she suggested that I create a priority list, an actual written priority list of what is most important to me in my career. Not a to-do list, but if I had to stack rank the goals that I have, the things I want to devote my daily attention to, the reality of my writing career day by day, what does that look like?

Then when I started to consider what I wanted to say yes to and book myself with, I was able to literally go back to that list and rank it in order of: how important is this to me —

Do I realistically have the bandwidth for this, and is it something that needs to be done imminently?

So that’s one way to start.

I do think it’s helpful to think of it, especially if you’re indie publishing, let’s say. With any publishing path, really, there is such a giant pile of things writers are responsible for now.

I think more and more, which is part of that overwhelm, we’re not just writing, we’re marketing. We have to learn graphic design, and we have to learn legal language to manage our contracts, and we have to worry about every aspect of the publishing process in a way I think authors never had to before.

So I think we just have to figure out how much of that we are comfortable with, what suits our goals, and rest. I don’t know if you’ve read the book by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, but the instinct, at least for me, when I’m overwhelmed, is to work harder, work longer, work more.

Sometimes I think that’s counterproductive because we’re burning out. We’re depleting all of our resources that we need in order to accomplish those things. So we have to remember to unplug sometimes. What is your advice on this? Because you are one of the busiest people in the industry that I know.

Joanna: It’s funny you say that because I don’t think I am. I think I just demonstrably have output. On my wall, I have—

“Measure your life by what you create.”

So in terms of my focus every day, that is my focus every day. All those other things, I often will not do them. I just don’t do them.

Tiffany: Like what? Do you mean social media?

Joanna: Social media is probably a very, very good example. If Sacha Black’s listening, she’ll laugh. I did try TikTok. I tried TikTok for like less than 12 hours, and I was like, you know what? No. There’s just no place in my life for this.

Things like advertising, I do things in campaigns, so I don’t do things all the time. So as we record this, I am just finishing up a Kickstarter, so I have been doing some social media and stuff, but most of the time I don’t do that.

I’ve cut out a lot of things, and one of my tips is having a not-to-do list.

This might help people who can’t say no. So for example, and people sometimes think I’m a bit mean for this, but podcasting, one of my rules is if you have fewer than 50 episodes, I won’t come on your podcast.

Sometimes I have exceptions, but what I have found is that a lot of podcasts, most podcasts, don’t last past 50 episodes. So it’s a bit of tough love, but most of them don’t last. I’ve had enough time wasted over the years that I’ve been like, okay, that’s one of my rules. So it’s on my not-to-do list.

Another thing on my not to do list is TikTok, for example. There’s also particular types of writing. So I think having a not-to-do list can really help.

Let’s come to intuition because I feel like intuition is part of this. How do we make a decision as to what we do prioritize, what we do value? So let’s just take a step back. Can you talk about how you describe intuition?

How can we tell whether something is intuition or just something we’re dreaming about and might be unrealistic?

Tiffany: I think intuition gets confused sometimes with magical thinking or manifesting, and that’s not what I mean. I used it in the title of my first book, which was a hard skills book, Intuitive Editing, because it’s the approach I take to editing.

Basically what I mean by it in that capacity, is that rather than trying to take some external system of writing and impose it on our writing, which I think is counterproductive and strips the writing of its voice and originality, we have to grow a story from the inside out.

Then if you want to take some of these, many of them wonderful, systems for helping you fine tune and make your story more effective, great. To try to cram what we’re doing into a mold, I think takes all the life out of it. That’s kind of how I feel about creating a writing career.

It touches on what you were just saying, which I love, which is even in this area of our field, there’s a lot of prescriptive advice about you know, here’s how you become a best seller, here’s how you make six figures as an author. It’s all very system-oriented, kind of like these craft systems I’m talking about.

I think writers go into it thinking, okay, I’ve got to do all those things, check, check, check, so that I can be successful also. We have to do more of what you were just talking about, set up our personal path, our boundaries.

We have to say no to the things that don’t suit us, whether or not we’re told they are best practices.

First of all, nothing that works for one person is going to work for every person. So if somebody is trying to set something up as the holy grail of “here’s the secret sauce,” there is no secret sauce. Also, the secret sauce isn’t right for everyone.

I think what we neglect to do as authors is honor ourselves and what we want.

What you just said is so empowering because it’s giving ourselves permission to not do things that we don’t want to do.

We can’t control any outcomes, but what we can control is the day-to-day experience of being an author and building a writing career, and that’s your main source of fulfillment and satisfaction and joy that’s going to allow you to weather all these hard parts of publishing that are not within your control.

So I’m with you. I sort of only moderately enjoy social media, so I sort of only moderately do it. I’m aware that I’m building a business, so my intuition is to do things that are more organic marketing. I really like talking to people. I love conversations like this with you. I love teaching.

I love writing my blog it turns out. I did that because, like everyone else, I’m like, “You should start a blog to create more followers.” Then it turned out it was really a wonderful way for me to help create community and to start exploring some of these ideas that weren’t necessarily in the purview of what I was known for doing.

So intuitively, I have been creating a career where I say all the time, that my worst day at work is still a really good day. I’m not always waiting for some holy grail that I’m trying to attain that may or may not happen. I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now.

Joanna: Yes, I agree with that. You used the word love when it comes to things like the blogging and talking and teaching and things. The word love, of course, is an emotional word, and I’m sure you don’t love everything all the time.

Tiffany: I don’t love everyone all the time, Joanna!

Joanna: No, exactly. I think partly, to me, the—

Intuition does come from some kind of emotional feeling.

Like, I like using TikTok (as an example) because I feel like some people absolutely love it and some people hate it. I tried it, and I just had almost a visceral (negative) reaction. I just don’t do video.

You and I, we’re not on video right now. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m an introvert and highly sensitive, but the visual field, when it’s doing a lot of things, is just too much for me.

I don’t consume video, so I don’t really make video. I do it sometimes, but very rarely. So why would I even try a video platform?

Now, I have, and I do have some YouTube videos and blah, blah, blah. The point is, I don’t love it, so I can never, ever sustain that. Whereas this show, in fact, I’m just about to record my 10 million downloads episode.

Tiffany: Congratulations.

Joanna: Thank you. This will go out after that, so people can listen to that a few shows ago. Essentially, when I started this podcast in 2009, podcasting wasn’t even a thing, but I intuitively felt that I should try it. So I tried it, and then I enjoyed it. Like we’re having this conversation and we’ve talked before, this is great.

We’re enjoying this, even though it’s also “marketing”, in inverted commas. So I was like, I tried something, I liked it, I continued doing it, and here we are 15 years later, whatever, still podcasting. That only happens because I intuitively started and then enjoyed the process.

It’s like you say, you can’t think of an outcome of 10 million downloads. That’s just impossible. You just have to start and go in a direction.

How would you advise people tap into that emotion? Because the problem with that also is that sometimes you go to a conference and there’s all this hype about something, or you get caught up in some hype and you do it.

How do you know when it’s hype or that you really should give it a go?

Tiffany: I just wrote a post about this obliquely, and that it’s very easy to market a dream to people who want it desperately. The whole first section of the new book is called Foundations, and this is kind of the core of it. I think we have to define why we went into this in the first place.

You have to stay in touch with that initial drive to be a writer because that’s the engine for your entire career.

For most of us, I don’t think it was that we wanted to be rich and famous. If it was, allow Joanna and I to disabuse you of that notion right now. If you don’t already know, the odds against that are enormous.

You wouldn’t go into any other career where you had, what is it, I don’t even know the statistics, but it’s something like less than a 3% chance, or even less, of making millions. Even becoming a full time writer, making all of your income from your work, is dauntingly rare, but we go into this anyway.

We have to remember why it matters that much to chase after something so unlikely. That’s the thing that’s going to start to build that resilience in all of us as creatives. Then, as I said, you have to define what you actually want out of this.

When you’re defining your goals, try not to make them things that are outcomes that you cannot control.

If we are in this business because we want to be a New York Times bestseller and nothing else will make us happy, then the chances are phenomenal that we will never be happy at what we do because most authors are not going to become New York Times bestsellers. It’s the harsh reality.

We have to understand and accept the realities of the business so that we can stay in touch with why it’s still worth pursuing for us.

There’s a question I ask in the book that I’ve used. I started as an actor, and then I was a journalist, and I wrote fiction. As you said, I haven’t been doing that lately because I identify primarily as an editor.

Every time I’m sort of evaluating where I am in my career, what I want intuitively, I ask myself: if somebody told me right now that I would never hit the heights, the greatest heights to which one might achieve in this field, would I still want to do it?

Asking myself that was the reason I eventually left acting. It was one of the reasons I stopped writing fiction. Every time I ask myself that as an editor, the answer is, hell yeah, I would still do it. I love it every day. I do use the word a lot.

You say it’s an emotional word, this is an emotional business.

We’re not in this for logical reasons most of the time. We’re in it because it feeds something in us, in our souls.

And that is emotional, I think. So, yes, I love my daily job, and I don’t want to do anything else. Even if someone said, “You’ve peaked, baby. This is the best it’s ever going to get.” I’m happy, and I think that is what we have to find a way to get in touch with.

Otherwise, everybody says you have to develop resilience in this field and persistence, but that’s the ingredient. The main ingredient of that resilience is finding the satisfaction in what is within your control to affect.

Joanna: Yes, it’s interesting. I’ve also been reflecting on this around persistence and resilience. Somebody said to me, “Oh, you’ve got so much discipline.” I’m like, I have no discipline.

I don’t have discipline. I don’t need discipline to do this job because I love what I do.

Same as you, right?

It’s interesting, you talked about moving on from acting and let’s just say you’re not in a fiction phase right now, because that may or may not come back to you. I feel like we’re writers partly because we almost have no choice. Once you tap into that vein of creativity, whatever that is, you can’t stop doing it.

It’s like even if nobody reads the damn story, or nobody buys the book or whatever, you’re going to continue. I was thinking about this with the podcast, given the reflection on the downloads and things, at some point I will stop podcasting. I can see an end to me podcasting, but I can’t see an end to me writing.

I feel like that’s actually something I could do for the rest of my life, you know, right up until I die. PD James, wonderful British writer, she was still working on a manuscript when she died at like 94, I think she was.

In fact, I have so many quotes on my wall, and I have a quote on my wall by a horror author called Adam Nevill, and it says,

“If you are gifted with an imagination, it must be used.” — Adam Nevill

I feel like that just gives me permission, and people listening and yourself permission.

We have an imagination, and I used to think everybody had what we have, but they don’t. They really don’t. People don’t live with all these things in their head that they want to write on the page. They just don’t, but we do. I mean, almost part of it is—

Once you tap into this [writing life], do you even have a choice, even if there is no reward?

Tiffany: I mean, it’s kind of a basic instinct, I think, especially for those who are called to do this. Do you want to set yourself up to dread and hate and get burned out on the thing that nourishes you so much?

I feel like if we’re just a little kinder to ourselves, give ourselves more grace, and give ourselves more agency in how we spend our days pursuing this thing we want, that’s how you sustain it until you’re 94 years old, writing your last book right before you die.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. Okay, so you used the word “kinder” then, and so I want to come onto this feedback section of the book.

Being kind to ourselves is all very well, and self-love is great and everything, but you have this thing about feedback. It encompasses writing feedback, rejection, criticism, and also the crickets when nobody responds to an email or query, or nobody buy your buys your book, and nobody even cares. I feel like this is the opposite side to the whole “love side” of things.

What are your tips for resilience when it comes to feedback?

Even if we intuitively reject it, because that can actually happen as well, how do we become better writers as well?

Tiffany: I love that you make the point that I probably should have clarified. I do have a lot of positive regard for this field, but let us not downplay how difficult and challenging and just downright painful many aspects of it can be. This is probably prime among them, rejection. It’s really hard, and criticism is tough.

You just recently wrote about this I think, Joanna, about getting back your notes from your editor, and how you always just kind of have to take a beat with it. I do think we have to be gentle with ourselves.

The first thing I tell authors when I return an editorial letter, and mine tend to be pretty meaty, so I mean, I just wrote one that was 10,000 words, just to give you an idea, on top of all the comments.

I tell them, draw a bath, pour yourself a glass of wine, take a moment to be in the right headspace to hear all the things that may not be as effective on the page as you hoped they would be.

I think that’s one critical distinction, is that good critique is not commenting on you or your talent or the worth of the story. It’s simply reflecting what is on the page and whether it’s coming across in a way that is conveying your vision as effectively as possible for the reader.

Again, this is a subjective thing. That’s another thing to remember is that all criticism, all critique, is subjective. I include mine as a professional editor, or any professional editor, I include agents, publishers, and every single reader who leaves a review.

Everyone feels how they feel about a story, and everyone is affected by something different. So remembering that can be helpful. Good critique is also not personal. I make a distinction in the book between three different kinds of feedback: commentary, criticism, and critique.

Criticism is my least favorite kind, and that’s just basically unhelpful negative feedback about your writing. Like, “This isn’t working. I hate this character,” things like that. First of all, it’s very daunting to hear that, and it’s hard to take it in in a way that allows you, as the author, to do something constructive with it.

Second, it is the criticizer, let’s say, the critic, who is simply offering their judgment, their assessment, which is personal and doesn’t necessarily help you.

Then there’s commentary, which you get a lot in critique groups, which is stuff like, “Well, you know what you should do,” or, “This actually happened to me, and let me tell you how it really would look.” That’s somebody telling you prescriptively how they would do something that is also not helpful.

Critique is that thing that simply holds up the mirror and reflects what that hopefully educated critiquer is seeing in your story, and is able to do so in a way that says, “Here is where I was pulled out of the story for this specific reason, and here are some ways you could address it,” not prescriptively, like, “What she should do is.”

For example, a good piece of critique would be something like, “I didn’t understand the character’s motivation in this scene, so I felt a little bit uninvested in her. It would help if we understood why she wants him to do so-and-so, and maybe that’s simply her telling him, or maybe it’s giving us a glimpse of her inner life.”

I’m giving some suggestions, but I’m not saying how to do it. Now, we don’t always get that. So you have to become your own advocate in many ways in this career, but this is one of them.

You’re great at this, I think, Joanna. You take in the feedback, and you determine what resonates for me and the story I’m trying to tell and what isn’t right for my intentions. So you take what is helpful to you, and you disregard what isn’t, and then you just leave it behind you and not let it continue to percolate.

I do want to talk about rejection too, but I want first to ask if you can weigh in on this as well, because I know you’re very experienced at handling critique.

Joanna: Well —

To me, it’s always been worth paying for a professional editor.

[You can find a list of editors here.]

I have never been in a book group or a writing group because I want somebody who knows what their job is.

So you’re a professional editor. You like editing. You know what the job of an editor is. Now, I do think finding an editor is a bit like dating, as in you might not find the right person for you at one point in your life. I think you also, when you grow as a writer, you might need a different editor.

So I think that that is important. Now I work with Kristen Tate at The Blue Garret, and she’s been on the show talking about editing, and helps me a lot. So I do think the intuition comes back in with when I get the feedback, sometimes I ignore it.

Like you say, I don’t take every single piece of feedback from Kristen and put that into action, but it usually is 80 to 90%. If I’m really reacting to it, it’s like, well, why am I reacting so hard? Is that a good reason? As in, do I just feel like, no, that’s really important? Or is it a more of an ego reason?

To me, the main thing with editing, like professional feedback, when it comes to someone who is trying to make your work better, is turning yourself into a reader rather than the writer.

It’s all about making the book the best it can be for the person who’s going to read it.

I think there’s such a precious moment when an editor reads your book for the first time because you’re never going to have that time again, that first sort of feeling of the manuscript. So it’s important to take that feedback seriously because that’s the experience the reader’s going to have.

They are coming to this cold. They don’t know what this is going to be. So, yes, I definitely take feedback from a professional editor differently to a one star review on Amazon, or “You’re just a boring person and just a crap writer.” I’m like, okay, whatever.

You mentioned you wanted to talk about rejection.

Tiffany: Yes, especially if you’re trying to pursue a traditional path, that’s a pretty big part of it.

You’re going to get a lot more rejection than acceptance, and that’s a good reality to accept when you’re going into this career.

Again, you have to learn not to take it personally, first of all.

Let me tell you, having been an actor, there is no rejection like the rejection of somebody staring at your face and going, “Thank you,” in the middle of what you’re saying. So I feel, in some ways, very lucky to have started that way because you can take anything after that.

It still hurts to get back even a form letter that says no thanks, if you get anything at all. So I think you have to find ways to keep it in perspective, for starters. If you’re getting a form letter, keep in mind you are one of likely hundreds of submissions they’re trying to read through on the slush pile.

They may not have made it past the first page or paragraph. They may have read a little more, and it’s just not right for them, for what they represent, for what the market is buying right now. They may like it, but they don’t love it. You want a champion who loves it, so be glad in that case.

It is like dating because you don’t want to go out with someone who doesn’t really think you’re all that. Also, you understand when you’re dating that it’s going to take a long time for most of us to find the person you really want to commit to.

We tend to lose sight of that because we set our sights on, “Oh, but this is the perfect agent for me. This is the perfect date for me. This is my perfect spouse.” We have decided that based on really nothing. We have to understand that it has to be the right fit, just like with an editor.

When you get those rejections, find ways to lighten the blow.

I made poetry out of mine. I included some in the book because the form letters, especially, they’re very funny to me because every agent, every publisher, is hoping as hard as you are that you’re the one.

So they’re not in the business of crushing dreams. They don’t want to do that. So a lot of these form letters are really nice, but they’re really generic. They will say things that are almost like haiku. “We admire this work greatly and feel that your talent will find the right home, but sadly, it is not for us at this time.”

This just began to strike me as hilarious, so I put it in poetry form, and I put them up on my wall, and it helped. I also started making kind of a contest out of it. It took me 113 queries to get my first agent. It took us two books and three rounds of submissions to get a publisher for it.

So I think if you go back to what we were talking about earlier, you develop that resilience and persistence. It’s also helpful in the rejection arena or the crickets arena, which can be even harder because it’s almost like you’re invisible or you don’t matter.

Again, that’s just a function of the industry.

Agents and publishers, they are buried. You think you’re overwhelmed? They are too.

They’re just trying to keep their head above water, and sometimes that means they can’t even acknowledge. So don’t take it personally.

If that’s really hurtful to you, maybe that’s not the right person for you anyway. So take it as you’re one step closer to finding the person who is.

Joanna: Yes, and get back to writing, I think that’s the other thing. Like everyone, I have a bit of a slump after finishing a book project because you’re empty, you’ve emptied yourself into the book, and I start to kind of mope around. I’m like, what am I doing? What should I do? Then in the end, some idea pops into my head.

I started writing this short story called Seahenge over the weekend because I was just in such a bad mood. I was like, why am I in such a bad mood?

I was just kind of waiting around for the Kickstarter to finish. I do have this book with an agent. I was like, why is everything so slow?

I just started writing another story, and now I’m happy again.

Tiffany: It’s kind of nice. It takes the pressure off. With this one launching now, I have the same thing. It opens up an empty space, but I always see that as, first of all, rest, because you know how hard it is to launch a book.

Then, freedom. Now I get to pick anything that I want to work on. What could that be next? I always think that’s a happy time.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. Now, there may be people listening who are struggling with that creative spark. I think sometimes it’s easier to find than others. You do talk about reclaiming the creative spark in troubled times.

I mean, right now, you just look at the news and there’s extreme weather, and hurricanes, and political upheaval, and war. Also, the creative community is being ripped apart by divisions over AI.

I wonder if you can help us to navigate reclaiming that creative spark in difficult times.

Tiffany: Well, you left out plague, which we also had!

Joanna: I’d forgotten that now. That didn’t happen!

Tiffany: It’ll be back, don’t worry. So I think that was sort of the genesis of thinking about a lot of this for me, was when COVID happened, I was hearing from so many authors that they couldn’t write.

Not just because of time and all the unrest we had then, and they were so busy making their sourdough starters, but because there was so much mental unrest and uncertainty and fear and distractions at home that you never had before for lot of us, or isolation you never had before.

So that was actually when I started doing online teaching. The first course I ever created was called “How to Train Your Editor Brain”. I was telling authors that just because you’re not feeling like you can create right now, that doesn’t mean you cannot be creative.

I am a big advocate that one of the greatest things you can do for your own writing is to analyze other people’s stories because you have the built in objectivity with those that you don’t in your own stories. So it lets you see the inner workings of it in a way that I think it’s hard to pick apart our own.

So you’re watching something, and you can follow back your own. You know, what were we doing during the plague? We were lying on the sofa, binge watching stuff.

I created this course that that showed authors how to watch analytically, like an editor. That is something you can do for your creativity, whether you’re able to create or not, and not feel that you are no longer a creator. Plus you’re resting, and I cannot overstate the importance of that.

There is a great value in our writing, I think, in using it in leaning into those feelings. I mean, first of all, a lot of us start writing, why? Because we want to escape something, the real world. We want to create an ideal world we love. We want to work through our emotions, anything painful or uncomfortable.

We want to learn what we think about things. We want to share our beliefs about things. All of that, especially in troubled times, I think can be your engine.

Allison Winn Scotch is a bestselling author that I’ve worked with in the past, and she had a book called Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing about a female politician. It was inspired by her frustration and fear about the political situation, and just the global unrest we’ve been having, and the polarization.

I think she told me that she wrote that book in something like six weeks, that it just poured out of her. She took all of those feelings, fears, fury that she was feeling, and put it into this story. So that’s one thing you can do with it.

The other thing is to remember the power of your story.

I think, for me, some of the most impactful moments I’ve had as an artist have been when a single individual said something to me, like one lady said, “Your books helped me get through chemo.” I don’t know of any greater reward than something like that.

It helps other people process pain. It connects us. It helps people make sense of what seems senseless.

It can give voice to the voiceless. It creates hope for people. It can change the world.

This is not a dumb story, but it’s so kind of pop culture-y that I tell it all the time. It is established that the show Will and Grace was a huge part of the reason that marriage equality passed in the Supreme Court.

It brought “the other”, for many people, into their living rooms in a way that broke down those barriers and misunderstandings and preconceptions people may have had about the LGBTQ community. So it enhanced acceptance.

I hate to use this word because it implies abnormal, but it normalized it for people in a way that influenced the law and civil rights. That’s astonishingly powerful.

I don’t know if that’s helpful for people when they’re in the middle of all that unrest, but for me, it does hold out a little bit of a beacon. I dedicated Intuitive Editing to the storytellers who illuminate the world, and I believe that.

Joanna: Yes, I guess to come back to the intuition, if the spark is anger or a cause that you have or something in your own life, but to let those sparks ignite and follow those sparks. Even if people say to you, “Oh, that’s a dead genre,” or, “That’s not going to sell to anyone,” or, “That’s just not going to make any impact on anything.”

Tiffany: Or, “You can’t write about that.” Do you want to write safe or not?

Joanna: So, really, do write those things that keep at you. I would say even if you don’t know how long it’ll take to resonate with people. So coming back to my book Writing the Shadow, I’ve been kind of working on an idea for that for like 20-odd years, and it took a long time to write.

I know that it’s not for most people most of the time, but when people are ready for that book, then it makes a difference.

Tiffany: It was important to you to write it, obviously, that you persisted for two decades to do it, which is the inherent reward of it to me. Like that’s the thing that makes that worthwhile for you as an author.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. So it’s quite interesting how these things develop. We’re out of time—

Where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online?

Tiffany: The best place for it all is FoxPrint Editorial. That’s my website. Writer’s Digest has named it one of the best websites for authors. It’s full of resources for authors, many of them free. Downloadable guides, recommendations. I’ve got my blog on there that’s full of like tips on craft and writing life.

The book links are there, but you can buy them anywhere you buy books. Then I also have online classes. Those are paid, but I keep them very low priced. Pretty much everything else on there is free and designed to just help authors write better.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tiffany. That was great.

Tiffany: Thank you so much, Joanna.

Takeaways

• Authors are feeling overwhelmed by the changing publishing landscape.
• It’s important to define what drives you as a writer.
• Setting priorities can help manage overwhelm.
• The creative process is both a business and an art.
• Intuition plays a crucial role in decision-making for authors.
• Resilience comes from finding satisfaction in what you can control.
• Not all advice fits every author; personal paths are essential.
• The emotional aspect of writing is significant for fulfillment.
• It’s vital to remember why you started writing in the first place.
• Imagination is a gift that must be used. Self-kindness is essential for sustaining a writing career.
• Feedback can be painful, but it is a tool for growth.
• Good critique reflects the story, not the author’s worth.
• Rejection is a common part of the writing journey.
• Finding the right editor is crucial for development.
• Writers should analyze stories to enhance their creativity.
• Creativity can thrive even in troubled times.
• Writing can be a means to process emotions and experiences.
• Stories have the power to change perspectives and society.
• Persistence in writing leads to eventual success.

The post The Intuitive Author With Tiffany Yates Martin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write memoir with deep sensory detail? How does terroir in wine equate to the writer’s voice? How can you manage your online presence while still protecting yourself from the haters? Multi-award-winning wine writer Natalie MacLean shares her tips.

In the intro, initial thoughts on Author Nation 2024, photos from Death Valley @jfpennauthor, Folk horror on The Nightmare Engine Podcast, Walking the Camino de Santiago on the Action Packed Travel Podcast; Introversion and writing the shadow on The Quiet and Strong Podcast.

Today’s show is sponsored by FindawayVoices by Spotify, the platform for independent authors who want to unlock the world’s largest audiobook platforms. Take your audiobook everywhere to earn everywhere with Findaway Voices by Spotify. Go to findawayvoices.com/penn to publish your next audiobook project.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Natalie MacLean is a multi-award-winning wine writer, named World’s Best Drinks Writer at The World Food Media Awards, as well as a sommelier, TV wine expert, and host of The Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. She’s also the bestselling author of multiple nonfiction books on wine, including Unquenchable, named as one of Amazon’s best books of the year. Her latest book is Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Challenges of writing memoir compared to journalistic writing
• Using memoir to tell your Truth
• Tips for sensory writing from a ‘super taster’
• What is terroir and how to use it in your writing
• Maintaining boundaries while still marketing your author brand
• Dealing with crisis management and managing your mental health
• How to reach and engage with book clubs
• Connecting multiple streams of income
• Utilising podcasting for book marketing in your author business

You can find Natalie at NatalieMaclean.com.

Transcript of Interview with Natalie Maclean

Joanna: Natalie MacLean is a multi-award-winning wine writer, named World’s Best Drinks Writer at The World Food Media Awards, as well as a sommelier, TV wine expert, and host of The Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. She’s also the bestselling author of multiple nonfiction books on wine, including Unquenchable, named as one of Amazon’s best books of the year.

Her latest book is Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. So welcome to the show, Natalie.

Natalie: It is so good to be back here with you. We’ve had an initial chat on my podcast [about biodynamic wine and Blood Vintage], but I am so looking forward to this, Jo.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up, just—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Natalie: Sure. So my career path was probably like a lot of folks. I didn’t plan to be a writer. I didn’t have the confidence to be a writer. I was brought up by a single mom, single parent mom. She was a school teacher, so she really pounded it into me, make sure you get an education that will get you a job.

So I wanted to study English, but no, no. So it was PR and an MBA, and right into the workforce in high tech marketing.

Along the way, I was working for a super computer company that was based in Mountain View, California. I’m Canadian, and I still live here, but the head office was down where the campus of Google now is.

So I started arranging all of my meetings there when I had to go on Fridays so I could stay over the weekend and drive up to Napa and Sonoma. While I didn’t have time to learn golf or pottery or anything else, I was dining out a lot with clients or whatever. So I really grew to love wine. So that sparked my interest in wine.

Then while I was off on maternity leave, I thought, well, I have to keep my brain active somehow. I had taken a sommelier course just for fun because that’s what type As do. It was a good thing I wasn’t taking golf lessons because, you know, long iron clubs and type A, that’s just not a good combination. So wine worked.

So while I was off on maternity leave, I pitched the editor of a local food magazine because I noticed they had all these gorgeous recipes, but no wine content. I knew just enough about wine to be a little dangerous.

She said, yes, okay, have you published before? I said yes, praying that she would not ask me to send samples because all I had was my high school newspaper. So she gave me a chance.

The first article or column was “How to Find Wine Food Pairings on the Internet.” That was the headline back then, it’s gotten much more specific since. That led to a regular column, which gave me the confidence just to cold call other editors.

Then I started landing columns in some of our national newspapers here in Canada and magazines. I didn’t know anybody. I was a nobody from nowhere who made a career out of nothing.

I loved it so much that by the time my maternity leave was over, which is generous here in Canada, was almost a year, I decided not to go back. I had found something that really sparked a passion.

Wine gave me the confidence to write. I had a hook.

Otherwise I would have never thought someone’s going to pay me to write. Also, I could be home with my son. So it just all worked, and that’s kind of how it came together.

Joanna: Just on that, should we just be clear that you were not swigging bottles of wine during your maternity!

Natalie: Yes. No need to call child services. Mommy doesn’t drink while she’s pregnant. I had finished the sommelier course while I was pregnant. In all seriousness, I never took a drop, and that remains the health guidance.

There are a lot of tips in my book about cutting back on drinking. I didn’t mean to write a self-help book, but it kind of turned into that for some people. Definitely, no, I was not swigging. I was not giving my little guy Pinot Noir early on.

Wine just touched all my senses. I often say you could do a liberal arts degree with wine as the hub because it ties to all facets of human endeavor. History, art, religion, commerce, science, war, politics. So it just fascinated me, beyond the buzz of it.

Joanna: Oh, and let’s add dating and sex to the list.

Natalie: Oh yes, absolutely. There’s a reason why it’s a better social lubricant than, say, orange juice.

Joanna: Absolutely. That’s fantastic. Then, again, just so people know, when was that? It wasn’t like last year.

How long have you now been doing this?

Natalie: So my son was born at the end of ’98, and so it’s been 25 years. It’s been a time.

Joanna: I think that’s really important because what you just described there, starting out and having nothing, and now you’re multi-award-winning. I mean, you are so super successful. I think some people forget the journey, and they just kind of see you now.

I mean, I’m not as lauded as you are at all, but people look at how many books I’ve written, for example, and they’re like, how did you do that? I’m like, well, it’s 16 years of doing this. So that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s year after year, and—

You’ve just added to it year after year.

Natalie: Yes, and you just keep plugging away at it, and the adage is compare and despair. The mistake that I used to make is I’m comparing my sort of back end—I know what’s going on in my life—to somebody else’s front end, which looks amazing. Like if you ever look at Instagram, everybody’s life’s perfect.

You don’t see what goes on behind the scenes or how long it took them to get there. You also don’t see that for every win, whether it’s a book published or an award or whatever, there’s like 76 losses or no’s from editors or whatever. It’s just going up to bat over and over and over and keeping going.

Joanna: I think what’s interesting about your writing is, obviously, you still write about wine and food pairings on your website, but also for loads of other places. You do reviews, you do articles on wine, but Wine Witch on Fire and some of your other books are much more personal.

What are the challenges of writing memoir compared to your more journalistic writing?

Natalie: So I’ve always written from a first person perspective. I like to be conversational. Memoir is a whole, as you know, Jo, is a whole other animal from nonfiction, and even from fiction.

Memoir does share so many techniques of fiction. I had to learn a new genre of writing, really. That’s how it felt. I had to learn about plot, and setting, and character, and conflict, and themes, and all the rest of it, and dual timelines.

All of this I did not have to do when writing a straightforward nonfiction book about wine or travel. It was so complex, and yet that’s what also made it exhilarating.

Memoir is a true account, or at least the way you understand the truth of what happened in your life, but you have all these other techniques. It’s a mountain to climb, but it’s definitely doable, but again, you have to keep at it.

I took all kinds of online courses. I started listening to your podcast, which has been immensely helpful. So that’s one set of challenges.

Then with memoir, if you’re writing about anything juicy, it’s probably something bad that happened to you because no one wants to write about “here’s my perfect life, and it all turned out nicely.”

So, of course, I write about my no good, terrible, very bad vintage, personally and professionally, in Wine Witch. To do that —

You really have to dig into your own dirt, and be honest, be vulnerable, but also, in a sense, you have to relive what you went through.

They’ve done MRI scans on the brains of people who’ve been through a traumatic car crash, survived, but then they read them the script of what happened during that car crash. The same areas of the brain are lighting up. So you’re not remembering it, you’re reliving it.

So that is another challenge of memoir. You’re going to have to go back into those scenes of your own life and really relive them if you want to tell it in full detail.

Joanna: You mentioned there how you understand the truth. I get quite obsessed around the word truth, as in truth with a capital T versus the small t. There are some things that obviously happened or didn’t happen, but how we write about it in memoir is how we see it, and other people can see it in quite a different way.

So the example being, you and I have both had relationship breakups. I’m sure everyone has, but divorce, particularly. Divorce, I always think of it as a good example. My parents are divorced. My husband’s parents were divorced.

Divorce from two different perspectives, it’s such a different thing. If both partners wrote a memoir, it would be completely different from their perspective. So what are your recommendations to people listening, when—

You’re trying to tell the ‘truth,’ but also to realize it’s not the only truth.

Natalie: So you can always put that caveat up front, the author’s note that says, “This is how I understand what happened. It’s my story, my story alone. It’s not someone else’s story.” Even though other people may come into your story in order for you to tell your story, you have to stick to your story.

So if there are parts about somebody else’s life that really don’t play a role in you telling your story, leave it out. Let them tell their story if they want to in their own memoir. Stick to your own story.

The other thing that I had to do was, you know, competitiveness and perfectionism are kind of the two snakes in my life. As I say, one is a cobra that will bite you. The other is a boa constrictor that will squeeze the life out of you. So I’m dealing with that all the time, trying to, during this memoir, get past that.

So showing my flaws, all my flaws. I think it’s only in being very honest with yourself, and on the page, that anyone’s going to relate to you.

For me, a memoir is not exactly what you did and what happened to you, because your story is going to be so different from anybody else’s, but what you did with it, how you recovered from it, and so on. It’s what people can take away from that story.

So just to wrap this up, I always tried to be harder on myself than anyone else, questioning myself, my own motives and so on. As opposed to a memoir never works if it’s a revenge book or if you’re tilting the story some way. Readers are too smart, and it serves no one, including the author.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. It can be like legally difficult, and it’s not your therapy. You have to be past therapy.

I wanted to come back to something else. So you’re a sommelier and you’re a super taster, which I discovered when I read your memoir. This fascinates me because I’m very visual in my writing. In my mind’s eye, I see the thing play out, and then I write what I see. So I’ll often use the language I see.

Other people obviously hear. Taste is literally something I always forgot in books, and smell I forgot in books. Then with COVID, I lost a lot of what I even had left, and it never really came back.

Yo’re a super taster. What are your tips on sensory writing?

I mean, you write about wine over and over and over again. You must have such a range of sensory details because otherwise it would get quite repetitive. So what are your tips for doing this? What is the world like when you are a super taster?

Natalie: Wow, I must say, I read Blood Vintage, as you know, Jo, and I think your sensory detail was amazing. Not just the visual, but the smell and the taste. I thought you did a great job.

Joanna: Thank you.

Natalie: So you’ve mastered that. So I’ll answer the last question first. As a super taster, it just means you’re very hyperaware of your sensory environment. I got tested in California by a master of wine. He actually measured my taste buds.

25% of the population are super tasters, and most of them tend to be women. We don’t know if that’s evolution because we were the ones cooking or tasting the berries before giving them to the children. Or we may just we’re more practiced in it today, sensing and sniffing and perfume and all the rest of it.

It was Dr. Linda Bartoshuk at Yale University of Medicine who discovered the phenomenon. She said super tasters live in a hyper sensory world. It’s like having 500 fingers rather than 10, or a hyper-neon world. It’s a lot of fun, Jo.

Joanna: Sounds overwhelming.

Natalie: It is. It is. Why do I drink? Why did I used to overdrink? It’s noticing everything. Without my telling him, the master of wine who tested me, he said, “I’ll bet you, you remove your tags from your clothing. You don’t like zippers. You have thermostat wars with your family.”

I’m thinking, that’s just creepy that he’s so right on. So it’s just a matter of noticing, over-noticing.

So that leads me to the answer to your question, how do you get better at sensory detail?

Start noticing everything. Slow down and pay attention.

You do not have to be a super taster, you can be a super noticer, though.

I teach online food and wine pairing classes, and one of the first things we talk about is pay attention to everything in your life. So when you cut open a vegetable or a fruit, that’s when it’s most pungent. Smell it, taste it. Put that into your mind, give it a name, say it out loud, you’ll remember it better doing it that way.

We live in a very visual culture, but we’ve forgotten our sense of smell. It’s kind of downgraded. There was a study of graduate students, and they said, which sense would you give up for your smartphone? It was smell. We know that loss of smell can lead to depression and all sorts of things.

So notice everything in your life. I even tell them, sniff the leather furniture in your living room, just don’t let anyone catch you doing it. So notice everything and then start naming it, and you will develop a vocabulary that you can call on in your writing or when you’re tasting wine or whatever.

Notice differences. The other thing we do is we don’t taste one wine alone. We’ll put them side by side or have a flight of wines, and notice the differences. Hey, that one smells different. Why? Again, it’s just about paying attention.

It’s like when a movie critic goes to a movie, they don’t just sit back. They’ve got their notes. They’re making notes on plot and narrative. Just pay attention, and you’ll open up your world, your vocabulary, and I think your writing.

Joanna: I think it’s being more specific in our writing.

So for example—and a lot of writers get this wrong—they might say it smelled of apples, let’s say. Whereas if you were tasting a wine, I presume you would say, like a Granny Smith apple, or Golden Delicious, or whatever you have in Canada.

Natalie: Exactly. “After a spring rain, and the orchard manager had an argument with his daughter.” No, I wouldn’t go on that way, but you’re right. Specificity, isn’t that what writing’s about? Like getting more and more specific so people can paint that picture in their mind of where you are and what you’re talking about.

Joanna: Absolutely. So another thing that I love from the book is terroir, which we talked about a lot when I came on your show, and in Blood Vintage it’s very important. I feel like it’s a word that’s thrown around a lot, but that perhaps some people don’t know what it means. So why is that important for wine?

Also in your book, I love that you compared that to the author’s voice.

Why make the comparison to author’s voice? Tell us about terroir.

Natalie: Yes, thank you. There’s a wine label at the beginning of the book that kind of sets up for the contents of the book, The Memoir Domaine MacLean, and then I talk about terroir.

For me, terroir in the wine world means it’s a magical combination of like soil, geography, climate, weather, the decisions the winemaker makes, all of these different influences that come together to create the final taste of the wine.

I think we do it as writers. The parallel would be our word choice, like our point of view, our humor, our dialogue. All those different techniques come together to form your voice.

We often hear in courses or rejection letters, you know, “I want to hear your voice. What is your writer’s voice?” I think it’s all of those things that are working together and that are uniquely you.

If you picked up a book and it didn’t have your name on it, or an essay, someone would know it’s you. Just like someone would know this wine is definitely a Pinot Noir from California. It isn’t from Burgundy. We could get even more specific than that, but that’s basically how I think about it.

Joanna: Yes, I think one of the issues with a lot of teaching of writing is that often we have to self-edit. Obviously, we believe in editing, and we believe in working with editors as well.

Often when you’re editing, I feel like there’s something in your brain that says, “Oh, that’s too me, like I should be more professional in my writing,” or, “I shouldn’t say that because it’s too colloquial.”

Often those are the things that actually emerge as your voice, that make you not like everyone else.

Natalie: Exactly. I like puns, even though they’re supposedly the lowest form of humor, lowest intellectual form of humor. So you learn to not overdo it so that it’s not one big groaner, but let a little through if that’s who you are.

In the wine world, I stopped capitalizing words like Pinot Noir and Cabernet, and it was like a shock, or using contractions. Wine writing could be very stiff and jargony, but I wanted to make it conversational. So it’s all those little, tiny touches along the way.

Again, it’s a sense of vulnerability, of being okay to show yourself to the world. As I say these days, everyone knows everything about everyone anyway. So why not show them the parts you want without harshly editing yourself. They’re going to find out some bits and bobs anyway, so why not welcome them in?

Joanna: Yes, and again, that’s a longer term thing. In fact, I was talking to an early stage writer the other day, and she said, “Oh, I just won’t put stuff about me online.” I was like, if you want a career this way, it’s actually impossible, a long-term career. You just can’t keep yourself away from everybody entirely.

I mean, you have to have your boundaries clearly, but you just can’t stay completely separate. So if you’re open from the beginning, then that’s all good.

Natalie: For better or worse, we are all brands, as authors, as business owners, if you self-publish, or even traditional.

People want to know the person behind the book.

I keep dragging this back to wine, just because it’s what I do, but when people present a bottle of wine, whether it’s at a dinner party or they’re asking for recommendation in a restaurant, we’re fascinated by if there’s a story with that bottle.

Every bottle has a story, every book has a story, but it’s the person behind the bottle. Did they struggle and live in a van for seven years, and then they finally got a break, and they got a high score from a famous critic, or whatever. We want to know who made this. Where did it come from?

We don’t want generic wines any more than we want completely AI written books.

It’s just there’s no human touch. We want to see who’s behind the books and the bottles.

Joanna: Which is why I think memoir is even more important than ever. When I think about the writers whose memoir I’ve read, I feel like I know them as a person far more.

Whereas, to be honest, I read fiction every day—well, every night I read fiction before I go to bed—and yes, there are some writers who I follow in other ways, but most of them, I just want to read the story. I just want the book.

With a lot of nonfiction, it’s I just want the information. So I think there is a difference. Memoir is the most personal of genres, really, which is why it’s so challenging, but—

Memoir is also the most important for standing out.

Natalie: Absolutely, yes. You’ve got to be all in. So it’s the most challenging, the most scary, and the most rewarding, I think, can be, for the reader and the writer, but you have to be all in. You can’t just hedge it a little bit, and I’ll tell this little bit, but I want to edit out that.

Joanna: Yes, that’s true. Now, of course, so talking about putting ourselves out there, one of the things that authors are most scared of is being attacked online, being canceled. The negative side of being out there, of putting your head up above the parapet and getting shot at.

This happened to you in this terrible way. The book goes into it in more detail. So just briefly explain what happened. Also, more importantly—

How did you deal with it in those months of crisis management, practically and also with your mental health?

Natalie: I didn’t deal with it that well at first. So what happened, just to summarize without going down a rabbit hole, is that this happened 10 years ago, but I do think the issues are even more relevant today.

This was in the heyday of aggregators, Huffington Post, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. I was looking at different sites, and there were a few wine sites quoting my wine reviews. They had invited me to be part of their website, but I declined because I had my own website.

So I noticed, okay, they’re quoting my wine reviews. Why are they doing that? Then I realized they were quoting my reviews from our provincial liquor store, which is government owned. So I thought, well, that must be okay. Wrong.

So I started quoting all the reviews from the liquor board because I thought, oh, that will give my readers more context. So I’ll have my review, and then I will have it clearly separated that this is a different review from another writer, just like rotten tomatoes will gather movie critic reviews.

That lit a bonfire, and allegations of copyright infringement or misattribution, all the rest of it. So I did get legal help. I sorted it all out. In the end, I was within the bounds of what we call fair dealing in Canada. It’s fair use in the United States, in terms of what you can quote and how much you can quote.

In terms of dealing with it at the time, it just kind of hit me like a Mack truck out of the blue. At that time it was just before Christmas, it’s a lovely Nightmare Before Christmas holiday feel bad story. No, it has a happy ending.

At the time, I thought strength meant dealing with it myself, independently, and not dragging friends and family into this mess that was happening online. I thought, I can handle it. I went for a week without telling anyone what was happening.

I was just watching these nasty streams of social media and all the rest of it happening online, in the wine world, admittedly. Still, in my world, it was a tsunami. In that time, it was about 11 days, I lost nine pounds, and subsequently I developed a heart murmur.

So people say sticks and stones will break my bones, you know, whatever, it’s just the internet turn it off. But if you live online, or make your earning online, as we do, if we have online businesses, you can no more turn it off than a surgeon can operate outside the hospital.

Day after day, I drank the venom, and that was a mistake.

So the first thing was leaning on friends and family and bringing them in. Admitting this awful thing has happened.

Yes, I’m involved and partially responsible for not communicating better and what happened. I thought it would just be an exercise in shame, but what it turned out to be was an exercise in strength. That my friends and family were there to help me, to support me.

My hot buttons, what triggered me online, weren’t their hot buttons. So they didn’t care if so and so was saying whatever, they were there for me. It was such a relief. It was just a psychic relief.

Then dealing with the crisis, you have to do the things you need to do. I got legal advice. Originally, I was enrolled in the combined business program law degree. I dropped law and just finished the MBA, but I sure got my law degree in the end by the end of it.

In terms of copyright, invasion of privacy, suing for defamation, all the rest of it. All those issues that writers worry about, I took a crash course. So I got really solid legal advice.

Then I took steps after that to address what the people were saying online, but at a certain point you also have to stop responding. You have to block and walk. Block them, then walk and ignore them. As tempting as it is, even though what they’re saying is “ugh,” stop reading it.

You’ve done what you can do, then you need to remove yourself. Or it’s just going to take all of your creative energy out of you, and it will have a physical impact in many cases.

Joanna: I mean, for people listening, unfortunately, this is something that happened to you. You did make a mistake, but as you said, it was not legally a mistake. The reaction happened, and all that happened to you, and now I think people are like, well, why would I ever do this?

Why didn’t you, at that point, give up? You’re a highly educated, intelligent woman. You could have got a job again doing something else.

Why didn’t you walk away from the whole thing?

Natalie: Well, first of all, I’m very stubborn. Second of all, I’m a collapsed Catholic. So I believe in suffering makes you stronger. Beyond that, I did ask friends and family. I had some conversations saying, should I just go back to high tech marketing? But I left high tech marketing because there was so much sexism.

Then I land here, it’s like, oh dear, I just left Brave New World, this high tech world, move fast, break things, and stumbled into Downton Abbey. There’s a different brand, a different blend of sexism here.

One friend asked me, well, you know, you love what you do, you’ve worked at it now for—at that time—13, 14 years. Are you sure you want to walk away from that and go back to a corporate job?

I thought, God, no, that’s not me. I’m too feral for an office. I just love what I do, so why wouldn’t I continue?

It was very scary because at the time when you’re in the middle of a maelstrom, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t see the future. You don’t know if you’re going to get sued or something’s going to happen. You have to take a breath, come back, lean on friends and family advice.

I was in counseling at the time. I remain in counseling. I’m a big proponent of therapy. You have to get back to, why did I do this in the first place? Why did I start writing about wine?

I love writing, and I love the sensory engagement that wine brings me. So has that changed? No. So why should I leave even though it feels like it might be safer at the time, but it’s not.

Joanna: I mean, it’s not at all what you went through, but several times over the last few years, I’ve attracted the hate for my stance on AI. I have at several times said to Jonathan, my husband, I think I’m just quitting the whole thing. I mean, screw this.

Then, as you say, the part of the community that are like, “No, this is valuable, and we want this,” it becomes part of why you stay. Also, as you said, I love what I do as well. I love writing books, but I also like technology and learning things. So why should you give up?

Also, people forget, right? So this is the more relevant question for people listening. How are things for you now?

How do you protect yourself and potentially try and stop these things from happening?

Natalie: Well, I’m so glad you do what you do, Jo. I mean, I just love following you all about AI. Unfortunately, those of us who are on this planet today evolved from probably the most paranoid ancestors who were always searching the environment for what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong.

So that’s our negative bent because that’s what helped us stay alive and procreate. So we are the progeny of the most worried people on the planet.

So we’re going to notice the naysayers and the negativity, but you have to kind of, again, step back after you block and walk, and realize there’s just so much more positivity. There’s so many more supporters.

So in terms of now, I’ve had the benefit of this has been a decade since this happened.

As the memoirist Glennon Doyle said, “Write from a scar, not an open wound.”

My family at the time said, “Well, okay, you’ve done the healing. Why would you bother to write about this? Aren’t you just opening the scar?”

Well, I always loved Sean Thomas Dougherty, an Irish poet who said, “Why bother to write about it? Because there is someone, somewhere, right now who has a wound in the exact shape of your words,” which I love. So that’s why I shared the story, but that’s why I’m also able to share the story.

I’ve had the telescoping of time, the lens, to pull back and to make the reflections on what happened 10 years ago from a place of being healed, so it feels safe. It’s those reflections that are useful to readers. So no one wants a misery dump for a memoir.

They want to know not just what you did, but what you did with it, so that they can apply that to their lives if they’re in a professional crisis or a personal meltdown with a relationship. So that’s why I’m able to do it now.

Then in terms of safeguarding my health, well, I work out with a fabulous trainer. You recommended him to me, I love him.

Joanna: Yes, even though I’m in the UK and you’re in Canada, we have the same personal trainer.

Natalie: We do. I do it remotely. Obviously, I’m not flying over to Bath once a week. I learned to say Bath correctly, too, on the last podcast. So physical health, exercise, sleep, diet, but also mental health.

I continue in therapy. I love it. We’re never finished with who we are.

Also, just the safeguards I put for myself online. A lot of blocking, a lot of deleting comments, whatever, because that’s your daily mental stream that’s in there. So you have to protect it.

Joanna: Well, another tip for people. For a while, I outsourced my inbox because I just couldn’t do it. I get a lot of email, and at the time, I was getting a lot of email that I didn’t want to see, and it was hurting my brain.

For about a year, I did outsource my inbox, and then that person triaged and then sent me the emails that were nice or that I could respond to. So that actually helped. I think perhaps that’s a crisis management tip. I don’t use that anymore. After a while, that kind of died down, and so I was able to take it back.

I mean, you’re on TV, and you’re visible, and you’re on social media. I mean—

You’ve set your boundaries, so you only share certain things. Give some advice around that.

Natalie: Sure, so when I go on TV, it’s all about wine and fast food, or wine and Turkey for holiday dinners. It’s pretty happy topics, other than when I was talking about my book, which does, again, have a lot of humor. I’m painting it as this really dark story.

In terms of boundaries, I am public, I am out there. The memoir is very personal, but it’s what I’ve chosen, where my boundaries are. In the memoir, I did change the names of my family because I wanted to protect their privacy.

Sure, someone who’s really diligent can Google and try to figure out who everybody is. So I have set up those boundaries.

Just a side note that writers might like to hear on this bit about changing names—at first, I didn’t want to use the real names for all of the trolls online. So I changed all their names because I thought, don’t give trolls oxygen in your book.

Then once one of the lawyers read the book, he said, “Well, you know that if you quote what they’re saying from statements online and you use a pseudonym, you’re violating the copyright.”

Then by the end of writing the book, I came to the full, deeply peaceful conclusion that they deserved full credit for what they did and said, so I used their real names.

Joanna: I love that. That’s great.

Natalie: So that’s basically what I do, is try to have some boundaries. I don’t expose where I live or real names of my family. There are just some things that just are good safety protocols.

Joanna: So another thing I wanted to ask you about was you sent me this extraordinary book club guide. It’s got wine pairings for the book, and it’s 54 pages. When you sent it to me, I thought, oh, I’ll just open this, I’m sure it’s just a list of questions.

That is what I do for book clubs, which is, “Oh, here’s 20 questions that you might like to explore.” You do that, but you’ve basically written a whole book for a book club, and this fascinates me.

What are your tips for engaging with book clubs, and how do you reach them?

Because you clearly didn’t make this for no reason.

Natalie: The evolution of that was at the end of each chapter in the memoir I was recommending wines that kind of tied into the themes. For two reasons, my editor and I decided to eliminate that and put it into this book club guide.

One was, are you down and depressed and getting divorced? Here’s a wine for that. It’s like, okay, that’s not the message that I want to send. The other thing is, it became too long. So 54 pages, 13,000 words in this little book club guide, we removed that because the length of the book was too long.

So it comes in at 75,000, which is a typical soft paperback at 300 pages, I think it is, or just under. So that made it the right length. So that’s where this first developed. I didn’t sit down to write a 54-page book club guide.

It worked as a standalone, I think, because it does go chapter by chapter. It gives you a wine, it asks you chapter-specific questions, but I tried to go beyond that because, again, a memoir should be relevant to the reader. It should get them talking about their own lives and what they can draw from the book.

So it asks questions like, do you feel that wine is marketed to women differently from men? How do you feel about your own relationship with alcohol? Did it change during the pandemic?

So these are all questions that can spark discussion for book clubs, especially when members don’t read the books, which I’ve heard happens sometimes.

Also, it was interesting because it came back to me through people emailing and direct messaging that like a husband and wife or husband-husband, wife-wife, would read it together and use the book club guide as a way to talk about those issues between them.

Also daughters and mothers and so on, of drinking age, were using it in that way. So I thought that’s great. So the marketing to the book clubs has been mainly through the front and back pages, or front and back matter, as we call it.

So at the beginning of the book there is a QR code and a URL, that if you scan it, it will take you right to the book club guide. So that’s WineWitchOnFire.com/guide, and then it’s there again at the back of the book. So that’s the greatest marketing that I did for this book club guide.

Of course, you’re collecting email addresses. They can unsubscribe anytime they want, but that’s how I heard from a lot of people. Then I also put at the back of the book, you know, “Email me if you’ve spotted a typo or just want to ask a question.”

Like, there weren’t a lot of typos, but I know people love to email about typos, so I got a lot of emails that way. I’m just trying to seek out engagement with my readers because I want to take them on the journey with me.

I’m not as prolific as you are, Joo, but I do believe that one of the key success factors for marketing any book is an email list. I’m on social media, but the majority of my effort is through my email newsletter because you’ve got that one-to-one conversation, not on rented land, as we all say.

That’s been the major thing. Now, when I hear there’s a book club reading my book, I’ll offer to go on Zoom and join their meeting. I get a lot of book club members who read the book on their own and then recommend it for their book club, just because it has such a big discussion potential.

Then they discover there’s a book club guide that will help them not only organize the discussion, but also the wine tasting. Which is, again, the reason why a lot of clubs meet in first place.

Joanna: I think that’s genius, and I think we should all try a bit harder, I think. I certainly felt like, oh, I should try harder with that. I’ve tried to go to a book club, but I just couldn’t get involved with that. I’m not a very groupy type person. So I think because I haven’t been part of them, I haven’t paid enough attention. Reading your guide, I was like, okay, this is great.

Natalie: Thank you. Book clubs aren’t for everyone, but if anybody’s listening that does interact with a lot of book clubs, I would love to hear their suggestions. For my next book, I do want to write a book that’s specifically for book clubs, but I’m still trying to get my head around it, you know, with wines to taste.

Most book clubs are very proprietary as to which books they choose to read. So I’m trying to think, well, where would a book for book clubs that’s recommending wines and maybe some books on the side, where would that fit in?

Anyway, so that’s just an open invitation. If anyone wants to contact me at natalie@nataliemaclean.com, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Joanna: I think that’s great. I wanted to just move into the business side for a minute. You mentioned that you’re not as prolific as me. I don’t think that’s true because you write freelance articles, you write for your website every day. In terms of number of words written, I think you outstrip me like a lot.

Natalie: I definitely out drink you

Joanna: You have a business around writing and wine, so it’s not just the book.

Talk us through your multiple streams of income

Because I think that’s really interesting.

Natalie: So the first one would be online wine and food pairing classes. So at NatalieMaclean.com you can find the wine and food pairing classes I offer. I have an in depth course. Food seems to be less intimidating for people to get to know than wine. You know, a chicken is a chicken. It doesn’t have a vintage chart, whatever.

So I bring people in that way, but also those who know a lot about wine, sommeliers and so on, also take the course. A lot of sommelier courses and so on, surprisingly, don’t have a heavy food and wine pairing element to it.

It’s just a lot of fun, and people get to know each other from around the world. So that’s stream number one.

Stream number two is subscriptions to my wine reviews. So every two weeks, there’s a new batch of 100 wines that come out in our liquor stores here. Our provincial liquor store is the second largest purchaser of wine in the world. So it’s a huge chain.

So a lot of the reviews are relevant to other regions, countries, and so on. I review wines from all over the planet. That’d be number two.

Number three is advertising on the website.

The books. What else? I get paid some honorariums for TV appearances, some not. Then I also do speaking.

Lately, it’s been a run of teachers organizations wanting me to speak to them. My mom was a teacher for 32 years. My grandmother was an English teacher. I taught Highland dancing. So I’m loving these groups.

It’s a variety of topics, from marketing wine to women, to make your dumpster fire your superpower, getting stronger through resilience after you’ve struggled through something, all those kind of topics.

Joanna: I mean, this is so important because nonfiction books, in particular, having an ecosystem around the book is where you can make more money. Then just finally, you’ve got your Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. I’ve been on that talking about Blood Vintage, which was great. I know how much work podcasting is—

Why did you start your show, and how does podcasting fit into your book marketing and your business?

Natalie: I am a listener first. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve read a physical book for a long time. Even when you sent me the PDF, I put it up into Adobe and got it to read it to me. That’s how I consumed Blood Vintage. So I’m listening to podcasts all the time. I listen to audio books. I’m an audible learner, audio learner.

Even before the rise of podcasts, I had a short wave satellite radio, and I would listen to the BBC at night because that’s when the reception was best. These voices, these lovely British voices, would sweep in and out over the ocean, depending on how clear the night was. I loved listening to those.

Perhaps it goes back to when my mom used to read me stories at night, and just hearing her voice read The Wizard of Oz, and putting my hand on her forearm and feeling her strength, and the words were in the air, and then coming into me. I love all that. I love audio.

So I decided to start the podcast in—well, I actually made a few attempts in 2008, but the technology just confounded me. Then I started officially near the end of 2018 and got it up and running.

It was an excuse for me to be nosy and ask impertinent questions to people in the wine world, people connected to the wine world. It’s not just winemakers. I interview authors like you, but they tend to be wine authors. Sommeliers, cheese people, chefs, anybody, but it’s all about the storytelling.

So it’s very much similar to what I do with my books. It allows me entry into someone else’s life to ask the questions that I hope that my listeners/readers would want to ask but might be too afraid to or don’t have access to this person. That’s what I’m trying to do on Unreserved Wine Talk.

Joanna: People who think about starting a podcast, it’s like, does it help me sell books? Does it promote my brand? Does it make me money? Because it is a lot of work, or you might pay other people to do that for you.

Does the podcast fit business-wise, as well?

Natalie: I think it does. There’s a bit of irrationality, like I love to do it, so I’m going to do it. I do think that it is like having a 100-hour conversation with someone. They get to know you pretty well because I don’t just launch into the interview.

There’s always a preamble where I’m talking about something, perhaps more personally, like you do. I love those bits and pieces. What’s happening in your life makes me feel connected, makes me feel like I really do know you, Jo. I think people love that, like it’s very intimate.

So the business case though, I know that I have purchased online courses after consuming hundreds of episodes of somebody’s podcast. While I don’t have sophisticated enough tracking, I do believe in the power of podcasting. Not only is it intimate, but the stats are amazing.

People will listen to you for 30, 45 minutes, sometimes longer. Whereas it’s considered a win on Facebook or YouTube to get a 5-10 second watch of a video. I mean, it’s just so engaged. It’s an engaging medium.

Those long term, deeply committed listeners are often also long term committed readers.

Whether they’re reading a physical book or listening to it. So I do think there’s quite an overlap, and I hope that the tools get better for measuring it.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, I think there will never ever be tools for podcast listeners conversion because, as you say, someone who maybe has listened for months doesn’t buy anything, and then one day they will when they’re ready.

Or I have people come back now, people will be like, “Oh, you’re still here. You’re still podcasting. I listened to you like five years ago. Then I gave up on my book, and now I’m writing it again.” So they’ve come back. I think for both of us, I think podcasting is very valuable. Insane, Nat, we’re out of time.

Where can people find you, and your books, and your podcasts online?

Natalie: So you can find me at NatalieMaclean.com or WineWitchOnFire.com will take you to NatalieMaclean.com. Then I’m on all the social media channels with my name, but my primary hub is NatalieMaclean.com. You can get that book club, that reader guide, at WineWitchOnFire.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Natalie. That was great.

Natalie: Cheers, Jo. I’m looking forward to that glass of wine or two in person next time you.

Takeaways

• Natalie MacLean’s journey into writing was unplanned and stemmed from her love for wine.
• Wine can be a gateway to understanding various aspects of life, including history and culture.
• Writing memoir requires a different set of skills compared to journalistic writing.
• The truth in memoir is subjective and can vary from person to person.
• Being vulnerable in writing allows readers to connect with the author.
• Sensory details enhance writing and can be developed through practice and observation.
• Terroir in wine reflects the unique characteristics of the writer’s voice.
• Authors should embrace their individuality in their writing style.
• Online criticism can be overwhelming, but seeking support is crucial.
• Memoir writing is both challenging and rewarding, requiring full commitment. You can’t just turn off online negativity; it requires active management.
• Leaning on friends and family can provide immense support during crises.
• Resilience is key; stubbornness can be a strength in tough times.
• Therapy and counseling are valuable tools for personal growth.
• Sharing your story can help others who are struggling.
• Engaging with book clubs can create community and discussion.
• Building multiple income streams is essential for writers.
• Podcasting allows for deep connections with audiences.
• Protecting your mental health is crucial in a public-facing career.
• Creating a reader guide can enhance engagement with your book.

The post Writing Memoir And Dealing With Haters With Natalie Maclean first appeared on The Creative Penn.